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 by 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