The sun had set hours ago. He had finished Drucker’s manuscript, as well as the associated classified documents Speers had sent him, in one long sitting. His feet were tingly. His eyes hurt. He was famished. He went to the window, forcing himself to look at distant objects so as to retrain his vision. He focused his gaze on the dome of St Peter’s Basilica, and then on the lights of the Royal Palace. At night, the palace was an arresting vision of power and majesty. He tried to imagine how it would have looked in January 1943, when Sebastian Wolf had been imprisoned there. So much was unchanged. The architecture. The uniforms of the clergy and the Swiss Guard. But he would have also seen Italian police on horseback and plumes of steam rising from the animals’ mouths. And although the official occupation of Rome would not begin until later that year, he would have seen plenty of German patrols in the streets. The Nazis must have thought it only a matter of time before the long red and black swastika banners hung from the palace façade.
