CHIAROSCURO
November, 1943
Rome, Italy.
The Kriminalinspektor adjusted the set of his black gloves with studied care. It was three in the afternoon, the weak November sun fighting through the great bay windows of his office. Despite this, the man was dressed for the darkest Berlin winters, in full leather greatcoat and black gloves. His head, pale with thinning blonde hair, shone like marble. His face was granite.
"We require only your cooperation."
The man in the chair opposite blinked. The Gestapo agent tried once more.
"It is known that you associate with members of the Resistance. It is known that you have sympathies with your countrymen."
The man in the chair blinked once more. A beard, four days in the making, crusted the lower half of his face. Under it, a trail of bruises stomped black and blue feet from his cheek to the withered expanse of his frail chest. His suit, once fashioned from the hands of the finest tailor on the Viale Giuseppe Manzini, was a mess of wrinkles and stains the lowest begger in the street would scorn to wear.
He had been in solitary confinement since the previous Monday.
Still, he straightened. Slowly. Muscle by muscle. Washed-pale blue eyes focussed on the implacable face. "Mi dispiace, signore, ma sono..."
"Yes, yes. I am aware. Your former countrymen. But we will dispense with the petty distinctions."
A ghost of a smile shone through the straggling beard. The useless hand, limp and dead on his filthy trouser leg, twitched once. "Also, Herr Kriminalinspektor," He observed in faultless German, "You have never been a diplomat for your country."
"Unlike you. Yes." The smile resembled nothing so much as a shark, baring its teeth before racing for the kill. He too switched to German, the throaty words falling like a snake's hiss from his lips. "We do know of your service in the days of the Second Reich. Our records are impeccable."
"I have had that experience."
"Then you will understand that this show of courage is nothing. We are the Gestapo, Sir Anthony Strallan. We know everything."
"We know everything, Strallan."
The chink of the decanter against the brandy balloon sounded like a prison door shutting.
Colonel Laverty was a man of Anthony's own age. Distinguished, greying at the temples. He had kept his figure- he looked twenty years younger in his field greens, particularly when viewed from the back. As Commander of the regiment, he exuded authority like a man throwing out his shadow. Always present, always properly aligned. Perfect.
The leather lounge chair creaked a little under his sparse weight. Laverty cradled the balloon between sparse fingers for a minute. Weighing the alcohol along with his words.
It was with difficulty that Anthony kept from fidgeting. The pain in his healing fingers ached like a tooth biting through to the bone.
"I don't expect you to... to confess it. Frankly, I would rather we avoided scenes of that sort. But the nature of the injuries and the reports given to me by Dr Jefferies..." Laverty gestured towards the still bandaged hand.
"You're not the first, Strallan. We have seen other men like you."
You have shot other men like me, you mean.
"I'm afraid I don't quite know what to say, Colonel."
"Nothing is usually best, Strallan. Under the circumstances."
They both sipped from the brandy. It tasted of bile in Anthony's mouth.
The room was not an office. He could be grateful for that, for the privacy with which Laverty had chosen to conduct this most painful of interviews. It was a library, part of an old chateau that the British Army had requisitioned in near Paris for use as a strategic retreat for the general staff. A place for the officers to civilise themselves with books and brandy and conversation before returning to the brutal mud and roaring screams of death that made up the Front Lines.
He used to dream of being a soldier, back when he was a boy. His Nanny had a brother who served in India. He'd lived on stories of daring dashes through the Khyber Pass, stalwart last stands against the dervishes and pashas of Afghanisatan. When the Boer War was ongoing, he had devoured every newspaper clipping he could grasp that wrote about the dusty, far-away conflict.
It had seemed so wonderful, so glorious, back in the quiet library in Locksleigh House. He would look up from the dry print to the Reubenesque mural cavorting across the ceiling. The Spartans at Thermopylae. Family history had it that Leonidas was modelled on the second Baronet Strallan, back when the painting was first commissioned in the 1790s. He had served in the American war, returning with a distinctive scar across his right hand. The same scar was replicated in Leonidas.
Anthony had a scar on his right hand now, too. It was not the same.
Laverty tapped his middle fingers against the glass. He looked every where in the room but at Anthony's face.
"In light of your service before the war, it has been resolved that you shall take an administrative post. GHQ, Paris. The committee resolved it would be best not to demote you from your rank. The morale of the regiment... if it were known that an officer had..."
"Yes."
Humiliation existed in the unfinished half-sentences.
"You will not see front line duty again, Strallan. That was agreed. Personally..." The aristocratic nostrils flared. A brief crack in the stiff upper lip of the officer class. Disgust, disdain and disquiet. If it were known that an officer had...
"I understand."
"Quite."
There seemed little to say after that. Anthony drained his glass and set it down on the sidetable. The polished wood barely clinked under the expensive crystal. He sketched a salute to the still-seated Laverty but it was a clumsy thing, done with his left hand. He turned to leave.
"I feel constrained to tell you that certain among the committee pushed for a court martial."
Laverty's voice cut in through the crackling flames and the ticking clock like a knife thrust.
Anthony stilled, halfway to the doorway. He did not turn around. Like a man pinned to the whipping post, he waited for the next strike.
"You know how the verdict would have gone in that case. Your title saved you. Last of a long line, distinguished service all..." The leather creaked again. A chink of glass on glass. Brandy sloshing in a balloon, as though to wash the bile away from Laverty's mouth.
"How would it go if all were to know that you were a coward?"