Tapestry of Spiesen-auB1F536A43E

TAPESTRY OF SPIES
by
Stephen Hunter
Also by Stephen Hunter

THE MASTER SNIPER

THE SECOND SALADIN

DIRTY WHITE BOYS

POINT OF IMPACT

THE DAY BEFORE MIDNIGHT

VIOLENT SCREEN

BLACK LIGHT Formerly titled The Spanish Gambit

Stephen Hunter

A Dell Book

ISLAND BOOKS Published by Dell Publishing a division of Bantam Doubleday
Dell Publishing Group, Inc. 1540 Broadway New York, New York 10036

if you purchased this book without a cover you should
be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as
"unsold and destroyed to the publisher and neither the author nor
the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

Grateful acknowledgment is made for the following: "We are the hollow
men." From

"The Hollow Men" in Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T. S. Eliot, Copyright
1936 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.; Copyright C 1963, 1964 by T. S.
Eliot.

Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. and Faber and
Faber Ltd.

"These in the hour when heaven was failing."

From

"Epitaph for an Army of Mercenaries" from The Collected Poems of a. E.
Housman, Copyright 1922 by Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Copyright 1950 by Barclays Bank Ltd. Reprinted by permission of Holt,
Rinehart & Winston, Publishers. "if I should die, think only this of me.

There's some foreign field that is forever England."

From Rupert Brooke's

"The Soldier."

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are
products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as
real.

The author's use of names of actual persons, living or dead, and actual
places are incidental to the purposes of the plot and are not intended
to change the entirely fictional character of the work.

Formerly titled The Spanish Gambit

Copyright C 1985 by Stephen Hunter

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except
where permitted by law.

The trademark Dell @ is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office.

ISBN: 0-440-22185-4

Printed in the United States of America

Published
Simultaneously in Canada February 1997

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank those who gave so generously of their
time and their imaginations. First, thanks to Ernie Erber, who actually
spent part of 1936 in Barcelona.

Thanks to Mike Hill and Joe Fanzone for valuable early consultations;
they see their ideas reflected on every page of the book. Thanks to Fred
Rasmussen, of The Sun library, for digging out the Spanish Civil War
photos that were of so much help; Antero Pietila of The Sun's Moscow
bureau, for unearthing the location, size, and architecture of the Hotel
Lux; to another colleague, Matt Sieden, for his kind words and good
suggestions. Thanks to my old college roommate, Lenne Miller, for his
enthusiasms for the book. Thanks to my mother, Virginia Hunter, and my
brother, Tim Hunter, for their comments and patience; and to my
brother-in-law, medical consultant, and good friend, John D. Bullock,
M.D.

Thanks to David Petzal for his reading. Thanks to the nightshift
concierge at the Hotel Col6n in Barcelona for numerous courtesies and
unfailing good humor. Thanks to Jeff Bass, for suggesting the epigram
from the Mason book.

And to Susan Camochan and Zita Dabars, for assistance with my Spanish.
Thanks especially to my courageous and stubborn agent, Victoria Gould
Pryor, who believed in this

book from the very start and fought for it as if it were her own; and to
my brilliant editor, Barbara Grossman, of Crown, for her quotient of
belief and her refusal to accept anything less than my best. And
thanks-special thanks-to my wife, Lucy Hageman Hunter, for her
glamourless, thankless, and yet heroic efforts on behalf of this book.

Needless to say, errors are entirely my own.

The Ruy-Lopez is more popular than any other king pawn opening... The
Gambit is astonishingly complicated, embodying as it does a perpetual
intertwining of grandiose strategical planning with an alarming maze of
difficult tactical finesses and combinative motifs. It is no
exaggeration to affirm that mastery of the Spanish Gambit is a requisite
for anyone aspiring to become a strong chess player.

Adapted from James Mason, The Art of Chess, London, April 1898

PROLOGUE.

THE TRIAL OF THE ASSASSIN BENNY LAL

IN THE OLD COURTHOUSE at Moulmein, lower Burma, in February of 1931,
caused a bit of a stir in its own day, but its memory has not lingered.
It was a forgotten moment in the history of a vanished empire.

Yet a case could be made that it changed the political history of our
century, however secretly, however subtly. Still, in the mind of one
man, the event was important for exactly what it was, and not for what
it eventually made possible.

He was, on the last day of the trial, the Crown's chief witness, a tall,
not unpleasant-looking young officer in the service khaki of the India
Imperial Police. It was his duty to put the noose around the neck of
Benny Lal.

The blades of the overhead fan moved through the air in a stately whirl,
yet without palpable effect. Robert Florry stared at the motion, its
easy, hypnotic blur fascinating him.

"Assistant superintendent?"

The magistrate's voice. Florry swallowed awkwardly and, blinking,
embarrassed, redirected his vision toward the bench. He hoped his
discomfort did not show, knowing of course that it did. He swallowed
again. It had taken such a long time for this moment to arrive, but now
it rushed at him with the power of the undeniable future.

"Assistant superintendent?"

Florry attempted a wretched smile. The courtroom, jammed with other
Imperial Policemen and natives, was as still as a photograph. He could
feel their scrutiny: it had the weight of accusation.

"Yes sir," he said. His own voice always bothered him. It was a reedy,
thin instrument and tended to disappear in key moments such as this one.

"The man I saw-" he said a bit more smartly, raising his finger to point
At the defense table, under the slow whirl of the fan, amid a collection
of more fortunate members of his race, sat a Hindu.

He was small and had that furtive, shifty, almost liquid swiftness in
which the wogs seemed to specialize. He had a shock of thick dark hair
and two darting black eyes, his skin so mocha-chocolate that it made his
white teeth blaze like diamonds in the firelight. For Benny Lal was
smiling; he always smiled. He was an idiot.

"That's the man," said Florry, suddenly finding his policeman's voice.
"That's the man I saw running from the deceased on Tuesday last, half
past eleven in the evening, outside the Moulmein officers' club. Sir."

He added the bit of recapitulation as if in testimony to his own
efficiency, which was on trial here, too. Yet surely every officer and
every native in the courtroom would have known that Tuesday last at
half-eleven, a drunken Burmese merchant named U Bat had had his throat
opened all over his white suit not fifty paces from the veranda of the
club where Florry, nursing his fifth gin of the night, had sat trying to
write Georgian poetry in the lamplight, amid moths and fancies. Only
slightly drunk, the young officer had rushed to the still form in the
dust as a smaller, quicker shape had dashed by him. Perhaps, it was
being said in certain quarters, a man with more wit about him (or less
gin in him) would have made the pinch right there. But Florry, stunned
by the suddenness with which the violence had occurred and a little
dotty not only with drink but also with dreams of literature and then
still further staggered by his first exposure to the gaudy wreckage of a
human body soaking in its own blood in the dust, had let the villain
slip away in the shadows of an alley.

A manhunt organized rather like a tiger drive had come upon the naked
Benny Lal sleeping in blissful abandon by the side of the road a few
miles away early the next morning. It developed swiftly, under blunt
methods of investigation, that he had once been a houseboy in the
domicile of U Bat and a frequent target of the drunken merchant's weekly
rages. Under questioning Benny Lal, idiot child of the East, neither
confessed nor defended himself.

He merely smiled pleasantly at everybody and tried not to offend the
British.

Was he in fact the guilty party?

If Florry could not really say yes, neither could he really say no. Yet
he could not say nothing. These were tricky times, it had been explained
to him by a fellow in the Intelligence Department. Already ugly rumors
were afoot. The British themselves, it was said, had been behind the
slaying.

U Bat, in certain quarters, was being inflated into some kind of
nationalist saint, not the black brute he'd been in reality.

It would do, the chap explained with sweet reason and abundant charm on
his side, it would do to be done with this matter quickly. It was a
duty; sometimes one had to see the bigger picture.

"You're certain, then?" said the magistrate.

"I am sure, sir, yessir, I am," said Florry in a clear, unwavering
voice.

"Mr. Gupta? Have you any questions?"

Mr. Gupta, who had been fanning himself this long time, at last arose.
He was a tiny Hindu lawyer, up at no fee save mischief from Rangoon to
speak for Benny Lal. He offered Florry a broad, extremely pleasant
smile.

"How much, Constable Florry, would you-2' Conscious of the contest and
eager not to fall behind from the start, Florry corrected the man.
"Assistant superintendent please," he said, and in the instant he said
it, realized he'd been snookered.

"Oh!" said the lawyer, in mock astonishment. "Oh, I am begging the
officer's pardon," his smile radiating heat, "oh, I am so sorry of the
mistake. Then you have received so recently a promotion? For duties of
spectacular success?"

"I don't see what the devil dif-" Florry began with an extra measure of
sahib's bluster, but the sudden swell of bright laughter from the
unsympathetic Hindus in the back of the courtroom drowned him out.

"Mr. Gupta, the bench does not quite see what relevance the assistant
superintendent's recent promotion has to do with the facts at issue,"
said the magistrate coolly.

"I meant no disrespect, your honored self. A simple mistake, in which no
harm was meant nor even intended or implied. I congratulate the new
assistant. If I have it right, over the year, the difference in moneys
is about one hundred pounds, is that not so""

"Perhaps counsel could explain what relevance to the case of the accused
is meant by this?" the magistrate requested.

"Apologies, apologies, many and profuse," said Gupta, his cynicism as
broad as his smile. "I only mean it to remark on the fortune of some and
the misfortune of others in this cruel world. I mean never to imply or
infer any kind of payment for services red-"

"Now see here!" began Florry.

"Mr. Gupta, your client's case will not be helped by impertinence.
Indeed, it will most likely be harmed."

"Then the subject of money shall be forever avoided from this moment
onward. Now, Mr. Assistant Superintendent, I understand that you are a
poet, is that not correct?"

Florry squirmed. He was a tall man, or boy, actually, twenty-three, with
a long thin face, sandy hair, and a husky, big-boned body. He looked
strong and English and a bit too decent for anybody's good. He was an
Eton boy-though he'd been wretched there-but of an odd English class.
The son of an India Company clerk, he'd gone to his fancy school on
account of having been at one time thought promising. He was in service
because no university would have him after a disastrous finish to his
years at the college.

Worse, he felt here, as he felt at Eton-as he felt everywhere-somewhat
fraudulent.

"Scribble a verse now and then, yes," he said.

"Ah, said the Indian, as if having made a remarkable discovery. "And
would you not say that a poet is rewarded for his imagination, Mr.

"And his sense of rhyme, his moral vision, his beautiful command of the
language, his higher range of exalted thought, his--" Florry looked like
a copper but he thought he was a poet, and if he was wholly neither, he
was still capable of speaking eloquently on this one subject alone.

But the magistrate cut him off.

"See here, Gupta, where's all this headed?"

"Honored judge of men, I wish only to see if the assistant
superintendent is the sort of chappy who sometimes sees things that
aren't there in his poems. Or I wonder if he doesn't, in the honored
tradition of such as Shakespeare and Spenser, sometimes improve the way
things are for the sake of the beauty and soul of his no doubt
significant poetics. I only mean to find the officer's sense or
definition of the truth."

Benny Lal smiled. A lick of drool, like a gossamer filament in a dream,
drifted from his mouth.

"My poems are my poems," said Florry sullenly, embarrassed to be
depicted as such a dreamy ninny before the other officers, "and duty is
duty. Separate and apart. The way it should be."

"Leaving aside which is the most important to you, let me ask you this,
Mr. Assistant Superintendent. You were off duty, relaxing, cooling down
at the end of a hot day's duty in service to your mighty engine of
empire. A man in these circumstances, sir, has been known to have a
drink of spirits. May I inquire, sir, if you had done so, and if you
had, to what extent?"

"A gin," Florry tied. "Maybe two."

"You are sure?"

"Quite.

"Not so much for an Englishman?"

"I'm sure I wouldn't know."

"Your Honor, I have here-ah--oh, yes-here-Assistant Superintendent
Florry's bar chit for the previous month."

He held aloft the pink form that the young policeman, with sinking
feeling, recognized immediately.

"And perhaps in the excitement of the night's events, the assistant
superintendent forgot to sign that night. Yet in the weeks proceeding,
it's quite clear he was accustomed to drinking as much as five gins a
night. My goodness, here's one night when he drank nine! Yet on the
night in question, he would have us believe he had drunk only two. My
goodness. Perhaps, Mr. Assistant Superintendent, you could amplify."

"Ah-" Florry began, feeling a tide of liar's phlegm rising in his
throat, "perhaps I may have had more than two.

Perhaps I had three. It's difficult to remember. Four gins is not a lot.
Certainly not enough to affect my vision, which is what is important in
this matter. My vision was intact, sir, it was. Yes, sir, four, four it
was."

Actually, it had been five. But the curious thing was, it hadn't really
affected him. He could drink grotesque amounts of liquor without much
damage.

"Well then, that should clear that up, shouldn't it?" said the
magistrate.

"You see," hastened Florry, "I had had an idea for a poem that day. And
when I write a poem, I never drink a lot. Dulls the senses."

"Then you had not written a poem for some time?"

"No," said Florry, wondering what the little devil was up to.

"And yet, here I have--oh, now where'?-yes, here, here it is!-" and the
little Hindu milked the theme of the missing document like some bad
actor in a West End melodrama for some time until at last---here it is,
indeed. Your postal chit."

He displayed it triumphantly to the courtroom.

"Yes," Mr. Gupta continued merrily, "your postal chit.

And on Friday before you had dispatched a large envelope-the bill was a
pound six-to an address in London. In Bloomsbury. Here it is. Number 56
Bedford. At Russell Square. SWI. Correct?"

"Well---" nd two weeks before. And a week before that. Would you tell
the court what the address is?"

Florry paused bitterly before issuing the grim answer.

"It's the address of The Spectator. A literary quarterly. The best
literary quarterly." They never took his poems. Nobody ever did.

"And so you have been writing poetry and you have been drinking and you
were lost in the worlds of your own poetry. You heard the scream. You
rushed off the veranda the body you have just noticed. You have so
testified, is this not true?"

"Yes," said Florry.

"And a shape flies past you. There's precious little light.

And the distance must be thirty feet and the time must be, oh, one would
gauge it to be only seconds, eh?"

Florry said nothing.

"Yet you recognized-please point to him."

Flony raised his finger to point.

Damn the wog.

Two smiling Hindus sat at the defense table. To Florry they were
identical. Gupta and his tricks.

Florry's rising finger grew heavy. Pick one, he thought.

Then he remembered a line from a poem: In the end, it's all the samel In
the end, it's all a game. Brilliant Julian had written it. It was from
the famous "Achilles, Fool," which had made him such a thing in London
these days.

Julian, why did you hurt me so? The pain of it, five years gone, was
never adequately buried and now came up like a rotting odor.

Pick one, he thought. It doesn't matter. It's just a game.

"How can I pick one," said Florry, with a sudden icy coolness, "when
neither is the right chap?"

There was a roar from the courtroom gallery. And then an English cheer.
Gupta stared at him. The message was hatred. Florry stared back.

Benny Lai now sat three places down the table, in a blue coat. He was
trying, under what must have been instruction from his lawyer, not to
smile. Florry's eyes linked with his in an odd second and beheld, behind
the gaze, exactly nothing.

Benny Lai smiled at him.

Three weeks after the murder of U Bat, Benny Lai was to be hanged.

Florry found himself standing in a small group of officials in the muddy
parade ground of the prison. It was the sort of thing one could not
avoid. The day was hot and gassy and he could feel his tunic clinging to
his skin and the prickles of sweat in his hairline under his sun helmet.
The prison building, an old hulk of a place that had once been a fort,
loomed above them. The latrines were hard by and the stench hung in the
air.

"Ever seen a hanging, Mr. Florry?" asked Mr. Gupta, with his bright
smile. The lawyer had also come to watch the event.

"No. Isn't the sort of thing a chap goes to every day."

"Oh, here he comes," Mr. Gupta suddenly chirped.

"Look, assistant superintendent. The treacherous, the cunning, the
despicable villain, Benny Lai, off to meet his just desserts."

Benny, in the center of a small troop of guards, had emerged in
handcuffs from the building. He walked, at an unhurried pace, toward the
gallows.

Benny Lai grinned and Florry looked away.

"Certainly cheery about it, isn't he?" observed Mr. Gupta.

"Well, you're a cold-blooded fellow," said Florry with more emotion than
he'd intended to show. "He was your client and now he's going to meet
his maker."

"The British Empire was his maker, assistant superintendent, just as it
is his destroyer."

Florry watched now as the little man climbed the ladder to the platform.

"Mr. Florry, perhaps some day you'll write a poem about all this. Think
of the colorful literary details: the stench, the hot sun, these
officials, the ever-obedient Benny Lal-and your own ambivalences." He
smiled wickedly.

"And you, Mr. Gupta."

"Oh, surely I am too insignificant for poetry," said Mr. Gupta.

The executioner had placed the hood on Benny Lai. He struggled with the
noose and Florry could see Benny lower his head cooperatively to make it
easier on the chap.

"Benny Lai, you stand convicted on the capital crime of murder under the
Crown's law," shouted the warden, in accordance with the ceremony. "What
say you in these last moments?"

Benny, hooded, was silent. Then he began to cry. "Please, sirs. Please,
sirs."

The Hindu, his scrawny bound body taut under the frame of the gallows,
the cords of his neck standing out in vivid relief, continued to sob.

"Please, sirs. Sirs, I beg you. Sirs, With a snap, the trap sprang, and
Benny Lai hurtled through the opening, disappearing into silence.

"Tally-ho, Benny," said Gupta.

Florry swore, watching the slow pendulum of the rope, tense with the
terrible weight of the dead man, that he would never again work for the
Empire.

It was a promise, however, he would not be permitted to keep.

Part I ROBERT In LONDON, LATE FALL OF 1936

MR. VANE AND MAJOR HOLLY-BROWNING FOUND A PARKING space on Woburn Place
at Russell Square, just across from the Russell Hotel. Mr. Vane, who
drove the Morris with a delicacy that was almost fussiness, pulled into
the gap with some grunting and huffing. He was not a physically graceful
man or a strong one, and mechanical tasks came to him with some
difficulty. He removed the ignition key and placed it in his vest
pocket. Neither man made a move to leave the auto. They simply sat in
the little car, two drab men of the commercial class, perhaps,
travelers, little clerks, barristers' assistants.

It was a bright blue morning in Bloomsbury, a fabulous morning. In the
elms of the square, whose dense leaves had begun to turn russet with the
coming of colder weather, squirrels chattered and scrambled; squads of
ugly, humbling old pigeons gathered on the lawn. Some even perched upon
the earl of Bedford's copper shoulders at the corner of the park. The
chrysanthemums in the beds alongside the walks had not yet perished,
though they would within the fortnight.

"He's late, of course," said Vane, examining his pocket watch.

"Give him time, Vane," said Major Holly-Browning.

"This is a big day in his life, and the chap's sure to be nervous. This
chap in particular."

Major Holly-Browning was in his fifties, ten years older than Mr. Vane,
and wore a vague mustache, a voluminous mackintosh despite the clear
skies, and a bowler.

On closer examination, he didn't look commercial at all but rather
military. He had the look of a passed-over officer, with a grayness to
the skin, a certain bleakness to the eyes, and a certain formality to
his carriage. He looked like the man who hadn't quite managed the proper
friends in the regiment and was therefore doomed to a succession of grim
assignments in the outposts of the Empire, far from the parades, the
swirling social life, the intrigues of home duty.

In fact, the major was head of Section V, MI-6, that is, the
counterespionage section of the Secret Intelligence Service; he was, in
the lexicon of the trade, V (a); Mr. Vane, his number two, was V (b).
There was no V (c); they were the entire division. The major took a deep
breath inside the little car. One of his headaches was starting up. He
touched his temple.

"Tired, sir?" "Exhausted, Vane. Haven't slept in weeks." "You must go
home more often, Sir. You can't expect to remain in the proper health
living as you do, those long nights in the office."

The major sighed. Vane could be an awful prig.

"I suppose you are right, Vane."

"He is now seven minutes late."

"He will be here. The bait is far too tempting for him not to swallow."

"Yes sir."

They sat again in silence.

"Sir! There he is."

"Don't stare, Vane."

The major waited calmly and at long last the object of his
well-controlled curiosity appeared. The fellow'd gotten off at the
Russell Square tube station, as they'd expected, and come up Bernard
Street. He waited patiently for the walk signal, then crossed to their
side of the street and ambled by a few feet beyond them: it was the
tall, diffident figure of a Mr. Robert Florry.

"The great Julian's ex-chum. Not an impressive man, is he?" observed the
major, who for all his efforts in the matter had not before this second
laid eyes upon the man.

"Nobody has ever been greatly impressed with Mr. Florry," said Mr. Vane,
the Florry expert. "Whatever can such a Robin Goodfellow of Society as
the great Julian Raines have seen in him?"

"He only saw it for a bit," said the major, knowing a little something
of the broken-off schoolboy friendship, the cometlike ascension of one
of the partners and the disappearance into ignominy of the other.

