James Benn: A Mortal Terror

“Don’t tell me,” I said.

“The jack of hearts?” Diana asked.

“Yes,” Julian said, laying down the close up as if he were dealing a poker hand.

“When did this happen?” I asked.

“The bodies were found yesterday morning. As soon as Fifth Army put two and two together, they sounded the alarm. German agents, Mafia, Italian Fascists, they’re seeing them all behind every rock.”

“There must be a lot of nervous majors, not to mention colonels and generals,” I said.

“From the cables in the file, I think it’s a general who sounded the alarm. But he probably got a major to do the work. Count in the British, and there are probably a thousand majors within five miles of Caserta Palace. And they’re all worried it will be them next.”

“No one else killed?”

“Not since we got that report last night in the diplomatic pouch from London.”

I leafed through the paperwork. Orders to proceed without delay to Naples and report to Major John Kearns at Fifth Army HQ. Maybe he didn’t like the odds. Maybe he knew Harding and called in a favor. There were more photos of Galante. I guessed that once the MPs realized there was a link between the two murders, they paid more attention to the crime scene. Close-ups of the neck, front and back.

“Interesting,” I said.

“What?” Julian and Diana said at the same time, leaning in to study the photo.

“The killer used a lot of force, and the good doctor fought back. These bruises and abrasions go up and down the neck, as if Galante struggled to get away. You can see the thumbprints where the killer squeezed. There’s also a bruise here at the base of the neck, from the excessive pressure.”

“So the killer was angry? Probably not uncommon,” Julian said.

“Look at Landry,” I said, placing that photo next to Galante’s. “No signs of a struggle. His pistol still in his holster. This killing was quick, professional. No sign of anger.”

“Two murderers?” Diana said.

“Maybe. Or two entirely different reasons. Can’t really tell much, but it’s something to look into. The cards could mean something, or be nothing at all.”

One of the photographs was a long shot, taken several steps back from the body. Galante lay against smooth gray boulders bordering a pool of water. It looked familiar, the waterfall and the sculpture of a pack of dogs bringing down some guy with antlers on his head. Not the kind of thing you forget.

“I’ve been here,” I said. “These are the gardens in back of Caserta Palace. The palace is at the top of a hill, and the gardens, fountains, and waterfalls go on forever, down the hill at the rear.”

“The Fountain of Diana must be beautiful,” Julian said, looking at the photo.

“Huh?”

“Oh, I see,” Diana said. “Diana and Actaeon, right?”

“Exactly,” Julian said.

“Is that somewhere in the file?” I asked.

“No, it’s nothing about the murder. Just a bit of Greek mythology, the kind of thing you pick up at Yale. Or one of the fine English schools, I’m sure,” he added, smiling at Diana.

“Okay Yalie, explain it to the one of us who didn’t pay attention in public school.”

“Diana was the virgin goddess of the wild places. One day she and her maidens were bathing in a forest stream. Naked. Actaeon was out hunting with his pals. They’d bagged their share of stag, and he was heading back with his pack of hunting dogs when he saw Diana. He was stunned by her beauty, but she could not allow a mere mortal to tell the world what he had seen. So she turned him into a stag, and his own dogs hunted him down and tore him apart.”

I studied the picture. Galante, dead in front of the sculpture that told a story of death from thousands of years ago. What had he seen in his last moments? Not the beauty of a goddess.

“When do we have to leave?”

“We should go now.”

“Give us half an hour.”

Diana and I walked along the road, arms wrapped around each other. I didn’t have to apologize. It could have been Kim Philby sending her off suddenly as easily as Julian Dwyer coming for me. We’d both donned our coats without speaking to spend our last few minutes outside, under blue skies. It was quiet away from the hotel, a farm on each side of the road, cowbells sounding from a hillside pasture.

“I thought you might want to tell Julian about Kurt Gerstein and the camps,” I said.

“I’d rather be with you. He’s not a bad sort, really, but it would be beyond his grasp.”

“What do you think Kim will do?”

“About Gerstein’s information? I don’t know. He seemed at a loss, which is unusual. I want him to send me back, but I think he’s upset about me coming out for this. He’d rather have hard information about troop movements, that sort of thing.”

“Be careful,” I said. “Of him and the Germans.”

“Good advice. It’s not bad, you know, inside the Vatican. We’re safe there.”

“Okay,” I said, knowing that anything else would only get Diana angry and me worried.

“You be careful, too. This seems like an odd business, with the playing cards. What do you suppose the killer is up to?”

“Sowing confusion? Or maybe it all makes sense to him. Or them. I’ll be careful, I promise.”

“Okay,” she said, echoing my own words, and probably my thoughts, as we leaned into each other. “I’ll only ask one thing.”

“What’s that?”

She stopped and turned to face me. “That whatever happens, to either of us, you keep a place in your heart for me. Always. Don’t ever forget I love you.”

I couldn’t speak. I held her close. I stared into the blue sky, drinking in the distant and near beauty, filling that space in my heart that was already feeling the claim of the war on it, the draw of the dead waiting for me, their stories, their desires, their final moments. I felt Diana’s cheek, her skin cold in the mountain air, like the sheen of ice on a pond in December.

I shed my civilian clothes in Gibraltar, and transformed from an Irish businessman into a piece of military cargo. I was tossed in the back of a B-24 Liberator making an early morning run to Naples, carrying mail, a couple of war correspondents, a congressman, and me. A supply sergeant had met me at the airfield with a duffle bag full of government-issue duds and a. 45 automatic. The congressman had come on board with a fifth of bourbon, and shared it with the reporters in hopes they’d mention his name. I didn’t work for anyone who bought ink by the gallon, and he wasn’t from Massachusetts, so the bottle didn’t come my way often. I settled in on some mail sacks. B-24s weren’t built for passengers, and there was damn little room in the narrow fuselage.

As they boozed it up, I read through the file Julian had given me. The initial report about Lieutenant Norman Landry was brief, the kind of cop shorthand I was used to. Perfunctory, describing the physical condition of the body, but little else. The kind of report a patrolman might write up after finding a drunk knifed in a doorway off Scollay Square at three in the morning. Dutiful scribbling doomed to the unsolved file, unless the victim turned out to be a Cambridge boy or a Beacon Hill gent.

Landry’s death was attributed to the usual “person or persons unknown” with no speculation as to why someone had snapped his neck. A doctor from the 32nd Station Hospital had listed cervical fracture as the cause of death. I could tell as much from the angle at which Landry’s head canted on the ground. He had been killed in a bivouac area near San Felice, a small village about five miles from headquarters. His regiment was resting and refitting there after being pulled out of the fighting along the Volturno Line, where he was one of thousands of GIs. A report from the MP noted that Landry had been popular with his men, a platoon he’d led at Salerno and on the road to Cassino before they were pulled off the line for rest outside of Naples. The fact that he’d survived, and that his men liked him, told me two things: he was a good soldier, and he led from the front. Lots of platoon leaders get killed quickly. Others who survive do it by staying behind their men. If Landry’s men, especially the veterans, liked him, then he wasn’t one of those.