Harold Earl “Cotton” Malone.
Formerly of the United States Justice Department, once attached to a special intelligence unit called the Magellan Billet. A naval commander, pilot, fighter-jet-qualified, with a law degree from Georgetown University. Malone worked at the Judge Advocate General’s corps before being reassigned to the Justice Department, where he remained for a dozen years. Not yet fifty years old, he’d retired early and now owned a business. Cotton Malone, Bookseller, Højbro Plads, Copenhagen.
An intriguing change of careers.
Malone possessed a distinguished reputation as a competent intelligence operative, one who still occasionally offered his services out for hire. What he’d not been able to learn was exactly why this American of obvious skills and talent was here, in Italy, asking questions about things that only a few people in the world would know.
He turned from the chaotic scene below and stared at the villa’s owner, hunched on the ground, wrists tied behind his back, ankles likewise restrained. A gag prevented the portly Italian from uttering a sound. An associate stood off to one side, keeping a watchful guard.
“You’ve proven to be quite a problem,” he told his prisoner, who watched him with petrified eyes.
He’d arrived at the villa two hours ago. The groundskeeper had appeared without warning and his associate had shot him. He would have preferred no bloodshed, but it had been unavoidable. The villa’s owner was already up for the day, dressed, about to leave. The idea had been to catch him before that happened. He’d asked the owner a few obligatory questions, hoping for cooperation, but no answers were forthcoming. Several more attempts at reason also failed, so he and his associate had brought the fat Italian up here, into the woods, still on the villa’s grounds, where a measure of privacy among the trees offered an opportunity to make his point clear. As if two bullets into the groundskeeper had not been enough to impress the point.
He stepped over and crouched down, the musk of the cool morning filling his nostrils. “I imagine you now regret making that call to the British embassy in Rome.”
A nod of the head.
“You just need to tell me where the letters are that you wanted to sell.”
Supposedly, in 1945, after Mussolini was captured, the contents of two satchels found with him had been inventoried by Italian partisans. But no one seriously believed that any list created by them was accurate. He’d read their entries, which documented little to nothing of interest. Most likely that perfunctory effort had all been for show and the valuable stuff had never made it on the list in the first place. Nor had anything on the actual list ever surfaced in the years since.
And this Italian might hold the answer as to why.
“You’re going to tell me all about those documents from Mussolini.”
Of course the villa owner could not answer and he had no intention of removing the gag.
Not yet, at least.
He motioned and his associate grabbed a coil of rope lying in the leaves. High above stretched several stout limbs. He studied them, finally deciding on one about ten meters off the ground. It took his associate two attempts to toss one end of the coil over the limb. Then he dragged the villa’s owner to the rope. He resisted, but with both hands and feet bound the effort proved futile. The Italian wiggled on the ground as his associate tied one end of the rope to the wrist bindings. With both hands his man then grabbed the end of the rope draping down from the limb and tightened the slack enough to tug on the Italian’s arms.
Which telegraphed the whole idea.
Once hauled off the ground the man’s arms would be extended upward from behind, at an angle that human joints were not meant to experience. The pain would be excruciating, the body’s weight eventually dislocating the shoulders.
“You understand what I can do to you?” he asked.
The villa’s owner gave a vigorous nod.
He reached beneath his jacket and found his revolver. “I’m going to remove the gag. If you call out, or even raise your voice, I’ll shoot you in the face. Is that clear?”
The man nodded.
He freed the gag.
The man sucked in a series of deep, long breaths. He allowed him a moment, then gazed down and said, “The contents of Mussolini’s two satchels have long been in dispute. So tell me, how did you come to acquire anything from them?”
The Italian hesitated, so he gestured and his associate tugged on the rope, which began to lift the man’s arms up, his body rising from a squat and becoming more deadweight. So the Italian scrambled up to his feet.
“No. No. Stop. Please.”
“Answer my question.”
“My grandfather was there. In Dongo, when they found Il Duce. He helped sort out the papers from the satchels, and he kept some of them.”
“Why?”
“He thought one day they could be sold.”
“What did he do with them?”
“Nothing. He just kept them. My father had them next, then they came to me.”
“How many documents do you have?”
“Fifty-five pages. All inside one of the original satchels, which he kept, too.”
He fished his left hand into his pant pocket and removed the ring. “And did your grandfather find this, too?”
The Italian nodded.
It had galled him to see it in the villa, displayed inside one of the armoires as some curiosity.
He’d promptly liberated the sacred object.
“Do you have any idea what this is?” he asked, holding the ring’s pewter face up for the man to see.
No reply.
“Do these five words mean anything to you? Does the ring mean anything to you?”
He motioned for the rope to be tugged a couple of times.
“I have no idea,” the man cried out, getting the message. “Only that it bears the Maltese cross inside. My grandfather told me it came from one of the satchels. That’s why I have it. A memento.”
Only a few people in the world knew the ring’s true significance, and clearly this greedy soul was one of them.
A background check had revealed that this man had lived above Lake Como all of his life in a villa that his family had owned since the 17th century. It wasn’t anything extravagant, similar to hundreds of others surrounding the lake. His prisoner dealt in antiques, usually buying from cash-strapped estates, but was not above stealing. No surprise that he was in possession of missing World War II documents.
He gestured and his associate tightened the rope more. The arms were about at their natural limit before the onslaught of excruciating pain, the man’s feet still planted on the ground.
“A memento of what?” he asked, motioning with the ring.
“Il Duce. He had it with him. It bears the cross inside, but I don’t know what it means.”
“You never tried to find out.”
A shake of the head. “Never.”
He wondered whether to believe him.
“There are so many who still worship Mussolini,” the owner said. “I know people who think he was a great man. My hope was that, one day, people like that would pay for mementos.”
The Italian’s breath was short, his voice fast and weak.
“And what do you think of the former great leader?”
“I care nothing for politics. None of that matters to me.”
He pointed a finger. “I suppose only money is your god.”
No reply.
“The British have no intention of buying your documents,” he said. “It was foolish of you to contact them. They have a man, right now, inside your villa, surely there to steal them.”
Fortunately, at the moment that operative was detained by some of the local wildlife.
“Where have you hidden the satchel containing those fifty-five pages of documents, including the letters you wanted to sell?”
“In the villa. On the third floor.”
Finally, some cooperation.
He listened as the Italian
described the hiding place.
“Ingenious,” he said, when the explanation ended. “Is everything there?”
The man nodded. “All I have.”
He wondered if Malone knew that information, too.
He gestured and his man relaxed the pressure on the rope, which allowed the arms to drop down.