"Lieutenant Andrews is dead," Major Harding said, starting off my day with bad news.
"Throat slit?" I asked, not surprised that another sap involved in this mess had stopped breathing.
"Hard to tell," Harding said. "He got caught in the open by a couple of Messerschmitts. Truck he was in exploded."
"Was he alone?"
"No. We found him in the back of the truck. Two GIs in the cab, also dead."
Harding's answers were crisp, like his uniform. Even in the field, his brown wool shirt looked as if it had been ironed. Actually, Harding looked as if he had been starched and ironed at birth, like the uniform stood to attention when he put it on. He sat straight, his torso at a perfect angle, his boots polished, the few gray hairs at his temples evenly distributed, though there might have been more of those gray hairs than when I'd first met him in England a year ago.
"Who killed them?" I asked.
"Probably someone named Fritz or Hans. I do not think the Germans are in on this conspiracy," Kaz said. Everyone's a comedian.
"Did anyone see the attack?" I asked.
"No," Harding answered in that patient tone reserved for explaining the obvious to thick-headed lieutenants. "The bullet-ridden burning truck was a clue, though."
Another dead body in another flaming wreck. I saw Kaz's eyes flicker to the floor and close for a second. Then he was back. He had only been half kidding about the Germans.
I leaned back in my chair and looked out over the Valley of the Temples. Rows of olive trees curved over the hills around us, silvery leaves bright in the morning light. The view would have been pretty if it hadn't been for the 20mm antiaircraft gun set up several yards in front of us and the fuel cans shaded by camouflage netting strung from the farmhouse. The night before, Kaz had taken us to Harding's headquarters outside of Agrigento, a small farmhouse between the city and the ancient ruins. I'd reported to Harding, telling him everything from waking up in the field hospital to all the things I'd gradually remembered. When I told him about Don Calo and the deserted defenses in the mountain towns, he pointed to a map showing the advance of Patton's infantry and armor into the interior of the western portion of the island.
"You saved lives with this one, Boyle," he'd said. He'd patted me on the back and ordered me to get some sleep, which was his version of awarding me the Silver Star. That was six hours ago, and now I was trying to get enough coffee in me to stay awake and talk through our next priority-finding Legs and Vito before they could heist millions in occupation lire.
Harry, Kaz, and I sat outside with Harding, all of us on rough wooden straight-back chairs, arranged in a semicircle to take advantage of the view. It felt strange to be back here, my memory returned and the journey to Don Calo over, looking out at the Temple of Concordia where things had first gone so wrong. I was glad to see Harding and have him in charge of what happened to me. I sipped the hot coffee, ready for him to decide what our next move was, tired of days of making decisions on my own.
"OK, Boyle, if you're satisfied with the circumstances of Lieutenant Andrews's death, what's our next move?" Harding said, as if he'd read my thoughts. So much for the subordinate relaxing.
"First thing is to track down where the payroll is. I assume they've brought it up from the bottom of the bay by now. We head to where it is, then watch for our Mafia pals."
"Makes sense," Harding said. "First, we secure the payroll. Then find out who Charlotte is. I understand that we need to let Genovese walk, but that doesn't mean we can't squeeze some information out of him first."
"What will happen to Nick?" Harry asked.
Nick was being held in a locked storeroom in an outbuilding behind the farmhouse. It wasn't the stockade, but he wasn't sipping coffee in the sun with us either.
"I'm not sure," said Harding. "He endangered the mission, even if I understand why he did it."
"He did deliver our request for cooperation to Don Calo," Harry said. "But without that yellow handkerchief, the old man wouldn't listen to him no matter what he said."
"He could have shot me at the temple and taken it," I said. Would that argument help or hurt Nick?
"I have to think about it," Harding said. "He could be court-martialed or simply sent back to the States. We can't trust him with anything vital if he can be so easily manipulated."
Back to the States. For screwing up. Maybe that would make Nick happy or maybe he wanted a chance to prove himself. Me, I had to stay here since I had done such a great job. Indispensable me.
Indispensable. That made me think about Andrews again. Hutton and Andrews had both been in the Signals Company. The two of them must have been the communications link between Charlotte and the other conspirators. But how had they worked their part of the scheme?
"Where was Andrews when the truck was hit? Where was he headed?" I looked to Kaz and Harding. They had no answers.
"I have a report in the office," Harding said. "Is it important?"
"I have no idea," I said. "But it might indicate what they were up to. Was his outfit moving out? Were they under orders? Or was he on a joyride?"
Harding got the report and I read it.
"Says here they took a truck from the motor pool and were headed to Vittoria. No mention of orders. I know his Signals Company is still in its original location. All our phone wires are strung to their position at Gela."
"What does it mean?" asked Kaz. Vittoria was a couple of hours east of Gela, past Biazza Ridge.
"Maybe nothing. If it had been official business, I'd have less doubt about Andrews being alive when they were hit. But the way people have been turning up dead, I wouldn't be surprised to find out he was already a corpse in the back of that truck. Maybe they didn't need him anymore."
"Why wouldn't they?" Harding asked.
"They wouldn't if Charlotte was already in Sicily. Maybe Charlotte can run his own communications now. Maybe Andrews got cold feet, or maybe that was someone else's body in the truck. I don't know, but it makes me wonder."
