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more to this story, Billy. I mean, it’s terrible that Captain Galante was killed, but people are killed every day in this war.”
    “Where is your boss?”
    “London.”
    “I can’t see how he found out, or even if he did, why he’d send you back. This is small potatoes, Phil.”
    “Maybe,” he said, eyeing me. “Are you Ike’s personal cop?”
    “Sort of,” I said. “It’s a long story.” I told him the whole thing, about how the Boyles viewed this war as another alliance with the British, who were seen as the real enemy in my strongly Irish Republican household. About Uncle Frank, the oldest of the Boyle brothers, who was killed in the Great War, and how Dad and Uncle Dan didn’t want to lose another Boyle in the second round. A few political strings were pulled, and after Officer Candidate School I was sent down to Washington D.C., where I was supposed to sit out the war in safety, on the staff of an obscure general laboring in the War Plans Department.
    It had been a great idea. Mom was related to the general’s wife, and we’d met him a few times at family events. So it was Uncle Ike whom I went to work for, and he jumped at the chance to have an experienced investigator on his team when he was chosen to head U.S. Army forces in Europe, back in 1942. It had been quite a surprise to us all.
    I left out the part about my not being all that experienced. I’d been promoted to detective, sure, but with the Boyles, the Boston Police Department was sort of a family business. Especially when Uncle Dan sat on the promotions board and Dad was a lead homicide detective.
    Of course I made detective; I’d just needed a little more time to actually learn the ins and outs of detecting. A little more on-the-job training with Dad would have gone a long way. But Emperor Hirohito had other ideas, and I ended up on Uncle Ike’s staff, trying not to make a fool of myself. Because if I did, I knew I’d end up as one of those lieutenants leading an infantry platoon with a life expectancy of weeks, if not days.
    Some things are better left unsaid.

PART TWO

    Caserta, Italy

CHAPTER FIVE
    W E’D LANDED AT Marcinese airport, between Naples and Caserta, where a jeep and driver were waiting. I’d let Einsmann tag along, leaving the drunken congressman and the Reuters reporter on the tarmac looking lonely and confused. We dropped Einsmann off at a cluster of tents pitched on the south lawn of the palace, and he and I agreed to meet up later at the officer’s bar.
    The driver parked near the side entrance, had me sign for the jeep, and took off. A light mist began to fall and the palace loomed against the gray sky, large and formidable. I could see the gardens descending on the north side, but the rain obscured the distant fountains. I turned up the collar on my mackinaw and ran inside.
    When I’d last been here, the town had just been captured. The palace was a mess, everything of value looted or destroyed. Now it hummed with activity, spruced up as purposeful men and women in the uniforms of half a dozen nations and services scurried along, a few like me pausing to gape at the high gilt ceilings. I worked my way to a desk at the base of the main staircase, where a corporal sat at a desk, directing traffic. I asked him where I could find Major John Kearns, and he pointed to a chart behind him, which contained a layout of the building.
    “G-2, third floor, quadrant two,” he said, and then went back to his paperwork. The diagram showed all five floors and four sections of the building, each with its own courtyard. I figured out where I was and spotted the rooms allocated to Fifth Army Intelligence. I took the staircase, got lost a couple of times, tripped over communications wire strung across a hallway, watched a rat scamper out of an empty room, and finally found a door with G-2 painted above it. I knocked and entered. The room was cavernous, with a row of deep-set windows at the far side. Maps were mounted on the