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The Villa by the Lake. The team found a good hideout, a vacant, 22-room villa, screened by trees on the west shore of Lake Orta. From there, the Chrysler mission asked Siena for its first airdrop. Two Army C-47s flew over, dumped out cascades of mortars, rifles, Tommy guns and ammunition. Holohan had arranged that this first drop was to go to nonCommunists. Instead, the Communists tried to grab the arms. Holohan was furious, but agreed to a meeting with the Red leader. The man he faced was Vincenzo Moscatelli, now a member of the Italian Senate.
After his brush with Moscatelli, Holohan resolved to order no more arms drops until he was quite sure into whose hands they would fall. Icardi disagreed with this cautious policy, and the issue sharpened a growing conflict between the two men. Holohan, cold and curt, puttered around the villa. Icardi, dashing and adventurous, liked to get around the countryside, turn up at bars and dances. Holohan insisted that the mission follow orders to wear U.S. uniforms, so that if captured they could not legally be executed as spies.
Up to this point, the story of danger, difficulty and friction can be matched by dozens of others in the secret annals of operations behind enemy lines. The account of what happened next is drawn from the confessions of three men, confessions believed by the Italian police and the U.S. Defense Department.
Lieut. Icardi told Sergeant LoDolce that the trigger-happy Communists were losing patience with the mission. If it were not for the major, the mission could forget about politics, start sending back vital military information and getting weapons that would save thousands of American lives. Icardi spoke of sending Holohan "to Switzerland without his shoes"—a partisan expression meaning to kill him.
The idea grew. Icardi and LoDolce talked it over with their two partisan attendants, a slim, wiry workman named Guiseppe Manini, and a slow-witted peasant by the name of Gualtiero Tozzini, known as "Pupo," the baby.
Cyanide in the Soup. The major liked minestrone. On the night of Dec. 6, Tozzini fixed a big pot of the soup. Holohan sat down with his back to the stove, and Manini slipped potassium cyanide into Holohan's bowl. Holohan took a few spoonfuls. The soup burned, he said. The major doggedly ate on, said that he felt sick, and reeled upstairs to vomit.
Sitting before the fireplace, Icardi and LoDolce decided not to take a chance on the poison. They tossed a coin. LoDolce lost. He was handed a 9-mm. Beretta automatic, and crept up the stairs. The others followed behind. LoDolce shoved open the door. "What's the matter?" asked Holohan, sitting up in bed. LoDolce fired two shots into the major's head.
The murderers worked swiftly. While Icardi wrapped a towel around Holohan's head to stop the blood, the two partisans wrapped the body in a sleeping bag, stuffed in the major's clothes and guns, and lugged their burden down to the lake. Manini had a boat waiting. The partisans weighted the bag with a stone and shoved off. About 100 yards from shore, they slipped the body of Major William V. Holohan into the icy waters of Lake Orta.