Florry was turned out, after the fashion of the day, to the maximum
limits of his wardrobe, but on his severely limited budget he could only
manage to appear a notch beyond the shabby. The coat was almost fifteen
years old, a tweed thing that was as lumpy as it was frayed, and flecked
with a dozen tawny colors. The rest of Florry's attire was in perfect
accordance with the coat: floppy wool trousers, a gaudy Fair Isle
sweater, and a bump n s well-beaten walking shoes. He had on his
officer's khaki service tie and his shirt was of dark blue, worn shiny
and limp from countless washings.

"I must confess I'd expected someone with a bit more bearing. The fellow
was an officer, wasn't he?" said the major.

"Of sorts," said Vane. "More a copper, actually."

Florry continued to navigate the sidewalk as he headed toward his
destination, which lay on the far side of the square, across still
another street. Yet even having cleared this, a final obstacle stood in
his way. The early edition of the afternoon Mail had just come out and a
news board hawked the leader in a crude child's scrawl.

MADRID BOMBED, SURROUNDED HOW LONG CAN REDS LAST?

This information brought the young man to a sudden halt. He stared at it
gravely for some time.

"Why on earth did that have to be there?" wondered Mr. Vane.

Florry finally pulled himself away from the announcement and made his
way another few yards down the street, where he assaulted the marble
steps of a red-brick house at Number 56 Bedford, at Russell Square.

Major Holly-Browning sat back but could not relax. A cold sore inside
his lip began to throb and his headache had not abated at all. He
believed himself, and not without some evidence, to be quietly
disintegrating. He knew now the most difficult part of the day was upon
him, the awful waiting while certain steps were taken to bring upon him
that most awkward and tender moment of the operation. Florry would be
wooed--delicately if possible, brutally if necessary-but at all costs
successfully.

The major, having partaken in so many similar seductions over the years,
had no illusions about the process of recruitment. Florry must be taken
and owned and directed. It was more important than Florry himself.

moor"

"I say, Vane, can you stay here and keep watch?" the major suddenly
said'. "I imagine it will still be a bit. I must move. The old leg, it's
beginning to smart up, eh?"

"Of course, sir," Vane replied.

The major opened the door, pulled himself onto the curb, and closed the
door behind him, absorbing great drafts of fresh air in the process. The
car had seemed a prison; sometimes, confined, he had the sudden
screaming urge come over him to stretch and breathe and feel the cool
air in his nose and the soft grass underneath his feet. It was a feeling
that could come hurtling over him without warning, until he could no
longer stand it. It had begun in Lubyanka, with Levitsky.

The major found his way to a bench near the gigantic old tree that stood
at the center of the park. He sat down, trying to calm himself. Yet what
returned to him was not calm but memory. Perhaps it was the drama of
recruitment being played out at that moment not a hundred yards off in
the office of The Spectator, or perhaps it was the sure and steady
approach of a moment when he, Holly-Browning, must himself act, the
pregnant moment of equipoise, when Florry, perched delicately between
worlds and lives, must be nudged into the right one. Or perhaps it was
simply time again to remember, for the memory had returned as regularly
as a train, twice a week, every week since 1922.

For in that year, he himself had been the object of just such a ritual
as was now transpiring so close at hand. His impersonation of one
Golitsyn, the furrier's son and Bolshevik officer of the cavalry, had
been penetrated by a clever Cheka agent. The major, who had fought Zulus
and wogs before the show, who'd gone over the top twice in suicidal
assaults during it, and who'd fought in seven battles of the civil war
in Russia under his fictitious identity, had never until that moment
been truly frightened. But Levitsky had sliced through him as a sharp
knife goes into a plump goose's breast.

He could not but think of his own session in the cell.

The same shame flooded over him. It came to sit on his chest like an
ingot, suffocating him.

Levitsky, he thought, you were so shrewd.

"Sir!"

It was Vane, out of the car.

"Look!"

The major looked across the green park and could see the upper shade of
Number 56, the arched window above the entrance: the shade had been
raised.

Vane approached, looking flushed.

"He's bitten. He has taken the hook."

"He has indeed," said the major. "And now it's time to land him."

The sherry was extraordinary. Florry had never tasted anything quite
like it.

"Well, Flony," said Sir Denis heartily, returning from the window whose
shade he had just raised, admitting a shaft of pale London sun, "I can't
tell you how delighted we all are here."

"Nor 1, sir," said Florry, still trembling with excitement.

"The Spectator has never sent a man abroad. Much less to a revolution."

"Well, you can certainly count on me to master my Spanish politics
before I leave, sir. I shall't mix up the POUM and the PSUD again."

"No, it wouldn't do. That's PSUC, old boy. The Trotsky fellows are the
first group, the dreamers, the new architects of society, the poets, the
artists. The fashionable folk, if you will. The PSUC would have precious
little patience for that. They're the Comintem lads, the professional
Russian and German revolutionaries.

Bloody Joe Stalin's pals. Best not to mingle them together. They hate
each other enough as it is. And they may end up cutting each other's
throats before too long.

It's all in the initials. Memorize the initials and the Spanish
revolution becomes as clear as a bell. You might read Julian's stuff in
Signature. He's got it down pat."

"Yes sir," said Florry, almost contritely. Damn Julian.

Of course he'd have it down pat. That was Julian, the art of getting
things down pat. The art of the easy success, the swift climb, the
importance of connections. Florry felt the old pain, the old hate mixed
with regret.

Yet another name from Florry's complicated past seemed present, in the
form of that constant nagging little dog that always told him he didn't
quite deserve that which he was about to receive. This new life, this
life he had dreamed about and wanted so badly for so long-no more
dreadful nights in dreadful bed-sitters up scribbling away on novels and
poems nobody would publish-had developed by virtue of his one piece of
professional writing. And a danined good piece it was, too, if effort
had anything to do with it: he'd rewritten it over thirteen times until
he felt he'd gotten every one of its five thousand words exactly right;
still, he'd been dumbstruck when the note from Sir Denis had arrived.

FLORRY:

Your piece on the hanging superb. Delighted to have it. It'll go in the
late February number. By the way, how about dropping by the office
Tuesday, halftennish. I have a proposition for you.

YOURS, MASON Benny Lal, six years among the worms, was still doing his
best to accommodate.

The phone rang. Sir Denis picked it up.

"They are? Fine, show them in," he said. "Now Florry, there is one small
thing." "Of course." "Two chaps from the foreign office. They'd like a
word with you."

"The F.O.?"

"Or some such. Something governmental. I never pay much attention to
that sort of thing. Fellow named Holly Browning. Knew him at Magdalen.
First-rate chap, you'll like him."

"Well, I certainly-"

But Sir Denis rose and crossed the room to open the door.

"Hullo, James. Vane."

"Denis. And how are you?"

"Ah, the same. And how's Ma@orie?"

"Blooming."

"You married the most beautiful woman of our time, that's for certain,
James."

"She's still quite beautiful, but I see her so infrequently these days,
one forgets."

"Is he working too hard as usual, Vane?"

"Yes sir. To midnight, most nights, and later even on many others."

"Good heavens, James, after all you've been through!

Well, here's young Mr. Robert Florry, our new Spanish political
correspondent."

Florry rose to encounter a large, sad man, dourly turned out, with huge
hands and a hulking body. There was something implacable about him, and
his beaten but pugnacious face somehow held the promise of secret
zealotry that Florry sensed immediately. Florry knew one other thing
instantly, having been one himself for five years: he knew he was among
coppers.

"Florry, I'm Mckjor Holly-Browning. This is my assistant Mr. Vane."

"Ah, pleased---2' began Florry, extending a hand that nobody seemed to
notice.

Sir Denis had quietly slipped out and Florry discovered himself being
ushered to a window alcove, where three old leather chairs sat about a
low table full of African masks and old numbers of The Spectator.

"The F.O., do I understand?" said Florry.

"His Majesty's government, shall we say. Please sit.

Tea?"

"Er, yes, thanks."

"Vane, see about some tea, will you?"

Florry, sitting, felt his exultation begin to transform into confusion.

"May I ask, Mr. Florry, are you a red?"

At first Florry thought he had said "Are you wellread?" and he'd begun
to compose what seemed an intelligent reply, when it occurred to him
that that wasn't it at all.

"But what possible business is it of yours?"

The major stared at him levelly, admitting the light of no surprise into
his dim eyes.

Florry wasn't fuddled. Though tense and suddenly aware he was in murky
waters, his mind flooded with lucidity. "Is this how they do it,
nowadays, major? In my time, we were a little subtler. I was a copper.
Been in on a few sessions like this myself I know how it works.

The affability and good companionship to put the poor fellow at his
ease. Then, with no warning, a hard question. Catch the poor bastard off
guard, goad him into something silly. Yes, I can see it now. Perhaps we
could spare each other the poking about and get right to it."

Something very like a little smile crossed the major's pug face.

"Here's tea," sang Vane, wheeling in triumphantly with a tray. "I also
found some marvelous buns. Care for a bun, Mr. Florry?"

"No," said Florry.

"One lump or two, Mr. Florry?"

"One should do, I would think."

"One it is, then."

"Vane, I'll have two. And lots of milk."

"Yes sir."

"And a bun. Are they crisp?"

"Very crisp, sir."

"A bun, then. I've just asked Florry if he's a red."

"Oh?" said Vane distractedly, pouring tea and sorting buns, "and what
did he say?"

"He wouldn't answer. Got his back up."

"Bully good for him, I say. Now don't let the major push you about, Mr.

"Now then, Florry," said the major, "suppose we were on the lookout for
just such a chap. Let's say, for a matter of argument, a genuine red.
Oh, I'm not talking your harmless parlor revolutionary, all hot air and
castles in Spain, your blowsy English eccentric who likes to stand on
soap boxes in Hyde Park on Sunday and harangue the passersby. No, let's
just suppose that somewhere there is a fellow who in his heart of hearts
really wants Uncle Joe Stalin to come over here, lock us in chains, turn
his secret policemen loose, and teach our children to read Russian.

Do you follow me so far?"

"Where is all this heading?" said Flony warily.

"We have information from a source we're not permitted to reveal that
such a chap as we're describing in this highly theoretical conversation
may in fact exist."

It suddenly dawned on Florry. These men were spies!

In the service, they'd been called "politicals," though perhaps the term
had gone out of use by now. These were the chaps that Kipling wrote
about in Kim, the great game fellows.

"You're smiling, Mr. Florry. Something funny here?"

"NO."

"Ever hear of the Official Secrets Act, Mr. Florry?

Nasty bit of legislation, went into effect in 'thirty-two.

Could put a chap away for seven years in the Scrubs.

What I'm about to tell you is protected by the Official Secrets Act, Mr.

Understand?"

"I must say, I don't see how I can be of any help to you.,, "Oh, you can
be of great help, Mr. Florry. Now listen closely. In 1931, while you
were'off having adventures in Burma for the Crown, a Russian secret
intelligence operative named Levitsky recruited a Cambridge University
student-young, gifted, clever, a lad with connections, with charm, with
immense potential-to spy for Russia.

As the first step of bringing Uncle Joe and his ways over here."

"Why, that's revolting," blurted Florry, not quite sure himself how he
meant it.

"Indeed it is," said the major.

"But what has all of this to do with me? I never went to Cambridge. I
can't help you find him."

"Oh, we need no help in finding him, Mr. Florry," said Vane cheerfully.
"We know who he is, of course. What we need is somebody to-oh, what's a
nice term? To stop him, shall we say? To disconnect him. Did the major
tell you, he went to a hanging once, too, Mr. Florty. In East Africa,
wasn't it, sir? Before the Great War?"

"In 'eleven, actually," the major said. "Ghastly thing.

One of the boys got drunk on honey wine on safari and actually attacked
the mem-sahib with a panga. Cut her on the arm, left a scar. They had to
make an example of the boy. Still, necessary as it was, it was horrid."

"What do you mean 'stop'?" Florry said. "I can tell you, I don't like
the sound of that word."

"Play chess, Mr. Florry?"

"Some. A little. Not very well."

"Ever read Sacrifice Theory by E. 1. Levitsky? Published in German in
Leipzig in 1901?"

"Haven't read it, no."

"Written by a young Russian political exile who'd just won an important
tournament. Don't play myself, although I ran into the author some years
later under peculiar circumstances. They say sacrifice is what makes a
chess genius a chess champion. The shrewd calculation of present loss
against future gain. It's what Levitsky specializes in, the best part of
his game. They call him the Devil Himself, that was his nickname as a
chess player back at the turn of the century. Brilliant. Quite an
opponent."

"Major Holly-Browning, I wonder if-2' But the major silenced him with a
stout finger, as a prefect silences a particularly rambunctious
sixth-former, and launched ahead. "Levitsky operated in this country
during most of 1931, our information relates. He was at that time head
of the Western European Bureau of Cornintem, and a lieutenant colonel in
the GRU, which is the Russian military intelligence department.
Comintern is their apparatus for coordinating world propaganda and
espionage. According to our source, early in that year Levitsky became
acquainted with and began to cultivate a c hap who was perfect for his
purposes. Levitsky was talent hunting. He was on safari, one might say,
hunting for that perfect young Englishman with a penchant for treason.
At any rate--"

"Major Holly-Browning, I'm certain all of this is perfectly interesting
to you but I can't quite--2' "Oh, he's just about there, assistant
superintendent," said Vane sweetly.

"Yes, Florry. Another second has it. At any rate, this Levitsky, our
source says, ultimately came in contact with a group of clever lads
called-perhaps you've heard the name; it's a secret club, fashionable
left-wing dons, that sort--called the Apostles."

So that was it. Florry sat back. He took a deep breath with some
difficulty. He felt the prickles of sweat begin to tingle in his hair.

"Interesting, eh, Vane? Speak the magic word and the impatient,
thick-hided young writer instantly loses his color and begins to
perspire."

"I shouldn't wonder," said Florry. "It isn't every day one is asked to
inform on one's best friend."

"Yes, he's made the leap," said Vane. "You said he would, Sir, and he
did. But Mr. Florry, don't you think it would be more accurate to say
'former best friend'?"

Florry rose. "I think you are making a grave and foolish mistake. You
are acting reprehensibly. We never ated the wogs this crassly out East,
and you are talking tre about an Englishman of unimpeachable reputation
and accomplishment."

The major stared at him quite placidly.

"Some more tea, Sir?" said Vane. "Or a nice bun.

They're very, very crisp, and I was able to find cinnamon."

"I do not want a bloody cinnamon bun. I want to leave, thanks."

"Florry, best to sit down."

"Julian Raines is a poet of distinction as well as a brilliant scholar.
He graduated with starred double-first at Trinity College, Cambridge.
His poem"Achilles, Fool," is one of the key texts in the modernist
movement. His-"

"Yes, I've read it."In the end, it's all the same/In the end, it's all a
game.' May I ask, do you agree with those sentiments, Florry?"

"He wouldn't spy for a batch of bloody Bolshies in overcoats twelve
sizes too big. Good heavens, he wouldn't even have tea with them."

"He certainly treated you as if you were a figure in a game, wouldn't
you say, Florry? You simply ceased to interest him and he cut you bloody
dead. We've checked, Florry. You weren't worth much after that, eh? Went
off and hid in the coppers in Bun-na, right? Couldn't face life without
the great Julian at your side'? Bit of a schoolboy crush. Happens all
the time, Florry. Only with you, it cut to the bone."

"He wouldn't do it," said Flony. "Yes, Julian's a bastard. Yes, he likes
to hurt people. But he wouldn't do anything like-"

"The facts are very clear. Of the Apostle Circle of the year 1931,
Julian is certainly the boy who fits most perfectly with our source's
description of Levitsky's recruit.

As you say, he was brilliant. His mother is wealthy as well as well
connected to the upper-strata political and artistic people of the
country. She could get her dear Julian any position he wanted in a
liberal or socialist government somewhere down the road. He would have
access to the very most important circles."

"Julian is an artist, a writer. A true artist. He's not interested in
bloody politics."

"Julian Raines is many men. It simply won't do to fit him into an
absolute category. He's a brilliant dabbler. At everything he tries he
succeeds. And perhaps in this lofty sense of brilliance, he's come to
see himself beyond the rest of us poor blokes. His analysis of history,
for example, would be just that much keener. Who's to say he hasn't
decided to have a dabble at the spy business, Florry, and make the
success of it that he made of poetry and that he now makes of
journalism?"

"Who is saying these awful things? Some ugly little man in a trench
coat?"

"Mr. Florry," said Mr. Vane, "you were a copper. You know that we've got
to use informants."

"A Russian. A secret policeman. Fleeing Stalin's executioners, that's
all we can tell you," said the major.

"Some seedy little Johnny Red on the bloody run from his bosses. The
bastard would say anything to get himself into the country."

"Actually, he's not in the country. He's in the United States. he's told
his story to the Americans and they believe him."

"The awful Yanks, yet! Good Christ, this gets seedier as it goes on."

"More tea, Mr. Florry?"

"I think it's necessary for me to leave."

"One last factor, Mr. Florry. Our Russian tattletale worked in
Amsterdam. He said his last job for his employers involved opening a
special, secret communications link to Barcelona. He concluded from the
rush and risk involved that the link could only be to service a secret,
most sensitively placed agent. This happened on five August; Julian
Raines arrived in Barcelona on four August. And of the Apostle group, he
and he alone is in Spain."

"You see, Mr. Florry, it is quite clear."

Florry shook his head.

"What we need is somebody to go out to Spain and establish an especially
close relationship with Julian Raines. We need somebody to keep watch
over him; we need reports on his whereabouts, his chums, his little jobs
for the Russians. We need evidence."

"And then?"

"And then do the necessary. As the necessary has been done before, Mr.

"To kill him?"

"One stops one's enemies as one can or as one must."

"Good Christ."

"Were you in the war, Florry?"

"No, of course not."

"Well, I have been in several. One learns to do what one must."

Florry saw now that the whole thing was a sham: Sir Denis and The
Spectator working in concert with His Majesty's government in the
subtle, cozy, pleasant, particularly English way of doing such things.
Offer Florry the life he wants; in exchange, take only his soul.

"No," Florry said. "You force me to be somewhat moralistic about this.
It's simply wrong."

"But surely, Mr. Florry, one's country counts for more than-,, "One's
ftiends are one's country; or rather, without them, one's country is
meaningless."

He got up to leave. "I'm sure you will inform Sir Denis of my decision."
He turned smartly and walked to the door. It wouldn't open.

"Mr. Florry," said Mr. Vane with some embarrassment, "there's a rather
large constable from Special Branch out there at our request. It's his
bulk that is blocking the doorway and he has his instructions."

"To arrest me, I suppose. On the charge of Refusal to Take Part in Ugly
Plots."

"Mr. Florry, I must say, it's your sanctimony that I find the most
difficult to bear," said the major at long last.

"Vane, tell the moralistic Mr. Florry what the constable has in his
pocket."

"It's a warrant. And it is for your arrest. But the charge is pedury."

"Pedury?"

"You do remember Benny Lal, do you not, Mr. Florry?" asked Vane.

Something ripped at Florry's chest.

"One would think so. You wrote about him quite elo quently. Although you
left out certain details, assistant superintendent," said the major.

Florry looked at the man, hating and fearing him at once.

"Last year, another man confessed to the murder of U Bat. He was a
member of the Burmese Po Beii Sien, or Freedom Party, a militant
nationalist group that we believe to be controlled by Julian's friends
at Comintern.

The movement eliminated U Bat when they realized he was secretly
reporting to one of our pol'ticals in the area.

They killed him and tried to place the blame on us."

"So you've got me. Some years ago, I made the mistake of telling less
than the truth, and now you've got me."

"Well, the option is a term in the Scrubs. Four years, I believe, is the
term for perjury in a capital case. And Mr. Florry, even in the Scrubs
there are cell blocks that might be pleasant and cell blocks that might
be dreadful for such a handsome chap as you. I might go so far as to use
what little influence I've got to see you end up among nellie-boys and
poofs of a particularly aggressive nature.

Not a pretty fate for a public-school boy."

"I say, you are a bastard, aren't you?"

"As a writer, you enjoy irony, don't you, Flony?

Here's one for your collection. I have no doubt you did exactly the
right thing in the matter of U Bat. It was necessary to close that case
swiftly. At the same time, I have absolutely no compunction against
using it against you now, to force you, once again, into doing the right
thing.

Your duty. We are quite prepared to see charges placed."

"I'd go to the press."

"With Official Secrets, we can shut the press down."

Florry could only look off, through the window. He could see the London
skyline, looking very much as it had looked in Dickens' day, a flat,
neat vista of little houses and chimneys. It looked like a set of
parcels laid out on the postman's table, and among the buildings crept,
anonymous, huddled, bent, hustling, the citizens of the British Empire,
faceless and nameless, in whose cause he had just been dragooned.

"I had no idea the British government could be so ruthless."

"The world has chosen to give us ruthless enemies, Florry."

"It really does have to be you, Mr. Florry," said Vane.

"You are a writer and have cause to travel where he travels. You know
him well. At a point, you knew him very well, in the ways that
public-school boys can come to know each other. Those old school ties,
Mr. Florry, they count for something. You know they do. Then, you are an
ex-policeman, experienced in security matters.

You do fit the ticket, Mr. Florry. And it is, sir, something of a duty."

"And one other thing, Florry," said the major. "You hate him. Or you
should."

Julian, thought Florry, why did you hurt me so? He remembered the boy
he'd loved and the boy who'd almost killed him.

