Though the field marshal had never quite said so, the implication was that, in the unlikely event the Allies continued to advance, the forces of the Reich would fall back to a line of positions halfway between Naples and Rome, just about where his entourage was at this moment: east of the Sperlonga headquarters, a short distance from the sea. The flat plain across which they traveled now was flanked by mountains—through the windows of the jeep, he could see them, three thousand meters at the tallest peaks, he guessed—and, with the holding of that high ground and the Reich’s superior air power and superior generals, the advancing Allied armies would be cut to shreds. All that would be left to them and the Italian traitors would be a retreat through thousands of hectares of ash and rubble, to their former Napoli. Burned, blown up, rendered uninhabitable, Naples would stand as a monument to Nazi power, a warning to the rest of Europe and the world. “Pockets of resistance,” the reports in the files had said. The Italians would see what happened when there were pockets of resistance: a flattened city. Smoking ruins, blood, nothingness.
And his name would forever be associated with that.
Thirteen
Aldo disliked ceremonies of any kind—birthday celebrations, weddings, wakes, anniversaries—and he had a particular dislike for religious services . . . not that he’d seen very many of them. Still, it would have been unwise to avoid attending the funeral of Giovanni Forni. It would also have been an act of the purest ingratitude, because Forni, the notorious leader of one of Naples’s most powerful Camorra clans, had helped him more than any person he’d ever known. Saved him from the consequences of the one truly violent deed he’d ever committed, given him decades of good-paying work, watched out for him at the edges of the illegal world—no one on this earth had helped him more.
So, a few hours after his brief visit with Lucia, four days after the Germans had executed the man who’d run the whole, once-lucrative stolen-goods distribution for the Camorra, Aldo put on his only suit and only felt hat and walked halfway across the city to the Church of Saints Demetrio and Bonifacio near the Piazzetta Monticelli. The church’s saffron facade had been damaged in an Allied bombing raid—he could see the pocked stucco and one soccer-ball-size hole in the front wall—but, unlike the much larger, much more famous, and completely ruined Santa Chiara two blocks away, it was still functioning. And now, thankfully, there were no raids at all. No sirens, no droning airplane engines or winged shadows flitting across the streets like scampering devils, no deafening crashes, no collapsing apartment buildings, no fires, no screams of people whose child or parent or spouse had been trapped in the rubble or mutilated by a truck-size piece of flying stone, no crews of elderly firemen trying desperately to free them. He wondered if it was because of the king’s armistice, as people said, or because the Allies had heard of Forni’s death and were keeping their planes away from Naples in his honor. Stranger things had happened. It was rumored, for instance, that the famous American mafioso, Vito Genovese, fleeing a murder charge in his own country, was working with the Allied generals in Sicily—running spies, procuring necessary goods, intimidating key officials. And everybody knew what the Sicilian mafia—La Cosa Nostra—had done to help with the Allied landing on their island in July.
Musing, wondering, running every possibility through his mind, Aldo removed his hat, stepped into the piazza, and went through the church’s large green metal door.
There were hundreds of people in the Church of Saints Demetrio and Bonifacio, every pew filled. Old men, young women, street kids, even one or two groups of carabinieri in their policemen’s uniforms. For all the evil deeds Forni had committed—and his viciousness was legendary—the Camorrista had littered the city with favors, providing jobs, protection, food. All these people hadn’t come to his funeral out of curiosity.
Aldo hoped he might see Rita among the mourners and ask her the proper etiquette. He stood near the back, ill at ease, unsure, until a trio of friends noticed him there and waved him into a pew. Mario, Luca, and Angelo had been his Neapolitan brothers for thirty years, since their days as twelve-year-olds in the cells of Nisida. Aldo sidled in close to them, handshakes and embraces all around. Following their lead, he stood and sat and knelt at what seemed the appropriate moments in the service. The order of the Mass made no sense to him. The prayers, hymns, and readings left him cold. Only the sermon—too long!—was of some small interest. “If we have been baptized into the faith,” the monsignor said at one point, “Christ looks upon our transgressions with one eye, and our kind deeds with two. He does not wish to cast us into the eternal flames. Like any good father, he wants for his children not suffering, but happiness.”
Kind deeds with two eyes, Aldo thought, transgressions with one: it was the opposite of the way humans behaved, the exact opposite, and he found himself wondering if the monsignor had been paid to offer this foolish idea in front of Forni’s family, if he’d been threatened, or if—the least likely possibility—he actually believed what he was saying.
The father’s love made sense. But he wouldn’t let himself think about that part.
When most of the other mourners went up for communion, Aldo followed his friends’ example and remained in the pew. When they bowed their heads, he did the same, watching them out of the corners of his eyes. Instead of praying—an alien act—he remembered his fight with the older, bigger Giovanni Forni on his second night in Nisida. A brutal affair it had been. He’d held his own for a time, and then Forni had knocked him down. He’d leaped to his feet, bleeding from the mouth, been knocked down again. He’d gotten up a third time, bloodied, barely able to see, swinging wildly. Forni had knocked him down again, then pounced on him and beaten him unconscious. Two broken teeth and the scar beneath his left eye were the mementos of that fight.
After their battle, a cautious friendship had evolved, a mix of wariness, respect, and something else, too, the kind of history that linked him even now to the three men kneeling beside him. The broken-up families they’d been born into, the harsh life of the streets, the months in Nisida with its moldy bread, damp walls, and sadistic guards—one of whom, as Aldo knew all too well, would later meet a hideous end. It toughened them, cemented them together. And then, years later, Forni had climbed the bloody ladder of the Camorra, learned to kill and scheme . . . and given all his old friends jobs, money, and food for their tables.
Part of Aldo—a small, buried part—wished he’d been able to make a life for himself without Forni’s help, without the Camorra. That small part swelled like a blister whenever he so much as walked past a church, and sometimes, late at night, when he paid his visits to Rita. He wouldn’t think about that, either.
At last, the service seemed to be ending. Here came the monsignor, marching slowly down the center aisle like a well-fed king, with priests holding the tails of his robe so they didn’t drag on the red carpet. Angling in through the hole in the wall, a ray of sunlight touched the young, dark heads. And here was Forni’s casket, carried by six of the most vicious men in southern Italy, including the Dell’Acqua brothers, Vito and Ubaldo, professional assassins. Behind them came the mourners, family first. As Forni’s brother walked past—Zozo, another killer, heir to the blood-soaked throne—he reached out to shake Aldo’s hand and leaned his mouth close. “Meet me at the Castello after he’s buried,” he whispered into Aldo’s ear, then walked on.