Lucilla--NaNoWriMo2014

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Mark and Lucilla continued to work with local Rabbis in order to obtain Christian Baptismal Certificates. Although local Jews would not convert to Christianity, they would have those certificates should the German SS decide to question them about their faith.

Mark and Lucilla met Rabbi Akiba at a ristorante that specialized in pizza.  The Rabbi happened to love pizza but ordered them with chicken or ground beef.  Lucilla was having pizza for the first time.

"Oh, Giuseppe, I would rather have had flat bread with spiced meats and fruits."

"You are familiar with Ancient Roman Cuisine, Sejnora?"

"You have no idea of what an expert I am on ancient food," Lucilla responded with a sinister laugh.

"Lay off the Rabbi, Helena. We are here to help out those Jews who cannot leave so easily."

"Thank you, Giuseppe,"  the Rabbi said.  "The war is growing in intensity each day."

"Yes, the Americans and the British are approaching a line even with Naples, it has been harder for Helena and I to travel to places like Anzio even."

"You need Baptismal Certificates?" Mark said.

"How many?" Lucilla asked.

"Two hundred," Rabbi Akiba said.

"Rabbi, I respectfully suggest that you arrange another meeting place and another contact.  Someone you trust to get them to the right people."

"Lucilla will take your request to Vatican City this week and submt it to the Holy See.  She will dress as a tourist but give the proper password."

"May the Lord God of Israel bless you Zion, he who made heaven and earth."  the Rabbi said.

Two days later Lucilla was walking in Saint Peter's Square, which is the tourists approach to Vatican City.  Before she could reach Saint Peter's Basilica, a man in work clothes took her by the arm.

"Sejnora, what you are doing is too dangerous."

"What do you mean?"

"I am with the Italian Resistance, and we have observed you and your husband visit Vatican City twice.  If we know that you are with the Resistance, then the German SS may already know it as well."

"What do we do?"

"Sejnora, come with me, and we will discuss your safe access there."

Lucilla was in dreadful fear that her contact would be an Italian member of the German SS or one of their stooges.  But when she arrived at an apartment house a block from Saint Peter's Square, she was able to relax.  There stood one of the operatives who had accompanied her and Mark on their convoy of Jewish refugees to Salerno.

"Sejnora, you will meet me at the Spanish Steps next to the Keats House.  There we will take a car to the back alley of the Vatican. A cleric or priest will be waiting to take us to the Holy See."

So Lucilla met the operative at the appointed place, where they climbed the Spanish Steps and met an awaiting black, Citroen automobile.  It was quite small, room for only four people.  In a few minutes, the car halted at a lonely door.  Lucilla's contact knocked once, and the two of them were inside a dark, abandoned hallway in under the Vatican.  There they followed an elderly priest, who worked in the archives.  The ascended steps and were in a little used office at street level.

"What do you desire, Sejnora?" the old priest said.

"I need Certificates of Baptism for some two hundred Jews.  Can you help me?"

The old priest smiled at them and returned with a stack of blank Baptismal Certificates.

"Now, Sejnora, I will take a stack to some ten bishops working here and ask them to sign them.  Each will back date them to a time when they were serving as bishops.  Then they will be returned to me, where I will place the Pop's Imprimatur.  Then you will supply the names.  But you must be careful.  Each priest will be punished for writing his name on an document that was not first filled out."

Two days later Lucilla met still another Resistance Agent at the Piazza Navona.  They found still another entrance.  After a few minutes, Lucilla met the driver, who turned down toward the bridge toward the Castle of San Angelo.  Behind them was a German SS staff car and the high and low siren.  Once they had crossed the bridge over the Tiber River, they stopped.  Lucilla was terrified.

A lone civilian approached their vehicle while the Germans remained behind in their vehicles. When the man in civilian clothes opened the car door, Lucilla was stunned.

Again, it was Petronius.

"Helena, you and Giuseppe ought to get out of Rome."

Then he left the car door open while he raised up, telling the Germans that he had made a mistake.

"You have not seen the last of me, Sejnora."

He then returned to his vehicle while Lucilla's driver continued to their point of departure.

Back at their safe house, Lucilla and Mark discussed their situation.

"Mark, our cover is compromised.  Petronius called me by the name on my fake passport.  That must mean that he knows who you are as well."

"Then we will have to get out of Rome until at least until after liberation."

Mark and Lucilla received new passports, travel permits, and money.  This time they would not travel by bicycle as before because they believed that Petronius would tip off the German SS about that mode of travel. So Mark and Lucilla did what no one would have expected of someone traveling on a secret mission.

They hitchhiked south toward the town of Cassino.  The village lay on a flat plain. Mark and Lucilla passesd wave after wave of German units on their way south to fight a delaying action while they were strengthening their forces.  Allies attacking would have to cross rivers and climb mountains.  Without bridges, or bridging equipment, they could not send tanks across rivers in support of their infantry units.

Mark and Lucilla had to take a hotel room alongside German officers who were in the area.  This was a rich source of information for them.  They were able to memorize the numbers of German soldiers and their military units complete with types of weapons and vehicles.

There in the hotel was General Kesselring.  Again he invited them to dine with him.  Mark and Lucilla thanked him for his support in evacuating Jews from Rome.

General Kesselring looked around in a gesture of symbolism.  "I am thankful that we could save innocent people from extermination.  But here is where the action will be.  I regret that it will be necessary to lose many good German lives here and the lives of Americans and British.  I believe that it was American Confederate Robert E. Lee who said it was well that war is so terrible, lest we become too fond of it."

Mark and Lucilla made small talk with the general into the evening.

In the morning they took a bus in the direction of Anzio.