Yes, I hate you. It was true. By some subtle alchemy of the emotions,
his passion had turned abjectly to loathing.

He could remember Julian cutting him for the sheer amusement of it all.

"We'll be in touch concerning details, Mr. Florry," said Mr. Vane.
"We'll provide everything, of course, No need to do this thing on a
miser's scale."

Florry looked up to see that his two new employers had risen and put on
their coats.

"Good day, then, Florry. Glad to have you aboard," said the major.
Florry shut his eyes. He heard the door close and the quiet pad of feet
down the hall. After a b' it, he left, too.

THE LUX BY LATE 1936, THE MOST TERRIFYIN(; SOUND IN ALL Moscow-in all
Russia, for that matter-was the sound of a single knock. It always came
at night-late. And it always meant but one thing.

The young men from the organ of state security, the NKVD, were
invariably polite, though a bit distant, as they stood there in their
green overcoats and their furmuffled winter caps with their hands on the
Tula Tokarev automatics in the holsters at their belts.

Mercifully, they kept the formalities to a minimum: they read the
charges, they allowed the accused a last word with his loved ones, a
chance to grab his coat, and then they removed him-forever.

It was the time of Yeshov-Yeshovchina, in the Russian-after Nikolai
Yeshov, the dwarfish chairman of state security. But the process of
purification represented by this massive wave of arrests surely
originated with the general secretary, whom most of the old
revolutionaries remembered as Koba. Koba sought to scour the party
clean, to make it a precise, scientific instrument, to do away with the
last remnants of bourgeois sentimentality so that the future could be
faced with strength and will and resolve. Koba most certainly sought
also to make certain he was never arrested.

In one Moscow building the arrests were greeted with something beyond
even fear and despair, something unique to the city: irony. The building
stood on Gorky Street, hard by Pushkin Park-, not three-quarters of a
downhill mile from the Kremlin itself, in the very center of the city.
It was an omate, Italianate construction, rich in marble and brass, and
its upper floors on the western 'de provided a grand panorama of the
Kremlin's domes.

si The place bore the name HOTEL LUX, on a brass plate untouched since
1917. Once, in the early years after its construction in 1907, Russian
and European nobility, American entrepreneurs, German adventurers,
Jewish diamond merchants, and exceedingly expensive courtesans had
occupied its stately rooms. These days, the Lux appealed to a different
clientele.

It had degenerated into a dirty, dingy ruin, its marble pitted and brass
unpolished, but the dreams dreamed in its bohemian corridors and
cabbage-stinking rooms boasted as much scale and romance as any dreamed
by capitalists.

For the Lux served as the unofficial headquarters of Cornintem, or the
Communist International, which, while a direct apparatus of the GRU, was
at the same time, since having been decreed into existence in 1919 by
Vladimir Lenin, the coordinating organ of the World Revolution.

Its inhabitants now comprised almost a Party congress of famous',
infamous, notorious, and violent European leftists, men who had lived
their whole lives underground, in the swirl and fog and rat hunt of
revolutionary conspiracy. The revolution achieved, it was seized from
them; they became its victims. Thus the nighttime visits of the young
policemen-they were frequent at the Lux-had a special bitterness.

And how the old revolutionaries talked of this! Their lives had become
almost pure language. They argued endlessly, like old rabbis at yeshiva.
It obsessed them.

What was Koba doing? What was his vision? By what theoretical
underpinnings did he justify the killings?

How did Yeshovchina fit into the ultimate trajectory toward socialist
victory? And who was taken last nights But one man, in all that noise,
said nothing He did not complain. He had no theories. He had no grudges
or secret fears, or so it seemed. He did not mingle in the lobby or
participate in the endless debate.

Nor did he care to comment upon the justice of it or the pathology of
Koba and his dwarf Yeshov.

Rather, he stayed behind his doors, emerging only for his afternoon
constitutional. On those occasions, he strode briskly through the lobby
with an aristocratic aloofness upon his face, as if any consideration
beyond the ancient lift that would haul him to his rooms was utterly
beneath him. He looked neither left nor right and issued no greetings to
old comrades, nor, by his iciness, did he expect to receive any. He
dressed as if a dandy in the last century, in spats, a velvet smoking
jacket, well worn but beautifully fitted, a white silk scarf, and a
lustrous mink coat. He acted as if, by special compact to the highest
authority, he was invulnerable to the nighttime visits of Koba's
killers.

He had been called many things in his interesting life, but one of them
clung even to this day and to this circumstance. He was called, not only
by his peers in the Lux and by his enemies in the Kremlin, but in the
capitals of the West, the Devil Himself.

For a legend, he seemed rather vigorous. At fifty-nine, E. 1. Levitsky
still had a taut, lively face. His mouth retained its unusual thinness.
It was a clever, prim mouth, as the eyes above it were also clever. They
carried the electricity of conviction. He wore, after Lenin, a little
goatee, purely an affectation. His head was glossily balding from the
forehead back to the crown, though extravagant with bushy peppercorn
hair beneath it, as if the black and gray individuals that comprised
this mass were violently divided among themselves as to their ultimate
direction and destiny. He had a lanky, surprisingly long body, wiry, and
long, pale, exquisite fingers. He looked exceptionally refined, as if
he'd spent his life in the higher realms of culture. He also looked hard
' in a peculiar way: hard, unmalleable, an alloy, not a base metal. in
his hand, he held a pawn. A blunt, smooth little soldier. It expects
only death and in this humble aspiration is ever so frequently rewarded.
Pawns are made for sacrifice; this is their function; this ennobles
them.

As he gripped the ancient chess piece in his hand, a name came to him, a
name whispered that afternoon in a hurried but not quite accidental
encounter in Pushkin Park, on a bench under the great trees.

"It's Tchiterine, Emmanuel Ivanovich. Your old comrade. Remember, he
saved your life in the war?"

Yes, Levitsky remembered Tchiterine, another noble pawn.

It wasn't the sort of thing a man forgot: he lay out in the snow, thrown
by his treacherous horse, the Maxim bullets clipping away at him. They
struck close by with a stinging spray. He tried to shrink into the snow.
All the while Kolchak's Death Battalion, with the eighteen-inch spike
bayonets fixed to their rifles, advanced at the trot from the left,
finishing the wounded as they came. No, one doesn't forget a memory such
as that, or the moment when brawny Tchiterine had come slithering
through the fire and with one strong hand taken him and pulled him into
a ravine and safety.

"The old ones. Koba is taking the old ones. It's clear now." The rue in
the mysterious comrade's voice had been almost operatic with passion.

"He can watch out for himself," Levitsky had said, concentrating on the
lacy patterns the snow-heavy limbs formed against the bright blue sky.
"He's no child. He's in Spain now, isn't he?"

"He'll never leave Spain. Koba is reaching into Spain now. Tchiterine
has just been arrested in Spain. They say he'll be shot."

The comrade sighed. "Tchiterine, he was the best. You even took him to
England with you. An inspiration."

"Yes, England," said Levitsky, aware that the fellow was well informed.

Then the man said, "Lemontov was the smart one."

"Lemontov was always smart. That's why he put a bullet in his head,"
Levitsky responded.

"No, haven't you heard? I just heard today. He's not dead, like they
said he was. He went over. Can you believe it?" He shook his head as if
in wonder.

Levitsky said nothing. However, he took a deep breath in acknowledgment
that his life and fate had just altered radically. The message had been
well delivered. His breath came in quiet, harsh little spurts. He could
feel his head begin to throb, as the comrade spoke.

It turned out that it hadn't been Lemontov's body, prune wrinkled and
pulpy, they'd pulled out of the canal at all. It was a ruse, using some
Dutchman's corpse. They say Lemontov had gone over to the Americans. He
was the smart one. He was the only one to beat hungry old Koba. The
Americans will give him lots of money and he will live in Hollywood and
fuck Greta Garbo all night long.

No, Levitsky thought. He paid them. In information.

Lemontov. Yes, Lemontov was the smart one.

Levitsky, in his room, set down the pawn. He went swiftly to the bottle,
poured himself another brandy.

Then, his nerves soothed, he walked back to the table and picked up the
pawn again. It was from a German set, which he'd won in Karlsbad in
1901. He fingered the piece, clutching it tightly to his palm.

So soon.

Oh, Lemontov, you clever, treacherous bastard. Of them all, my brave
boys whom I taught so well, I should have foreseen it would be you.
Tchiterine was hardworking, dull, brave, a zealot. Another was nakedly
ambitious, a stupid peasant boy dead set on rising above himself by
sheer will. Still another was a coward, a schemer, a weakling. You,
Lemontov, you were the brilliant one. A Jew like myself, of course. So
smart, so full of ideas, so crackling with insight and enthus'

I iasm.

if Lemontov had fled to the Americans, the Americans knew. And the
Americans would tell the British. About the agent code-named Castle.
Castle, Lev'tsky's lasting legacy to the revolution, the one thing not
steal. His Castle at the center of the hment.

This meant the game had begun years earlier than it ought to have, and
on the enemy's terms, and that, worse, it would have to be improvised in
the middle of Koba's terror, thrown together with madcap dash.

Somebody in the GRU saw that the buried Castle had suddenly became
vulnerable, and knew that NKVD, crazy with the bloodlust, didn't care.
And somebody knew only the man who had recruited Castle could help.

Thus by secret approach, a last mission for the Devil Himself.

Save Castle.

At once an impulse seized him. He rose, strode back across the carpet of
his shabby room, and sat at the table before an empty chessboard. No
emotion appeared on his studious, ascetic face. He stared at the glossy,
checkered surface.

It seemed immense. Its sixty-four squares described a universe of
possibility; an illusion, of course. There was, to begin with, a remote
mathematical limit on possibility. More to the point, however,
possibility was strictly a function of position: you could only go from
where you were-that was Levitsky's first principle of reality, and it
was more binding and absolute than any law in physics.

He therefore began to solve his problem by defining the positions.

What, for example, did Lemontov know? Did he know Castle's name, his
identity? No, Levitsky had been exceedingly careful about the mechanism
from the start, shielding Castle from his staff; only two men other than
Levitsky and Castle himself knew of the arrangement: two high-ranking
officers in the GRU, Red Army intelligence, men of unimpeachable honesty
and honor, sworn only to reveal the information upon Levitsky's death.
What Lemontov, therefore, could provide was only a description: a set of
credentials and possibilities, a year ( 1 931), a place (Cambridge),
which would define perhaps more than several hundred young British men
of a certain age and social standing and potential. It would be a
British problem, then, to winnow these possibilities down to several
specific candidates. And then, from among these, find the right one.

Not an easy task, particularly in a democracy, where security services
were notoriously hamstrung by sentimental notions of privacy and respect
for individual rights.

He stared at the pattern on the board, absorbed. Was there time in the
world to save Castle?

From far below on this still, late Moscow night, Levitsky heard the buzz
of a motorcar. It pulled up to the hotel and halted. Doors opened,
closed with a metallic slam. Men walked toward the hotel, their boots
striking crisply on the pavement.

Lev'tsky looked at the clock on the mantel. It was 4 A.M., the hour of
the NKVD.

He looked back to the board and, with an urgency that bordered on
despair, reopened the leather-bound case.

The figures were beautifully carved, with an omate, quite possibly
decadent skill that nothing in the Soviet Union could now equal. He
plucked the pieces out and arranged them on the board, two white ranks,
two red ranks.

From somewhere deep in the building, he heard the clang of the lift
gate.

It's the time of sacrifice, he thought.

His fingers pushed a piece out from its rank. His humble rook's pawn,
the red. Levitsky looked at the dowdy little thing. 0 hero pawn! Brave,
willing to sacrifice yourself up in the furnace of the game for larger
considerations.

Levitsky smiled, hearing the climb of the lift through the building. He
remembered 1901. In that year, in the great hall at the Karlsbad Casino,
against the best in the world, the humble pawn had been the key to
Levitsky's greatest victory in the single master's tournament he had
allowed himself before disappearing forever in the underground. And in
the fortnight, the bespectacled young exile had become the mysterious
Devil Himself, vanquisher of all ... He heard the lift stop at his
floor. The gate opened. He heard the boots on the tile.

Schlecter, the German, suddenly sat across from him: a dandy, wordless
little genius who wore carnations and plaid suits of English cut and had
watery eyes and eczema and sported a flowery cologne and fought like a
Cossack. Schlecter would not look at him. Schlecter preferred to avoid
personalities. To him it was just the movement of pieces on the board.

Levitsky had the opening and pushed his queen's pawn into the fourth row
and Schlecter matched him. Then he swiftly brought his knight into play,
moving it to king's bishop three. Schlecter paused, a bit nonplussed,
but not exactly near panic; then responded dramatically by moving his
bishop forward to bishop's four. Strange: even Schlecter himself seemed
controlled by some mysterious energy in the air then, as if strange
forces, dybbuks, had been released to ride the currents of the vast
space over their heads.

Levitsky was twenty-four; he was young and lean and furiously bright. He
was only becoming gradually aware, however, of his gift.

He exploited the seam opening in the center of the board with that lone
pawn, advancing him to bishop's four. Schlecter considered a long
time-he was, after all, the drawmaster, more renowned for not losing
than for winning-and ultimately shrank from the challenge with the
conventional pawn to queen's bishop three.

Levitsky waited just a second, then reached down and shoved his queen
through the gap he'd opened in his own ranks and pushed her out to
knight's three; he heard the gasp and smiled, and felt himself almost
blush as the gasp rose to a cheer.

Schlecter, of course, did not look up, as if to meet Levitsky's eyes
would somehow be to submit to his power. He studied the pieces in
perfect silence and then almost languidly brushed his biue-veined old
hand across the table and yanked his own queen out to knight's three.

The tumult was enormous; neither player acknowledged it. Time for some
blood, old man. Levitsky took a pawn, exposing his queen.

Schlecter quickly replaced Levitsky's queen with his own, and less than
one second later, Levitsky had Schlecter's lady himself with a pawn; and
he still had his lead pawn out there, achingly alone in center board.

Schlecter saw the open rank, and he hurled his bishop down the gap to
take the suddenly defenseless knight; but it didn't matter, for Levitsky
was able to spring the trap he had so ingeniously engineered. He took
Schlecter's solitary pawn and dared Schlecter to expose his king by
taking the pawn out with his knight.

"Herr Levitsky," Schlecter asked in the quietest German, "do you wish me
to play it out, or would you prefer that I resign now?"

"It is up to YOU."

"It was brilliant, young man." "Thank you. I was very lucky." "No, it
was more than luck. I've played against enough luck in my time to know
luck."

Schlecter took his pawn with a rook and Levitsky completed the action:
he moved his lead pawn into the back rank, thereby castling it. In the
back row it acquired extraordinary force; it was born again. It mated
Herr Schlecter's poor king. The theme had been a variation on the idea
of the brave pawn, an exceedingly unusual phenomenon in international
play, where the odds against a single pawn surviving a charge into the
enemy's last rank are forbiddingly rare. Yet Levitsky had brought it off
because he had the hardness of spirit and the sheer guts to pay the
price as the combinations developed, feeding his own pieces into the maw
to advance the pawn.

That was it: the erratic. the brilliant fluctuation of it, the
fascination of it-the humble pawn, suddenly castled in the back rank,
suddenly made the most powerful piece on the board, planted in the soft
underbelly. A humble pawn has become all powerful and any sacrifice, or
any orchestration of sacrifice, is worth it.

Levitsky sat back. He had worked out his solution. It all turned then,
on a single bright young Englishman.

Levitsky remembered him with fondness, love even: bright, fair, gifted,
pleasant, charming.

It's time. After all the years, it's time.

He heard the NKVD men knocking.

"I'm INNOCENT!" The scream pierced the narrow walls of the Lux.

A door slammed. Feet dragged and snapped in the hall.

Levitsky heard the lift gate clank shut, and heard the machine descend.

Another for your hunger, old Koba.

The face of the young Englishman returned to his mind. He would be in
Spain, of course, for Spain was all the fashion of his set. Spain would
attract the golden lads of this world as a lamp attracts the moths.

Spain, then. The game of pawns and rooks and deaths must be played in
Spain. It all turns on the position of the pieces, on the willingness,
the nerve, for sacrifice.

BARCELONA, LATE 1936

COMRADE BOLODIN," INSTRUCTED COMRADE GLASANOV, "break his nose. But be
careful of the mouth."

Comrade Bolodin walked to the naked old man who was bound to the chair.
He studied the problem with dispassion while the old man looked up at
him, as if he didn't seem too sure of what was happening. He looked
dazed. Bolodin, who was exceedingly strong, drove a sharp, perfect blow
into his face. The meaty thud filled the cell. He felt the nose crack
and splinter in its flesh in the split second before the head snapped
back.

"Well done, comrade," said Glasanov.

The old man's head lolled forward on his chest. Snot and blood ran from
his face and spotted his white, scrawny body. Glasanov lifted the head
gently and stared at it. The nose was crushed almost flat but the
bruising and the swelling had not yet begun. Glasanov waited for the
focus to come back into the eyes, and for the fear to appear.

"Listen, why do you make us hurt you?" he asked with genuine curiosity.
"Why must we go through this? Can you not begin now to understand the
gravity of these charges?"

"Osysvorf " the old man cursed, but the language was familiar to the
Russian.

"He's delirious," he said. "He's praying in Hebrew."

"No," said Comrade Bolodin, "that's Yiddish. And it isn't a prayer. It's
a curse. He said you were garbage."

Glasanov did not take the insult personally; he never did.

"You cannot win," he pointed out to the old man.

"Surely you understand that. And not just in this room, where you are
doomed, but in the larger sense, the historical sense."

Glasanov talked frequently of history; he loved history.

Each night, when they were done or before they had begun, they sat in
the cafe Moka on the Ramblas sipping Pemod and r'y'os among English
newsmen and fiery young Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalists and POUMISTAS and
other assorted but quite colorful riffraff that an out of-control
revolution throws up. Glasanov would explain at great length to his
assistant Bolodin about history.

"Fuck history," said the old man, in Russian.

"Hit him," said Giasanov. "In the body. The ribs. Hard.

Several times, please, comrade."

Bolodin walked to the bound figure, feeling the old Yid's eyes on him
the whole way. Jesus, they could be tough, these old birds. Without a
great deal of emotional involvement, Comrade Bolodin threw a flurry of
short, penetrating blows into his ribs and chest. He could hear the
crack of his fists against the body as the old man jerked spastically in
the ropes. But he would not scream.

"All right," said Glasanov. "It's very clear, Comrade Tchiterine. The
charges are clear and they are obvious.

You are a wrecker and an oppositionist. You have constantly worked to
undermine the Party and betray the revolution. In England in 1931, you
and Lemontov and Levitsky entered into an agreement with the British
Secret Service, so you are also a spy. And all of this is under the
control of your leader, the Jew Trotsky."

The old man raised his head slowly. His skin had gone almost the color
of state. Blood showed on his lips.

"Fuck your sister, you cowshit peasant. The Great Lenin himself gave
Levitsky and me medals."

"And what if it's true, old Tchiterine? It's irrelevant to history. Hit
him hard."

Comrade Bolodin hit him in the ear and the face. He hit him in the
mouth, smashing out his teeth. He hit him in the temple, then hit him
again and again under the eye, in the face. The sound of the blows was
slippery and wet and dense. He hit him in the "BOLODIN! Enough, Christ,
enough. You forget yourself."

Bolodin stepped back. He sometimes had difficulty stopping.

"Tchiterine, it's pointless to resist. You'll sign the confession either
here or in the Lubyanka. You'll go on trial.

You'll be found guilty. You'll die. Your generation must pass on now.
That's what history has written."

The old man's face had been greatly damaged by the punishment. It looked
like a piece of mashed fruit, swollen and bruised and caked in blood.
The blood was everywhere. He croaked something through his swollen lips.
"Eh?" asked Glasanov. "Fuck Koba," said Tchiterine, somehow, and Comrade
Bolodin hit him a cruel, powerful blow in the side. Of the many, this
was perhaps the most devastating, for it ruptured the old man's
appendix. In his bounds, Tchlterine commenced to struggle as the pain
and numbness rocketed through him. In time he lapsed into a waxen coma.
His breathing was imperceptible.

"You hit him too much. Your zeal gets the best of you.

Discipline. Remember, above all, discipline. Strength, passion,
commitment, they are all fine and absolutely necessary. The great
Stalin, however, says that in discipline lies the key to the future."

"I apologize, comrade."

"You Americans," Comrade Glasanov said.

Comrade Bolodin's true name was Lenny Mink, and his last fixed address
had been 1351 Cypress Avenue in the Williamsburgh section of Brooklyn,
but he was to be found more frequently at Midnight Rose's, a candy store
at Livonia and Saratoga streets, that served as the unofficial
headquarters for his company, which went by the name Murder, Inc. He had
left New York at the urging of certain parties, as police curiosity
concerning his involvement with the deaths by shooting, bludgeoning, ice
picking, and drowning of several witnesses due to deliver evidence
against Lepke Buchalter had reached embarrassing proportions. Lenny,
like his peers Pittsburgh Phil, Gangy Cohen, Pretty Levine, Jack
Drucker, and his bosses Mendy Weiss, Dandy Phil Kastel, and Bugsy
Siegel, killed people for two reasons: because he was good at it and
because he was paid for it.

