When Pino reached Casa Alpina after another three days of hard climbing in the first week of October 1943, he was exhausted and ravenous. He ate two bowls of “Spaghetti Bormio” and drank several liters of water before he could lift his head and look around the dining room.

The usual boys were all there. Mimo was commanding an entire table of them on the other side of the room. And Father Re was entertaining guests, two men and a woman. The younger man had sandy hair. His arm was around the shoulder of the woman, who had pale skin and dark, preoccupied eyes. The older man wore a suit, no tie, had a mustache, and smoked. He coughed a lot, and his fingers softly drummed on the tabletop whenever the priest talked.

Pino sleepily wondered who they were. It wasn’t that unusual for visitors to come to Casa Alpina. Parents often visited. And many hikers sought refuge there during storms. But these three were no hikers. They were dressed in street clothes.

Pino desperately wanted to go to bed, but he knew that wouldn’t go over well with Father Re. He was trying to get up the energy to study when the priest came over and said, “You’ve earned a day’s rest tomorrow. And you can put off studying until then. Okay?”

Pino smiled and nodded. He couldn’t remember how he managed to find and get into his bunk.

When he finally awoke, it was broad daylight, and the sun shone in the window at the end of the hall. Mimo was gone. So were all the other boys. When he entered the dining room, it was empty except for those three visitors, who were having a heated whispered discussion at the other end of the room.

“We can’t wait any longer,” the younger man was saying. “It’s all disintegrating. Fifty in Meina! They’re raiding in Rome even as we speak.”

“But you said we were safe,” the woman fretted.

“We are safe here,” he said. “Father Re is a good man.”

“But for how long?” the older man said, lighting another cigarette.

The woman noticed Pino looking their way, and silenced the men. Brother Bormio brought Pino coffee and bread and salami. The visitors left the room, and he didn’t think much about them the rest of the day, which he spent by the fire with his books.

By the time Mimo and the boys trooped in from a long hike it was almost dinnertime, and Pino was feeling not only rested but as fit as he’d been in his entire life. As much as he was exercising, with the massive amounts of food Brother Bormio was feeding him, Pino felt like he was gaining weight and muscle every day.

“Pino?” Father Re said as Mimo and two other boys laid out plates and silverware on the long table.

Pino set his books aside and got up out of his chair. “Father?”

“Find me after dessert, in the chapel.”

That puzzled Pino. The chapel was rarely used for anything besides a small Sunday service, usually at dawn. But he left his curiosity aside and sat and joked with Mimo and the other boys, and then entranced them with his description of the perils of the hard way up the Groppera.

“One wrong step up there and it’s over,” he said.

“I could do it,” Mimo boasted.

“Start doing pull-ups, push-ups, and squats. I’ll bet you can.”

The challenge ignited Mimo as all challenges did, and Pino knew his brother was about to become a pull-ups, push-ups, and squats fanatic.

After dishes had been cleared, Mimo asked Pino if he wanted to play cards. Pino begged off, saying he was going to the chapel to talk to Father Re.

“About what?” Mimo said.

“I’ll find out,” Pino said, grabbing a wool hat from the rack near the front door. He put it on and went out into the night.

The temperature had fallen below freezing. Above him, a quarter moon shone, and the stars looked as brilliant as firecrackers. A north wind bit his cheeks with the first hint of winter as he walked toward the chapel, beyond which a grove of towering fir trees grew along the rim of the plateau.

Four candles burned when he thumbed the latch to the chapel door and went inside. Father Re was on his knees in a pew, praying, head down. Pino shut the chapel door quietly and sat. After several moments, the priest made the sign of the cross, used his cane to drive himself to his feet, and then limped over and sat closer.

“Do you think you can travel most of the northern route to Val di Lei in the dark?” Father Re asked. “No light other than the moon?”

Pino thought, then said, “Not the face of the cirque, but everything up to that, I think.”

“How much more time would it add?”

“Maybe an hour. Why?”

Father Re took a deep breath and said, “I have been praying for an answer to that question, Pino. Part of me wants to keep you in the dark, to keep things simple, focused on your task, and nothing more. But God doesn’t make life simple, does he? We cannot say nothing. We cannot do nothing.”

Pino was confused. “Father?”

“The three people at dinner tonight. Did you speak with them?”

“No,” he said, “but I overheard them say something about Meina.”

Father Re turned somber, pained. “Two weeks ago, there were more than fifty Jews hiding in a hotel in Meina. Colonel Rauff, the Gestapo chief in Milan, sent Nazi SS troops. They found the Jews, bound their wrists and ankles, and threw them into Lake Maggiore, where they were machine-gunned to death.”

Pino felt his stomach roll hard. “What? Why?”

“Because they were Jews.”

Pino understood that Hitler hated the Jews. He’d even known Italians who didn’t like Jews and who said disparaging things about them. But to kill them in cold blood? Simply for their religion? It was beyond barbaric.

“I just don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, Pino. But it’s clear now that the Jews of Italy are in grave danger. I spoke with Cardinal Schuster about it by phone this morning.”

Father Re said the cardinal told him that after the Meina massacre, the Nazis extorted the Jews still remaining in Rome’s ghetto, demanding a payment of fifty kilos of gold in thirty-six hours in return for their safety. The Jews got the gold from their own stocks and from many Catholics. But after the treasure was delivered, the Germans raided the temple and found a list of every Jew in Rome.

The priest stopped, his face tortured, and then said, “Cardinal Schuster says the Nazis have brought in a special SS team to hunt the Jews on that list.”

“And do what?” Pino said.

“Kill them. All of them.”

Before that moment, Pino could not have imagined such a thing in the remotest and most troubled parts of his young mind. “This is . . . evil.”

“It is evil,” Father Re said.

“How does Cardinal Schuster know all these things?”

“The pope,” Father Re said. “His Holiness told Cardinal Schuster that the German ambassador to the Vatican told him.”