She waited for an hour before deciding to leave. She spent the whole time looking at Ulrich Jürgens’s body, repeating over and over again in a low voice how much she had hated him, and how happy she was that justice was finally done. She was surprised to feel no regret, she didn’t know if she would be attacked by emotions later, but at that moment the only thing she felt was a deep satisfaction.
When she left the room an officer and a blonde woman were going into the next room alone. She didn’t look at them, and they seemed not to pay her any attention. They were drunk and seemed happy.
She waited impatiently for the elevator to come, and didn’t breathe again until she was out in the street.
She walked along calmly, telling herself that nothing could connect her to the murder. She reached Vittorio’s house at one o’clock and entered very slowly, trying not to wake up Vittorio or the servants.
She got into bed and fell fast asleep until late the next morning. It was Vittorio himself who woke her up; he seemed extremely agitated.
“There was a murder at the Excelsior. An SS officer.”
“Why do we care about that?” she said boldly.
“They are stopping people all over Rome. I don’t know how many people have been arrested. Cecilia called for you a moment or so ago to talk about it.”
“I’ll call her as soon as I am dressed. We had arranged to meet and have lunch at her house.”
“It would be better if you were to stay here.”
“Don’t worry about me. Cecilia said she would send her own car.”
“Amelia, they are stopping people in the streets, and arresting lots of them. It is not a good idea for you to go out.”
But Amelia insisted that this had nothing to do with them, and called Cecilia to confirm that she would go to her house for lunch.
When Amelia arrived, Guido was just leaving.
“It’s not a good idea for you to go out,” he said. “They’re looking for a dark-haired woman, they think it was she who killed Colonel Ulrich Jürgens.”
“Jürgens?” Amelia said, surprised.
“Yes, the SS officer who has turned up dead. The police think that it was a prostitute, but apparently nothing was taken, so why should she kill him? A couple saw a dark-haired woman leaving Jürgens’s room around midnight.”
“But who would dare kill an SS officer?” Amelia said as if she were not only scared but surprised.
“Well, it might not have been a prostitute. Apparently, one of Jürgens’s friends gave them another clue, that Jürgens had a meeting with a woman, someone who didn’t like him very much but who was still prepared to go to his hotel room.”
“Who could that be?” Cecilia asked with interest.
“I don’t know, I don’t think Colonel Jürgens had many friends,” Amelia said.
“Well, you knew him, apparently you were seen having a discussion at the New Year’s party. I’ll tell you, I thought that the colonel had quite a liking for you.”
“How silly! We were just talking about how the war was progressing, nothing else.”
Guido left them talking about who the mysterious woman could have been, even though he was inclined to believe the version the police favored: that Jürgens had been murdered by a prostitute. Perhaps he had been violent with her: He was a fearsome man, who made even Guido nervous.
When Amelia got back to Vittorio’s house, she found Father Müller waiting for her.
“I didn’t expect you, Rudolf,” she said with a smile.
“Do you know what happened?”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me what everyone already knows, that someone killed Colonel Jürgens.”
“Yes... Amelia, forgive me for asking, but...”
She let out a shout of laughter that sounded false to Father Müller, given how well he knew her.
“Rudolf, I’m not going to deny that I’m happy he’s dead.”
“I came because Marchetti sent word that he wants to see you.”
“Me? Why?”
“You know what you talked about the last time you met.”
“I asked him if I could work with the Resistance, if I could take the place of Carla,” she lied.
“Well, he may have decided to accept your offer. He wants to see you tomorrow, in San Clemente. Come a little bit before they lock the church.”
“I’ll be there. But you needn’t worry about me.”
“How can I not worry! I’ve lost too many friends.”
“I wanted to ask you about that...”
“Amelia, I didn’t want to say anything so as not to worry you. Max asked me not to. The Gestapo arrested Professor Schatzhauser a few months ago. He was at the university, and they burst into one of his lectures and took him. We haven’t heard anything more about him. They also arrested Pastor Schmidt.”
“And the Kastens?”
“No, they’re still in Berlin, but the Gestapo must be keeping an eye on them. Everyone knows that they were Dr. Schatzhauser’s friends. And if I went back... well, maybe they’d arrest me too.”
“You should have told me.”
“Understand me when I say that... Max doesn’t want you to suffer.”
The police came to Vittorio’s house four days later, the same time that Max von Schumann arrived in Rome.
They made Amelia come with them to a police lineup. An SS officer who was a friend of Colonel Jürgens’s insisted that Jürgens had been going to meet the baron’s lover.
Amelia shouted and even cried, and appeared scared; but even though Vittorio told them to leave her in peace, they took her down to the station.
There she found herself face to face with the couple who had been going into the room next to Jürgens’s. They looked her up and down, but said straight away that she was not the woman whom they had seen leaving Jürgens’s room on the night of the murder.
“No, it’s not her,” the officer said. “She was dark-haired.”
