[ONE].

Hotel Michelangelo Palermo, Sicily 1915 30 May 1943 SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Oskar Kappler watched a rugged-looking man of maybe forty approaching the cocktail table where he and SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Hans Muller sat with the two hookers. The man was about five-nine and muscular, with a warm face, a somewhat pronounced nose, and a full head of brown hair. He was casually but nicely dressed, and Kappler noted that he did not walk as much as he sauntered.

The man stopped before the table.

"Giovano said you asked for me, Hans," he announced in passable German as he met Kappler's eyes and nodded once.

Muller put his arm around Kappler and said, "So I did. I wanted you to meet a very important person, Obersturmbannfuhrer Oskar Kappler, who I told you was coming."

The man offered his hand, and in German said, "Jimmy Palasota. It is a genuine honor to have you here."

"The pleasure is mine," Kappler said, shaking the hand firmly.

"Jimmy runs our little hotel," Muller announced.

There he goes with "our" again, Kappler thought.

Maybe it is simply one of those boastful "our favorite place"type expressions.

"When Hans here told me that you would be our guest tonight," Palasota went on in German, looking between Muller and Kappler, "we made sure the top suite was available."

Kappler saw that Palasota appeared very relaxed and comfortable with himself-He's not at all intimidated by Muller-and that his intelligent eyes missed nothing.

What does he mean by making sure the suite was "available"? Kappler wondered. They threw out the guest who was using it?

"It's quite fine," he said.

"Good. I hope you enjoy it," Palasota went on. "Everything is of course taken care of, but if there is anything else that I can do for you, please say."

Kappler could not quite put his finger on it, but he thought he detected not so much a Sicilian accent as maybe an American one.

How could that be?

"That is most kind of you," Kappler said. Then, testing, he added, "So you have spent time in our happy home of Deutschland, Signore Palasota?"

Palasota, hands on his hips, shook his head.

"Not once. Never been near it." He glanced at Muller, then said: "I'm told constantly that it's a lovely place."

"That it is!" Muller put in.

"Then you're a native Sicilian?" Kappler pursued.

Palasota nodded, bending a bit at the waist as he did so. "Born right here in Palermo," he said.

"I see," Kappler said. "But you must forgive me. Something does not quite fit. Perhaps it is my poor hearing-I had a long drive from Messina in a very noisy little Fiat this afternoon-but I do not detect a Sicilian accent."

Palasota shrugged.

Kappler went on: "Again, forgive me, I mean no insult whatever-and most would indeed take this as an insult-but I think I hear what could be the accent of an American?"

Jimmy Palasota grinned broadly.

"Close. A former American."

"Former?" Kappler repeated. "How is that?"

"I was an American citizen. I spent many years in New York City before being asked to leave. They took away my citizenship."

"Really?" Kappler said.

He thought: Just like Hitler did to Fritz Thyssen.

"Really," Palasota said.

"Educate me, if you would, please. What does it take for one to be 'asked to leave' and then have one's citizenship revoked?"

"Well, I wasn't asked to leave right away. I spent a few years behind bars. And after I got out, and they said I hadn't learned my lesson, they deported me back here."

"And then they took away your citizenship."

"And then they took away my citizenship."

"May I ask why you served time in the prison?"

Palasota looked at Sturmbannfuhrer Muller for a moment, then back at Kappler as he mentally chose his words.

"Running businesses that were frowned upon," he said as he glanced at the hookers. "Girls, for one."

The two young women looked at each other, sensed that they were the subject of conversation, and giggled.

So he ran whorehouses in New York? Kappler thought.

And now he runs one here?

"And such an enterprise as that gets one deported from the United States of America?" Kappler said.

Jimmy Palasota chuckled. "No. Not that alone. I guess I shot one guy."

"Only one?" Kappler said.

"One guy too many."

Muller, sipping at his wine, put in: "Shot or killed?"

Palasota raised his eyebrows.

"Okay," he said, "killed."

"How many did you kill?" Kappler said.

Palasota's eyes wandered around the room. He crossed his arms and shrugged.

Muller, his tone suddenly icy, said: "He asked how many. Tell the obersturmbannfuhrer how many you killed!"

Palasota met Muller's eyes for a long moment, then he looked at Kappler.

"Let's just say more than one, Herr Obersturmbannfuhrer."

Kappler nodded as he thought, Very interesting. The body language suggests this Palasota does as he pleases. And he is completely uncowed by Muller and his temper.

Muller, his tone now lighter, raised his glass in toast toward Palasota.

"Very well, then! Salute!"

Okay, so now I understand what's probably the real appeal for Muller.

He believes that they are kindred souls.

Muller, the murderous bastard, has the reputation of being quick to the kill.

