"Herr Kappler," he heard Palasota's now familiar voice call out.

Damn it. I do not want to speak with anyone else tonight.

Especially not with me drunk.

"Herr Palasota," he said. "Good night. I am retiring."

"Alone?"

"Yes," Kappler said with a chuckle. "Alone. I do appreciate the thought, however."

And I appreciate that you could be trying to get me in a compromising situation. Something to use for leverage later.

Nice try, but I made my no-whores decision a long time ago.

"Please, call me Jimmy."

"Very well," Kappler said, holding out his hand. "And I am Oskar. Good night, Jimmy."

Palasota took the hand, and gripped it tightly.

"Look, Oskar. I am not judging, but if I may say so, you looked rather tense when we met earlier. I am sure that an important person such as yourself has many difficult things weighing on your mind. A little companionship is good for the soul. And it takes your mind off those things. These are very nice women. You will be pleased, trust me."

Kappler chuckled. "Again, thank you. I do appreciate your concern. I simply need some sleep. Good night."

There was moonlight coming in the bedroom window of Kappler's suite, and when he went to close the blinds, he glanced out. The city was dark. There was little to see, even in the soft moonlight. Just as he started closing the blinds, he noticed in the harbor that the new T-dock was empty.

So, the S-boots are out on patrol.

Tomorrow, when they are back, I should visit with their captains. Anything for an excuse not to suffer more time in Muller's company.

Five minutes after Kappler had crawled into bed, he heard a faint series of taps on his door.

If I ignore it, it will go away.

He rolled over.

The series of light taps became more persistent, then the tapping became continuous.

"Damn it!" he muttered, then threw back the sheet.

He went to the door in his boxer shorts and pulled it open enough to see who stood in the hall.

"Lucia," he said softly.

She held a bottle of cognac and two small glasses.

And she had changed into a sheer nightgown. Even in the dim lighting, he could make out the naked curves.

She is stunning! But . . .

"Grazie, no," he said, holding his hand up, palm out.

She smiled, then before he knew it, she turned and smoothly slipped in through the gap.

Damn it!

He sighed.

Okay, one drink, then I send her on her way.

After Lucia drank almost half of her glass of cognac, she went and sat on the edge of the bed. And smiled seductively.

I am too drunk and too tired to throw you out, Lucia.

And perhaps my new friend Jimmy Palasota is having my room watched to see if you stay.

But that's okay because nothing more than you staying is to happen.

Oskar then walked over and, using his hand, made a chopping motion down the center of the bedsheet. He pointed to the side of the imaginary line where Lucia was, then pointed to her. And then he pointed to his side of the imaginary line, and pointed to himself.

Lucia frowned, then nodded her understanding. She drained her glass and crawled under the sheet on her side of the imaginary line.

Oskar thought, Well, that certainly went better than I expected.

He drained his glass, then got in under his side of the sheet. On his back, he looked at the ceiling a long moment, then closed his eyes.

In the quiet darkness, Oskar could hear Lucia's soft breathing.

Their combined body heat was quickly warming the sheets, and with that Oskar noticed that he could now really smell her.

It's lilac. So fresh . . .

She moved to adjust her pillow, and when she did more of her warm scent seemed to engulf him.

Oskar felt himself inhaling slowly and deeply.

Then he felt a stir in his groin-and, a moment later, the sheet directly above his groin slowly began to rise.

The movement did not go unnoticed.

Oskar felt her hand slide over to him under the sheet, then wrap around his penis. She stroked and he was suddenly extremely hard.

She giggled-and then her head disappeared under the sheet.

Ach du lieber Gott!

What the hell!

I may well be in a concentration camp tomorrow.

"Oh, Lucia," he said softly. . . .

[TWO].

Palermo, Sicily 2335 30 May 1943 "We don't want to stay on the air a second longer than absolutely necessary," Dick Canidy said. "Always a chance someone is listening, and I've about had enough excitement for one day without some SS bastard trying to triangulate on our signal."

"Understood," John Craig van der Ploeg said, his voice sounding genuinely tired. He yawned. "And agreed. I'm exhausted."

Exhausted and he looks like shit, Canidy thought as he pulled a fat cigar from his pocket, unwrapped it, bit a hole in its closed end, and then lit it.

Small wonder. He's been throwing up since we went wheels-up. He got smacked around really good landing in that tree. And now he can barely stand-never mind walk-on that busted ankle.

But . . . whoopee! Lucky me . . . I'm stuck with him for the duration.

John Craig was sitting on the floor by the window. Canidy had taken parts of one of the busted beds and with them fashioned short legs for the wooden bedside table that also had been broken. The result was a bit wobbly, but the lower height was close to perfect for John Craig to get his hurt foot under and be able to comfortably work the SSTR-1 wireless telegraphy set.

