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do. Now we can’t tell the Vatican we have no say with the Italian police, and that baboon Caruso will get us in trouble yet.”
    In the days following 19 January, there was more for Bora to worry about than the head of police. His long hours with Westphal – often extending to fifteen daily – practically ran round the clock after the British advanced beyond the Garigliano River and passed Minturno by the coast on their way to the crossroad village of St Maria Infante. On Thursday, a counter-attack was launched from Ausonia on the affluent south of Cassino, by which time nervous talk arose of an imminent landing. Kappler called in to inquire about the number of soldiers available in Rome for immediate recall to the front, if needed. Bora came up with ten thousand. All day Westphal stayed at Soratte and returned late, tired after his conference with Kesselring. Stillhe spent most of the night before a map held in place by hastily emptied coffee mugs, evaluating enemy positions and the endless coastal stretch marked for stand-to. Waiting.
    Kappler phoned again at four in the morning to warn that Gestapo and SS stood ready to requisition drivers and attendants.
    “Go ahead,” Westphal replied, yawning into his fist. “If that’s what we throw before an invading army, we deserve what we have coming.” He looked at Bora, who had been reading charts of the shoreline from Leghorn to Naples. “Well, it doesn’t look slow any more,” he said. “And the field marshal is right – they bombed too much all around us for it not to happen in the Rome sector. Especially as they hit the Littorio Airfield yesterday.”
    “It ought to be on this coast, anyway, if reports of activity in the Naples harbor are correct.”
    “But where, and when?” Westphal passed his hands over the bristle of his cheeks. “Be good, Bora. Shave and run by Gestapo headquarters to see what Kappler has in mind.”
    21 JANUARY 1944
    The calendar day celebrated the feast of St Agnes with a Gospel reading from Matthew, the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. During the light hours, mixed reports were phoned in from the front, and by nightfall the only news of interest pertained to a heavy air raid on London. In a headstrong state of premonition, Westphal stayed up until late. Then, mostly because Kesselring had agreed to relent the alert after three tense days, he told Bora he would go lie down. “Call me if anything happens.”
    Bora set to keep watch in the dead hours that followed, when even vigilance born of foreboding whittled down under physical weariness. Nothing had happened. Nothing might happen. Around him and this room the whole great buildingseemed enchanted, bound in silence. Shortly after midnight, he began a letter to his wife, reread it and decided not to send it.
    A cigarette later, his mind wandered to disparate and irrelevant subjects, as in dreams. Who was the SS Magda Reiner had dated, and was God really Borromeo’s last lover? He wondered if it was true that Kappler collected Etruscan art, like Dollmann said. Was this the time to collect anything? And so through the night. Coffee grew cold in his cup, names on the maps became confused scribbles on mountainsides along wavy seashores. At one point Bora turned the lights off and went to open the window. It was like plunging his face in icy water, bracing and beneficial. Outside, the late hour stood calm, depthless. A thin haze stretched like a canopy of gauze over the city. He sat at his desk in the dark, facing the window. Finally, at three o’clock, the news came. Bora collected himself after leaving the telephone, and on his way to the general’s room he took time to straighten his uniform. Westphal didn’t need much to be awakened. He stared at the door where his aide’s figure stood straight, bare-headed. “Where?” he asked at once.
    “ Codename Option Richard .”
    “Anzio?”
    “And Nettuno.” Bora looked away while the general furiously threw his clothes back