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First impressions were important, Major Richard M. Canidy, USAAF, knew, and the thing that most impressed him about Sicily was how it appeared utterly unaffected by the fact that there was a war going on.
Although he had taken great care to evade any German or Italian coast watchers when he had landed just up the beach from Mondello, and when he had deflated the rubber boat and buried it, and then when he had passed through the tiny seaside town, his efforts seemed misspent.
He had not seen a single soul.
There had of course been a dog, and a slew of damned feral cats—but not a single human being.
Mondello may as well have had its sidewalks rolled up.
It was only now, as Canidy continued to walk the ten-plus kilometers to Palermo, paralleling a two-lane macadam road but staying far off it, that he finally saw someone.
It was a man, and he was inside a small stone house off in the distance.
Canidy saw him through the window and watched as he walked across the room—and blew out the candles for the night.
Amazing, Canidy thought, shaking his head and looking up at the twinking stars in the dark sky. Is the whole island on snooze?
He started walking again.
I don’t know.
But I do know that the last thing I’m going to do is let my guard down.
I plan on being back at that beach when the sub returns in six days….
Canidy came closer to the capital city and its glow of lights began pushing back the pitch-black night.
Now, as he entered the outskirts of town with its brightly painted modern buildings constructed of masonry, he finally saw some people. He passed a man, then another, then saw a couple holding hands as they walked across a piazza.
Not many, but at least it was some life.
He walked until he came to what he recognized from photographs was the Quattro Canti district. It was the city center, the medieval “four corners” area, and its ancient Norman-built stone buildings loomed in the night shadows.
He looked around, then walked on, heading in what he thought—hoped—was the direction of the University of Palermo.
I may as well check it out now, in the dark, with no one around.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky and bump into the professor.
He chuckled.
Yeah, right.
Fifteen minutes later, after covering five blocks and backtracking two, he found affixed to a street-corner wall a metal sign with an arrow and the word UNIVERSITÀ.
Voilà! Canidy thought.
Or is it “Eureka!”?
He reached the university after three blocks.
The school itself was a disappointment. There was no campus. And with no campus there were no fields for playing sports, no complex for housing students—nothing that gave a genuine sense of a school.
There was, instead, only more of the same masonry-style buildings he had seen in the modern parts of the city. Across the top of the main building’s façade was basic signage, the black block lettering on a white background proclaiming: PALERMO UNIVERSITÀ.
Canidy walked up and got a closer look in the big window of the main building.
There was a security guard inside, sitting on a wooden folding chair with a billy club resting across his knees—and sound asleep.
