Shout in the Dark

  *

  Twelve hours after an ashen faced Kessel received this reply, he was killed by a Gapist bomb thrown at a group of soldiers outside the Gestapo block in the Via Tasso, and thus saved from the imminent interview with his Oberstgruppenführer for abusing military authority. The Communist resistance were still able to fight the fascists.

  Untersturmführer Helmut Bayer was also spared a military inquiry for, on hearing of his Sturmbannführer's sudden death, he rolled up the offending film and placed it at the back of his locker. Perhaps the world would pass him by. When he had made a set of prints of his delicious Monika he would destroy the negatives -- if there was no more talk of an inquiry. As with so many of life's intentions, he was the first to admit that this one was likely to be quickly forgotten. And after the war, if he returned to the rubble of Köln, and if the seductive Monika Schulte agreed to become the respectable Monika Bayer, he would probably still have the film somewhere in his possession.

  RENATA BASTIANI was waiting in the Sturmbannführer's room for the officer to arrive, so she could act out her loathsome duties. For the last three sessions, the guards had allowed her to leave Bruno in the room below. While the German had taken his pleasure each night, she watched and planned, desperate to make good her promise to end the man's life.

  When the explosion from the Gapist bomb shook the windows, and she could clearly see the reason for the commotion in the narrow street outside, she snatched a bundle of papers from the table. Sturmbannführer Kessel had been busy with his writing over the last few days. Perhaps these pages contained information of value to her anti-fascist friends. She bitterly regretted not being the one to end the man's life. It would have been justice for the disgusting assaults on her body.

  She collected Bruno and slipped through the confusion caused by the bomb, away from the Via Tasso and into the unlit Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano. In the distance, gunfire from the coast lit the night sky in bright flashes. For a moment she paused to watch. The British and the Americans were somewhere over there, getting ready for their advance on Rome. That is where she would go. There might be safety for a young widow with the liberators.