"Well, he'll be out all night," said Glasanov. "Get him back to his
cell. Wash him off, clean him up. Get him some brandy. We'll work on him
some more tomorrow."

"Yes, comrade," said Lenny Mink, still in Russian.

"Tough old fellow," said Glasanov. "They had to be in those days. He's
right, you know, what they did was extraordinary. Fighting the Okrana
and the Cossacks and later the western armies and Kolchak. My God, they
were tough."

Lenny looked at the old guy. Yeah, tough. Tougher than any nigger, and
when he was young, Lenny had fought a nigger for almost an hour down by
the docks until both men had been too exhausted to continue and nobody
took the kitty. Later, some whore used a razor on the guy.

"Be careful with him, now. Comrade Koba wants him back in Moscow,
understand?"

"Yes, comrade." Lenny kept his Russian simple and polite.

"I'll be in my office. Wake me if anything occurs."

Lenny, alone with the old man, reached into his pocket and removed a
switchblade, popped it, and cut the bonds.

The body fell; he caught it. Tch'terine had once been an important man,
the Comintem agent in charge of imposing Party demands on the often
unruly dockworkers' unions in the port of Barcelona. Now look at him.

Lenny, six-three and well over two hundred pounds, had no trouble
getting the old guy up in his arms. The American had a blunt, sullen,
nearly handsome face' though it was pocked. He seemed to carry his big
bones slowly and had a kind of cold force to him-he liked to hurt people
and people understood this of him almost instinctively, and tended to
become uncomfortable in his presence, an effect he enjoyed. He had
always had it. In fact, in his youth, in the Diaspora before he had come
to America, his shtetl nickname had been "Cossack," after the rumor that
he'd been begotten, not by his nominal father, a butcher, but by a
Russian raider in a pogrom.

He rarely spoke. He appeared to listen intently. People often considered
him stupid, which was a mistake. He simply wasn't clever with words,
although he spoke imperfect versions of English and Russian, having
learned the latter during a two-thousand-mile walk from Minsk to Odessa
when he was eleven years old, a remarkable journey. He had made the trip
on his own, after another pogrom, the one in which his mother and father
and all his brothers and sisters had been killed. His best language was
Yiddish, the language of his boyhood, although he was picking up Spanish
rapidly. When he had presented himself at the International Brigade
clearinghouse in Paris, in hopes of finding suitable employment in the
natural venue for a man of his professions warthe NKVD had scooped him
up. The NKVD had plans for Barcelona, and Lenny looked to be the perfect
instrument.

He took old Tchiterine's body into the harsh light of the newly wired
bulbs and down the empty corridor of the prison, which at one time had
been the novitiate's wing of the Convent of St. Ursula. The place had
been vandalized, as had all Church properties in the first crazed days
of the July Revolution, and rioters had smashed everything and painted
slogans everywhere.

Shards of broken glass still lay on the floor. Yet the place also had a
sense of newness to it; recently occupied by elements of the NKVD, which
clearly needed both privacy and security, it had been painted roughly,
rewired for electricity, patched, and repaired. It smelled of paint and
new wood and also of piss and despair.

Lenny reached Tchiterine's cell and set him on the bed.

The old man breathed roughly. His swelling completely disfigured his
face. Lenny covered his nakedness with a blanket. He went to a bucket,
brought it over, and wet his handkerchief He began to wipe the dried
blood off the face. He'd really gone a little nuts there-a problem of
his. Sometimes he couldn't hold on to himself. He ' just liked the way
it felt when he hit people. Discipline, this Russian boss was always
saying. Discipline was the secret of history. He actually believed that
shit.

The old man moaned suddenly.

Lenny jumped.

"Ya!" he yelped in Yiddish. "You scared me, old man."

One yellow eye came open. The other was swollen shut.

Vasser, " the old man begged through his ripened lips.

"Please," he begged in Yiddish, "a little, please."

"You old yentzer," Lenny laughed. He cupped some water in his big hand
and let it dribble into the old man's mouth. The old man lapped it up
greedily.

"I don't feel so good in my gut," he said.

"What'd you expect, from the smashing you got?"

"Help me," the old man said then. "I can pay you."

"Pay what? You got a treasure stuck up your old asshole? You're making
me laugh, you old putz."

Lenny stood to leave. The old man looked like one of those bums you find
on Seventh Avenue after the Harlem niggers got done rolling him: all
beat to shit, beat to craziness, not good for nothing. Naked, shivering,
in the straw, his face punched to shit. It made Lenny sick. He was so
big once, this old man, and now look at him.

The old man fought to get a word out. It came in a whisper, racked and
hoarse.

"Whaaaa?" said Lenny.

"G-g-g-g-gelt, " the old man finally spat out. Money.

Lenny bent. Maybe the old guy had a stash somewhere.

The old man's feeble hand flew up to Lenny's shoulder. It felt like a
perched bird.

"Save me, nu? Save an old Jew?" "How much? Talk a figure." "Lots. Would
I lie?"

"Everybody lies."

"Gelt! Lots and lots, I'm telling you."

"Where, up your asshole?"

"Gold, by the ton."

"A ton of gold. In a mountain somewhere, no? Old putz, talking dreams."

Lenny had an urge to kill him. Put the thumb to his throat, press it in;
he'd be history in a second.

"In 1931, me, Lemontov, Levitsky, we worked in England as spies."

"It's old business."

"Listen. Listen."

"So fucking talk."

"Levitsky found a student at a fancy university."

"Who's this Levitsky?"

"Tetful "Devil?"

I "Shavner Yid. Devil Himself The old revolutionary.

I he master spy. He was head of Comintem. A real important guy."

Lenny was growing interested. But what was the money angle?

"Go on, you old fuck," he said.

The old man told him swiftly, croaking the story out of his swollen lips
in little bursts as he grabbed on to Lenny's arm with his tight hand,
about the boy in England, the gentile boy who would rise, and yet was
bound in special ways to old Levitsky, the spy.

"The Devil Himself owns the boy's soul," the old Jew said.

"What's this guy's name?" Lenny wanted to know.

"I don't know it. I only served Levitsky, the man is a genius. I never
knew any of the real secrets. Lemontov didn't know. But I saw him once.
The boychik, I saw him. When I was in a place I shouldn't have been."

Where's the dough you're talking about?" "He's in Spain, five years
older, this boy, now grown to a man. Working for the Russians, nu? I've
seen him with my own two eyes. I can point him out. He's in the car's
every night."

"So what's this talk of a ton of gold, old man. You pulling my putz?"

"Listen good. The Russians took gold off these Spaniards. To pay for
guns, they said. It was shipped out, they said. And everybody thinks
it's gone. But at the last minute, they got scared when the Italian
submarines started sinking ships. I know, I found out in the harbor.

Those ships they loaded up with gold, they were empty.

They hid the stuff. Somewhere in this city. They're going to take it
over land, through Europe. This Englishman, it's his job, I tell you.
He's here to move the gold, because the Russians don't trust their own
people. This Englishman, he knows where the gold is. When he moves, the
ton of gold moves too."

Lenny looked at him, feeling something working in his head. A ton of
gold. Moved secretly. An Englishman.

Who would suspect an Englishman moving Spanish gold for the Russians?

Lenny thought it over. A ton of gold! Ripe for picking.

With only an Englishman for a guard.

Lenny liked the idea of a lot of money; it meant you went to the clubs
and everybody knew you and you had a swell dame and guys were always
coming by and asking how you were, the way they did with Lepke.

"One thing. We got to protect Levitsky. He's family, nu? He's one of us.
He's one of us. He's shayner Yid, and we don't give him away."

"Ah, he's off in Russia somewhere drinking vodka with his pals."

"No, I'm telling you. He'll check in on his boychik, he will. He's the
smartest man in the world, a chess champion, a genius, not like us. Hah,
he-"

He made a sudden strange, gurgling sound.

"I don't feel so good," the old man said. "When you hit me, the last
time, in the side; my gut burts."

"You're okay."

"No, get me a doctor. You gotta get me a doctor."

"There ain't any doctors in this joint. What, a stomach ache? In the
morning, you'll be-----"

But the old man had gone gray almost incredibly and he continued to
choke and gurgle and tremble.

"Help me!" he said, his one eye opened wide. His hand flew to Lenny and
grabbed his arm desperately.

"Help me!"

"Fuck you," said Lenny, but he was talking to a corpse.

And fuck me, too, Lenny Mink thought, with his dream of a ton of gold as
dead as the body before him.

A few days later, Lenny received a bit of unusual news. He was told to
proceed, in daylight, to Glasanov's office in the Main Police Building
on the Via Layetana, not far from the port. This was quite peculiar.
Lenny had never been there before.

Some German drove him from the convent to the station. It was a big,
square, white building in the middle of a busy city street, just a few
blocks from the Ramblas.

The revolutionary slogans and painted initials, the rippling banners,
the huge posters of old men with goatees could not quite disguise the
grandeur of the place, its link to a time when Spain had been ruled by
about six guys who built everything to look like a wedding cake. It was
maybe nine stories tall, and each window had a little balcony under it,
all the way up. You went in through a main gate under a banner that said
LET US GO FORWARD INTO THE MODERN AGE which took you into a courtyard
and then you went in a set of double doors which took you into a big
corridor and then you went up four flights to find Glasanov's office.

Glasanov, Lenny understood, was some kind of "adviser" to the Barcelona
police department, which meant he ran it. He was helping them organize
what they called the Servicio de Investigaci6n Militar, the SIM; Lenny
also understood that the SIM was a Spanish version of the NKVD; or,
rather, that it was the NKVD. It was like gangs anywhere: one gang got
control and they tried to take over everywhere. A tough gang stayed
tough by squashing any gang that thought it was tougher.

Yet Glasanov's office turned out to be a modest arrangement at the end
of a hall. He walked in to find Glasanov standing. Glasanov looked a
little like a German because he was so pale and blond. He was not
smiling, but he never smiled, because he took his responsibilities so
seriously. His cheeks had an almost artificial color to them, which the
Russians called the "midnight look," because it seemed to show up on the
faces of officials who spent the nights in their offices.

"Comrade Bolodin. Our Amerikanski."

Lenny had never liked the revolutionary pseudonym; he still had to think
twice when one of the Russians called him by it.

"Comrade commissar," Lenny responded. He hated the comrade shit, the
talk of history, the endless lectures on scientific Marxism and the
necessity for building a better world. But when you worked for a boss,
you played it his way. Until you got yours.

"A drink?"

"No thanks."

"Excellent. A man who controls his appetites. I like that."

"Is this about the old guy? Look, it wasn't my fault he croaked."

"No, no. An accident. A terrible accident. He was in ill health. Moscow
understands."

Lenny waited. What was the story?

"Here. I have something for you. It's time, I think, for you to take a
more active role in the processes of enforcing Party discipline here in
Barcelona. This is why I asked you to come by."

He handed over a card.

Lenny realized it was an ID naming him a captain in the SIM-making him,
in other words, an official secret policeman and giving him all the
rights and responsibilities thereof, which included the right to make
spot arrests and searches, to confiscate property and vehicles in the
service of the state, to command units of the Asaltos, or assault
police, to extract immediate cooperation, not to say obedience, from all
civil authority.

"There's much work ahead," Glasanov went on.

"There are traitors everywhere, do you understand? Even in Moscow in the
heart of government, among the oldest and most trusted of the
revolutionary fighters. Every day, they confess their crimes in the
dock, or flee."

"So I hear," said Lenny Mink.

"The late Comrade Tchiterine," said Glasanov, "for example, was under
the control of a famous revolutionary fighter named Levitsky, who was
the worst. Tchiterine, a man named Lemontov who has disappeared, and
this Levitsky, they formed a terrorism center, working at espionage to
betray us. Levitsky was second only to Trotsky. Did Tcbiterine, by
chance, mention Levitsky?"

"He didn't mention anybody. He just died."

"Umm. I bad thought they might have been in contact.

They seem to ha-v e been in some sort of plot together."

Lenny grunted, thinking What plot, you fuck?

"First Lemontov disappears-that should have been the tipoff. At least we
were fast enough to nab Tchiterine."

"What about this guy Levitsky?"

"Ali. A wily old fox. They call him the Devil Himself, for certain
colorful exploits. He's gone. He disappeared from Moscow even as the
security people were coming to arrest him."

Lenny nodded. The old fucker was out!

"I tell you this to encourage your vigilance. We are preparing to move
against our enemies here. The days of car& sitting will soon be coming
to an end."

"You can count on me," said Lenny.

"Of course. You are an extraordinarily valuable man."

Glasanov handed him a piece of paper. On it was written a name.

"An oppositionist. He leads the propaganda battle against us in his
newspaper. His organization is powerful, and he is one of its leaders."

It was just like at Midnight Rose's. The word came, and you took
somebody for a ride.

"You want him killed."

"Ali-"

"Believe me, he's gone."

"There will be others. Some to be arrested and interrogated, some to be
liquidated. You must cut off the head of a beast before you dispose of
its body. A period of great struggle is coming, and I am personally
charged with commanding our forces."

But Lenny wasn't really listening, nor was he thinking about the man he
would pop that night.

He was thinking of what old Tchiterine had told him.

He'll check in on his boychik.

Lenny smirked in triumph. He knew what none of them knew. He was ahead
of this smart Russian, he was ahead of everybody in the world. He knew
where this Levitsky, this teuful, would head. The Devil Himself, eh?

Well, the old guy was coming strai-ht to Barcelona, to check up on his
boychik. And he'd lead Lenny to him.

He'd lead him to the gelt.

"Comrade," said Glasanov. "To the future." He handed him a small glass
of vodka. "You must not refuse me."

"Let us go forward into the modem age," said Lenny, throwing the vodka
down his throat.

He hated vodka.

4. San MR. STERNE AND MR. WEBLEY FLORRY MET HOLLY-BROWNING THE FOLLOWING
TUESDAY on a bench in Hyde Park. The older officer had a bag of peanuts
for the pigeons and a briefcase. Mr. Vane sat quietly three benches down
the walk, looking blankly off through the trees.

The major sighed, his eyes settling on some obscure object in the far
distance. He shelled a peanut, launched it to the walk, and a doddering,
scabby old pigeon contemptuously gobbled it off the concrete. . "I
wonder if this is quite necessary," said Florry impatiently.

"Oh, there's not much to say, Mr. Florry. The technical business is
quite easily taken care of We try to keep things simple. You'll find
this is useful." He handed over a package, which Florry opened quickly.
It was a thick, densely printed book.

"Tri.vtram Shandy? I loathe it. I loathe Laurence Steme. I never was
able to finish it."

"I haven't met anybody who has. And that's the point.

But it will do for an introduction to a chap in Barcelona called
Sampson. David Harold Allen Sampson-"

Ilia "The Times writer?"

"Yes, indeed. You've seen his dispatches?"

"He's awfully dull, I think. Julian's stuff is much better."

"Sampson represents our interests there, and through him you'll keep us
informed. He's got an office on the Ramblas, Number II 4 Rambla San
Jose. He can reach us quickly via the consulate wireless. Can you
remember that?"

"Of course."

"Show him the book. It's a way of saying hullo, we're in the same
family. He'll guide you to Raines."

"I'm sure I'll have no trouble finding Julian."

"And there's this." From the briefcase he withdrew another bulky
package, something heavy wrapped in oilskins. Florry took it in his lap
and began to pull apart the rags.

"Not here. Good Christ, man, somebody might see But Florry plunged
ahead: he got enough of the material apart to penetrate to the center of
the treasure.

Wrapped in an elaborate leather rig there was a vaguely familiar object,
and as his fingers flew across it, he recognized it immediately. He put
his hand on the grip and pulled it out.

It was a well-oiled Webley Mark 1, a big revolver with a short octagonal
barrel.

"God, you're not joking about all this, are you?"

Florry said.

"Put it away, Florry. Somebody could come along."

But Florry continued to look at it, fascinated. He experienced the
weapon's heft and weight and perfect easy feel. He'd carried much the
same thing in Burma, though in a slightly later model. With a dexterity
from memory that surprised him, he hit the latch to break the action and
the barrel obediently dropped to expose the cylinder. Six gleaming brass
circles peeped out, like six coins on a pewter plate.

"Loaded," he said.

"The bloody things are useless without bullets. That's a shoulder
holster, by the way. It'll hold the weapon neatly out of sight under a
coat or cardigan. And as you know, the four-five-five will knock down
anything on two feet at close range. Now put it away, Florry. Someone
could come."

Julian? What would a monster like a Webley do to vivid, charming, cruel
Julian? It would blow his guts in quarts across the landscape.

He shook his head, quickly replaced the pistol in the holster, wrapped
it in the cloth, and put it back in the briefcase. Mr. Steme and Mr.

"I suppose that's it, then?" he said. "A revolver and a code book. It is
a game, isn't it?"

"It's not a game, Mr. Florry. Never think of it as a game. Think of it
as life and death." "I wonder if I could ever do the final thing."
,:You'll do what's necessary. You'll see your duty."

I suppose you're right. And that is what frightens me."

Florry turned and issued the major a look that was either stupidity or
shock. The major had seen it before, but not since 1916. It was the look
of men in the trenches, about to go over the top, who didn't believe
their moment of destiny had finally arrived. Florry got up and walked
away gloomily.

The major peeled another peanut and turned it over to the hungry
pigeons. Soon Mr. Vane joined him.

"I trust it went well, sit?"

"It went as well as could be expected, Vane. Given the circumstances."

"Did you think he's up to it?"

"Not yet. That's Sampson's job."

"Yes sir."

"We'll have to play Mr. Florry very carefully, won't we, Vane? I ' I '
"Yes sir' "Levitsky can make a traitor of anyone. Can I make a murderer
so easily?"

They watched as Florry, now a small figure, disappeared in the traffic.

BARCELONA MOST NIGHTS, IN OBEDIENCE TO HIS INSTRUCTIONS, Comrade Captain
Bolodin of the SIM went out with his men and made arrests. The
instructions were perfect: the addresses were always right, the criminal
always available. Comrade Captain Bolodin and his men were always on
time; they never had any trouble. Nothing worked well in Republican
Spain except the NKVD and nothing worked better in the NKVD than Comrade
Captain Bolodin.

Sometimes the criminals were imprisoned, sometimes merely liquidated. A
libertarian lawyer, for example, author of a wickedly scatological
anti-Russian poem for his four-page party newspaper, paid for this crime
with a bullet in the neck; a Polish trade unionist also died, as did a
French intellectual who wrote scathing editorials, and a German Social
Democrat who had published an unkind article in a Norwegian socialist
newspaper. A Cuban, however, was simply reeducated in the political
realities of Barcelona by an administration of Comrade Captain Bolodin's
fists for an excruciatingly long evening.

But under this political drama another one was running.

Certain of the arrestees of a peculiar age and range of experience were
spared the more furious applications of Koba's justice and-although this
was quite unknown to Koba's official representatives, particularly the
aggressively moral Glasanov-were escorted into an obscure cell for a
private interview with Comrade Captain Bolodin. The subjects were always
the same.

The first was a certain shipment of gold, said to have left the
Barcelona port in November of 1936 on four Russian steamers. Had this
material actually been loaded on the ships and sent out to Odessa, as
official records insisted? The answers varied, and the arrestees, mainly
dockworkers and low-ranking Spanish port officials, were at great pains
to please their interrogator. Some swore yes, they'd seen Russian
tankers loading the material that the Spaniards had not been able to get
near to.

But others said the entire affair was quite odd, because the Russians
had insisted on being so public about it; they wanted the world to know
they were moving the go I'd. One man said the ships rode awfully high in
the water for all the weight they were said to be carrying. But if the
gold remained hidden in Barcelona, where could it be? None of Lenny's
many arrestees had an opinion.

For these men, the fate was always the same. They had learned, from
their ordeal, of Mink's real interest. It was the most dangerous
knowledge a man could have in Barcelona. They died, usually with a 7.62
mm slug from Lenny Mink's Tula-Tokarev in the back of their skulls.

The other subject that Lenny Mink examined at length was a certain
category of arrestee's acquaintance with the legendary Levitsky, or
"Devil Himself' as he was called in certain quarters.

These questions met with a variety of responses.

Some, for example, would not talk at all without severe assistance. It
took Lenny the best part of one whole evening to pry out of one old man
the story of Levitsky's youth, and how the Cossacks had, one bloody
morning, liberated the boy from responsibility to parents and shtetl by
slaying the former and burning the latter, all before his terrified
twelve-year-old eyes, an event which forever propelled him to the
revolutionary course. Lenny listened gravely to this account, having
some familiarity with the materials himself.

Of Levitsky's early exploits in the underground of the nineties at a
very young age, his first contests with the Okrana, and his eventual
abandonment of anarchism for the tenets of Marx, no reliable witness
could be found, though several alluded to it.

What they remembered most of Levitsky was the long period between the
failed revolution of 1905 and the successful one of 1917 in which he
roamed Europe making his legend as a cunning strategist and a fighter of
great bravery. It was primarily his enemies from these days who
remembered him and frequently hated him still and were ready, even
eager, to speak. They remembered his ruthlessness, his cunning, and even
his brilliant chess.

"He could have owned the world, it was said," one man infon-ned Lenny.
"Instead he chose to change it."

