The Lights of Alborada. Gianni Riotta

beach at Shelter Island, the black rubber raft. They were chasing four German raiders, silently lest they alarm the few well-to-do people who wintered on the island. A single gunshot, one broken window, and terror would flood the bright lights and the headlines of nearby New York. Sixty miles away from the deer forest, on the alert for the roar of the backwash, panic could spread to Manhattan, jazz, the Apollo Theater and the ladies who danced in their satin dresses. On Shelter Island, a saw-toothed, tempered-steel German dagger slit the throat of his friend Tom, without a cry, without a movement, just a gurgle like that of an unplugged sink, the last sound of the voice that had, in 1939, seduced the whole class of graduating girls at Barnard College, up in Broadway. Perhaps, even now, those young women were wondering, over a drink at Baker House, ‘Where do you think Tom is now? We must go and hear him when the war's over,’ but Tom lay bleeding to death on the beach which, once peace had returned, would host happy family picnics by the rock pools. Cheever had finished off the Germans, two pistol shots muffled by his silencer, and captured the remaining member of the commando unit, a colossus who had been lamed by one of the shots. He could have killed him like a dog – who would ever have investigated? But Tom had died precisely because they didn't want to act like Nazis. A democratic officer didn't cut throats like an SS fanatic. So he had given him a slap and dragged him by one arm to the Ford, to take him to the investigation centre. In the darkness, the light of the 100-watt bulb … ‘Cheever, are you listening?’

      ‘Of course, General.’

      ‘We have precise information on the escape of a dangerous Nazi from a prisoner-of-war camp. An expert in sabotage. Like the one you captured on Shelter Island, he's off the U-boats. There's some confusion about his identity. Read this.’

      The general handed him a grey file, and Cheever timidly opened it. The sheet of paper, the meticulous typing of the girls in Washington, the black stamps of the censor and the secret service, and the stout, white vellum suggested the hand of the Washington top brass, the only ones who could still afford to use such fragrant paper.

      ‘U-boat commander from 1940 to 1942,’ began Matthews. 'Six Allied sinkings in the Atlantic to his credit. His name is believed to have been Hans von Luck, Prussian Junker of aristocratic family, father a diplomat, speaks three languages, escaped from the camp in Amarillo, expert in sabotage and explosives, code-breaking, infiltrations of enemy camps, undercover operations. Sources in the Italian fascist camp in Hereford, Texas, tell us that Captain von Luck, disappointed by the way the war was going and the resignation of his fellow detainees in the USA, planned to organise a highly visible suicide operation. He trained the Italian subs at the Danzig base in 1940, and can rely on their solidarity. He's probably preparing an attack on the levees of the Tennessee Valley Authority, to flood a vast zone in the southern states, and spark the enthusiasm of the Germans. He plans to force Allied Command to increase checks and confiscations, concentrating men and resources on this side of the ocean. A massive manhunt in the south would have enormous propaganda value, and would be broadcast by radio to occupied Europe. Hitler's in desperate need of a psychological success.

      ‘Von Luck must be found straight away, Cheever, he must be arrested, neutralised or brought back to camp in chains. I didn't want to write this in the file that I've prepared, but another source assures me that he's armed, and heading to Washington to attack President Roosevelt,’ Matthews continued. ‘And we're not even sure of his identity.’

      ‘What do you mean, sir?’

      ‘I mean that prisoners are identified by their Soldbuch, the paybook of the German army. But von Luck's Soldbuch wasn't found at the camp. He can hardly have taken it with him, it's far too dangerous. It's more likely that he's destroyed it. I'm worried that the escaped prisoner may not actually be von Luck.’

      ‘Tell Cheever your hypothesis, Major,’ ordered the general.

      ‘The prisoners are quite capable of preparing fake American documents, creating a new identity for themselves. So why not obliterate the old one? We'll be going after von Luck, but our true prey is someone else.’

      ‘And what about von Luck?’

      ‘He's dead. Or he never got to America, he went missing at sea, and someone else has his Soldbuch in his pocket. There's a lot of confusion during prisoner transfers. And the registers are kept in order by the senior prisoners, we haven't got enough of our own men for the job. The escaped man could be an officer, but not von Luck.’

      Cheever understood. ‘When am I off?’

      ‘Tonight. Cafard will be in charge of the mission. Will you be able to make it?’

      ‘I'll have a shot at it, sir.’

      Then he looked at Cafard and corrected himself. ‘We'll have a shot at it, sir.’

      This reassurance wasn't enough for General Matthews, who leaned over the restaurant table. He pushed the glasses aside with his massive hands, and pressed his torso breathlessly forward. ‘Get him, Cheever. Get him. Once the war's over I don't want to find myself with a fanatical Nazi wandering about the States blowing up dykes and massacring innocent schoolchildren. I don't want him to organise a terrorist resistance network in the German quarters of New York. Get him before he shoots the president, get him, whether he's German or Italian.’

      Matthews seemed very old to Cheever, his face wrinkled, tired and melancholy. He repeated the words, ‘before the war is over’, as though afraid he wouldn't see that day. As though catching the only fascist at liberty in the United States of America was not a military matter, like guaranteeing the safety of the dykes, the schoolchildren of Tennessee and Franklin Roosevelt. No, it was rather as if putting that U-boat commander behind the barbed wire of the Amarillo camp was the strategic key to the final victory, a magical challenge to the fate of the world.

      ‘Get him, Cheever, get him. For all our sakes.’

       6

      What did Ulysses dream of during those nights on his plank bed on board his ship when the bright and friendly stars of the Mediterranean lit the unknown way before him? Did he draw up battle plans for fighting monsters? Or did he ask himself questions about his destiny, did he try to find a solution to the traps of Fate that had left him on his own, his comrades gone, the final mystery still to be solved, the doubt that lay within him? What is the hero's true adventure? Blinding the Cyclops, escaping Sirens, seducing goddesses, or is the challenge one of finding inner clarity, the truth about oneself, being accepted and understood as part of the nature of the world and the things that are in it? Perhaps Odysseus' bosun wasn't seeking his course up there, beyond the pulsating Pleiades and the Great and Little Bears, doubting his own vision, rubbing his salt-crusted lids, but wise in the knowledge that bound him to the heavenly vault? Faithful to his course, he would return home. Then, whatever bitterness might be hidden in his homeland, not even Father Zeus, not even Nux, the night that awaits us all, will be able to overcome us.

      Back in barracks in Turin, rolled up on the deck of the rusty steamer that had brought me to Africa, in the watches of Bardia, lying on the soft sand of the desert, I had wondered about Odysseus' dreams as I went to sleep. Sleeping is hard in wartime. Even when you're completely worn out and you want only to plunge yourself silently into the darkness, you are held back by the anxiety that you might have made a mistake, and that you would die before dawn for that tiny mistake, perhaps you'd broken a little branch on patrol, forgotten about sentry duty, or miscalculated the trigonometry of the enemy's artillery camp. Or, worse, that that same mistake might cause the deaths of the men whom fate had entrusted to you. It's hard for a serious-minded officer to sleep in wartime.

      Sometimes I tried to remember Zita, the professor, to meditate on logic and my sins, like Wittgenstein in Cambridge in 1911. Nothing worked. Sensuality was depressing. If it was sated, I was drained of energy, while if it was the object of my contemplation, it led to a painful comparison between my two lives, the happy one of earlier times and the present, piled with my comrades on a haystack that the British General Wavell was about to set alight along with our little fortress. It was then, at five o'clock on a freezing morning