What would have been better was the location.

John Craig sat an inch from where the pool of blood and brain matter from Mariano's head wound had dried on the wooden floor. It had a distinctive foul odor, and John Craig's stomach, though absolutely empty after the last series of dry heaves, still was sensitive.

Canidy saw that John Craig regularly looked to see that he was not in fact sitting on the dried blood.

Still, Canidy knew nothing could be done; there was only the one window, and the W/T antenna went out it.

And I really tried to make it right. . . .

After Canidy, with some effort, had turned the chair and Mariano upright, then slid him over by the stairwell, he had taken one of the torn bedsheets and covered the dead man. Then he had taken another bedsheet and scrubbed at the dried pool. All that that had accomplished, however, was to break up the caked blood and tissue-and stir up the fetid odor. The room smelled worse.

Frustrated, he threw open the window. As a warm breeze floated in, he walked over to the broken beds.

"The SS think they're tough, huh?" John Craig said as he watched Canidy work.

Canidy, puffing heavily on his cigar, grunted.

"With an organization as large as the SS," he said, "headed by the sonofabitch Himmler and charged by Hitler to protect the Nazi state at any cost whatever, they are tough. And the sense of invincibility they get from that machine makes them more dangerous. Makes them damn mean"-he gestured with a piece of wood at Mariano-"sadistic even. But separate the man from the machine, and he discovers he's not the tough guy he thought."

Canidy began sorting through the wooden pieces, and said, "General George Washington said that to be a good leader, an effective one, people don't need to love you, or even like you, but they need to respect you. And that's the chink in the SS's armor. Being feared is not the same as being respected."

He looked at John Craig, and added, "Eventually people choose not to take counsel of their fears and rise up."

"Like the resistance fighters training at your throat-cutting academy," John Craig said.

"And the Polish underground I told you about. They are tough and determined, even if they have to fight alone," Canidy said, still looking at him. He glanced at Mariano. "And he was tough to the end. And Charley Lucky is one tough sonofabitch."

"Who?"

"Luciano. He's the New York Mafia boss I was going to tell you about. He's currently serving thirty-plus years-and remarkably still running his gang, and helping us-at New York's Great Meadow prison."

"Running the mob from prison? And helping us how?"

"I'll get into that in a minute. You know what omerta is?"

"Sure. The Mafia's code of silence."

"If you never heard of Charley Lucky then you probably never heard of how he, when left to die, took omerta to a remarkable level."

John Craig shook his head.

Canidy found four more or less even lengths of wood. As he carried them over to the window, he began, "Giuseppe 'Joe the Boss' Masseria-a ruthless guinea gangster who was born on the coast about forty miles from here-we damn-near flew over Menfi tonight-fled Sicily to avoid murder charges. He wound up in New York, and eventually became a Mafia don, the capo di tutti capi-"

"Boss of all bosses."

"-Yeah. And Masseria's mob made a lot of money. Then a hotshot named Charley Lucky became his number two, and he made Masseria even more. Luciano had a lot of ideas and smart connections-his most trusted friend going back to childhood is Meyer Lansky-and suggested to Masseria that they diversify, do business with gangs that weren't Italian." He paused, then added, "Now that I think about it, Lansky is another tough Polish Jew, so that had to influence Luciano's thoughts."

Canidy walked back to the beds, found the busted side table, and carried it to the window.

"Anyway," he went on, "Luciano was already envisioning a nationwide syndicate. He not only wanted to do business with gangs that weren't Wops but with gangs that weren't Wops and weren't in New York City. Despite Luciano's pushing, Masseria was having none of it. Worse, Luciano's hunger for even more power made him paranoid. This was October 1929, and as Luciano stood on the sidewalk in front of the Flatiron Building, there at Broadway and Fifth, a car pulled up. He was forced into the backseat, and the goons bound and gagged him. They took him out to a Staten Island warehouse, where he was strung up with rope, then pistol-whipped and stabbed. Before they left him for dead, they slit his throat."

"But you said he's serving time. So he's still alive?"

"Let me finish," Canidy said, fitting the wooden boards to the tabletop. "Charley Lucky, living up to his name, managed to work free of the ropes, then crawl to the street. Cops from NYPD's 123rd Precinct found him. Of course they knew who the hell Charley Lucky was, and after they got him stitched up, they made all kinds of threats to get him to tell who tried whacking him. He refused to rat out the goons."

"Omerta."

Canidy looked up from his project.

"Omerta in a big way. The cops, having no choice, let him go. Charley Lucky found out who ordered the hit, and settled the score-without breaking the code of silence. Now, that's goddamn tough."

John Craig looked at the dead man.

"And you think the same about Mariano?"