He planted bombs in Bucharest, he organized strikes in Turin, he robbed
banks in Zagreb; wherever the Party needed him, he went; whatever price
the Party demanded, he paid. He was arrested half a dozen times, usually
escaping, most spectacularly from the terrible Constantinople Hall of
Darkness. Three times, maybe four, the Okrana tried to kill him.

He surfaced, again briefly, in the incredibly hectic years of the
revolution, from 1917 to 1921. In this period, an old veteran recalled,
he was remembered mainly as a soldier: a great battlefield tactician
who, unlike the cowardly Trotsky in his armored train, rode at the head
of every charge and was once unhorsed three times in a single afternoon.
He fought in all the battles around Kazan and was wounded twice; he was
a brigade commander, a counter-intelligence officer, and a leader of
cavalry. He rode with the Red Cossacks-he, whose parents had been
butchered by Cossacks--out of the hills on June 3, 1919, in the battle
that spelled the end for Kolchak. He fought against Yedenitch in the
north and Denekin in the south. This was particularly impressive to all
who remembered it because Levitsky hated horses as he hated nothing on
earth. It was a sheer triumph of will.

After the war, he again passed from view as he returned to the secret
life of the conspirator. Few facts were forthcoming on this period,
though Comrade Captain Bolodin sought them with special fervor. At the
point of death, an old Rumanian confessed that he had heard that Comrade
Levitsky had arranged assignment to the Otdyel Mezhunarodnol Svyazi, the
International Liaison Section of Comintern, where he could privately
pursue his goal of world revolution and safety ignore Koba as he
ransacked the revolution. Comintern, it was also stated, was really but
an arm of the GRU, Red Army Intelligence, whose policies it pursued with
an almost noble integrity. It was said that Levitsky carried a high,
secret rank in the GRU. It was said that when the GRU lost favor to the
NKVD, Levitsky's magic protection began to wither away, his freedom to
say unkind things about Koba, his ability to shock at social gatherings
with his imitation of Koba at the chessboard, all these disappeared. He
was being watched. But they were, on the whole, mysterious years: no
witnesses knew enough to tell Lenny more than he already knew.

The arrests began in 1934. Koba arrested him then, and again in 1935; he
spent time in Siberia, six frozen months as a zek in one of the prison
camps, before "rehabilitation," and returned from the East with his
particularly forbidding dignity, which most interpreted as pessimism and
which, most agreed, doomed him; his last days were spent in the Lux
Hotel, waiting for something ... or waiting for Koba's final justice.
Whether he was affiliated still with GRU was unknown.

These shreds of fact and bits of legend Lenny accumulated over a few
weeks; for them all, the payment was the same: the bullet in the skull.
And from them, he determined where he might be able to find what he
needed most in his quest.

It was a steelpoint etching from a quick sketch done in 1901 in the
Great Hall of the Casino at Karlsbad of the champion of the chess
tournament. It has been printed within the pages of Deutyche
Schach-zeitung, the German chess magazine. It was a picture of a fierce
young Jew, and the caption under had read, Der Teuful Selbst, E. I.
Levitsky.

It took Lenny a week to find it in an antiquarian bookstore in the
Gothic Quarter.

horaw@

THE AKIM LATE IN THE MORNING, A CALM FELL ON THE TIRED old scow. No
breeze furled the flat sea; the sky was cloudless, but white and drill
with oppressive radiance. It was a warm, almost tropical day.

Sylvia noticed it first.

"We seem to be dead in the water," she observed, looking up from her
copy of Signature. "I hope nothing is wrong." She sat on a canvas chair
on the Akim's small passenger deck beneath its battered bridge and
single stack with her two fellow passengers.

"Perhaps they wait for a clearance or something," said Count Witte, the
Polish correspondent.

"Can we be that close to Barcelona?"

"I don't know, dear girl," he said.

"What do you make of it, Mr. Florry?" she asked.

It was another in the constant barrage of questions she had for him. She
was a young Englishwoman of his own age and the middle class, who had,
if he understood correctly, come into some money, picked up a taint of
fashionable leftist politics, and was now headed to Barcelona for
adventuring. Though her questions were generally stupid, it pleased him
to be asked them. She had so many!

Flony, also sitting on a deck chair, put down Tristram Shandy and said,
"With this lot of amateurs one can never tell. I suppose I ought to go
check."

"If you can make yourself understood," said the count, an aristocratic
old man in a yellow panama hat and monocle. "These monkeys are hardly
human."

The count had a point: the crew of the old steamer consisted largely of
semicivilized Arabs, wily, barefoot primitives in bumooses and filthy
whites who scuttled about her rusty chambers and funnels like athletes
and spoke in gibberish. The officers were only slightly better: two
smarmy Turks who always needed a shave and spoke in impenetrable
platitudes in answer to any query.

Tell them their hair was on fire or some fellow had stuck a knife
between their shoulder blades and they'd have answered the same: All is
well, all is well, and praise to Allah.

"I suppose I shall have to ask the bloody steward," Florry said. "At
least he's European."

"Good heavens," said the count, "if you consider that chap European, Mr.
just swallowed a lemon, and followed it with a quick wink.

"Keep the pirates off Miss. Lilliford, will you, count?"

Floriy called, leaving them.

He set out in search of the steward, but of course the old fellow was
not always that easy to find. He was a seedy but kindly chap officially
charged with attending to their needs on this short voyage from
Marseilles to Barcelona and, more important, charged with helping the
cook. He was not the sort of man who took duty seriously, however; he
spent his time affixed to a secret flask of peppermint schnapps, for he
wore the odor of the liquor about him like a scarf.

Florry climbed down through the hatchway and made his way into the oily
interior of the craft. Twice, he stopped to let jabbering Arabs by. They
salaamed obsequiously, but he could see the mockery in their bright
eyes. He pressed on, and the temperature rose and the atmosphere seemed
to thicken with moisture; it was actually steamy.

He finally found the old man in the galley, where he sat hunched in his
filthy uniform, slicing onions into a large pot and weeping copiously.
As Florry approached he realized Gruenwald had really been on a toot
this morning, for he smelled like a peppermint factory. He also gleamed
with sweat, for the temperature in this room was even more grotesque
than in the passageway. Florry mopped his face with a handkerchief,
which came away transparent.

"I say, Mr. Gruenwald. The ship is no longer moving.

Do you know why?"

"Hah?" replied old Gruenwald, scrunching up his face like a clown's. "No
can I quite hear."

"We've stopped," Florry shouted over the clamor of the engines. "In the
water. No propeller. No move.

Understand?"

"Stopped? Wir halten, ja?"

"Yes. It's upsetting. Is anything wrong?"

"Ach. Nothing is. Is nothing. Nein, is nothing."

Old Herr Gruenwaid leaped out of the galley-the Arab cook cursed him to
Allah as he rose, but he paid no attention-and pulled Florry out through
a hatchway onto a rusty lower deck-ah, fresh blast of salt air!- where
he settled into the lee of a rotting lifeboat and bade Florry collapse
beside him.

"Hah. You some schnapps want,.ia, Englischman?"

"No, I think not. Awfully nice of you though," Florry said. Take a swig
of that? Revolting!

"Ach. You should relax, no? Relax. Old Gruenwald, he take care." He
reached into his back pocket, pulled out his flask, swiftly unscrewed
the lid, and took a swallow.

His bony old Adam's apple flexed like a fist as it worked.

He handed the flask to Florry. "Go on. Is gut."

Florry looked at the thing with great reluctance but in the end didn't
want to seem an utter prig, and so took a swift gulp. It was awful. He
coughed gaspingly and handed it back.

"Good, nein?"

"Delicious," Florry said.

"We stop because the Fascists sometime bomb docks in daylight. We stop
here until five ja. Then we go in in dark. So? Is okay?"

"Yes, I see." Florry looked out across the flat, still water.

Not so long to wait, eh, Herr Florry?" "Not if safety's the issue. I'd
hate to think of what a bomb would do to this old tub."

"Boom! No more tub, ja?" The old man laughed merrily, took another swig
from his flask. "The Queen Mary, nein, eh, Herr Florry?" he said
conspiratorially, gesturing down to the paint-flecked, rust-pitted deck.

"Nor, I trust, the Lusitania."

The old man laughed.

"I had a brother killed in the Unterseeboots. Ja. 1917."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Ach. No matter. He vas bastard, anyhow. Hah!"

Florry nodded sweetly, seeming to pay attention, and then said, "Come
on, now, old fellow. The true reason.

Don't let's play games."

Gruenwald professed indignation and shock at the accusation.

"Hah. Gruenwald tell truth. Ja, Ich-"

"Now, now, don't get excited. Perhaps you are. On the other hand, I
can't imagine the owners of this wonderful oceangoing paradise would be
too pleased to have it inspected terribly closely, would they? Unless my
nose deceives me-and I've got a very good nose-I think I make out the
undertang of tobacco amid the general welter of odors available below
decks. Tobacco's contraband, I believe, in Spain. That, I believe, is
the reason for our delay. So that we can sneak in under cover of
darkness. Damned interesting." Florry gave the old man a sly look.

Gruenwald was gravely offended. "Herr Florry, you must zay nothing of
zis! You keep your nose clean. Ja?

You are at risk if you go about-"

"Don't worry, old fellow. I personally don't care what's done with the
stuff, just so it doesn't inconvenience me unduly. All right?"

"Herr Florry, you be careful. Barcelona is very dangerous."

"Why, there's no fighting there anymore."

"You listen gut, Herr Florry, I like Englisch peoples, even if they kill
my brother in 1917. Hah! You be careful. The man who own zis boat, he is
very powerful.

He would not like young Englisch gentleman go around town talk about
tobacco. Ja! Bad trouble for someone who do this. There are many ways to
die in Barcelona."

"Well, that's a fair warning given, and I shall take it to heart. Thank
you, Herr Gruenwald."

"Ja, Gruenwaid not zo zmart these days. I vas vunce real zmart. But in
here, now, 1st-how you say?"- he tapped his head and leaned close to
Florry, his pepperminty breath flooding all over the
Englishman-"lifftmensch. Ah---@"

"Crazy, we would say."

"Ja! Ja! Crazy, I got blown up by the Frenchies in the great war. In
here metal 1st. A big plate. Like as you would haben die zup-eat your
dinner off. Ja, metal in the head, ja!

"Good heavens," said Florry.

"In the war. The war was very bad."

"Yes, I know."

"How would you know, Herr Florry? You are too young for zuch things."

"Yes, I suppose I am," said Florry.

The old man took another swig on his flask and then another. His eyes
seemed dead.

"Mr. Florry, where on earth have you been?" she asked, as he at last
returned.

"I am sorry," he said.

She lounged on a chaise in the pale sun. Count Witte his jacket off and
folded, a pair of circular sunglasses perched comically across his face,
lay beside her. He was reading a book in Polish.

Florry quickly explained. "And so we sit," he concluded. "I suppose if
you choose a vessel that asks you no questions, then you must not ask
questions of it."

"A good principle, Mr. Florry," called Count Witte.

"It's as true of political parties as well. And also"-he added with
another wink-"of women."

"Count Witte, you are such an old chan-ner," said Sylvia.

"Miss. Lilliford, you make me wish I were a young charmer."

"Well," said Sylvia, "at least it will give me a chance to get all this
read by landfall." She meant her pile of magazines. "At least then I
shall have some understanding of things."

"It is exactly when one thinks one understands a revolution," said the
count, "that the revolution changes into something that cannot be
understood."

"I certainly understand the basic principles," boasted Florry. "They are
threefold. It there's shooting you duck and if there's yelling you
listen and if there's singing you pretend you know the words."

"Exactly," said the count. "Mr. Florry, we shall make an international
correspondent of you yet."

The girl laughed. Florry pretended not to notice, as he'd been
pretending not to notice since he came aboard three days earlier and
discovered her on the deck. She was as slender as a blade, with a neck
like a cocktail glass stem. She had a mass of tawny, curled hair. She
was about his own age, with gray green eyes. He did not think her
terribly attractive, but nevertheless found himself taking great
pleasure in the sound of her laughter or the sense of her attention when
he talked politics with the sardonic old Witte.

"Oh, Mr. Florry," she had said, boldly speaking first, "you know so
much."

Florry knew it not to be true, but found himself smiling again.

By five, the A kim had begun to move again, and shortly before
nightfall, the passengers could see the long, thin line of the Spanish
coastline.

"Look, Mr. Florry," Sylvia called from the rail. "There it is. At last."

Florry went to her.

"Hmm, just looks like the other side of the Thames to me. One supposes
one should feel some sense of a great adventure beginning. I'd rather
spend a night in a bed that doesn't rock quite as much as this one."

She laughed. "You're such a cynic -and she gave him a slightly oblique
look from her oddly powerful eyes-"except that you aren't."

"I tend to put my own comforts first, I suppose. Before politics and
before history. And before long, I hope."

She laughed again, which pleased him. Then she said, "I don't feel the
adventure, either, to tell the truth. What I feel is a sense of
confusion. This war is a terrible mess.

Only this fellow Julian Raines, the poet', can seem to make any sense of
it. Did you read his piece on Barcelona?"

The name struck him uneasily.

"Brilliant fellow," he said uncomfortably, hoping to be done with the
subject.

"His explanations are the clearest," she said with what seemed to be a
kind of admiration. "What an extraordinary place it must be. On the
occasion of the army rebellion, the armed workers beat them down. Then
they refused to turn the guns over to the government and established a
revolutionary society and are preparing for the next step. Which would
be the establishment of a true classless society."

"God, what a nauseating prospect," said the count. "No, my dear, you'll
see. The tension will mount between the Russian Communists and the
libertarian, anti-Stalinist Anarchists and Socialists, and there'll be
an explosion."

"In which case," Florry said, "we all obey Florry's First Rule of
Revolution, which is: when the bombs go bang, find a deep hole."

They both laughed.

"You make it sound like a war, Mr. Florry. You have been reading your
Julian Raines, too. He's very pessimistic about the Popular Front. He
feels that-"

"Yes, I know, Sylvia. I have read all of Julian's pieces.

He's awfully good, I admit it."

"It's a surprise, actually. I loathe his poetry. I loathe "Achilles,
Fool,' the poem about his poor father on the wire. My father also died
in the Great War, and I don't see it as a game at all."

"Julian inspires passions," said Florry, looking out across the sea at
the dark jut of land, profoundly aware that he himself did not.

"Oh, do you know him, Mr. Florry?" She squealed with delight, vivid
animation coming into her eyes.

Flon-y stared at the life on her face, hating it.

"We were at school together," he said. "Rather close, at one time,
actually."

"He must be the most brilliant writer of his generation," she said. "Oh,
could you possibly introduce me.

He could teach me so much."

"Yes, I suppose. One never knows, of course, how these things will work
out, but I suppose I might be able to. He'll be quite busy, of course.
As will I."

"Oh, of course. As will I." She laughed. "To imagine, learning from both
Robert Florry and Julian Raines.

What an unusually lucky chance. The correspondent from The Spectator and
from Signature." She laughed again. "I feel so lucky."

Florry looked at her. There was something about her slim neck that
attracted him enormously. I'm the lucky one, he thought and watched her
go back to her cabin.

Flon-y stood at the railing, nursing his vague feeling of unease, and
was there still several minutes later when Count Witte approached.

"Mr. Florry, I must say I envy you. That's a lovely young woman."

"Yes, she's quite special, I agree."

"I envy you her feelings for you."

"Well, it's not gone to that. She seems to be drawn to adventure. She's
evidently got some money for travel.

She says she wants to be a writer."

"Whatever it is, I must say I can think of better spots to take a
beautiful young woman than a volatile city like Barcelona. Perhaps she
is the sort who feels most alive in danger. Still, I'd be careful if I
were you."

"Thanks for the advice."

With that comment, the old count went to his cabin.

Florry turned back to the sea. It was almost dark now; the sun had left
a vivid smear where't had disappeared into the ocean; the Spanish coast
looked much closer now. Florry knew he ought to go to his cabin and
pack.

But he looked at it one more time. Spain. Red Spain, in the year 1937.

What the devil, he thought, am I doing here?

Then he went back to his cabin to pack for the arrival.

Florry gathered his tweed jacket about him, wishing he had a scarf He
could feel the ludicrous revolver hanging in the ludicrous holster under
his arm. He lit a cigarette.

The night was cool and calm, full of moon which reflected off the sea in
a gleam that was incandescent, fluttering, almost mesmerizing. It was
absurdly beautiful, almost as bright as day. Before him, he could see
the land mass, looming larger. He could see the light of the harbor and
make out in the light what appeared to be the hulk of a low mountain off
on one side, Monjuich it would be called. There was another mountain,
one behind the city, called Tibidabo, but he could not see it.

He leaned forward on the railing, wondering how in the world he'd handle
it with Julian.

Julian, old man.

Robert, good God, it's been bloody ages.

Been reading your stuff in Signature. Damned good.

I'm out for The Spectator myself.

Oh, and how's the bloody awful Denis Mason? Hated that man.

Been absolutely topping with me, old sport No, that wouldn't work. So
much between them.

Julian, once I loved you and then you hurt me and now they've sent me
out here to betray you. How on earth can I ever look upon your face? He
took a deep breath, happy at least for the solitude. He flipped the
cigarette out into the dark, wondering if he had the force to deal with
Julian. Something powerful about Julian: it almost frightened him. The
city, a few miles beyond, looked serene and peaceful in the moonlight.
It looked like some sort of silly, romantic painting.

"Mr. Florry. Staring into the future?"

He turned. It was the girl.

"Yes, well, you've caught me at it."

"How long now until we dock?"

"Well, not a goodly while. You can make out the quay.

We slip through the breakwater, then wherever these Arab monkeys choose
to tie up, and we'll be on dry land."

The moon touched her oval face and made it shine. She smiled and the
moon turned her teeth blinding white, small perfect little pearls,
little replicas of itself Had she ever really smiled at him quite like
this before? He didn't think so. The radiance of her look overwhelmed
him.

"You've changed your clothes." She now had on some sort of purple dress.

"Yes. The adventure begins, that kind of silly nonsense."

"It's quite appropriate, I assure you."

He could see her hand on the rail, her fair face in the white moonlight.
He could smell her. It was lovely, something musky and rather dense. He
wanted to reach out and touch her, but felt incapable of even commencing
such a move. A squawking of Arabic rose from the bridge-two sailors
cursing each other.

"I'm actually glad I caught you here alone," she said.

"You've been awfully kind to me. I wanted to thank you for it."

"Believe me, Miss. Lilliford, it doesn't take much effort to be kind to
you."

"No, you're just one of the decent chaps of the world. I can tell. Fewer
and fewer of them around, and you're one.

"You exaggerate my decency, Miss. Lilliford. Scratch my surface and
you'll find the same brute underneath in any man."

"I can't begin to believe it."

It occurred to him he ought to kiss her. He had, actually, never kissed
a white woman before.

"There you are," said Count Witte, coming out onto the deck. "Good
heavens, I've just had the most terrible altercation with that awful old
Gr-uenwald. The man is completely drunk. He smells as if He's bathed in
peppermint. He was trying to get my trunk up and banging it around
terribly. It was most upsetting."

Florry turned.

"Oh, he's a hannless old fellow. Worthless, I suppose, but hartnless,"
said Florry tightly.

"Oh, I say-am I disturbing you or something? I didn't mean to intrude."

"Oh, no," said Florry, "it's nothing-2' "But it is. I can tell from the
startled look on Miss. Lilliford's face. I shall beat a hasty retreat."

"Please, Count Witte. Our conversation can wait. Mr. Florry and I have
plenty of time ahead. Come out and watch the ship sail into the harbor."

"Yes, do come on, Count Witte."

"Well, you English are so wonderfully polite I don't know if you mean it
or not, but I will come. Yes. Do you know, we must get together for
dinner in the week to come. There used to be some wonderful restaurants
in Barcelona, though I shouldn't be surprised if the revolutionaries
have closed them all down in the spirit of equality. But-"

Amazingly, it had begun to rain!

Florry had the distinct impression that the air itself had suddenly
liquefied and then, oddly, all sound had vanished from the earth: the
slosh of the prow through the water, the clank and groan of the old
engine, the chatter of Arabic from deep inside the ship.

Or no: there was sound. There was, in fact, nothing but sound, huge in
his cars. Sound and liquid-sound and water-sound and chaos.

A shock seemed to slither through the guts of the ship. Its very
relationship to the shiny sea began to alter crazily; the deck, which
had until this second seemed as secure as the surface of the earth,
issued a great animal shudder; Florry, in his mind, thought of a dying
elephant he'd once seen, that moment when the bullet plunges home and
every line is somehow terribly changed as the consciousness of doom
suddenly imprints itself upon the beast. He stood bolted to the rail,
trying to make sense of it all: water and roar, everywhere; Sylvia's
dress plastered with hideous immodesty against her body as the shock
spread from the ship to her own face, in the ron-n of total panic, which
flashed whitely in the wet moonlight; old Witte, gobbling in terror like
an ancient bird before the ax, his jowls heavy and flopping, his wet
hair curled, his monocle fluttering about. And suddenly also a tide of
demented, howling voices, a guttural mix of Arabic and Turkish and all
the dialects of the Mediterranean.

