James Benn - A Mortal Terror

As the column moved through the intersection, I did not look back.

The road was ours the rest of the way, two hours straight to the Naples docks. The column snaked through the narrow streets leading to the waterfront. On each corner, Italians sold bottles of wine, fruit, and anything else GIs would fork over cash or cigarettes for.

“Major,” I said, leaning forward as the driver weaved the jeep between crates of supplies and lines of American and British soldiers. “Can you tell us now where we’re headed?”

“Not until we board ship. It’s all top secret, not to be revealed until we are sequestered from the civilian population. We can’t take a chance on Fascist spies getting word to the Germans.”

“Okay,” I said. Next to me, Kaz shrugged. We could wait. The traffic stalled, and we bought some oranges from a skinny young girl doling them out from a burlap sack. Following her was a short, pudgy guy with a thick black mustache, selling postcards. He held a stack in his grimy hands, fanning them out for all to see.

“Naples harbor, Anzio. Good-a luck, boys. Nice-a women in Anzio. Post-a cards, Anzio, Nettuno here.” He kept up his singsong pitch. Army security, you gotta love it.

“Anzio. That’s about a hundred miles north of the German lines, Major,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I guess the cat’s out of the bag already. We ship out in the morning, hit the beach the following day. Anzio and Nettuno are two seafront villages about a mile apart. The idea is to get behind the Germans and cut off their supplies from Rome. Something along those lines.”

“Something?” Kaz said.

“We’ll talk when we’re on board,” Kearns said. He seemed to be in a bad mood. Maybe it was finding out our target was common knowledge, or the vagueness of the battle plan, or the fear that a colonel and a general would get their necks snapped. None of these things made me happy either.

As we entered the harbor, MPs waved trucks to their unloading areas, and after a quick check of Major Kearns’s orders, we were directed to the main wharf where Liberty ships and landing craft of all types were lined up, taking on men and the machinery of war.

“Here’s our ship,” Major Kearns said. “The USS Biscayne, command vessel for the invasion. You’ll be traveling with the brass. General Lucas is on board.”

“And a number of colonels and other generals, no doubt,” Kaz said.

“Yep, so keep your eyes peeled and don’t get in the way.”

We followed him up the gangplank and a swabbie showed us where to stash our gear. Kaz and I had a cabin about the size of a janitor’s closet with two double bunks. Plenty of room, as long as the four guys didn’t all get out of their bunks at once.

Up on deck, we gazed out over the five-inch guns on the bow and watched the parade of troops boarding vessels all along the waterfront. LSTs had beached themselves beyond the wharf, their bow doors dropped onto flat rocks where GIs used to sunbathe and fishermen had dried their nets. Now, Sherman tanks backed in, their engines growling as they slowly made their way onboard. Shouts and curses drifted up from the ships as the traffic jammed up on the docks.

“What do you know about Anzio?” I asked Kaz.

“In ancient times it was called Antium. Both Nero and Caligula were born there. Actually, that is where Nero was when Rome burned and he famously played his lyre. He had a summer palace in Antium, and Rome is only forty miles away; the sky must have glowed with the flames. I hope we shall get to see the palace ruins.”

“I bet there will be plenty of ruins. Just not all two thousand years old. What about Caligula? Wasn’t he the crazy one?”

“A bloodthirsty killer, a megalomaniac, yes. But Nero was no prize either. He had his own mother killed for plotting against him.”

“Both sons of Anzio,” I said.

“Ironic that we are pursuing a killer, perhaps a madman, to that very place.”

“Is he a madman? It seems he has a plan, of sorts. The playing cards, plus the murder of Inzerillo, pushing Cole to suicide. These aren’t sudden or random. They’re deliberate, linked in some way we can’t yet understand.”

“Billy, we don’t know for certain that Inzerillo’s killer is the same man.”

“It’s a good bet. His joint was frequented by the Third Platoon, Landry was mixed up with some girl there, and we have conflicting stories about damage done. Somebody’s hiding something, and I think that has something to do with Inzerillo being silenced. What I don’t see anywhere is a motive. For any of this.”

“Caligula was a madman, but he managed to run an empire. Being insane doesn’t mean one is out of control. It is another way of seeing the world.”

“So our guy has his own set of rules?”

“Yes, rules that make sense to him. Perhaps he views us as out of step with reality.”

“Being in the army, it would be hard to keep to your own rules, your personal sense of reality.”

“It is difficult, maintaining individuality in such a large organization that demands obedience and discipline.”

“Yeah, it’s hard enough for guys like us,” I said. I felt I had the thread of an idea, but didn’t know how to put it into words. “But our Caligula, he’d have a real hard time of it, wouldn’t he?”

“Are you getting at his motive?”

“Maybe. I’ve been trying to think of the usual motives. Greed, passion, revenge. But what if it’s beyond that? Something we can’t imagine, but that he desperately needs to cover up?”

“That would mean the victims all knew something. Something that got them killed.”

“A lieutenant, a captain, a major, a pimp, and a sergeant. What did they have in common, and what did they know?”

“Perhaps we should be asking which colonel and which general have something in common with them,” Kaz said.

“We’re not going to get a senior officer to admit knowing a pimp. And Captain Galante wasn’t really part of Landry’s Third Platoon crowd.”

“But Landry and Galante were connected. They knew each other from before Galante was transferred to the hospital at Caserta. Sergeant Cole was transferred to Caserta courtesy of Captain Galante.”

“I can see some connection there,” I said. “But I don’t see how it all hangs together, and where it’s going. I keep thinking we have to go back to the beginning, that there’s something we got wrong from the start.”

“Like what?” Kaz asked.

“Wish I knew, buddy, wish I knew.” We stood in silence, feet up on the rail, watching the activity on the wharf. It was a nice day, maybe mid-fifties, a hazy sky and calm waters. A good day for watching a parade. A bad day for solving mysteries.

“Look,” said Kaz, as he pointed to a column of blue uniforms advancing along the wharf. Carabinieri. About a hundred, maybe more, marching in good order, packs on their backs and rifles slung over their shoulders. They halted before the Liberty ship next to us and began to file aboard, their boots clanging against the metal gangplank. Lieutenant Luca Amatori brought up the rear, giving his boss, Captain Trevisi, a snappy salute before he followed his men up. It was hard to make out at that distance, but I got the impression Trevisi was as glad to stay on shore as Luca was to leave him there. At the top of the gangplank, Trevisi saluted again, and leaned on the deck, just as we were doing, watching the massive preparations.

“I didn’t have a chance to ask you about Luca and the concentration camp,” I said. “What did you find out?”

“I spoke to a friend on the staff of British Army Intelligence, a fellow Pole. He had a file on Lieutenant Amatori. Our friend Luca was posted to the island of Rab, in the Adriatic, off the coast of Yugoslavia. The Fourteenth Carabinieri Battalion was charged with guarding a concentration camp there, mainly for Yugoslav civilians suspected of partisan activities. Mostly Slovenes and Croatians, often entire families if they were thought to have helped the partisans.”