Intrigue In Milan

Chapter 5

Milan, 16 October 1816, 11.30 p.m.

Via Molino delle Armi

Four men wrapped in their loose black cloaks moved in stealth along Molino delle Armi street as the rain lashed down no end.

Walking the length of the canal, they went beyond the old mill used to forge weapons when the Signoria used to rule the city.

This building, as with others built more recently, was being used by the Austrians to grind wheat meant for the civic guard.

The group of four reached the Piazza della Vetra, with the right turret of the San Lorenzo Basilica and townhouses containing it.

They found the square deserted, as if it were just the place for tortures to be meted out before, or instead of, an execution during the Middle Ages.

Local legend of witches’ and heretics’ spirits creeping without relent through stormy nights was sufficient to guarantee they went unobserved by all.

They crossed the square cornerwise and swept through a passage by the Vepra canal that flowed into the Olona. A few steps down, they entered a precarious, unguarded mill. With his lantern lit, one of the men led them to a warehouse full of breadbaskets with enough to feed a regiment.

The lantern holder turned to his companion, a tall and portly gentleman dressed in a green trench coat.

‘See here the great godsend we have, Kramer!’ the smuggler cried out. He was a short, lean man, the so-called Sfrosador.

‘Where did all this stuff come from?’

‘Never you mind. Are you still prepared to buy at the price arranged?’

‘Of course, but how am I to take it away?’ asked the man, speaking in a strong German accent.

Sfrosador thrice heard a knock at the door before a brief silence and two more.

‘My lads are here already;’ he answered as he rubbed his hands in glee at the success of this venture, ‘they’ll take care of loading up the wares and then onto the black market’.

‘But are you sure that everything will be in order?’ asked Kramer.

‘With Gino Tagliabue ─ “Sfrosador” to you ─ all business runs as oil,’ answered the companion as he opened the door.

A square blow to the nose powerful enough to knock him cold amongst the breadbaskets belied these last words.

Before the others could react, the man who had landed the punch shot a second smuggler’s knee through with precision and a pistol. The third lunged at the assailant with the knife, but the back of his skull was then caved in with a single sharp blow from a shovel leaning against the wall. As the afflicted rogue fell to the ground as a clean-felled tree, the last one standing made good his escape, sweeping towards Piazza della Vetra. The assailant, a tall man dressed in a dark green raincoat, turned to a man in a white Austrian soldiers’ uniform who had just rushed to the head of the patrol.

‘Paolo, your pistol!’

The weapon seized, the man shot the fugitive in the thigh just a moment before he fell out of range.

He saw the man fall onto the pavement after a colourful turn of German phrase.

With a satisfied grin, he looked him up and down.

‘So, Günther, since when did you decide to open a bakery?’

‘Ziani, is that you? Scheiße, you’re a curse unto me!’

‘Alas for you, I was seconded to Milan some months ago’.

‘Do you know this man, Marco?’ said the man in sergeant’s uniform.

‘I present to you Herr Günther Kramer, former spy and deserter, now become the former worst smuggler in the Empire,’ Ziani answered sergeant Paolo Sangalli.

‘Brazen of face and lies as quick as his feet, if I may be so bold. Is he the worst in that he’s infamous?’

‘By that I mean he’s incapable, from when he was selling unsound armaments to Serbian renegades in Sarajevo; isn’t that right, Günther?’

‘I’m bleeding to death. Do something instead of making mock, you bastard!’

‘It would be a pleasure to kill you, you worm, but I shall leave you at the mercy of the patrol who’ll take you to Cà Granda and then to the clink. Speaking of which, given your facility to escape from the gaols here, you’ve earnt yourself a nice sojourn at Spielberg in Bohemia. Hats off to you!’

‘Fick dich, deine Mutter!’ exclaimed the German as he covered the wound with his bare hands. Ziani turned away from him as Sangalli set his sights on the soldiers of the patrol.

‘You three there ─ to the mill! Sfrosador is there with two others, roughed up! You two, however, deal with this man. Stanch the bleed!’

‘Such wasted effort!’ ventured Ziani as he drank liquor from a hipflask.

‘Could you not have waited for us as agreed before breaking the mill in, Marco? With your methods of policing, you’ve brought four of them to the infirmary!’

‘You’re to blame, the one to ask me not to kill anybody!’ answered Ziani.

Then, dignifying neither the sergeant nor the patrolmen with a look their way, he moved away, throwing the now-spent flask into the canal.