And Florry, attempting in the first second, with what he felt was icy
calm but was in fact the beginning of bone-deep panic, to sort all this
out, became aware of yet another and perhaps more frightening
phenomenon. That is, the angle of the deck to the horizon had begun to
shift radically. We're sinking, he realized. We're sinking.

MI-6@ LONDON MAJOR HOLLY-BROWNINC, TOOK TEA LATE AT HIS headquarters
that same night. He sat in his little fifth floor office in the Broadway
Building off a corridor that led only to a rear stairwell. Perhaps it
looked a bit more like a publisher's cubicle than a spy's: he was
surrounded by an almost endless collection of books and pamphlets of
poetry, clipped newspaper reviews, glossy and not so-glossy literary
quarterlies, reproductions of paintings, tutors' reports, the minutes of
meetings of longabandoned undergraduate political committees,
broadsides, handbills, and the like. It all dated from the year 1931 at
Cambridge University.

Where another, more sympathetic mind might have divined from the rubble
a new generation of promising voices attempting to define and make
itself heard, Major Holly-Browning saw most of it as infernal gibberish,
a bloody Playfair cipher without a key, whose maze was therefore sealed
off forever from his entrance. It represented a private language, a
chattering of pansy aesthetes; it filled him, also, with melancholy.

He'd seen so many of these young fools' fathers die in the"I 4-'l 8
show, cut down by the German Maxims, or blown to shreds by Krupp
explosives, or choked, their lungs browned and shriveled in the mustard,
or mutilated by the serrated upper edges of the ghastly Hun bayonets'
And for what? For this? For "In Excelsior Paie Grows the Mould"? For
"Nocturne in Shades of Gray"? For "A New Theory of Spanish Radicalism"?
For "The Pacifist's Litany"? For Julian's hated "Achilles, Fool"?

The poem, originally published in the February 1931 number of Denis
Mason's foolish rag The Spectator and later the title of Julian's sole
collection of verse, from Heinemann in November of the same year, was
never far from the major's consciousness. He could recite it.

Achilles, ' ri)of, on your wire, the scream lost in your ripped lungs,
Achilles, fool, they took your lips, Achilles, fool, you let them have
your tongue.

We are the tendentious genet-atioii, A c-hillev, Fool No wiresfor uv;
our lips will stay Our own. We know the final truth:

In the end, it's all the same.

In the end, it's all a game.

Julian's father had died on the Somme, hung up on a wire for a long
day's dying. The major had heard Capt.

Basil Raines over the artillery barrage that day. He screamed for hours.
But not to be rescued. He screamed at his men to stay away, because be
knew they would die if they came for him. The major touched the bridge
of his nose, which was tender with pain.

"May I get you something, sir?"

"Vane, are you still here? Perhaps you could go down to Signals and see
if Florry's ship has reached Barcelona yet. Sampson said he'd inform
us."

Vane darted out. Major Holly-Browning turned back to the sea of paper
before him. He had mastered with sheer, dogged persistence nearly
everything the pile contained.

It was not a happy experience. He had become a kind of reluctant expert
on the culture of 1931, its torrents and enthusiasms and excesses, its
pacifism, its ideologies, its brilliances, its ugly insistence on secret
conformism. And most o f all, running beneath it like a hidden current,
its spies.

Yes, there were spies. The climate almost demanded it.

The postwar euphoria had long since worn off, and with the coming of
economic hard times, a certain sensibility flourished, a sensibility of
doubt. Despair seemed somehow fashionable. Peculiar sexual styles became
smart. And the brightest lads were the worst: dandy boys, cleverbools,
know-it-alls, fellow travelers; they climbed aboard the Soviet Russian
bandwagon, toot-toot-tooting all the way. They loathed their own
country. They simply, in their glib and fancy way, hated it, as had no
other generation in English history. They hated it for its smugness and
complacency. They hated it for being English and they hated it for
making them comfortable while it was unable to feed its own poor. They
regarded the very presence of the poor as a priori evidence of the
corruption of the society. And they loved what little Koba, the red
butcher, was doing in his worker's paradise. It was this, finally, that
so infuriated the major: their willed, forced, self-induced
self-deception.

Major Holly-Browning touched the pile. It was there.

He had dug it out, assembled it, bit by painful bit, as an Etruscan
artist must have assembled a mosaic, in which no one piece has any
meaning, but the pattern was everything!

The evidence was irrefutable. The dates, the places the reports: they
meshed so perfectly. It seemed that Levitsky, who nowhere else in his
career had behaved with anything but utmost care, had been utterly
sloppy around Cambridge in 1931, so contemptuous was he of our lazy
security, our comforting veil of illusion, our pious stupidity.

Levitsky's prime blunder had been a botched come-on to a clerk in the
F.O. in February of '31; from that time on, he'd been identified as a
Bolshevik agent, though it had been assumed from the clumsiness of his
approach that he was a low-ranking, incompetent one. He had been
routinely surveilled on a weekly basis for the next seven months by
Section V, until he left the country for parts unknown. His special
watering hole, the MI-6 investigators noted, was Cambridge. He made
trips there nearly every weekend for the entire seven months. He was
hunting for talent, it was clear. But what talent? Who did he see? Where
did he go? One investigator could have supplied the answers in a weekend
at Cambridge.

He was never followed. In those days, Section V never worked weekends!

But twice Levitsky had not gone when he had been scheduled to. On April
12-15 and May 11-13; and both weekends, Julian Raines had appeared at
prominent London society parties as part of a set of bright young things
that so caught the public's eye that year!

Then there was the matter of the arrest. Levitsky had been picked up by
the Cambridge constabulary late on a Saturday night in March. The
copper, mistrusting his foreign accent and his peculiar ways, had hauled
him off to jail. And who had, the next morning, bailed him out? The
copper, five years later, had recognized the picture.

It was the famous poet, Julian Raines.

And then there was the holiday. In June, Julian had taken off a week to
rusticate in the south of France, Cap d'antibes, to be exact. That same
week, Levitsky, according to Passport Control (which kept impeccable
records) left the country, too; his stated destination was ... southern
France.

Julian's face seemed suddenly to appear in front of Holly-Browning: that
smug, handsome face that seemed to be sweet reason and aesthetician's
grandeur. How he hated that face!

You little bastard. You smirk at your own father hanging on the wire,
trapped in his own guts, too far to reach, his screams louder in the
sulfurous vapors of the attack than the sound of the Maxims or the
Krupps. The major closed his eyes. He could hear those screams still.

Your father died to give you everything and you in turn give us to the
Russians.

Yes. In discreet interview after discreet interview, they all agreed.
Some time during 1931, Julian changed, his friends said. He became
graver, odder, more private, more profligate, sloppier. His own easy
brilliance seemed undercut with what one of his oh-so-sympathetic chums
called "tragic self-awareness." His gaiety was "forced."

What had happened to dear Julian?

Holly-Browning knew. It'll weigh a man down, deciding to betray his
country.

The dates told the rest of the story. Julian had gone out to Spain on
August 4, 1936, three weeks after the outbreak of rebellion. According
to the defector Lemontov, an urgent flash had come to him from Moscow,
graded Priority One, the highest, which ordered him to establish a radio
hookup in a safe house with a transmitter in Barcelona, and to service
it with a code expert, to use the Orange Cipher, the GRU's most private,
most impenetrable, most highly graded secret language. He was then to
prepare to funnel the same information almost immediately back to Moscow
via a second radio link. He was not to decode the information himself
That's how secret it was. The date of the flash? August 5, 1936.

Lemontov had buckled. Making such arrangements was not only expensive
and time consuming but risky.

And this one seemed utterly unnecessary. After all, there were already
enough OGPU and GRU operatives in Spain to Lemontov was curtly ordered
to return to Moscow.

The implication was clear. Someone very high was running a special,
sensitively placed agent and trusted (wisely) none of the usual security
arrangements. It had to mean that a long-term asset was involved, and
who but this old master Levitsky would run long-term assets on a private
channel through Amsterdam to Moscow?

Lemontov realized that Levitsky was running the agent he'd recruited
five years earlier, in England, and that the job was very important. And
Lemontov realized that to return with this information was to die in
Koba's purge.

Julian Raines, you bloody bastard. A stooge for the GRU, for old
Levitsky. You've sold us out. But now we know. And now we can stop you.

"Sir.,, It was Vane, silhouetted in the doorway. Something in his voice
immediately unsettled Holly-Browning.

"Yes, Vane. What is it?"

"Sir, I'm afraid the news isn't good."

Holly-Browning sighed. He waited a heartbeat and said, "Go ahead,
please."

"The ship is evidently overdue." "is that all? Does he send details?"

"No, sir. But there is another bit of news. Signals also monitored a
communication between the Italian diesel submarine D- I I and its home
port at the naval station at Palma on Majorca."

"Yes, Vane?"

"The D- I I claims a kill off Barcelona."

OEM&-"

6

THE WATER WE'RE SINKING," HE ANNOUNCED, TRYING TO SORT OUT what the
bloody hell to do. "We're sinking," he repeated, as if to convince
himself, but at that moment a sailor leaped off the bridge down to them,
bounded by, and launched himself into the darkness.

"Robert, oh God," Sylvia screamed. He held her tightly. Steam had added
itself to the spectacle and curled up everywhere from the decks and out
of hatchways. One of the Turks hollered at them from the bridge but it
was all gibberish. Above, the stars reeled and whirled through the
rising steam.

Florry found himself yelling, "Lifeboat! Lifeboat aft."

Yes, he'd seen it with old Gruenwald that afternoon. "It's this way,
come on."

He pointed in the darkness, aware suddenly that the destination his
finger described also seemed to be the destination of the ship as it
slid into the sea.

He grabbed Sylvia and they began to wobble down the slanting deck, the
old count close behind. The Akim's relationship to the surface had grown
exceedingly tentative. She lurched under their feet as she fought for
some leverage against the sucking waves and the hole in her own guts
that dragged her down. She'd begun not merely to slant but to tilt,
corkscrewing into the sea.

As they moved they found themselves not walking on the deck proper, but
on the juncture between deck and bulkhead, one foot on each, with the
awkwardness of working their way down a gutter. A garish fire blazed up
ahead. It was almost purple in the dark. Florry felt the heat pressing
up from the boards beneath his feet. Smoke and steam mingled in the
atmosphere. He breathed, getting smoke, and coughed. He pulled her hand
along.

"Just a little farther."

"We're going to die."

"Not if we keep our heads."

A sudden BOOM blew a gout of flame out of the hatchway just ahead of
them.

The count screamed.

Chairs and crates plunged about the deck like missiles.

Steam continued to gush from the blown-out hatchway and suddenly a man
crab-walked out in scalded agony, pulled his way to the rail uttering
the name of God--or blaspheming with it-and hurled himself over. The
boiler had ruptured and the live steam was cooking the engine-room crew.
Another man groped in the steam's murk and Florry grabbed for him, but
he fell back and was gone. Florry could hear the screams from inside.

"Come on, damn it," Florry yelled, for Sylvia had seemed to settle back,
and behind her poor old Witte looked numb with shock. The ship,
meanwhile, was steadily rising behind them, seeming to encourage their
progress. Florry yanked her past the hatch, which, as they fled by, made
them wince for the heat it poured out.

"Come on, count," Florry called. "Come on." The old man managed to get
by the opening and the energy seet-ned to liberate him; now he led them
on their plunge through the smoke and steam.

"No. No. Nooooooo."

He stopped and fell to his knees.

"It's ruined. God, it's ruined," and he lapsed into Polish.

And so it was: just ahead, the empty lifeboat hung limply off one davit,
enmeshed in a tangle of ropes. At least a dozen Arabs squawked and
fought and scampered about it, some beating ineffectually on the jammed
pulley, others simply howling insanely against their fates.

"Oh God, we're finished," said Sylvia.

"No," shouted Florry, but even as he insisted, a new burst of steam
ripped up from the decks, and the ship seemed to groan once again in
pain and slipped farther into the water.

"It's no use," sobbed Witte.

Suddenly, with a freakish crack, the second davit broke and the lifeboat
plunged toward the sea. It struck the water with great force in a roar
of foam and flailing lines' Yet even as the foam subsided, it seemed to
emerge intact and afloat and squirt across the surface.

"Can you swim? Sylvia, listen, can you swim?"

"Yes," she muttered through trembling lips.

"Swim for the boat. You'll be safe in the boat."

"Come on, Robert."

"You go. I'll get this old man out."

"Good-bye then."

She lunged to the railing, and with a dive that was almost a jump, she
disappeared over the side.

Florry tugged the old man to the railing. ?"

"Can you swim The old man clung to him tenaciously.

"No," he gulped. "No, I can' t."

"Look, you'll die here for certain. Don't you see? The water is your
only hope."

"Ali, God. To end like this. I-ah, God, it's so---2' "Look, when you hit
the water, look about for wreckage.

Perhaps you can thrash your way to it. Now take off your coat, Count
Witte, and get going. I'll be over next and I'll help you."

"God bless you, Florry."

"Hurry. We'll both be gone if you don't move."

The water was littered with planks and bobbing heads in the purple
flicker of the flames.

"Good luck, old man," Florry said, and rolled him off.

He fell screaming and hit the water with a crash.

The ship yielded further still, and Florry felt it begin to gather
momentum as it descended. He took a last look around and could see that
the stem had broken off and was low in the sea about fifty yards off,
amid hissing bubbles and steam. The stench of petroleum lingered
everywhere and fire moved across the water itself Florry shucked his own
jacket, kicked off his shoes, and leaped. He seemed to hang in the air
for an eternity, until finally the sea's green calm claimed him. Utter
quiet assailed him after the chaos above. In the cold thick murk,
bubbles surrounded him. He fought against the water, but was not
entirely sure which way was up. His legs cramped and knit. His clothes
became leaden, pulling him down. His lungs filled with panic, which
spread to his brain, arriving with an urge to surrender.

But instead, in a spasm of clawing, he broke the surface.

He could see a dozen other bobbing heads and the lifeboat, as yet
tantalizingly empty, just ahead.

He looked about for the girl but saw nothing.

"Sylvia!"

"I'm all right! Where's the old man?"

"Make for the boat! Hurry!"

"Yes. Yes."

Florry looked back toward the ship, which had become nothing but a low
silhouette lit by spurting flames and rising vapor-, it had settled
almost entirely into the water.

A few small oil fires burned on the surface, amid crates and chairs and
other wreckage. The ship gave a final shudder and slid under the water.
It went in backward, its prow last, as if with infinite regret. From all
about, there rose shouts and screams.

"Count Witte!" he shouted. "Count!"

There was no answer.

Florry paddled about a bit. It seemed to have gotten calm suddenly.

"Count Witte!"

There was still no answer. He looked about. The old man was gone. Damn
the luck, he thought bitterly. Gone, gone, gone. Something brushed
against Flony's face in the water. He reached out to touch it with his
finger: it was a rotting cigarette. He looked about in the flickering
light: the surface of the water was jammed with millions of the things,
forming a kind of tobacco scum. "Ahhh." it was the old man, clinging to
a floating portion of the railing. Florry thrashed over to him. His
face, covered with oil, kept flopping forward in the water.

"I have you. I have you. It's just a little ways. You're going to be all
right."

But the old man slipped away. Florry got to him in the water and
struggled oafishly with the limp body; both kept going under. He could
feel his will ebbing. Dump him, he thought. Dump the old fool and save
yourself But at last he seemed to get the old count properly situated,
with his arm under the man's oily neck, and he began to pull himself
with a long stroke through the water toward the lifeboat.

He thought bitterly of Julian, for whom it was always so easy. Lucky
Julian. Julian, why did you hurt me?

He shook his head at the idiocy of it all and continued to plunge ahead.
It seemed to take forever, the long passage through the salty,
ever-colder, every-heavier sea, which grew soupy and finally mushy as
his arms weakened in their thrashing. Twice the salt water flooded his
lungs and he broke stroke, coughing and gagging and spitting, the snot
running from his nose. The old man groaned at one point and tried to
fight away.

"Stop it, damn you," Florry shrieked, tasting sea water.

The old man gargled in agony but seemed to settle down. Florry pressed
on, growing more numb and more insane; at last, nothing seemed left of
the whole universe except the rotten-ripe heaviness of his arms, the
ache in his chest, and the sea water leaking into his nose and throat.
His eyes stung themselves blind and his muscles seemed loose,
unconnected to his bones, which nevertheless continued in their
mechanical clawing. Yet when he at last allowed himself to look, the
surprise was mighty: he had made it. The lifeboat bobbled in the water,
looking immense, a mountain, against the dark horizon.

He got one weary hand up to the gunwale while holding the old man close
to him, and gasped, "Christ, help us."

Quickly, a strong set of hands had him, and then they were pulling Witte
aboard. Florry was slipping away; he was beginning to see things in his
head, odd spangles of lights, patches of colors, whirling patterns of
sparks and flashes. Then the hands had him too, and up he went.

He came to rest with an awkward bang on the floor of the boat, and was
aware of bodies all about him.

"Praise to Allah, all is well," said the man who'd rescued him, who
turned out to be the captain.

"Robert!"

"Sylvia, thank God-I got him. Christ, I got him."

He pulled himself up to a sitting position.

"Is he all right? Is the count all right?"

Two Arabs were working on the old man, slapping him about rather roughly
to get him back to life. Florry saw the old oil-soaked body stir into a
convulsion and he heard the sound of wretching and gagging and then a
cry.

"He's alive," said Sylvia. "You saved him, oh, Robert, he's alive!"

The count sat up.

"Ohhh," he groaned.

And then Florry smelled something so peculiar it made him wince:
peppermint.

He had saved Gruenwaid.

As they huddled together in the flickering light they could see bobbing
heads, which gradually disappeared; perhaps some of the Arabs had
managed to cling to floating wreckage, perhaps not. They could not steer
into the flotsam to save the occasional screamers because they had no
oars and the rudder of the lifeboat had rotted away.

Florry sat in numb exhaustion among the perhaps ten or fifteen others
who had made it to the boat; be wanted to die or curl up and surrender
to sleep. He could not seem to get his mind working properly. Sylvia sat
very close to him. It seemed he was shaking and she was holding him, or
perhaps she was shaking and he was holding her.

"God," she said. "My mother insisted that I take swimming lessons. I
always hated her for it. Oh, Mother, you were so wrong about so much,
but you were so right about the bloody swimming. She's dead, you know,
the poor idiot."

Florry could hardly understand her. Meanwhile, of them all, it was
Gruenwald who recovered with the most amazing speed. He scuttled perkily
through the craft, hopping over the survivors like the lead in a Gilbert
and Sullivan operetta, shouting orders, bellowing crazily to the stars,
commenting acidly on Arab seamanship. The captain cursed him in Turkish
but the old man only laughed at him and at one point a sailor made a
lunge, and Gruenwald squirted away.

"Hah! Nein catchen Gruenwald!"

"A madman," said Florry. "Poor Count Witte."

"Hah. Herr Florry, in za var, much worse. Ja, pretty Englisch lady.
Boats mit kinder, kiddies, go down. Men die in war. Torpedo kill."

"Oh, Lord," said Sylvia wanly. "Mr. Gruenwald, do you think you could
spare us the history lesson."

"Yes, please shut up. We all feel rather terrible."

"Hah. Should feel gut. Ve 'st alive, nein? Hah!"

The first boats to arrive were fishing vessels, and it occurred to
Florry, in watching the fleet spread out across the water, that the
fishermen were more interested in salvage than survivors. The captain
hailed them, but they ignored the call. Soon, however, a large official
boat reached the scene and made straight for the lifeboat. It only took
seconds before they were hauled aboard and wrapped quickly in blankets.

The trip into the harbor was largely anticlimactic. By the time they
arrived, the sun had begun to rise. Florry's first glimpse of Barcelona
was disappointing: he could see the city on the low hills and the por-t
beginning to come alive in the early light. He could see palm trees but
it was still cold and he shivered.

"If I don't get some sleep," said Sylvia, "I think I shall die. They
can't expect much of us when we get there, can they?"

"I hope not," said Florry, unsure of what exactly awaited them.

It turned out not to be much. There were some policemen at the dock and
some officials from the Maritime Commission with a brief to talk to the
officers and some first-aid attendants. Florry found himself explaining
in the Maritime Commission Building, to which they had been removed, who
and what he was to a largely uninterested Spanish youth who gradually
ceased taking notes. it occurred to Florry that they were done with him.
"Where should I go?" Florry asked him. "Find a party," said the boy.
"Barcelona, many parties.

Parties everywhere. Then you can march in our parades."

Florry wasn't sure what this meant-party as in political or party as in
celebration, or possibly, both-but before he could seek an explanation,
he was summarily dismissed and found himself escorted to the street and
abandoned under a palm tree, with only a pair of illfitting plimsoles in
place of his lost shoes to prepare him for the ordeal ahead. By this
time, his clothes had largely dried on his body, even though the breeze
still brought the goose pimples to his skin.

He was standing there with Sylvia, discussing their next move, when it
occurred to him that he still had the silly revolver in the shoulder
holster under his sweater. It had hung there through the ordeal!

"Good heavens," he said to her, "can you believe I still have my pistol!
Isn't that amazing?"

But she was suddenly not listening. Florry looked and saw that she was
watching as first-aid workers were applying bandages to Mr. Gruenwald.