"What's in Vittoria?" Kaz asked. He was getting pretty good at this detective stuff.
"Let's put that number one on the list," I said. "Could be important."
"One more thing," Harding said. "What about your Dr. Sciafani? Where does he fit in?"
"He helped me when I needed it," I said.
"He could have gotten you killed too, by knifing Don Calo's caporegime," Harding noted. Harry grunted in agreement.
"He wasn't acting rationally," I said. "He fell apart and found out the hard way it wasn't in his nature to be a killer. He was a big help to me, no matter what else he did. I don't think I could have gotten to Don Calo without him. But he can't stay in Sicily, that's for sure."
"What do you want me to do?" Harding asked.
"Can you get him to the States?"
"Only way to do that is via a POW camp. We're not accepting enemy prisoners as immigrants."
"But he's not a prisoner. He was paroled, he has the paperwork to prove it. Why couldn't he go back on a hospital ship? He's a doctor, he could help with the wounded."
Harding stroked his chin, struggling with the notion of bending army regulations. "I don't know about the States, but I could easily get him to North Africa. We have lots of Italian prisoners there. They need medical care. He could work for us, in one of the POW hospitals."
"He wouldn't be a prisoner?" I asked.
"No. He'd work for AMGOT. They hire many civilians. And he would be out of Don Calo's reach, and once he's on staff he'd have a better chance of making it to the States."
"As long as his boss isn't named Charlotte," I said.
"Then find Charlotte. I'll work on getting Sciafani to Tunisia. You let him know he's to stay put for now."
"OK," I said, standing. "How about I check out what Andrews was up to back at the Signals Company? Kaz and Harry can track down the location of the payroll." I had a hunch we might end up in the same place.
"Fine," Harding said. "Take a jeep there now. They can contact the 45th Division headquarters by radio to find out where the payroll is. All of you report back here tonight or radio in if you can't. If you find these mobsters, bring them back too. As our guests, of course. Mr. Genovese can stay for dinner."
"Will you wait until we return to decide about Nick?" Harry asked. He and Nick had grown close during their stay with Don Calo, and he was clearly on Nick's side. It also helped that Nick hadn't pointed a gun at Harry. I wasn't so sure, although I thought the best punishment for Nick would be to keep him here, not to send him packing-home.
"He's not going anywhere for a while," Harding said. "I might be able to use him as a translator, with an MP posted at the door."
"Fair enough," Harry said.
Fair had nothing to do with it, but Harry had his illusions. If life were fair, Vito Genovese wouldn't have a free pass and Roberto would still be alive, working on a plan to get to America. Hutton wouldn't have taken a bullet in the head, and Rocko would be alive, serving a sentence in the stockade for selling army inventory on the black market. Fair was a fairy tale.
I left after talking to Nick and Sciafani, trying to sound upbeat about their respective futures. Freshly shaved, in a clean uniform, with the familiar feel of a Colt. 45 automatic at my side, I pulled onto the main road to Gela and let the breeze blow away the heat and dust of the day. I had given the Beretta to Kaz as a souvenir; he liked having a backup gat. Or maybe he liked saying gat, rolling the hard gangster slang around his Oxford-educated tongue. Me, I liked the feel of my new clothes, the open road, and the sure knowledge of where I was going- all things that had been in short supply recently. A medic had removed the stitches from my arm and cleaned out the cut on my head. It was a relief not to sport white gauze anymore.
The open road soon lost its allure as I choked in the smoke and grit of a convoy of deuce-and-a-half trucks. Traffic crawled along, and I was glad of the goggles that had been left on the passenger seat. I tied a handkerchief, plain army-issue khaki, over my nose and mouth, and ate dust for a dozen slow miles.
I tried to think things through, wondering how I could get a line on Charlotte. Was he already in Sicily, or still back in North Africa? Some AMGOT staff were already here, I knew, setting up basic services in liberated towns. They started with burying the dead, working their way up from there, helping to establish a normal life for civilians while at the same time insuring the army had everything it needed. That meant food, transportation, road and rail access, all the things civilians wanted. It wasn't an easy job, and it required lots of patience both with our own bureaucracy and with civilian complaints. Sort of like Boston politics, but in the middle of a war zone.
So, how to find Charlotte, a bad apple in a big barrel? I had hoped to interrogate Lieutenant Andrews, but the Luftwaffe, or somebody, had eliminated that option. It was too convenient. But that didn't stop me from craning my neck in every direction, scanning the skies for enemy planes. Our convoy would be a juicy target, and I didn't want to get caught at the tail end of a strafing run.
It would be great if Harry and Kaz found Vito and Legs, and brought them in without a fight. I'd like to question Vito myself. I'd bet he would give up Charlotte in return for his freedom or his life.
I wondered about Nick. Would Vito still be after him either as revenge for killing his henchmen in order to free his family, or for his services as a yegg? Not the latter, I concluded. All those lira notes had to be dried out. If they were left in the safes, they would turn to moldy paste in no time. Someone had to have opened those safes by now. So somewhere in Sicily, two million dollars' worth of occupation scrip was drying in the sun. In Vittoria, where Andrews had been headed? Why would a communications guy go there? I needed to know what was in Vittoria. And if Andrews had started the trip dead or alive.