Chapter 1

      The Italian admiral was a proud man and justifiably so. Before joining the resistance he’d commanded a good proportion of the Italian fleet. Too old to operate like a partisan any more, fighting against an occupying force, his role now was to observe Allied airstrikes from this mountaintop fastness positioned well behind enemy lines, and to radio through battle damage reports to Allied headquarters.

      Entirely military-like in his attitude, he had an eye for detail and for range and bearing that made him ideally suited to his task. But on this late-September evening in 1944 he’d put away his binoculars, turning his mind to entirely different and more urgent matters.

      Captain Michael Lees felt the admiral’s firm grip shaking him awake. He’d been drifting into sleep, hoping for a rare night uninterrupted by enemy ambushes, shellfire or raids. It was remarkable how comfortable a rickety old hayloft could prove, after so many weeks living rough behind enemy lines. It made a passable billet for himself, assorted Brits and other nationalities who’d come here to assist the Italian partisans, striking with lightning speed from the mountains.

      ‘There’s a message from Major Temple,’ the admiral hissed. ‘You’re to get to his headquarters immediately.’

      Lees fumbled for his boots, hurrying to pull them on in the chill night air, the admiral’s tone reflecting the import of the major’s summons. In Major Darewski – ‘Temple’ was his operational cover name – Lees had discovered a fellow adventurer who hungered for action. After parachuting into the unknown and executing a tortuous and perilous route to get here, Lees was keen to lead the kind of guerrilla operations for which Major Temple was famed.

      Lacing up his boots and pulling on a jacket, he set off at a run. The path ahead glistened blue-white in the moonlight, the night beautifully starlit and crystal clear. As his feet pounded upon the rough, stony ground, Lees felt the excitement rising within him. He wondered what might lie behind the major’s summons. It was either a juicy sabotage mission, or perhaps the Germans were launching a sweep through the valley, in an attempt to encircle the partisans, in which case they would need to act swiftly to organise their defences.

      Such efforts as this – to raise, train and arm the Italian partisans for war – were largely at the behest of Winston Churchill. The Allied invasion of Italy in the summer of 1943 had been at Churchill’s urging, designed to drive a dagger into the ‘soft underbelly of Europe’. By doing so, Britain’s wartime leader intended to strike at Nazi Germany via Italy, so splitting the enemy’s defences in the run-up to the D-Day landings. Initially the proposal had met with fierce opposition, especially from the Americans. By way of response Churchill had sketched out a picture of a crocodile, pointing out how it was just as good to strike at the belly as the snout.

      Eventually the Americans had been convinced that hitting Europe’s ‘soft underbelly’ was the right thing to do. Yet despite early successes in southern Italy, the Italian campaign had proven anything but ‘soft’. Hitler had little intention of leaving the back door to Europe open. He’d rushed reinforcements into the country, the Germans fighting a series of die-hard battles, first under the command of General Erwin Rommel, and then under another of Hitler’s favourites, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring.

      Come the approach of winter, the Allied advance had stalled on the Gothic Line, a string of formidable defences – thousands of machine-gun bunkers, concrete gun emplacements, deep tunnels, minefields and razor wire – stretching from coast to coast across northern Italy’s Apennine mountains. The forces manning the Gothic Line were some of Germany’s finest. They included the 1st and 4th Parachute Divisions, arguably some of the best troops in the Reich, plus two Panzergrenadier – mechanised infantry – divisions equipped with heavy armour.

      All of Italy south of the Gothic Line had been seized in fearsome fighting by the Allies. But territory to the north of the line remained in enemy hands, excepting pockets of remote, mountainous territory held by the Italian resistance – Major Temple’s mission being one such example. At Churchill’s urging, the partisans were being armed and trained to rise up in the enemy’s rear, to help achieve a decisive breakthrough. Lees and Temple’s operation, headquartered towards the western end of the Apennines and just to the rear of the Gothic Line, was intended to strike hard at enemy lines of supply and communications.

      Whatever tonight’s mission, Lees felt an immense sense of respect and camaraderie for Major Temple, who’d already won a DSO (Distinguished Service Order) in the war. Formerly an officer with airborne forces, but now serving as an agent with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) – Churchill’s shadowy ‘Ministry for Ungentlemanly Warfare’ – Lees was second-in-command here, and in Major Temple he believed he had found a real kindred spirit.

      On his earliest operations with the SOE, Lees had earned the nickname ‘Mickey Mouse’. It was Yugoslav guerrillas who had coined the name, Mickey Mouse being the only ‘Michael’ they had ever heard of. But there had been nothing Mickey Mouse about the long months Lees had spent soldiering with them: he’d led dozens of dramatic raids on enemy railway tracks, blowing trains laden with war materiel to smithereens.

      When told to cease offensive operations with the Yugoslav guerrillas, Lees had decided to interpret his orders rather literally: he’d stopped working with the resistance, launching a string of solo sabotage missions instead, ones of breathtaking – some might argue suicidal – daring. In doing so he’d earned a somewhat more apposite nickname – Michael ‘Wild Man’ Lees. His linking up with Major Temple promised fireworks and heroics in equal measure.

      With delicious irony, Temple’s mission had been codenamed Operation Flap. In truth, no one was inclined to ‘get a flap on’ with Temple – or Lees – in command. At thirty years of age, Major Neville Lawrence Darewski was comparatively old for an SOE operative. (By contrast, Lees was still in his early twenties.) The son of Polish-born Herman Darewski, a famous music hall musician of the time, and the English actress Madge Temple, it was from her that Darewski had coined his nom de guerre.

      Major Temple had been operating behind the lines for months now. He’d parachuted