"Well, it's off to the hospital for him," said Florry, yet something was
particularly odd about it all. For one thing, Gruenwald had been unhurt,
and for that reason t seemed unnecessary to bandage him, particularly
about the eyes. His hands were bandaged too, but behind his back.

"I wonder if that's necessary," said Florry.

"You'd best stay out of it," said Sylvia. "I don't like the way it
looks."

The head doctor, an enormous man in a black leather coat with cold eyes
and pitted skin, had just thrown the old man against the side of the
ambulance, which, Florry now realized, was no ambulance at all.

It said POLICIA.

THE INTERROGATION GLASANOV HAD A PREDICTION. HE WAS IN A JAUNTY mood,
close to humor. His life was filled with good cheer and possibility and
with something as close to amusement as Lenny had ever seen on his face.
They were walking through the prison toward the old man's cell.

"He won't sign a thing," predicted Glasanov. "Not a thing. He'll be
intractable. You'll pound your fists to pulp on his skull, Bolodin,
before he confesses." He was almost giddy.

"No," he continued in his lecture-hall manner, "we shall have to break
him down. Assault his illusions, dismantle his vanities, force him to
see reality as it is. Brick by brick, we must disassemble his brain. Oh,
it'll be a test. It'll be a struggle, Bolodin, as you've never seen.

But what fun! Imagine, the old dog himself here, in our humble jail."

Lenny nodded dumbly, as if he were the moron Glasanov clearly believed
him to be, and then issued a grunt of imprecise meaning that Glasanov
took to be stupefied agreement and enthusiasm. Yet, looking at Glasanov.
he recognized a man caught in some vision of higher glory, some scheme
of higher ambition: you saw it in Brooklyn all the time. A dreamer, full
of fancy ideas of what tomorrow would bring.

"I want him sent back to Moscow split," said Glasanov. "I want him
confessed and repentant, not merely captured. Eh, Bolodin, how's that
for a challenge? It's not old Comintern unionists we're dealing with
here, but the GRU's best, a man of iron will, a legend."

They had now reached the corridor that led to Levitsky's cell.

"Get some water. It's time to wake our charge from his baby sleep."

Lenny fitted a bucket under a faucet set in the wall and filled it
brimful with icy water.

It was dark and damp down here, as in fairy tales, all old cobwebs and
ancient stone. The walls showed cruciforms where religious icons had
been smashed down in the first crazed days of the July victory; a number
of grotesque revolutionary admonitions had been painted on the stone and
they stood out like wounds in the harsh glare of electric bulbs that
hung crudely jerryrigged from the ceiling. Glasanov produced a key, an
ancient thing, and with some effort got the stiff old tumblers of the
massive door open. Inside, the old man slept under a thin blanket on a
straw mat under another raw cruciform denoting a smashed symbol of the
untrue faith. The old man wheezed thinly. He looked vulnerable and pale
and in the bad light his skin seemed like old parchment.

Glasanov studied the man for a second without emotion, then nodded to
Lenny, who dashed the water on him. Levitsky sat up instantly with a
howl of pain and a massive, marrow-deep shiver, all naked animal hurt
and outrage. His eyes snapped instantly alert, displaying confusion and
panic for just a second, but the man quickly controlled them, and as
Lenny, standing just behind Glasanov, watched, they seemed to dilate
down into something tightly focused.

"Stand up, old man," Glasanov said with theatrical heartiness miles
outside his character, "we've got work to do."

The old man stood next to the bed, soaked, staring straight ahead. His
eyes were fixed and blank.

"We'll get you singing before long," Glasanov said.

"We'll have you singing like a bird. We'll have all the crimes out on
the table."

Levitsky looked up at his tormentor.

"Glasanov, isn't it?" he asked.

"I'll ask the questions, comrade," said Glasanov.

"Nevertheless, it is Glasanov. Nikolai Illyich, if I'm not wrong. I
remember you from the Baku Conference in 'twenty-seven. You were on
Glitzky's staff. They said you were bright."

"Old man, I'll run things here. This comrade here is quite brutal and I
haven't time for you to impress me with your memory. I'll have him beat
you to turnip mash if you give me cause."

"We both know how absurd that would be. Beat me to turnip mash and
you'll have nothing to ship back to Moscow--except turnip mash."

Lenny, watching the two Russians pick at each other, heard a sigh,
perhaps even involuntary, escape from Glasanov's lips.

"They said you'd be sly. The Devil Himself."

"I'm not sly at all, Comrade Glasanov. I'm an old man without much in
the way of strength or guile. I simply adhere to my beliefs exactly, and
they give me a foundation that careerist scum can never shatter."

"Oh, I'll break you, Comrade Levitsky. I'll split you for Moscow, don't
doubt it. Time, after all, is all on my side. Time, and the considerable
skills of Comrade Bolodin here."

"Your vanity, Glasanov, will kill you sooner than my idealism will kill
me."

"The ribs," said Glasanov. "But not too bad yet."

Lenny went to the old man, hit him hard, once, in the ribs, sending a
spasm through him. As he twisted, Lenny put two more swift right hands
into his solar plexus. He shrieked, falling. Trying to halt himself, he
clung to Lenny, who brought his knee up quickly, catching him between
the legs. The old man slipped loose and went to the floor. He lay there,
wet and trembling. His lips were white. He coughed and heaved
wordlessly, his face drawn in the pain.

"See how quickly the mighty Levitsky is reduced to nothingness," said
Glasanov. "Bolodin exposes you for what you are, Levitsky: pathetic.
With your feeble, ancient disguise, which Comrade Bolodin penetrated
with comical ease. Your pretend accent. You stink of the peppermint
schnapps even now, you pitiful old fool." Glasanov shook his head, as if
in great disappointment. "I had expected so much more from the Devil
Himself. Instead I get an obsolete comic actor from a nineteenth-century
operetta. It actually disgusts me."

He bent over Levitsky and spoke quickly into his ear.

"Now. I ask the questions and you give the answers. If I like the
answer, we go on. If not, Comrade Bolodin here, with his American
efficiency, will hit you in the ribs. He is inexhaustible and
indefatigable and without a brain in his muscular head. Do you see, old
man, how it is to be?"

Levitsky rolled over. His face was gray. His eyes would not focus on
anything in the cell. Glasanov leaned close.

"Now, der Teuful Selbvt, tell me, to begin with. Why Spain?"

Levitsky spat in his face.

In the evening, he lay against the gray cobbles of the cell floor,
breathing raspily. He had been beaten expertly.

The ribs were not broken yet the pain was extraordinary.

Bolodin knew how to take him to the very edge, then bring him back.
Bolodin knew how to inspire the thought that the future would forever
and ever be pain.

He concentrated on not trembling. He tried to will the pain from the
center of his body, tried to drive it out.

Come on, old Devil.

He laughed bitterly. Some devil. Old, infin-n, lying beaten in a Spanish
cell, attended by rats. And so this was how the great adventure ended;
thus it was with all vain and foolish crusades. His plot came to an end
as did his odd, perhaps senile quest, doomed from the beginning, he now
saw, to play in life, in history, in flesh, what he had once played on
the chessboard. The march of folly! the pyre of vanity! the absurdity of
ego!

Too many enemies. You, Koba. And you, Glasanov, Koba's minion. You,
dreadful Amerikanski, with your thunderous fists and your murderous
eyes. And you the English spy-catchers, somewhere lurking in the
distance.

You all want me. You all want Castle.

Castle was doomed. He saw it now. In check. They were closing on him and
would dog him down. Like me, he will cease to exist.

He felt the sweat running down his body, leaving icy tracks. He tried to
sit up but the pain came instantly, seizing him. He tried again and
managed to get himself up against the wall. A victory, a giant victory!

Why fight them? You'll confess in the end, everybody does. Why not give
Glasanov his moment of glory, his tiny triumph? He, too, is doomed, if
not this year then the next. Koba will have him because he stinks of
ambition. The better he does, the more arrests and executions, the more
efficiency with which he routs Koba's enemies, the more completely he
dooms himself. So smart in so many things, Glasanov, can you not see
this one thing?

Then he heard the approach of steps on the stones outside, the click of
the old lock. The door swung open in the dark.

Beyond surprise, Levitsky at least had the capacity for stupefaction.
The figure silhouetted in the harsh corridor light filled the frame.

For a big man, he moved with a rare grace. He moved swiftly, hauling the
door shut behind him, and came to Levitsky. The old man watched him
come, not scared but awed. What? What could-? The Amerikanski bent and
with his strong hands he lifted Lev'tsky's skull from the stones and
turned it this way and that, a queer gentleness in his fingers.

"You stink of the shtetl after all these years," the American said, and
it occurred suddenly to Lev'tsky that he was speaking in Yiddish. The
language flooded back upon him; it had once been his only language,
years ago, ages ago, in the time before there was time.

"Jud, nu?" asked Levitsky.

"Yes. One of the chosen. Raised in a little shit smelling village. And,
like you, old fuck, I remember the day when Cossacks came."

So long ago: Ural Cossacks, Levitsky remembered, in fur hats and
upturned boots, with curved sabers, on great black steaming stallions.
They came out of the trees at daybreak, after a night's drinking. He
remembered the bright blood, the smells of huts burning, the screams,
the heat of the flames, his brother's sobs. He remembered his mother,
butchered, his father, hacked, the bright blood, the woodsmoke, the
heat, the screams. He remembered the horses, brutes that stank of death
and would smash you to nothingness ... "So we changed all that,"
Levitsky said. "We made a revolution."

"Fuck the revolution."

Levitsky stared at the huge shape above him. Had he been sent to kill
him? He could do it easily, with his thumbs. But why now, in the dark?
Why not with the p'stol?

I "So what do you want, comrade? A confession? You should fuck goats."

"To help you."

"Excuse me, I'm hearing things, no?"

"To help you. I help you, you help me. A deal.

Between two Jews."

"So talk. I'm not going anywhere."

"A certain name, old man. Give the name, and I'll get your ass out of
here."

"What name?" said Levitsky.

"The name that no one speaks. The English boy, whose soul you own, old
devil."

"What boy?"

"You call him Castle, after a chess thing. Surprised?

You didn't think anybody knew. But I knew!"

Levitsky felt the closeness of the huge man. He let the moment linger.
He felt an awful stillness settling through him. A new player on the
board.

"Don't play with me. I can kill you in a second. Or in a second you can
walk out of here to America. You can be a writer for the Daily Forward,
huh? And sit in the park with all the other East Side dreamers and talk
revolution.

Give the name!"

Levitsky tried to concentrate, to calculate the chain of possibilities.
How could he know? What had he learned?

Who told him? Who sent him?

"I have no names."

"You have a bellyful of names. In England in 'thirty-one, with
Tchiterine and Lemontov. Lemontov's gone and Tchiterine's in the ground
a few hundred feet from here. Give me the name of this English boy, or
so help me I'll put you in the ground alive and you can die by slow
degrees you never dreamed of in this world."

And so Levitsky saw his chance. The big American Bolodin had made his
mistake. He had revealed exactly how important the information was to
him.

"Kill me, and you'll never know anything. But give me a night to think
and maybe there's this deal you keep telling me about."

"After tomorrow, there may not be enough to give an answer."

"I may surprise you, Bolodin. I may surprise you."

The American snorted.

"I'll go easy. But I'll come back at night for the answer, and if it
isn't the right answer, then I'll go so hard you'll pray for death. And
God doesn't work this neighborhood."

At dawn, Levitsky lay on his pallet. He knew he had two simple choices:
suicide or escape.

Consider: a locked cell in some sort of Spanish monastery. In a few
hours, Glasanov would arrive and the beatings would begin anew. Another
day's torture would leave him just that much weaker and less able to
escape or resist, and the Amerikanski would be back at night for his
answer. But there really was no answer: if he told, the Amerikanski
would kill him quickly. If he didn't, the Amerikanski would kill him
slowly. Either way, Levitsky perished, and with Levitsky gone Castle was
open to assault.

It occurred to Levitsky that he had reached the climax of his life. The
chess master, designer of elegant combinations and stratagems, now faced
his greatest test, and it was a simple puzzle. He looked about, as if to
study. This puzzle might not have a solution. The cell was vaulted; it
had one barred window; it was, at least, at ground level.

Levitsky ran his fingers painfully over the mortar of the old stones.
No, it was solid, undisturbed except by tears for centuries. He turned
his attention to the window. The iron of the bars felt ancient and cold,
tempered in medieval fires and set in the stone to last until the
arrival of God the Father on earth. His hands locked about and tested
each. They had no give at all. Next, the door.

It, too, seemed ancient, a collection of polished oak slats, massively
thick and heavy, held together with iron bands. The hinges were on the
outside, beyond reach.

The lock only remained. He bent to it. Hmmmmm. It was not at least a
dead bolt, but a tumbler mechanism, old iron, black and hard.
Well-oiled. It could be picked, perhaps, with a pick. But he had no
pick.

His examination of the physical possibilities of the cell had exhausted
him. His bruised ribs hurt furiously. He closed his eyes: sleep came
toward him. He fought it off--or did he? For an instant he was back in
the water after the ship had gone down, knowing he would die, until the
Englishman's strong hands had pulled him back to life.

For this?

I should have died, nu?

He blinked awake: the same cell. How much time had passed, how much time
had he lost?

He went to the window: the sun was coming up. He could see they were on
a hill on the outskirts of the city: he could see across the way a
chapel, now abandoned, desecrated, the doors blasted off, the interior
blackened by flame, all the windows shattered. It was a dead building.
The Church, enemy of the people, enemy of the masses, at last feeling
the full brunt of their wrath. The nuns raped and beaten, perhaps -shot;
the processes of history were never pleasant and only made sense in the
longer view.

Another cracked smile passed over Levitsky's face.

Old nuns, old mother superior, facing the workers' bayonets and the hour
of your death, how just you'd see it that a man like Levitsky should
perish on the same blasphemed ground. You'd cackle at the perfection of
it-an old revolutionary professional, me, der Teuful Selbst, devoured by
the very forces he'd thought to understand and master and that he'd
liberated.

He turned away from the window and stared at the scab left in the stone
where an old cross had been beaten down from the wall. It was, he now
saw, a room of death.

What was a cross except a way to kill a man in slow, horrible agony, a
long day's dying. Maybe that's why the Jews could never make sense of
it: worship an execution device. Strange, these Christians.

He might not be the first Jew in this cell. Others, four hundred years
ago, may have been held here, facing the same choice he would face:
renounce your faith of die.

Which was really, renounce your faith and die. They would have been men
like his father, men of decency but without weapons. What would they,
having squandered their gifts for analysis and dialectic on the Talmud
in five thousand years of hushed, devotional study, have made of their
torturers?

Levitsky felt it sliding away. He had trained himself so hard over the
years to a certain pitch of revolutionary toughness: to see only what
was real, what was important. Always to move to the heart of the issue.
Always to be without illusion. Never to waste time in pointless
bourgeois memory, nostalgia, and sentiment. To be, after the Great
Lenin, a hard man. Now, when he needed them most, these difficultly
acquired disciplines had simply vanished.

He sat down, under the mocking cruciform. The crucifiers were coming. It
was another memento mori, teasing him, a monument to the dead "The sleep
will have done him some good," said Comrade Commissar Glasanov. "He'll
see the hopelessness of his situation. He'll see the inevitability of
surrender, the rightness of it. You know, Bolodin, I'm somewhat
disappointed. I had expected something more impressive."

Lenny nodded as if a stupid man.

"These old Bolsheviki, at least they were realists. They understood what
was required."

They reached the end of the corridor in the yellow morning light. The
door, solid and massive, lay before them.

"Open it," said Glasanov.

Lenny took the big brass key and inserted it into the hole and felt the
tumblers yield to his strength. He pulled the door open. They entered.

"Well, Comrade Levitsky, I hope began Glasanov, halting only when he
realized Levitsky was gone.

ON THE RAMBLAS FLORRY SLEPT FOR A DAY AND A HALF IN A ROOM ON THE sixth
floor of the Hotel Falcon, which he and Sylvia chose, in their delirium,
on the strength of one of Julian's pieces, which had described it as the
"hotel of the young and bold."

When he finally stirred from his dreamless sleep, it was night. Someone
was with him in the room.

"Who's there9" he asked, but he knew her smell.

"It's me," she said.

"How long have I been out?"

"Quite some time. I've been watching you."

"God, how boring. I'm ravenous."

"There's a curfew. You'll have to wait for morning."

"Oh."

"How do you feel?"

"I feel fine, Sylvia. I'm rather pleased to be alive, come to think of
it."

"I am too. Robert, you saved my life. Do you recall?"

"Oh, that. Good heavens, what a terrible mess. I think I was saving my
life and you just happened to be there."

She sat on the bed.

Tor "We're all alone."

She was very near.

"Do you know, Sylvia," he said, "I'm rather glad I met you." Then,
surprised at his own boldness, he took her to him and kissed her. It
felt like he always knew it would, only better. She stood up.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm undressing," she said.

He could see her in the dark, a blur. She was quickly shedding her
gan-nents with a kind of athletic simplicity.

She stepped out of her chemise and he could see her breasts in the dark
and sense their weight. They were very small and pearshaped and lovely.
Her hips were slim, her belly flat and tight. She walked to him and he
could smell her sweetness. She had his hand.

"Touch me," she said, moving it to her breast. "Here.

Feel it. Hold it."

It was warm and Ul. Beneath it, her heart beat. She was so close. There
was nothing else in the world except Sylvia.

"I've wanted you for so long," he could hear himself saying.

Their mouths crushed together; Florry felt himself losing contact with
the conscious world and entering a new zone of sensation. Sylvia was
tawny, sinewy, and athletic-very strong, surprisingly strong as she
pulled him to the bed. Florry was surprised that in his fumbling rush in
the moon-vivid room and among the thunder of images and feelings and
experiences that raced across him he didn't want to miss anything,
anything at all. Her breasts, for example, upon which he suddenly felt
as if he could spend a lifetime. They were a marvel of economy and
grace. He wanted, strangely, to eat them, and he tried eagerly.

"Oh, God," she moaned, sprawled beneath him. "Oh, God, Florry, that
feels so good."

She became increasingly lyric yet increasingly abstract: he was
astonished that she had enough sense to talk-for she continued, in a
froggy voice, to comment upon events-when language had been banished
from his mind.

He put his hand into her cleft, feeling the moist surrender, the
eagerness, and it was quite something, the extent to which she'd become
smooth and open and liquefied to him; her whole body had liquefied and
then began to tense and arch and crack like a whip.

And then there came a time to shut her up at last with a kiss and it
felt as if he were at the center of an explosion, so plummy and sweet,
so crammed-full, so bloody perfect, like a line of poetry against his
skull.

"Hurry, darling," she whispered. "I can't wait. God, Florry, hurry."

He raced on to the act's finale, entering her and falling through into a
different universe.

"Do it," she commanded, and he completed the exchange, sinking in
further, rising to gather strength to sink again. It had become a thing
of rising and sinking: high, off, and distant followed by the giddy
plunge, the surrender to the gravity of pleasure, and then climbing back
up again.

"Yes, yes, yes," she was saying and the last bond of restraint snapped
and the whole universe seemed to transmute into a phenomenon of optics:
lights, lights, lights, lights. He felt a screeching moment in which he
seemed at last to slide beneath the surface, while at the same time
exactly clinging to her as she was to him, as if in recognition that
each had only the other in protection against the world.

"Do you know what's odd?" Sylvia asked the next morning. "It's the
history. It's everywhere. Can you feel it? One is actually at the center
of history."

Florry nodded dreamily, although at the moment he would have preferred
to find the center of his overalls.

They were roomy, Spanish things of one huge piece, rather like an
aviator's or a mechanic's suit. They were of worn, rough, blue cotton,
and they had been donated to the cause of his depleted wardrobe by the
POUM, which turned out to control the Hotel Falcon.

POUM stood for the Party of Marxist Unification, in the Spanish, which
was more colloquially and less tendentiously translated into English as
the Spanish Worker's Party; its initials were everywhere in the city, as
it was one of the largest and most enthusiastic of the several
contending revolutionary bodies within Barcelona proper, but it did not
quite control the city. It did not even control itself, it did not
control anything. It was something more than a splinter group but
perhaps not quite a mass movement on the scale of the gigantic union
organizations that had dominated Barcelona for so long. In a sense it
simply was, in the way that a mountain is there. It was more a monument
to a certain pitch of feeling than an actual political movement: it
stood for how things would be, as opposed to how they had been. Florry
understood it to be loosely affiliated with the Anarcho-Syndicalists,
another large, dreamy, semipowerful group, equally enthusiastic, equally
long on vision for the next century while short on vision for the next
day. In fact if the POUM and the Anarchists stood for anything beyond a
set of vague words like victory and equality and freedom, they seemed to
stand for having a smashing time while trampling the rubble of the old.

Down with what was; what would come simply had to be better, even if
nobody had any good idea what that was. The POUMISTAS, nevertheless, had
taken control of the Falcon, here on the Ramblas. What was more, they
sponsored the largest of the militias, the Lenin Division, now
entrenched outside of Huesca two hundred fifty miles to the east in the
foothills of the Pyrenees, the closest authentic "war" to Barcelona.

But Florry, still sluggish after the business of the night, understood
what she meant.

