Patton had little doubt that it would all come back and haunt him in his later days.
He had no idea that it would visit itself upon him this very day.
Sabine Faber knew this was her moment, and she acted decisively.
She had harboured and nurtured her inner feelings, keeping them safely hidden, earning trust, and becoming a familiar figure around the Third Army Headquarters.
Fraulein Faber was an intelligence-cleared cleaner and, in that capacity, had been entrusted with tending more sensitive areas, especially as she was the daughter of a German officer serving in one of the new Republican units.
Intelligence had missed one vital matter.
She was also the sister of the dead Oberleutnant Maximillian Faber, late of the 1st Fallschirm-Panzer Division ‘Hermann Goering’.
Max Faber had been taken prisoner in Sicily, at the Biscari Airfield, on the 14th July 1943. He had been summarily executed by men of the 45th US Infantry Division, some of whom were tried for the offence.
Had they not been brought before the military court, then Sabine would never have learnt of the circumstances of her brother’s death, and would not have built up a hatred for the man responsible.
The man in the room, outside of which, she now prepared herself.
Picking up the tools of her trade, she knocked on the dark wood doors.
“Enter.”
Pushing open both doors, Sabine slid into the room, receiving a cordial welcome from the man she had come to kill.
“Good morning, Sabine. How are you today?”
“Much better thank you, Herr General.”
She had tried the day before, but the arrival of some Ranger officers had prevented her, and she had feigned a sudden sickness to excuse herself from the room, in case anyone noticed the contents of her bucket.
She moved quickly around the room, tidying and dusting, the map stands covered with their light linen covers to ensure prying eyes saw nothing of value.
She swept, moving around the room with barely concealed haste, Patton so engrossed in his writing that he failed to notice that she did not clean around the desk.
Moving the bucket to the window, Sabine pulled out the mop. Any casual glance at the implement would have betrayed its dry state. The bucket contained a Walther PPK, now in the hand of the vengeful Faber.
The sudden silence associated with lack of movement broke into Patton’s consciousness, the sole sound he recognised being the heavy breathing of Sabine Faber.
He turned.
‘What the…’
“Say nothing, you murdering swine. Say nothing at all. Keep your hands in front of you, and sit still. Just listen.”
The General nodded his understanding, and leant back in his chair, displaying a calmness he did not feel inside. He forced himself to focus on the woman, knowing that she had something she wanted him to hear, or he would already be dead.
“In Sicily, you ordered your men to kill prisoners. One of them was my brother. Your men killed him at the Biscari airfield.”
She snarled, her words almost hissing through her teeth in the increasing anger.
“He pleaded for his life, and they shot him in the head.”
She took half a step closer, and gestured with the small automatic.
“I want to hear you plead for your life, you bastard.”
Patton’s face became thoughtful, almost as if he were debating his response. But no words came. He just maintained eye contact.
“Plead for your life, General, or I will shoot you down now, like the dog you are.”
Sabine moved closer, the muzzle of the PPK now three feet from her target.
Raising her voice, she lashed out with her foot, catching Patton on the shin.
“Scream for your miserable life, get on your knees. GET ON YOUR KNEES!”
Her raised voice blotted out the sound of the opening door, as the cleaner who had actually been detailed to clean the room, entered to investigate.
The PPK erupted, the first bullet aimed at Patton.
Swivelling quickly, the next bullet took the new cleaner in the chest, and dropped her to the tiles, where her head smashed into the solid floor and knocked her out.
It took Sabine Faber less than three seconds to fire both shots and return the weapon to cover Patton.
It took General George Scott Patton just over two seconds to snatch up the paper opener and ram it through the assassin’s solar plexus.
The pain was so total and debilitating.
Faber tried to bring the pistol up again, but the strength was not there.
Suddenly, she was flung against the far wall, as a .45 slug smashed into her. She was dead before her corpse had finished its bloody slide down the Mediterranean mural.
“Sonofabitch!”
The Captain who had shot Sabine down could not better that. Others rushed into the room, keen to confirm that their General was alive.
Her shot had missed, passing through the gap between his epaulette and shoulder, and clipping away some of the woodwork beyond.
The area was quickly secured, the Lieutenant Colonel in charge of security acting swiftly, conscious of the fact that there had been a grave error, and that they had been very lucky that day.
Still unconscious, the wounded cleaner was stabilised and whisked away to the medical facility, where later Patton would visit her and thank her for saving his life.
The body of Sabine Faber was removed from the room, drawing a cursory look from Patton as he spread the word through other Allied commands.
Whilst the woman had spoken of her own reasons, it did not pay to take chances, and so the alert went out to all commands in Allied Europe.
Knocke was pleased to see Anne-Marie Valois waiting on the steps.
It had previously been agreed that he would not be told when the OSS operation to rescue his family would take place.
That had been for sound operational and personal reasons.
But he sensed something was in the air, and the presence of the ‘Deux’ agent confirmed it in his mind.
He alighted from the jeep, smiling at the pretty agent.
His smile was not returned, and his heart twisted in agony.
“Mademoiselle Valois? Are you well?”
“Yes, perfectly, thank you, Général Knocke.”
Which she very obviously was not.
His body cold, Knocke did not know what to say or do.
“Shall we walk together, Général?”
Side by side, the two strode around the Hotel and into the garden, the area where it had been agreed that Anne Marie de Valois would break the news.
Sitting down in a small arbour, Valois invited Knocke to sit.
‘Mein Gott!’
“I shall stand, if that’s alright with you?”
“Please, Ernst, please sit.”
That did it, and as he sat down, his resolve started to disintegrate.
A hand found his, and he looked up into the moist eyes and knew that he had lost them all.
‘Nein! Nein! Nein!’
“Ernst… I…”
Instinctively, her other hand moved to comfort the grieving man.
The timing went astray, the minder misunderstood the signals from Valois, and he set the pair loose ahead of schedule.
Running for all they were worth, Greta and Magda Knocke sprinted from the hotel, and threw themselves upon their father.
Tears of joy spilled down his face as he swept them up, hugging them, and kissing them in his happiness.