“With mahogany highlights in her hair and dark eyes, and this woman has light eyes,” the woman added.
“She was taller,” the officer said, “and fatter.”
They gave her a routine interrogation about where she had been that night. She said that she had been in Vittorio’s house all night and that the servants could confirm that. She didn’t deny that she knew Colonel Jürgens, or even that she didn’t like him very much. She knew that they knew everything that had happened in Warsaw, so that it was better to tell the truth, or at least most of the truth.
They interrogated her for two days and two nights without her falling into any contradiction in her story. On the third day, Max came to find her at the police station. He had asked his general to do whatever he could to stop her from falling back into the hands of the SS. The general only made one condition: The police report had to absolve her of any possibility of being the murderer.
The police had the description given to them by the couple who had stayed in the neighboring room, so they concluded that it was extremely unlikely that Amelia could have been the murderer. They let her go. Max was waiting for her.
“We’re going to Athens,” Max said as they walked back to Vittorio’s house.
Amelia gave a sigh of relief.
“Well, that’s it.”
Paolo Plattini gave a satisfied smile, aware that Francesca and I had listened to him with such interest that we hadn’t opened our mouths the entire time.
“What a story!” Francesca exclaimed in shock.
“My great-grandmother is a real Russian doll: the more I find out about her, the more shocked I get,” I said.
“I have something for you.” Paolo gave me some folders.
“What are they?”
“Photocopies of newspaper reports about the murder of Colonel Jürgens. As you can see, for the first few days the newspapers spoke about the murder having been carried out by a prostitute, but then they started to blame the partisans. Look here,” he said, pointing to one of the photocopies. “It says tha
t several districts of Rome were papered with posters that said that the partisans claimed the assassination of Colonel Jürgens to be revenge for the hanging of Carla Alessandrini.”
There was nothing I could do but thank Paolo Plattini for the information that he had provided, for all that I felt annoyed to leave him standing in the doorway, his arm around Francesca’s waist. I’m sure that they would finish the bottle of Barolo together and wake up in the morning to look at the iridescent reflections on the rooftops of Rome.
In spite of the hour, I decided to walk around the city a little. I needed to think of everything I had heard that night. My great-grandmother was turning out to be a strong and unpredictable woman. Nothing that she did seemed to have anything to do with her true nature. Was she a romantic bourgeois woman who let herself get carried away by events, or did she really have a much more complex personality? I was surprised that she had been capable of killing a man in cold blood, even though he had been a disgusting Nazi. I decided to go back to the hotel. When I was in the room, I opened my suitcase and took out the copy of the photograph of Amelia Garayoa that Aunt Marta had given me. I looked at it from time to time to try to understand how this young blonde woman, with her apparently ethereal and aloof personality, had been able to live so dangerously and with such intensity.
That night I found it hard to get to sleep, not just because I was annoyed that Paolo and Francesca were a couple, but because I was upset to think of my great-grandmother as being a murderer.
Paolo had lent me the book written by the partisan, and so I decided to have a look at it, and fell asleep with it in my hand.
The next day I called Francesca to thank her for the dinner and the revelations that Paolo had provided. She was friendly and affectionate, as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders by making it clear that she and I would never again watch the dawn from the windows of her loft.
“What are you going to do now?”
“I’ve booked a flight to London.”
“Are you going to meet with Major William Hurley?”
“I hope so. I’ve told you that the major is very British and that you have to book things a long way in advance with him. But I will try.”
“Paolo has told me to tell you that he’ll carry on looking, that if he finds out anything else about your great-grandmother he’ll call you.”
“Tell him that I’m very grateful, that he has been molto gentile, as you Italians say.”
“Yes, he is. Well, call me if you think that we can help you with anything else. Ciao, caro!”
The next thing I did was to call Major William Hurley, and to my surprise he did not seem as distant and tense as he had on previous occasions.
“Ah, Guillermo, it’s you! I was wondering why you didn’t call. Lady Victoria has been asking about you.”
“I wanted to know if you could meet with me.”
“How was Rome?”
“Very useful. I’ll tell you what I’ve found out.”
He made an appointment for two days’ time, which for him was as if he’d agreed to see me that very afternoon.
10
It was raining when I arrived in London. At least it was not too cold. I booked into the hotel that I normally used and called my mother.
“Where are you?”
“In London.”
“But you said you were going to Rome!”
“I was in Rome, but I had to go back to London.”
“Guillermo, I’m sick and tired of telling you to give up on this ridiculous activity, that this investigation will not take you anywhere. If I don’t care what this woman did or didn’t do, and I’m her granddaughter, you should care even less. It’s only Marta who could have made such a mess out of our grandmother!”
“And I’m sick and tired of your lectures. I don’t care what your grandmother did, or my great-grandmother: This has nothing to do with family history. It is a job I am doing, which they have paid me to do, and which I will carry on doing, and I’m happy that Aunt Marta doesn’t have any control over it anymore.”
