The Malta Exchange (Cotton Malone 14)
PROLOGUE
SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 1945
LAKE COMO, ITALY
3:30 P.M.
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini knew fate was about to overtake him. He’d known that from the moment, yesterday, when partisans of the 52nd Garibaldi Brigade blocked his route north and halted the German convoy that had been aiding his escape toward Switzerland. The column’s Wehrmacht commander had made no secret of the fact that he was tired of fighting and intended on avoiding the advancing American troops with an uneventful journey back to the Third Reich. Which explained how a downed tree and thirty ragtag partisans captured three hundred fully armed German regulars.
For twenty-one years he’d ruled Italy, but when the Allies took Sicily, then invaded the mainland, his fascist associates and King Victor Emmanuel III seized the opportunity to strip him of power. It took Hitler to rescue him from prison, then install him as head of the Italian Social Republic, headquartered in Milan. Nothing more than a German puppet regime—a way to maintain the illusion of power. But that was gone now, too. The Allies had stormed northward taking Milan, which had forced him to flee farther north to Lake Como and the Swiss border, only a few kilometers away.
“It is a calm day,” Clara said to him.
There’d been countless women in his life. His wife tolerated the mistresses because divorce was not an option. Mainly on religious grounds, but what would being the ex-wife of Il Duce do for her?
Not much.
But of all his dalliances, Claretta Petacci held a special place. Twenty-eight years separated them in age, but somehow she understood him. Never questioning. Never doubting. Always loving. She’d come to Como of her own accord to join him in exile.
But fate was working against them.
The Russians were shelling Berlin, the Brits and Americans racing through Germany unchallenged, the Third Reich in ruins. Hitler cowered in a bunker beneath the rubble of his capital city. The Rome–Berlin Axis had collapsed. The godforsaken war, which should never have been fought in the first place, was drawing to an end.
And they’d lost.
Clara stood at the open window, wrapped in her own thoughts. The view from their lofty perch was of the far-off lake and the mountains on the other side. They’d spent the night in this humble house, their room adorned with a plain bed, a couple of chairs, and a stone floor. No fire burned in the hearth, the only light provided by a bare bulb that shone starkly against the whitewashed walls. His life had been, for a long time, a cascade of luxury and indulgence. So he’d found it ironic that he and Clara—who once sought solace in each other’s arms amid the opulence of the Palazzo Venezia—had found themselves in the bed of a peasant’s cottage amid the lonely Italian hills.
He stepped over to the window to stand beside her. Dust lay thick on the sill. She held his hand as though he were a child.
“Seven years ago,” he said in Italian, “I was an interesting person. Now I am little more than a corpse.”
His voice seemed doom-laden and apathetic.
“You’re still important,” she declared.
He managed a weak smile. “I’m finished. My star has fallen. I have no fight left in me.”
Of late he’d stayed more and more angry, belligerent, and uncharacteristically indecisive. Only here and there had his magisterial rage emerged. No one cared anymore what he did, what he thought, or what he said.
Save for Clara.
The cloudy afternoon loomed clammy, the air filled with the sound of distant gunfire. The damn rebels were turning the countryside into a shooting range, flushing out every element of fascism. Below he caught sight of a car winding its way up the narrow road from Azzano. He and Clara had been brought here to the house in the wee hours of the morning. Why? He did not know. But two bearded partisans, wearing peaked caps with a red star and toting machine guns, had stood close guard ever since.
As if they were waiting for something.
“You should not have come,” he said to her.
She squeezed his hand. “My place is with you.”
He admired her loyalty and wished his Black Shirts possessed just a tiny percentage of it. The drop to the ground from the window was about five meters. But he imagined himself standing much higher, on the balcony at the Palazzo Venezia, in 1936, extolling Italy’s grand victory in Abyssinia. Four hundred thousand people had thronged the piazza that day, their reaction wild, ceaseless, and hypnotic. Duce, Duce, Duce, they’d screamed, and he’d breathed in the warmth of their mass hysteria.
What a tonic.
But so little of Caesar remained inside him.
