And neither mother—I still can’t tell which nun/wife belongs to which priest/SS man—has raised any questions, much less objections.
All of these people—and that includes Sister María Isabel and her nuns—are used to obeying, without question, any
orders they get.
[TWO]
Clete waited until Enrico had followed Sister María Encarnación out of the dining room and closed the door after them.
Well, let’s see if I can get away with this.
“Actually, this is very simple,” Clete began. “But for reasons you will understand, secrecy is of the utmost importance.”
Sister María Isabel’s face showed she was prepared to disbelieve everything Don Cletus had to say.
“The Germans have lost the war,” Cletus announced. “They know it but won’t admit it. We know it and have taken certain steps to make sure things go more easily for the German people when their leaders finally surrender.”
“For the German people, Don Cletus, or the English and the Americans?” Sister María Isabel challenged.
So I’m wrong. This nun asks questions and expects an answer.
Clete met her eyes.
“For the German people,” he said. “I think you would have to agree, Sister, without me getting into the details, that the Germans—the German leadership—are behaving quite badly.”
“And the Soviets are not?” Sister María Isabel challenged.
“I am not about to defend the godless Communists, Sister,” Clete said.
She looked at him and nodded.
She did not swallow that whole.
Well, I never thought I had it in me to become a really good used-car salesman.
“What Germany is going to need after the war is leaders,” Clete went on. “What we are afraid of is that the Nazis realize that those we feel are the ones who should lead Germany after the war are the same people who oppose Hitler. Or whom they suspect oppose him. And we fear that they will be punished—executed—in the last days of the war. The very suspicion that someone does not fully support Hitler or Nazism—”
“Sister,” Welner interrupted. “I know you’ve been to Rome. Did you perhaps have the chance to see the Ardeatine Caves, near Via Ardeatina?”
What the hell is this? Frade thought.
“Yes, I did,” the nun said.
“To support what Don Cletus is saying, Sister, let me repeat what the Papal Nuncio to Portugal told me privately when I was in Lisbon,” Welner said. “On March twenty-third, Italian partisans attacked a German formation on the Via Rasella, in the center of Rome. Thirty-three German soldiers were killed.
“When Hitler heard about this—and mind you, Sister, this is what the Papal Nuncio told me, not English or American propaganda—Hitler lost his temper and ordered that Rome—including Vatican City—be razed to the ground and that the entire population of the city be arrested and taken to Germany.”
Sister María Isabel inhaled audibly.
Clete thought, Is Welner making this up?
Is Hitler actually that nuts?
He saw on Schultz’s and O’Sullivan’s faces that they were asking themselves the same thing.
No. Jesuits don’t lie. They bend the truth a little, but they don’t lie.
He looked at Strübel and Niedermeyer and the wives. Their faces were absolutely inscrutable.