Free Street Boys by Lorenzo Carcaterra Page B

always admirable, but in your case, it’s also foolish,” Von Klaus said. “As of today, the Italians want your beloved Mussolini dead, the Americans want him captured and we Germans really don’t know what to do with him. We have enough buffoons in our high command as it is. Which leaves you a loyal man with no place to turn.”
    “He will not abandon those who stay by his side,” the man said. “Il Duce will be back and Italy will again belong to him.”
    “Perhaps,” Von Klaus said in a sterner voice. “And if he does return, I hope he rewards your loyalty with a new home and new riches. Because as of this moment, all that you own is the suit you wear. The rest now belongs to Germany.”
    “This land has been in my family for three generations,” the man said. “
No one
can take it from us. Not even Il Duce himself.”
    “Your family may have owned the land, but they never worked it,” Von Klaus said. He gazed at the man, his eyes gleaming and hard. “That’s a duty people like yourself reserve for the poor.”
    “It’s not against any laws to employ farmhands,” the man said. “And we took good care of them. Treated them as if they were members of my own family.”
    Von Klaus walked in a small circle around the man. “And where is the poor side of your family now?” he asked.
    “Most of them fled,” the man said. “A few stayed behind and were killed. They were foolish enough to go against the power of Il Duce.”
    “Yet you not only stayed, you’ve managed to survive,” Von Klaus said. “With most of your wealth still at your disposal. Seems a poor way for a man to care for members of his family.”
    “They made their choice,” the man said. “And now they have to live or die with the results of that choice.”
    Von Klaus nodded, the son of a working-class Berlin mill worker about to pass judgment on the landed nobility that stood before him. “And I have made mine,” he said. “And
you
will have to live or die with the results of that choice.”
    “What are you going to do?” the man said, all the confidence and arrogance seeping from his body.
    “What I was sent here to do,” Von Klaus said, giving the man a last disdainful look. He turned and stepped toward the front of the house. “Empty the house of all its goods,” he shouted to his men. “Then blast it down. I don’t want even a stone left untouched. Use the flame throwers and torch the surrounding property. All of it, from one end to the other. Once I order the pull out, I want two tanks to stay back and mine the areas around the four sides of the house. I want nothing left standing. Nothing! And I want the smoke to be seen for miles. To be seen and smelled by everyone hiding around us.”
    “You bastard!” the old man shouted at Von Klaus. “You heartless bastard!”
    Von Klaus stared down at the man and smiled. “To a soldier doing his duty, that is considered the highest of compliments,” the colonel said.
    The old man stood his ground, breath coming out in hard gasps through his open mouth, his hands trembling. He shook when the first blast from a tank shattered the front door of his home and his eyes welled with tears when a second ripped through a third-floor bedroom. The third explosion stripped the man of all judgment. He rushed toward the colonel, standing now a dozen feet away, sanity giving way to suicide.
    “I will kill you for this, you Nazi bastard!” he shouted, running at Von Klaus with both arms extended. He had a small revolver gripped in one trembling hand. It had been jammed inside his tobacco pouch, hidden from the soldiers’ search.
    Colonel Von Klaus watched as he raced toward him, his manner relaxed and indifferent. He didn’t flinch as the two soldiers to his left fired three shots into the old man, dropping him face first onto the red dirt that lined the front of the house. Von Klaus walked over to the body, reached down, took the revolver from the man’s hand, and put it inside the