He glanced at the bar.

Which would explain the look those men made-they probably are university professors.

Oskar Kappler had had no choice but to oversee Hans Muller when the SS had transferred the germ warfare experiment to Palermo from the Dachau concentration camp.

The program used live humans as hosts, injecting Sicilian prisoners with extract from mosquito mucous glands to develop strains of yellow fever. When the sickened hosts eventually died of malaria, new hosts-often members of the Mafia brought in from the penal colonies off Sicily-were injected.

It had been no secret to the SS that everyone approached at the University of Palermo to contribute to the experiment had been shocked and disgusted that the Nazis had come in and inflicted such a horrible program upon Sicilians in their own country-and, pouring salt in the wound, had done so in a villa named for Archimedes, who was widely considered the greatest of all Sicilians.

And so Muller had gone directly to Dr. Carlo Modica, the brilliant seventy-year-old mathematician who had served as the head of the university for a decade. He explained to the gentle Modica that, if one in such a prestigious position participated as the figurehead of the experiment, it would send a positive message to others at the school and elsewhere.

Modica of course balked, but Muller coerced him. Then Modica, while injecting prisoners with the extract, managed to infect himself-and died.

Muller planned to replace him with two of Modica's colleagues-Dr. Giuseppe Napoli, also in his seventies, and Professor Arturo Rossi, a metallurgist who was fifty-five. He wound up shooting Napoli-and did so in front of Rossi. Rossi disappeared-the SS still hunted him-and shortly thereafter the villa exploded.

Muller blamed Mafia sabotage for the explosion. Kappler didn't care what the cause. Privately, he was very glad it was gone. He believed-and felt sick to his stomach for having had any connection with it-that what had occurred at the villa was equal to the atrocities he heard were being committed at the Auschwitz concentration camps. Word was that Josef Mengele was conducting dispassionate experiments, treating humans, many of them mere children, as if they were laboratory rats. Worse than rats, in fact, because he was dissecting KL prisoners while they were alive-and without use of anesthesia. It was so barbaric and disturbing that in order to get German soldiers to serve at the KL required bribing them with bonuses of cigarettes and salamis and schnapps.

Kappler saw that Palasota had more or less ignored the praise from Muller.

"Again, Herr Obersturmbannfuhrer," Palasota said, "it is an honor to meet you and have you here. Now, if you'll excuse me-"

"We're about to have dinner," Muller interrupted. "You must join us."

"Thank you, but I can't," Palasota said, then looked at the young women and then at Kappler, and said, "I hope you all enjoy yourself."

As Kappler watched Palasota saunter across the lounge then disappear through the doorway behind the long wooden bar-greeting the two professors drinking there as he passed-Kappler wondered even more about the man.

He must have something on Muller. Something good . . .

"Well, then," Muller said, "shall we buy our ladies dinner?"

"Is that a good idea?" Kappler said.

"What harm is it if the ladies join us for dinner? Is life not better when in the company of lovely women?"

Damn it, Kappler thought. The reality is that I cannot talk business with him in his condition. And we sure as hell will not discuss anything important in front of these hookers.

As the Romans themselves slurred here so long ago-"In vino veritas." Maybe a drunken Muller will run off at the mouth and reveal something the bastard otherwise wouldn't.

And I'd sure like to know what the hell is going on here.

Kappler nodded, then said, "Yes, what harm indeed? And then I am going to retire immediately afterward. We have a big day tomorrow."

Muller grinned broadly. "Yes, of course."

Two hours later, Kappler was walking alone up the stairs, holding the railing for balance while waving down at Muller. He stood in the lobby with Maria and Lucia on either side of him.

"It is your choice, my friend," Muller called after him, barely able to speak. "But not one I would take."

Kappler ignored him, then made the turn for the next flight of steps, and thought, Except for Lucia playing footsie and rubbing the balls of her feet in my crotch, that was a rather uneventful meal.

I got damn-near nothing out of Muller. He just got drunker.

All I know is that he said he's squeezing Palasota, just as the Mafia has forever squeezed others for its money.

What was it the bastard said? "Ah, the irony. We take our percentage in cash and sometimes in trade." Then he goosed Maria, who squealed, to Muller's delight.

What he's doing at "our hotel" is no different than what he's been doing at the docks, taking cash and "accepting as a personal courtesy" the occasional skim of what passes through the dock warehouses-from fresh food to cases of wine. Which was how the bastard came across those Tabun rounds in the warehouse. . . .

And that was it. Then I drank far more than I should, trying to drown him out while trying not to dwell again on Father's letter.

As Kappler reached the third flight of stairs, taking each step with care, he thought that he saw someone coming down the third-floor hall, walking toward him.