“You’re getting obsessed.”
“No I’m not, it’s just a job.”
I didn’t dare tell my mother that her grandmother had been capable of rubbing out a man without blinking. It would have upset her, or maybe not: Knowing my mother, she would have been capable of saying that Colonel Ulrich Jürgens had it coming to him.
Two days later, at the agreed-upon time, eight o’clock in the morning, Major Hurley received me in his office at the military archives. He was in a better mood than I was, given the hour. This was a man who started to fade at nine o’clock at night, whereas at eight o’clock in the morning I was barely capable of keeping my eyes open.
“Well, I lost track of my great-grandmother in Greece.”
“In Greece? Ah yes, of course! After her time in Rome Amelia went to Greece with Baron von Schumann, and started to work for us again. As you will know by now, the loss of her great friend, the diva Carla Alessandrini, marked her so deeply that your grandmother was never the same again.”
I was about to get annoyed with the major: He had known about my grandmother’s movements in Rome and had not wanted to help me. I mentioned this.
“In fact, I don’t know much of what happened in Rome. Colonel Jürgens’s death was not something we planned ourselves. We knew about it via the Resistance: They organized it.”
I took my revenge by giving him a lecture about what had actually happened in Rome, and made it clear that it was not an operation carried out by the Resistance, but by my great-grandmother.
“Our archives record that the free agent Amelia Garayoa, working on the orders of the Resistance, executed one of the bloodiest officers of the SS, Colonel Ulrich Jürgens.”
“Well, if you want to be true to what actually happened, then listen to me: My great-grandmother killed Jürgens on her own account and at her own risk. The only thing the Resistance did was give her a pistol.”
It was clear that however much I argued with him, Major Hurley was not going to change what was recorded in the archives.
“Amelia Garayoa left Rome at the beginning of 1944. The trial was taking place in Verona of those who had tried to overthrow Mussolini. They were all condemned to death, including Il Duce’s own son-in-law, Count Ciano. Only Tullio Cianetti survived. On January 17 came the battle of Monte Cassino. Have you ever heard about this battle? On January 22, the Allies landed at Anzio, near Rome. Let’s see... let’s see... yes, here we go, your great-grandmother arrived in Athens on January 16, just one day before Monte Cassino. We knew via the Resistance that Jürgens had been executed and so we supposed that Amelia Garayoa might be willing to go back to work. So when we knew she was in Athens we got in touch with her.”
“Just like that.”
“Who said anything about it being easy?” Major Hurley said grumpily. “Young man, you need to listen and not be so impatient, because I haven’t got any time to lose.”
I shut up, worried that I might have spoiled the Major’s good mood, and let him begin his story.
Major Murray received a report that said that Amelia Garayoa, working with the Italian Resistance, had killed an SS Colonel in Rome. Murray was surprised at Amelia’s action because, even though he had trained her to kill if such a thing should become necessary, he had doubted that she would be capable of it. Her fragile appearance was deceptive.
Murray decided to try to get the young Spaniard to collaborate with them again. She could be very useful in Athens, working with the Resistance and providing reports about the disposition of German troops on the Greek islands.
Baron von Schumann took two neighboring rooms in the Hotel Great Britain. It was no secret that Amelia Garayoa was his lover, but Baron von Schumann was too much of a gentleman to crudely display their relationship. The Hotel Great Britain is right in the center of Athens, close to the Acropolis.
Amelia enjoyed visiting the archaeological ruins and regretted, silently, to herself, th
at the Nazi banner should fly over the Acropolis.
Max von Schumann went to visit the various German battalions and to assess their wounded and see which medical supplies were required. Then he wrote long reports to Berlin, which he sent to them knowing that very few of his demands would be fulfilled.
What neither Amelia nor any of the German officers staying at the Great Britain were aware of was the fact that one of the waiters who served them so politely at the bar was in fact a British agent.
His codename was “Dion.” His real name is still classified.
Dion spoke German and English perfectly. His father was Greek and worked for the British Embassy. He had met a young woman there, the personal maid of the ambassador’s wife. They fell in love, they married and had a son. When the British ambassador went on to his next posting, the young maid stayed with her husband and son in Athens. She was an excellent maid, so she found work in the house of a German historian who spent large periods in Athens. He must have been a good man, because he allowed her to bring Dion to the house with him, and spent his free time teaching him German. This was how Dion managed to gain his knowledge of languages, which was so useful for his profession. He listened to conversations among the guests without giving any sign of being able to understand them. And they spoke with the confidence that came from assuming that no one could understand what it was they said.
A little after Max and Amelia arrived at the hotel, Dion sent a report of one of the conversations he had heard.
“The war isn’t going well,” Max said to Amelia.
“Will the Allies win?” she asked, without hiding her hope that this would be so.
“Don’t you see what that would mean?”