Dear Pop:
If you get this, I will have done what you always said I was going to do, test the detonator after I hooked up the charge.
Maybe after the war, somebody will tell you what I was doing down here, but right now it’s classified, and all I can tell you is that it was important, and I volunteered to do it.
What comes next is probably going to upset you a little.
I fell in love down here. Her name is Maria-Teresa Alberghoni, and she is a nice Italian girl whose family comes from around Naples someplace. Pop, she and her family don’t have a dime. They work hard, but they’re really poor.
So what I’ve done is make her the beneficiary of the ten thousand dollar GI insurance policy I get from the Army, and I want you to somehow arrange to get her the money I inherited from Grandpa, less thirteen thousand dollars I owe First Lieutenant C.H. Frade, USMCR, c/o OSS. If he doesn’t come through this either, the OSS can get you the name of his family in New Orleans.
Since I can’t use it, I think Grandpa would like what I want to do with his money. If he told me once he told me a hundred times how he came from Italy with sixteen dollars and the clothes on his back. You don’t need the money and it will help Maria-Teresa get a start on life here in Argentina.
Kiss Mamma, those ugly brothers of mine, and maybe light a candle for me every once in a while.
Love, your son
Anthony
* * *
“This is a letter to your father?”
“Right.”
“What does it say?”
“It says that if something happens to me, I have some money I want him to send to you.”
“What’s going to happen to you?”
“Maybe nothing.”
“And maybe what?”
“Maybe I’ll get killed.”
“How?”
“I can’t tell you about that.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t tell you, that’s all.”
“It has to do with the war?”
Tony nodded.
“I thought so,” she said. “I knew you were doing something. You told me you were an American, and you told my father you were from the North of Italy. You lied.”
“I had to.”
“Are you lying to me now?”
“About what? No, I’m not lying to you.”
“Señor Mallín said you would come to me.”