He retained his trademark bald head and paunch stomach, but his eyes had yellowed and seemed more and more haunted. He wore his uniform. Black shirt, gray tunic, breeches with red stripes down the sides, jackboots, and a plain gray forage cap. Yesterday, before he’d been taken b
y the partisans, he’d donned the greatcoat and helmet of a German private in a foolish attempt to hide.
That had been a mistake.
It showed fear.
Some called him a buffoon, others an adventurer in power politics or a gambler in a high stakes game bathed in the past. Europeans had proclaimed him the man who made the trains run on time.
But he was merely Il Duce.
The Leader.
The youngest man ever to rule Italy.
“I await the end of this tragedy,” he said. “Strangely detached from everything. I don’t feel any more an actor. I’m more the last of the spectators.”
Some of that depression he’d felt of late crept back over him and he fought hard to quell its spread.
Now was not the time for self-pity.
The car kept groaning up the steep switchbacks through heavy stands of cedar and fir, its engine growing louder as it approached the house.
He was tired, his face pale, and he needed a shave. He was also unusually untidy, his uniform wrinkled and unkempt. Even worse, he felt at the mercy of events. In a state of panic and flight.
No longer in control.
The car came to a stop below.
A man emerged from the driver’s side wearing the pale blue uniform of a Luftwaffe captain, the brown of his collar tabs identifying him as part of the communications corps. Since yesterday only the disheveled, disorganized chaos of the partisans had surrounded him. He’d witnessed their lack of authority at the Dongo city hall, where he’d first been taken, none of his inquisitors really knowing what to do with him. He’d sat in a room thick with talk and nicotine and listened to Milan Radio proclaim an end to fascism, and that every member of the government should be detained.
Imbeciles. All of them.
But they paled in comparison with the Germans.
He’d delayed entering into a pact with Germany for as long as he could. Hitler was a brute, Mein Kampf gibberish. He both disliked and distrusted the crazed Austrian. But ultimately public opinion became too strong to ignore and, in 1940, he’d finally succumbed to war.
A horrible error.
To hell with those Aryan bastards. He never wanted to see one of their uniforms again.
Yet here was another.
The uniform entered the house and climbed the stairs to the second floor. He and Clara stayed by the window, but they turned as the bedroom door opened and the uniform entered. He waited for the man to click his heels and offer a salute. But no sign of respect was shown. Instead the newcomer calmly said in Italian, “I wish to speak with you. Alone.”
The visitor was a tall, thin man with a long face, large ears, and a sallow complexion. His black hair was slicked back and a clipped mustache brushed a tight-lipped mouth. Mussolini mentally sorted through all of the desperate elements of the situation, looking for options. For the past two decades no one would have dared rebuke him like this. To be feared authority must be absolute, with no boundaries. So his first inclination was to tell this newcomer to get out, but the vacuum of uncertainty that surrounded him overcame his pride.
“Wait outside,” he said to Clara.
She hesitated and started to protest but he silenced her with a raise of his hand. She did not object any further and simply nodded, leaving the room.
The uniform closed the door behind her.
“Time is short,” the man said. “The Committee of National Liberation and the Volunteer Freedom Corps are coming for you.”
Both were trouble, the latter especially since it mainly comprised communists who had long wanted Italy for themselves.
“The decision has been made for you to be shot. I’ve managed to get ahead of their emissaries, but they are not far behind.”
“All thanks to your fellow Germans, who abandoned me.”
The man stuffed his right hand into his coat pocket and removed an object.
A ring.
He slipped it onto his left third finger and displayed the face, which contained five rows of letters etched into the dull, pewter surface.
Now he understood.
This was no ordinary visitor.
He’d dealt with two popes during his time as supreme leader, Pius XI and XII. One was more accommodating than the other, both irritating. Unfortunately, to govern Italy meant having the Catholic Church on your side, which was no small feat. But he’d managed to contain the church, forming an uneasy alliance, one that was also now coming to an end.
“I’m sure this ring is familiar to you,” the man said. “It is just like the one you stole from the man you had killed.”
More clarity arrived.
After founding a hospital on the frontier of Christendom dedicated to St. John the Baptist in 1070, a small group of Europeans became the Hospitaller Brothers of St. John’s of Jerusalem. Their current label, after over 850 years of evolution, was obscenely long.
Sovereign Military Hospitallers Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta.
