Derek Lambert - The Saint Peter’s Plot

At first Maria had wondered why the more level-headed partisani bothered with Angelo. Then she had discovered that they used him because he liked to kill.

She was replacing the bottle when she noticed the sheaf of paper on which it had been resting. On the first sheet were scrawled three words in Angelo’s childish hand-writing: DIETRICH VATICAN HUDAL.

Slowly Maria lowered the bottle to the table. She glanced at her wrist-watch. It was 11.30 am. If Dietrich had been granted an audience with the Pope, then it would be over by now.

In two strides she was across the room, pulling back the bed, grimacing at the smell of unwashed sheets, pulling an old oak wedding chest from underneath. She tossed aside old magazines until she reached Angelo’s private armoury. A dismantled Thompson sub-machine gun, a Luger pistol and a stiletto with an elaborately carved handle.

All present and correct — except a German stick-grenade.

Maria ran out of the house into the square where the cats spat and arched their backs. Then she was in the Via Cavour running towards the centre of the city.

An old Lancia passed her, the driver — a fat man with a few strands of hair greased across his scalp — glanced at her over his shoulder. She waved and he smiled, winked and stopped the car.

“What’s the hurry, my pretty one?”

She jumped in beside him and told him to take her to the Piazza Navona as though she were addressing a taxi driver.

He shrugged, smiled, patted her knee and drove away.

“Urgent business?”

“Very.”

“Perhaps after this, ah, urgent business, we could meet and have a little drink. Perhaps in the sunshine on the Via Veneto …”

“Perhaps,” thinking: “If Angelo has ruined everything I’ll kill him.”

“What is the, ah, nature of this urgent business? It isn’t usual to see beautiful girls running on a hot day in Rome.” He glanced sideways at her. “You looked as though you were running for your life.”

“I’ll tell you about it later,” she said. “When we’re having that drink. And maybe after that …” managing a smile at the fat Fascist black-marketeer beside her. “Could we go a little quicker?”

“Nothing easier.” He stamped on the accelerator. “There’s no traffic on the roads. Not many of us are lucky enough to have cars these days. I have lots of beautiful things I could show you.”

As they neared the Piazza Navona Maria told him to stop.

“But I thought —”

“This will do,” she snapped.

As she climbed out she turned on him. “I know your face now, you fat pig. You’d better watch out.”

She lifted her skirts and ran through the narrow streets arriving at S. Maria dell’ Anima just as a black Mercedes was pulling up outside.

She saw Angelo Peruzzi in his clerical clothes as he was reaching into the leather briefcase. She threw herself at him, grabbing his hand inside the briefcase.

He swore and tried to push her away. She pressed her body against him, trapping the briefcase between them.

He pushed again with his free hand but she clung to him. He thrust his hand under her chin: “Get away from me or I’ll break your neck.”

She could feel his strength overcoming her; all she needed was a few moments more.

“Get away …”

Her head was bending backwards. Another fraction of an inch and the bones of her neck would snap. She gave way and fell to the ground, just as the door closed behind the bulky figure in the ill-fitting grey suit.

Angelo’s lips were trembling. With shaking hands he slipped home the tongue of the strap over the spring-clip on the case.

“You bitch,” he said.

III

The inquiry into the Dietrich episode was held in a cellar in the Borgo — a grenade’s throw from The Vatican, as Angelo Peruzzi had once put it.

But this evening Angelo Peruzzi was not in joking mood. He was trying desperately to maintain his prestige which is difficult when you have been all but overpowered by a woman.

Angelo’s prestige had been based on his willingness, and proven ability, to kill. And it owed its strength to the smallness of the group at a time when the partisani were an inchoate force of splinter groups which would only become a unified resistance movement when the Germans occupied Rome, and the British and Americans invaded the Italian mainland.

Angelo also drew his strength from Maria which had not been fully realised by the other members of the group. Until now.

The cellar was lit by a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. The three men — the two who had stalked Dietrich, and Angelo Peruzzi — sat on packing cases sharing a bottle of grappa while Maria sat on the table swinging her long legs as her agitation increased.

Angelo’s only possible ally was the younger man with the frost-bitten brain, but he was no match for Maria’s passionate eloquence or the menacing presence of the Sicilian.

Angelo was saying: “I still think I should have killed him.”

Carlo, the younger man, said: “What kind of partisani are we if we fail to kill a big fish like Dietrich when he’s handed to us on a plate?” By now he was asking questions instead of making statements. He looked at the Sicilian who shrugged. “If you had seen men like that in Russia …” Carlo always produced Russia and they forgave him a lot because of what he had been through.

The Sicilian drank from the bottle of grappa and handed it to Angelo Peruzzi. “And what about the things the Russians did to the Germans? What about the story of the gold?”

“What gold?” Angelo asked, happy for any diversion.

“It seems the SS were searching for gold in some village. They threatened to arrest the entire population — and by arrest they meant murder — if the gold wasn’t produced. They left four men in charge. Next day they returned and in one of the buildings they found a box marked GOLD.” The Sicilian paused for effect. “When they opened it they found it contained the heads of the four men they had left behind.”

“Sometimes,” Carlo said, “I wonder whose side you’re on.”

The Sicilian gave a gold-toothed smile. “Mine,” he said.

“You should be in Sicily fighting the Germans.”

The Sicilian closed his smile, took a knife from his belt and tested its blade with his thumb. “My place is here in Rome. Here I have contacts. Family contacts,” he emphasised. “Sicily will fall within a month. And when the Germans march into Rome there will be much work to do,” throwing the knife at a photograph of Mussolini on the wall.

Maria lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke into the aureole of light around the naked bulb. “If Angelo had killed Dietrich we wouldn’t be in any position to fight the Germans.”

Angelo started to speak but she held up her hand.

“If Angelo had thrown that grenade the Germans would be here now. They would be in The Vatican. We would have been finished before we started. They would have slaughtered hundreds of innocent men, women and children. Our movement would have been obliterated.”

“ Our movement?” The Sicilian retrieved the knife from the Duce’s face, already slitted with many wounds. “What exactly are your priorities?” His parents had sent him to Rome to be educated and he spoke Italian like a Roman.

She swung her heart-breaking legs a little quicker. “Very well, it’s obvious that I am concerned with the Jews. But that doesn’t mean we cannot work together.”

“That is true,” the Sicilian agreed. He held up the bottle to determine how much grappa Angelo Peruzzi had swallowed. “And I tell you now that I agree that it was a mistake to try and kill Dietrich.”

It was then that Maria realised the strength of the Sicilian. To be strong you had to admit your mistakes; beside the Sicilian, Carlo and Angelo were actors, cowboys.