They were stopped at four checkpoints as they made their way to Varenna, but every time, the sentry saw Leyers in the back of the staff car and quickly waved them through. The general had Pino stop at a small café in Lecco for an espresso and a pastry, which Leyers ate and drank as they drove on.

On the outskirts of Varenna, General Leyers gave directions that led out of town and up into the foothills of the southern Alps. The road quickly became a two-track that led to a gated pasture. Leyers told Pino to go through the gate and across the field.

“Are you sure the car will make it?” Pino asked.

The general looked at him like he was a fool. “It is a six-wheel drive. It will go anywhere I tell it to go.”

Pino dropped the transmission into full-low gear, and they went through the gate, cruising like a small tank across the uneven terrain with surprising ease. General Leyers told him to park in the far corner of the field near six empty lorries and a pair of OT soldiers guarding them.

Pino pulled in and shut off the staff car.

Before he could get out, the general said, “Can you take notes, too?”

“Oui, mon général.”

Leyers rooted in his valise, came up with a stenographer’s notepad and a pen. Then he retrieved the chain and key beneath his shirt and locked the case.

“Follow me,” he said. “Write down what I tell you.”

Pino snatched up the notepad and pen and climbed out. He opened the rear door, and Leyers exited, walking briskly past the lorries to a path that entered woods.

It was nearly eleven o’clock in the morning. Crickets sawed in the heat. The air in the forest smelled good and green and reminded Pino of that grassy hillside where he and Carletto had slept during the bombardment. The trail began to angle steeply downhill, with lots of exposed tree roots and ledges.

A few minutes later, they emerged from the trees onto a railroad track that curved into a tunnel. General Leyers marched toward it. Only then did Pino hear the din of steel on rock, hundreds of hammers striking stone inside the tunnel. The air reeked of spent explosives.

Sentries outside the tunnel snapped to attention and saluted as Leyers passed. Pino followed, feeling their eyes on him. It was gloomy and got gloomier the deeper they walked into the tunnel. With every step, the hammering got closer and turned more painful to the ear.

The general stopped, dug in his pocket, and came out with cotton balls. He handed one to Pino, motioned to him to tear it in half and stuff the pieces in his ear canals. Pino did, and it helped enough that only if the general shouted right next to him could he hear what he was saying.

They rounded a curve in the tunnel. Bright electric bulbs hung from the ceiling ahead, casting a garish light that revealed the silhouettes of a small army of gray men using picks and sledge hammers to attack the walls on both sides of the tunnel, which stank of detonation. Chunks of rock yielded to the onslaught, broke off, and fell at the men’s feet. They kicked the rocks behind them to other men loading the debris into ore cars on the rail tracks.

It was hellish, Pino thought, and he wanted to leave immediately. But General Leyers continued on without pause, stopping by an OT guard who handed him a flashlight. The general shone it into the excavations on either side of the track. The gray men had cut a solid meter into the wall in places, and were hollowing out a space that Pino judged at two and a half meters high and twenty-four meters long.

They walked on past the excavations. Fifteen meters on, the walls on either side of the track had already been dug out four and a half meters deep, two and a half meters high, and another thirty meters long. Large wooden crates filled much of the space on both sides of the track. Several were open, revealing bands of ammunition.

General Leyers inspected samples from each of the crates and then asked the sergeant there something in German. The sergeant handed Leyers a clipboard of documents. Leyers scanned several pages and then looked up at Pino.

“Write, Vorarbeiter,” he commanded. “Seven point nine two by fifty-seven millimeter Mauser: six point four million rounds ready for shipment south.”

Pino scribbled, looked up.

“Nine by nineteen millimeter Parabellum,” Leyers said. “Two hundred twenty-five thousand rounds to Waffen-SS Milan. Four hundred thousand rounds to Modena south. Two hundred and fifty thousand rounds to Genoa SS.”

Pino was writing as fast as he could and barely keeping pace. When he looked up, the general said, “Read it back to me.”

Pino did, and Leyers nodded curtly. He walked on, looking at the printing on some of the crates and barking out notes and orders.

“Panzerfaust,” Leyers said. “Six—”

“Sorry, mon général,” Pino said. “I do not know this word Panzer—”

“One hundred millimeter rocket grenade,” General Leyers said impatiently. “Seventy-five crates to the Gothic Line, per Field Marshal Kesselring’s ask. Eighty-eight millimeter tank-wreckers. Forty launchers and one thousand rockets to the Gothic Line, also per Kesselring’s ask.”

It went on like this for another twenty minutes, with the general barking out orders and destinations of everything from machine pistols to Karabiner 98ks, the Wehrmacht’s standard infantry rifle, to Solothurn long-range rifles and the stout 20 x 138 mm ammunition that fed it.

An officer appeared from farther up the tunnel, saluted, and spoke to Leyers, who turned and started back in the other direction. The officer, a colonel, ran to stay abreast with the general, still speaking crisply. Pino lagged a short distance behind.

At last the colonel stopped talking. General Leyers dropped his head slightly, pivoted with military precision, and began to verbally tear into the junior officer in German. The colonel tried to respond, but Leyers went on with his tirade. The colonel took a step back. That seemed to infuriate Leyers all the more.

He looked around, saw Pino standing there, and scowled.

“You, Vorarbeiter,” he said. “Go wait by the rock pile.”

Pino dropped his head and hurried past them, hearing the general shouting once more. The hammers and the stone cracking ahead made him want to wait for Leyers there. He’d no sooner had that thought than the clamor died, replaced by the sound of tools falling to the ground. By the time he reached the excavation site, the men with the picks and shovels were sitting with their backs to the walls. Many held their heads in their hands. Others looked blankly at the tunnel’s ceiling.

Pino did not think he’d ever seen men like this. It was almost unbearable to look at them: how they panted, how they gushed sweat, and how they rolled their tongues along the inside of their parched lips. He looked around. There was a big milk can of water by the near wall and beside it a bucket with a ladle.

None of the guards watching over the men had moved to offer them any water. Whoever they were, whatever they’d done to be here, they deserved water, Pino thought, growing angry. He went to the milk can, tipped it over, and filled the bucket.