Talk about vanity.
“I speak for His Most Eminent Highness, the prince and grand master himself,” the uniform said. “Who asks you once again to relinquish what you possess.”
“Are you actually a German officer?” he asked.
The man nodded. “But I was a knight of the order long before there was anything called the Third Reich.”
He smiled.
Finally, the shroud had dropped.
This man was nothing more than a spy, which explained why his enemies had allowed this envoy to come.
“You say people are on the way for me. To the partisans I matter not. To the Germans I’m an embarrassment. Only to the communists does my death have value. So tell me, what can you offer to deny them their pleasure?”
“Your tricks yesterday failed.”
He was sorry to hear that.
He’d first fled Milan to Como, following the narrow, winding road hugging the lakeshore, motoring through dozens of tiny villages hunched beside the still water. Cernobbio, Moltrasio, Tremezzo, Menaggio. Usually it was an easy half-day journey, but it had taken much longer. He’d expected five thousand Black Shirts to be waiting for him. His soldiers. But only twelve had shown. Then a German convoy of thirty-eight lorries and three hundred battle-hardened soldiers appeared, moving north for Austria, so he’d forced his way into the caravan hoping to make it to Chiavenna, where he planned to split off and head toward Switzerland.
But he’d never made it that far.
The bastard Germans sold him out in return for safe passage.
Thankfully, he’d brought along some insurance. Gold and jewels from the Italian treasury, along with stacks of currency and two satchels loaded with important papers, dossiers, and correspondence.
“The partisans have some of your gold,” the man said. “But most of it was tossed into the lake by the Germans. Your two briefcases, though, have vanished. Is what I want in one of them?”
“Why would I tell you that?”
“Because I can save your miserable life.”
He could not deny that he would like to live. But even more important, “And Clara?”
“I can save her, too.”
He stretched his arms behind his back and thrust out his jaw in a familiar and comfortable angle. He then paced the floor, the soles of his boots scuffing off the gritty stone. For the first time in a long while, strength surged through his bones.
“The illustrious order will never perish,” he said. “It is like virtue itself, like faith. Is that correct?”
“It is. The Comte de Marcellus gave an elegant speech in the French Chamber of Deputies.”
“As I recall he was trying to obtain the return of a large tract of land that the Crown had seized from the knights. He failed, but he did manage to obtain a decree of sovereignty. One that made the Hospitallers their own nation within France.”
“And we have not perished,” the man said.
“Much to my good fortune.” He glared at his visitor. “Get me away
from these partisans and we can talk about the Nostra Trinità.”
The man shook his head. “Perhaps you haven’t gleaned the gravity of your situation. You’re a doomed man trying to flee for your life with every lire and ounce of gold you could steal.” He paused. “Unfortunately, that effort failed. They are coming to kill you. I’m your only hope. You have nothing to bargain with, besides giving me exactly what I want.”
“In those two satchels you mentioned, I have correspondence the British will not want public.”
The man shrugged. “That’s a problem for them.”
“Imagine what the knights might do with such incriminating information.”
“We have excellent relations with London. I only want the ring and the documents you stole.”
“The ring? It’s but a chunk of metal.”
The uniform held his hand up. “It’s much more than that to us.”
He shook his head. “You knights are nothing but pariahs. Thrown from Jerusalem, Cyprus, Rhodes, Russia, Malta, now you huddle in two palazzi in Rome clinging to a glory that has long since vanished.”
“Then we have something in common.”
He grinned. “That we do.”
Past the open window he heard the grind of another engine.
His visitor noticed, too.
“They’re here,” the man said.
A sudden resolve came over him, bolstered by the fact that Holy Roman Emperors, Napoleon, even Hitler himself had all been denied what he’d accomplished.
Defeating the pope.
This man being here was concrete proof of his victory.
“Ask Pius XII what it felt like to kneel before me,” he said.
“I doubt that happened.”
“Not literally. But figuratively, he knelt. He knew what I could do to his precious church. What I still can do.”
Which explained why the Vatican had never outwardly opposed his grab for power. Even after he’d attained total control, the church had continued to stay silent, never once using its massive influence to rally the Italian people into revolt. No king, queen, or emperor had ever been so fortunate.