The Spymasters (Men at War 7)

Doesn’t matter . . . though “Idiot” comes to mind.

“I’m guessing that this guy’s wife found the parachute and made herself that scarf from it. Then she paraded around Palermo with it, and some SS shithead saw it—or someone else saw it and snitched to the SS. So the SS made a little courtesy visit.”

“And then they did this . . .” John Craig said, looking at the dead man.

He stared at the dead man’s hands.

“His fingernails . . .”

“Pretty bad, huh?”

“. . . They tore them out?”

“No. They pulled them out. Slowly. It’s torture. Then, judging from the shape of the bruises, they beat the shit out of him with a cosh.”

In addition to daggers and garrotes, John Craig’s training at OSS Dellys had had him practicing close-combat using a cosh. The limber paddle made of leather had a heavy lead ball sewn in its head. One smack alone caused deep pain; multiple hits, particularly to the temples, led to death.

“Why?” John Craig said, his face looking ill. “Because he didn’t tell them what they wanted to know?”

“That is possible, even probable, considering his bruises. But I’m thinking it’s because he couldn’t.”

John Craig raised his eyebrows.

“And that,” Canidy added, “is what might be the bad news that could be good news—good news for us.”

Canidy walked over to the overturned and broken bed frames. They were against the far wall, which had a window. The mattresses had been shredded. It took him a minute to clear a large area of the wooden floor there, pushing the torn sheets and mattress pieces to either side of the room.

“Keep your fingers crossed,” Canidy said.

John Craig shuffled over to get a better view in the light of the lone bulb.

Canidy shined his flashlight up and down the floorboards, pushed at a couple places with his fingers, then found what he was looking for and started to pull up a thin board. When that was out of the way, he tugged on a wider one until it started to come up.

John Craig now saw that it was the edge of a larger piece that had been cut in the floor.

A hidden door!

As the large section of flooring came up, John Craig saw Canidy nod.

He looked up at John Craig and said, “My son, let this be a lesson to you. To paraphrase Matthew, ‘Live a life as pure and righteous as mine, and blessed be your luck all your days.’ Or maybe it was Mark or Luke who said that.”

“What did you find?” John Craig said.

He looked around the makeshift door. He saw that there were dead spaces between the long joists that supported the floor of the second level and the ceiling of the first floor.

And then he saw that there was a suitcase in one dead space.

Canidy said, “If my clean living is any indication, this is the backup W/T that Tubes and I brought.”

Canidy looked at John Craig and could tell that he mentally was putting the pieces together.

“So,” John Craig then said, “this guy’s wife wears a silk scarf. That brings the SS here, where they find the parachute and maybe the money and whatever else we air-dropped before Mercury Station was compromised. And a parachute for a supply drop means that there had to be a radio to arrange for the airdrop.”

Canidy exhaled audibly, then nodded.

“That’s my guess. It fits. And because this poor bastard Mariano had no idea where the radio was, it got him killed.” He paused, then added, “Not that the SS bastards weren’t going to kill him if he knew and told anyway.”

“And then they trashed this place.”