“We’ll put ourselves in your good hands,” Dick said. “You can be our guide and helper here in Maletta.”
“Is the town still the same?” Tony asked.
“No, of course not,” Tomaso replied sadly. “Many have fled. Many others have been evacuated to the factories in the north. And all our young men—they were in the army, of course. Some are dead, others are prisoners of the Germans. We don’t hear much. But here in Maletta we try to keep on laughing and smiling. Why, we still have the opera once a week.”
He glanced apologetically at Dick. “I know that Ricardo Donnelli would find our opera company a poor one. Our costumes are shabby now, our sets falling to pieces. The good young voices are not here, but the performances still give us great joy—almost the only joy we still have in our lives.”
“Then it is a fine opera company,” Dick said. “If it gives the people pleasure, it is doing all that anything can do.”
“Now tell me what I am to do,” Tomaso said, in businesslike fashion.
“First, we must find a place for my radio,” Tony said. “Uncle, I am a radioman for America’s Army. We have, in the hills where we landed, a complete broadcasting set. I must use it to send messages in code to our Army, messages telling about movements of German troops and supplies through Maletta.”
“That is not easy,” Tomaso said, with a puzzled frown on his face. “The Germans do not like radios, even for receiving.”
“They have a way, Uncle,” Tony explained, “of listening to a radio and telling exactly where it is.”
“I know, I know,” the old man said. “The underground had a secret, illegal station in Florence—there are many others, but I know about this one. The Germans listened and found out exactly which block it was hidden in. Then they just went through all the houses and found it. There is another in a truck that moves from place to place, and they cannot find it. But the Germans have no detectors here in Maletta. I know that.”