What was he trying to find or see? And where was he trying to find or see it? There was the valise and its contents, to be sure. And General Leyers had offices here in Como, and in Milan, Pino supposed. But would he ever be allowed inside them?

He couldn’t see that happening, and realizing there was little for him to do now but wait for the general, he let his thoughts drift to Anna. He’d thought for sure he’d never see her again, but here she was, the maid of the general’s mistress! What were the odds of that? Didn’t it all seem like it was—?

German lorries, better than a dozen, rumbled past him blowing black diesel smoke, and ground to a halt at the north end of the street. Armed Organization Todt soldiers leaped out of one vehicle and fanned out, training their weapons on the rears of the other lorries.

“Raus!” they shouted, and dropped the gate. Throwing back the canvas, they revealed forty men looking around in bewilderment. “Raus!”

They were all emaciated, filthy, with scraggly beards and long tangled hair. Many of them had vacant, dead eyes and wore ragged gray trousers and tops. There were letters on their chests he couldn’t make out. Manacled, they moved at no better than a shuffle until the guards tore into them, hitting a few with the butts of their rifles. As lorry after lorry emptied, there were soon three hundred of the men, maybe more, moving en masse to the stadium’s north end.

Pino recalled the similar men in the central rail yard in Milan clearing the streets of bomb debris. Were they Jews? Where had they come from?

The gray men, as he’d taken to calling them, rounded the northwest corner of the stadium and headed east toward the lake and out of view. He thought about General Leyers’s order to wait by the Daimler, and then Uncle Albert’s wish that he become a spy. Pino started walking at a quick pace past the four guards at the near entrance. One said something in German he didn’t understand. He nodded, laughed, and kept moving, figuring that acting confident was as good as being confident.

He rounded the corner. The gray men were gone. How was that possible?

Then Pino saw that an overhead door on the north end of the stadium had been rolled up. Two armed guards appeared outside. He thought of Tullio Galimberti, how he used to say that the trick to doing almost anything difficult was to act like someone else, someone who belonged.

Pino saluted the guards and took a right inside a tunnel that led out toward the pitch. He figured if he was going to be stopped, it would be now, but his gamble paid off, and they didn’t say a word. He quickly saw why. The tunnel had side hallways in which many men in OT uniforms like his own were stacking boxes and crates. The guards must have figured Pino was just one more in the bunch.

He walked almost to the mouth of the tunnel, then hung back in the shadows and looked out, seeing the gray men lining up in rows on the near side. Beyond them, at the southern end of the stadium, camouflage netting had been raised and lashed in place. There were howitzer cannons on trailers beneath the netting, six of them by Pino’s count, dozens of heavy machine guns, and too many wooden crates to ponder. It was a supply depot. Maybe an ammo dump.

Pino turned his attention to the OT soldiers prodding the last few gray men into position just before General Leyers appeared from another tunnel perhaps fifty meters away and down the length of the stadium. An OT captain and a sergeant trailed him.

Pino pressed himself tight to the tunnel wall, only then truly considering what might happen if he were caught snooping about. He’d be questioned, certainly. Maybe punched up. Maybe worse. He thought about walking confidently right back out the way he’d come in, waiting however long it took for Leyers to return, and going on with his day.

But then, ramrod straight and with the full authority of a Nazi Reich Minister, General Leyers strode to a stop in front of the gray men, who were assembled in thirty rows, ten deep, with close to a meter gap between each man, and a three-meter gap between each row. Leyers studied the first man a moment, and then made some kind of pronouncement that Pino couldn’t hear.

The captain scribbled on a notepad. The sergeant pointed with the muzzle of his rifle, and the first gray man broke formation. He trudged across the field, turned, and stood looking back at Leyers, who’d moved on to the next man, and the next. Each time Leyers would study the man before him, and then make his pronouncement. The captain would write it down, and the sergeant would point his gun. Some went with the first man. Others were assigned to one of two other groups.

He’s grading them. Sorting them.

Indeed, the biggest and strongest of the prisoners stood in a cluster smaller than the other two. The men in the second and larger group looked more beaten up, but they were still grasping at dignity. The third and largest bunch looked like men at their limits, skeletal, and about to drop dead in the building heat.

Leyers was a model of German efficiency in the sorting process. He gave no man more than a five-second appraisal, rendered his verdict, and moved on. He reached the three-hundredth man in less than fifteen minutes, said something to the captain and the sergeant, who snapped into a Sieg heil salute. General Leyers returned the Nazi salute with vigor and then strode toward the exit.

He’s heading to the car!

Pino spun around, swallowing at the metal taste on his tongue, wanting to run but forcing himself to model the general in his purposeful, authoritative stride. When he walked out the north gate, one of the guards asked him something in German. Before he could answer, their attention moved to the sound of the gray men shuffling into the tunnel behind Pino, who kept moving as if he were leading the parade at a distance.

He rounded the corner. Midway down the stadium, Leyers exited, heading toward the Daimler. Pino exploded into a full sprint.

They’d been seventy-five meters apart when Leyers came out the door. But twelve steps from the staff car, Pino caught up, went by the general, and came to a skidding halt. He saluted, tried to calm his breath, and opened the door. A dribble of sweat left his hairline and ran down between his eyes onto the bridge of his nose.

General Leyers must have seen it, because he stopped before getting in and looked closely at Pino. More sweat beads appeared and dribbled.

“I told you to wait with the car,” Leyers said.

“Oui, mon général,” Pino gasped. “But I had to piss.”

The general showed slight disgust, and climbed inside. Pino shut the door behind him, feeling like he’d taken a steam bath. He wiped both sleeves across his face and got into the driver’s seat.

“Varenna,” General Leyers said. “Do you know it?”

“East shore of the east arm of the lake, mon général,” Pino said, and threw the staff car in gear.