"Yes, it is odd," he replied. There was something particular in the air,
and to come to it, straight out from tidy England, was to feel its power
in a particularly undiluted dosage. They'd heard the theories all these
years, the fashionable arguments, the intellectual fancies spun in
cigarette-smoke-filled rooms, the shouted dreams, the fevered visions.
The optimism of it was like a virus, the hope like a fantasy. Yet here
it was, or at least one early model, clearly clunky, a wheezing,
puffing, whirling gizmo, but the thing itself. the classless society.

"It fills one with hope," Sylvia said. "It's how things could be; it's
how they should be."

Florry nodded, unsure of the feelings in his own heart just then, but
somehow in agreement with her. They sat in the sunlight at a table at
the Car& Moka, which occupied the ground-floor corner of the Hotel
Falcon, surprised at the warmth and sunlight of January, which in its
way was oddly appropriate. They sipped car@ con leche and watched the
parade. For the revolution was a parade.

Down the Ramblas, a wide thoroughfare that ran a mile from the Plaza de
Catalunya to the port, in never-ending columns, the revolutionary masses
tramped. To watch it, one felt, was almost a privilege; it was quite a
moment for the tired old world.

"God, look at them," Sylvia said, her face flushed, her eyes vivid.

"It's the biggest parade there ever was," said Florry, speaking the
truth, but leaving unsaid and unanswered the question of ultimate
destinations.

And for this parade, Barcelona had tarted herself up in a new garb, as
if part of the joy were in the costumes; the whole population had become
workers, it seemed. It was, for the first time in the history of the
world, fashionable to be a worker. Everybody wore the blue monos of the
working class, or the khaki of the fighting militias. Even the prosaic
public transportation contrivances wore costumes: the trams up and down
the Ramblas moved like vast floats, pulling their cargo through the
crowds; all wore a gaudy red-and-black scheme and all of them sported
the giant initials of their particular political affiliations. At the
same time the autos and trucks had been liberated to political purpose
and they, too, wore their allegiances as proudly as old guardsman's
chevrons. It was a Mardi Gras of revolutions, a reveler's revolution.

The air was full of confetti and music and history. Festive banners
flapped from the balconies of the buildings to the leafless trunks of
the trees of the Ramblas or were strung in crudely painted, sagging,
dripping majesty from balcony to lamp pole, offering a cheerful variety
of exhortations to the duties that still lay ahead.

THEY SHALL NOT PASS FASCISM WILL BE BURIED HERE TO HUESCA! TO HUESCA!

UNITE, WORKERS IN UNION, LIBERTY DEATH TORIE BOURGEOISIE!

Huge portraits from the revolutionary pantheon hung everywhere, heroic,
kind, knowing faces, the faces of saints. Florry knew the key figures:
Marx and Lenin, the woman called La Passionaria, an intense intellectual
fellow named Nin, head of POUM; and some other Spaniards whom he didn't
recognize. Only the Soviet Man of Steel, Stalin, was missing, unwelcome
down here among the unruly libertarians; but he held great sway not half
a mile away at the vast Plaza de Catalunya, where the PSUC, the
Communist Party of Catalonia, under Russian guidance, had taken over the
Hotel Colon and turned that ceremonial space into a small block of
downtown Moscow.

There was noise, too, on the Ramblas, noise everywhere: a din of singing
and gramophone recordings, the clash of a dozen different tongues,
Spanish and Catalonian the most popular only by a narrow margin, the
others being English, French, German, and Russian. The air had filled
with sunlight and the dust and the noise and the smell of flowers and
petrol and horses and sweets.

Sensation piled atop sensation, sight atop sight.

"It's like a new world," Sylvia said. "It's like a different world
altogether. It's like some year in the future."

Florry didn't know what to say. The extent of her passion somewhat
astonished him. She had not referred to last night.

"I want to believe in it so much," Sylvia said. "It explains so many
things to me."

She was quite right, of course. So pure was the sense of revolution, the
ether of justice deferred for so long but arriving at last, that to
breathe it was to endorse it: the joyous madness of Starting Over, of
Doing Right, of the Just State. To be in the birthing room of history,
as a new age attempted to wrench itself into life! Florry, sitting
there, could feel the sentiment move through his bones.

Yet even now, in the blooming ardor, with the mood of purpose as heavy
as perfume all about him, Florry could not prevent the coming of doubts.
How much, one could ask, of all this was simple illusion. Parades,
speeches, leaping peasants: the future?

Or was the future old Gruenwald removed by the police for reasons
unknown? What about poor, drowned Witte, lost in the night, and the
hundred unknown Arab crewmen sucked under the black water?

"Your face is so long, Robert."

"I was thinking of Count Witte."

"Dead and gone," she said. "The poor man."

"Yes." He reached over and took her hand.

"I was also thinking of us, Sylvia. Not of history, not of progress or
justice. No, us. Is that fair, Sylvia? Do I have that right?"

"I like it when you touch me," she said. "I like it very much."

"Here we sit, Sylvia, in the brave new world. And you tell me you like
it when I touch you. Are you part of my illusion, Sylvia? Tell me,
please. Am I misreading you?

Am I weak and sentimental and seeing things that aren't there?"

Her face clouded in the sunlight. There was a particular burst of music
from somewhere, so loud it made him wince. A haunted look came to her
face.

"I just wonder if there's time for us," she said. "In all this."

A troop of khaki cavalry was moving down the Rambias, the horses' hooves
clattering on the cobblestones.

From this distance, they looked fierce and proud, a conceit of glory and
destiny.

am "I like you so very, very much. I just want time for this.

Not the revolution really, but the experience of it. I've never been
anyplace so exciting, I've never been so close to history. I never will
again. I want some time to ... to have my experiences. That is what I
came for, for my experiences. Do you see what I'm saying?"

"Well, Sylvia, I suppose I do. Still, the truth is--God help me for
finding the courage to face it at last-I suppose the truth is that I
love you. Comical, isn't it? Well, let's do be grown up about the whole
thing. Yes, let's do be fhends."

"Last night was wonderful. Do you see? But there's so much more to it
than just the simple business of how we feel.,, "I suppose there is."

"There's so much to do still."

Florry said nothing. Yes, he had things to do, too.

"Your friend Julian has joined up. I talked to some of the party
members. He no longer represents his little magazine. Now he represents
the People. With a capital P, one supposes. He's joined the POUMISTA
Lenin Division. He's out in the trenches at Huesca. He's in the war.

God, Robert, now there's a man."

The admiration in her voice almost killed him.

"Well, Sylvia," he heard himself saying, "well, then you may get your
introduction to the great Julian after all. Because I shall be there,
also."

"Yes," said David Harold Allen Sampson, "yes, I suppose you are Florry,
even if you don't have the item."

Sampson turned out to be a youngish, gray chap with flat eyes and a
vaguely chilly manner, though handsome in a certain pampered way. He had
a toneless, measured BBC announcer's voice and when he talked he tended
to look away, into space, as if fixed on the stars. He looked as if he'd
seen nearly everything there was to see in the world, even if he was
only thirty.

"I say, Sampson, with the ship sinking and people dying all about, one
would hardly have headed down to one's cabin to dig up Tristram Shandy."

"It's your rudeness that convinces me. Only Eton could teach it and the
bloody Bolshies haven't got good enough yet to turn out bogus Etonians.
Yes, I suppose I must believe you are Florry."

He took a sip of his whiskey. They sat on hard chairs at a marble topped
table in the dark and smoky interior of the cafe de las Ramblas, an
old-fashioned place of high Mediterranean style much favored by the
English press in the wearying heat of the afternoon when the Spaniards
laid aside their furious revolution for the age-old custom of siesta.

"And now you propose to go off to the front. As a common soldier, no
less. God, Florry, one would think after that awful experience with that
damned boat, you'd want nothing but two weeks in hospital."

"That's not important. What's important is Julian."

"Good heavens, they didn't tell me you were cut of such heroic stuff,"
Sampson said, manfully restraining his excess enthusiasm.

"I simply want to get the business over."

"I shall so inform them. We shall see what they say."

"I certainly am not going to wait about," said Florry, "for the major
and his fruity assistant to make up their minds. I'm going to the Lenin
barracks first thing tomorrow. Is that understood?"

"Florry, you needn't be bloody shirty in this matter."

"You see, I'm anxious to be on with it. Do you know why?"

"I suppose I cannot prevent you from telling me."

"Because I am sick of the whole thing. I want to do what must be done
and get on with it."

"Good," Sampson said. "You should know that we believe that Julian's
sign up is another step in the proof, so to speak. Another whiskey? Boy!
Good heavens, I'm supposed to call him 'comrade,' as if he's an old
school chum. Comrade! Another round, please."

The sounds of gaiety had suddenly begun to pick up from the
out-of-doors. Florry could hear a snatch of music, the rush of many
voices. The afternoon sing had begun.

Arise, ye prisonerv of starvation Arise, ye wretched of the earth For
Justice thunders condemnation A better world's in birth.

"Wonderful sentiments, eh?" said Sampson, with his tight, prim, fishy
smile. "It's a pity they go about murdering chaps, isn't it?"

"Get on with it, Sampson. The game isn't amusing anymore.,, Sampson
smiled. He was enjoying the game immensely.

"We have been aware for some time that the Russian secret police's
intelligence on its factional rivals-the POUM, the Anarchists, the trade
unions, the bloody parade marcbers-has been exceedingly good. In fact,
there seems to be a secret war going on. Key people in the opposition
disappear in the dead of night; they turn up dead, or they never turn up
at all, they simply vanish.

It's just a racket, isn't it? One mob of gangsters rubbing out another.
But the Russians have got to know who to take, eh? Can't just take
anybody. And so who better to go among the enemy than a seemingly
innocent British journalist with a brilliant, wondrous, easy charm? It
fits with what we know. He wouldn't report to anybody here, except some
control fellow, who would send his information straight back to Moscow
via the Amsterdam route that was so important to them. Then the orders
go out from Moscow; there's no direct contact between Julian and the
local goons. He's never compromised. It's quite clever."

Flony stared at him.

"So it's murder, then? Yet another level of debauchery."

"In for a penny, in for a pound. Now it appears this secret war may be
moving into another, perhaps ultimate, phase. What better way, really,
to get to the inner workings of POUM than to place their best agent
among its militia, near to its military headquarters at La Granja? And,
for the record, it doesn't appear that he's in any great danger. The
real fighting's still around Madrid. Out near Huesca, it's mostly
potting about in the mud. If one keeps one's bum down, one has an
excellent chance at surviving. The only thing he's really given up is
his abundant corps of female admirers. Still, one has to do what one
must for the wonderful revolution, eh?"

"You're as cynical as a whore."

"The profession inclines one thus. And it is, come to think of it,
rather a brothel. And I must say I take the cynic's pleasure in
another's discomfort: the idea of Julian Raines potting about in the mud
is quite amusing.

At university, he and his lot were such dandies."

"You knew him?"

"Everybody knew him. He has a gift for getting known, quite apart from
other gifts."

Florry took a drink of the whiskey.

"So if you must go off and be a hero for that lovely girl, then, go,"
said Sampson. "Perhaps it may even work out for the best."

It suddenly dawned on Florry how much Sampson had thought about all
this. "I've made it easy on you, haven't I?" he said.

Sampson smiled. Florry hated him.

"I suppose you have. You rather conveniently started where I had hoped
to finish. The major's most recent communication reached me last night.
He said it was imperative that you join the Lenin Division. He left it
to me to engineer a way. You spared me that, old man."

"You are a whore, Sampson."

"Of course I am. But one likes to think of oneself as a good whore. But
let's not part enemies, old man, even if we did go to different public
schools. If you've a mind, do drop in, and bring that girl. I've rented
a villa out in the Sarrea district. Big, damned drafty place, rather
nice.

They go for a song these days. I'll have my man do up a nice meal. We'll
have a bash."

Florry got up to leave. "Er, it sounds fine. Let me give you a ring on
it or something."

"Splendid. By the way, there's one other interesting little tidbit that
might be of some help to you," Sampson said.

He turned back.

"Yes. There's a rumor afoot that Julian's old friend Levitsky is in
Barcelona. You might keep your eye open."

"And how would I know Levitsky? Do you think me a mind reader?"

"Good God, no. But you would know him because you arrived with him. He
traveled undercover on that ship.

He survived the sinking too, evidently."

Florry looked at the fishy young Englishman who smirked up at him. Yet
what he suddenly felt was the memory of an odor.

Peppermint.

IGENKO LEVITSKY, FROM THE WRNDOW, WATCHED IGENKO APPROACH.

The man was prissy, a bit pudgy. His white suit wore immense,, dark
crescents under the armpits. He needed a shave. He looked desperately
uncomfortable.

Come, little one, Levitsky thought.

The man wandered with not a small amount of trepidation the winding,
evil-smelling, narrow streets of the Barrio Chino, which was just
beginning to fill with customers as the night began. Even the revolution
had not halted the practice of certain ancient professions and in the
Barrio Chino, in the warren of overhanging buildings, balconies bright
with wash, amid the smell of garbage and piss, amid the little bars
where Spanish men stood and ate and talked the nights away, the tarts
had come out, mingling with sailors, soldiers, politicians, and
revolutionaries; a hundred little nightclubs had half open doors that
promised certain otherwise unavailable delights inside.

As Levtisky watched, prim, chubby Igenko tried to melt into the
cosmopolitan crowd, evidently terrified first that he was under
observation by the NKVD and second that he might be stopped by an
Anarchist patrol. For the Anarchists controlled the Barrio Chino, which
is why it was able to flourish, but the Anarchists were not terribly
fond of Russians.

But the man was stopped by no one, fortunately, and after a time
consulted a watch. He seemed to take a deep breath, as if in search of
his courage, and, with a last glance at the world around him, ducked out
of sight.

Levitsky waited. He could imagine poor Igenko's ordeal as he negotiated
the protocols of the brothel. In time, Levtisky knew he approached: he
could hear the girls cooing. 11.

Hey, sugar tits, come see me, I'll make a man out of you."

"Put your little thing in a woman's hole, princess."

"Lick my tittles and I'll show you things you never saw in your life,
dolly."

Poor Igenko, pretending to stoicism. Teenage boys frequently yelled
things at him and the whores knew, too.

Levitsky wondered-how did they know? So surely, how did they know? How
did everybody know?

Outside the door, they stopped.

"In here," Levitsky heard the girl say. "Now give me the money."

There was a pause, as lgenko dug through his wallet.

"You Russians," she said. "Through the eyes and the nose, you all look
the same. Fat or thin, you all look the same." She left him.

Igenko opened the door and stepped into the darkness. "lvanch? Ivanch,
are you there?" he called, using the most intimate abridgment of
Levitsky's middle name.

"Were you seen?" "lvanch, thank God you're all right."

"Close the door!" Levitsky hissed.

Igenko closed the door. There were another few seconds of silence and
then the light came on.

"God, Ivanch. You look dreadful."

"God had nothing to do with it, I assure you," said Levitsky. He held
himself with grave care, because the pain was still intense. His face
was pinched and drawn.

Yet it was Igenko who seemed close to coming apart.

He sat on the bed, heaving and breathing wretchedly, struggling for his
breath, his pallid skin becoming chalkier. "It's so terrible. They beat
you?"

"Of course they beat me. They're serious about their work."

Igenko began to weep. He covered his eyes with his dainty handkerchief
and made sniveling sounds. "Is it really that awful?" said Levitsky.
"You were such a handsome man. To see you like this is almost more than
one can take."

"Don't concern yourself It's nothing I won't recover from."

"We heard that you were here. There were rumors.

That the NKVD had-" "What about my escape?" "Nothing. Nothing at all.
That is why I was so stunned when your note reached me."

Levitsky laughed harshly, through pain.

"Glasanov has gotten himself into a terrible mess. He can't let anybody
know I'm gone or he's on his way back to Moscow for a bullet in his
neck. So he must catch me without officially admitting I've flown. Let's
see him bluff his way out of this!" He enjoyed it immensely. "lvanch,
how did you manage to-"

Levitsky laughed again.

"Don't concern yourself One simply does what one must."

But it had been quite simple. Levitsky laughed at the memory. They are
so stupid, these new fellows. Some inheritors! He looked about the cell
in his hour of need and noted by the variation of color on the stone
that for centuries a crucifix had been hung above the pallet. He
reasoned that surely such a device must have been affixed to the stone
in some fashion or other. It didn't take much cunning to find a nail
sunk in the crevices of the stone-an ancient thing, there for centuries.
A strong tug and it was his.

He felt his trophy in his pocket now-a wicked lance of black iron,
perhaps four inches long.

He used it to pick the lock. Then, reasoning he had no chance to escape
in full daylight, he simply slipped into the cell next door, where his
hardest problem was to stifle his laughter during the great Commissar
Glasanov's rage. When he and his Amerikanski finally left, Levitsky went
back to his original cell, figuring that it would be the safest place.
He waited there until nightfall, then made his way out.

"I suspected that an Anarchist neighborhood would offer the least chance
of NKVD observation, and so here I am. Safe, if not quite sound," he
told Igenko.

"You are brilliant, Emmanuel. As usual. You always were." Igenko's
little eyes shone with respect and admiration.

He reached and touched Levitsky on the knee, with a weak, hopeful smile.
"I've always been your staunchest supporter. Your greatest admirer. You
know that."

"I need help, Ivan Alexyovich. I need it badly."

"I understand. You can trust me. I owe you so much. I will do anything
for you."

"Yes.

"Anything. Use me in any way to advance your plan."

"All right. All right, Alexyovich."

Igenko began to weep. He put his head down on the bed and cried.
Levitsky stroked the back of his fat neck and crooned to him gently.

"It's been so long," Igenko said.

"So many years. Since 1919. Come on, wipe your tears, old Ivan
Alexyovich. Stop whimpering."

"I'll be all right, now that you're here."

"Of course you will."

"I know I can help. I'm a clerk in the Maritime Commission. I know
people in the port. People owe me things. I've done favors. I can get
you out. I can get you on a ship. To Africa maybe, to America, even."

"No.

"Emmanuel, they'll kill you. Glasanov and his monster Bolodin. They're
feared everywhere in Barcelona. The Comintern people dread them. The
radicals and the Anarchists are terrified of them."

His voice rose in pitch; he was verging on hysteria.

"Listen, Ivan Alexyovich, please. Calm yourself, and listen. I need
money. And I need a place to go to earth for a while. It's only a
question of a few days before they begin to run down the brothels, even
in the Anarchist neighborhoods."

"Glasanov controls the SIM, and the SIM is every where."

"I know. That's why time is so desperate. But mostly I need papers.
Above all, I need papers. I need to be somebody."

"I can give you money. I have twenty pieces of gold.

I've had them for years. I can sell them. And I can find a place where
you can hide. And as for the papers-well, it's not my line, but I can
certainly try."

"And one last thing. That watch. The watch is important to me."

"Why, yes. Of course. You gave it to me, of course. I give it back."

"Thanks, old friend."

Levitsky took the thing from Igenko, quickly strapped it to his wrist.

"Here. Take what little money I have now," Igenko said. He pushed over a
wad of pesetas. "I'll get the gold tomorrow."

"Are you observed?"

"Evervbody is observed. The NKVD is everywhere, just like the SIM."

"They are the same, one supposes."

"I am not observed regularly. I've some freedom."

"All fight. I'll move to another bordello tonight. Can you get back to
me tomorrow?"

"I-I think."

"On the Ramblas, across from the Plaza Real. Among the stalls in the
center. There's one where an old lady sells chicken on a spit. Do you
know it?"

"I'll find it."

"Meet me there at seven. Carry a briefcase. You have a briefcase?"

"Yes.

"If you think you've been followed, carry it in your ht hand. If you
know it's safe, carry it in your left. Do you understand?"

"Yes. Right, danger; left, safe."

"As it once was in politics."

"Please be careful, Ivanch. Please." He touched Levitsky's thigh in an
absentminded way.

"Ivan Alexyovich, if you help me, we can both get away. You and me,
we'll get out, in just a few days.

We'll go to America together."

"Yes.,, "Go now. Hurry, so that you aren't missed at the Colon."

Igenko stood to leave, but paused. "lvanch, it's wonderful that you're
here."

The fat man smiled. "And I want you to know, whatever you do. Whatever.
It's all right. Do what you must.

Do you understands"

Levitsky looked at him. "I'll do what I have to, Ivan Alexyovich."

Igenko hurried out.

Levitsky stood up slowly, feeling the ache in his ribs.

You are an old man. You are nearly sixty, much too old for this.

He turned and saw himself in the mirror. He snapped the light out
quickly, for he could not look upon his own face.

It was a question of timing, of careful calibration. Levitsky had
decided that six was the ideal hour; an hour later and they would have
too much time to think, to plot out the various possibilities, to
counter plan against his game. An hour earlier and they might not be
able to bring it off. the system would break down somewhere and he'd pay
his dear price for nothing.

Accordingly, he left the barrio at five the next afternoon, at last
reaching the crowded Ramblas and turning it, toward the Plaza de
Catalunya. Oh, the cafes were UP jammed this bright late afternoon,
beginning to fill up for another evening of celebration. All revolutions
always love themselves first; it is a rule. As he climbed along the
central strip, walking among the trees and benches and stalls and street
lamps, the busy density of the place momentarily dizzied him. The hunted
man is safest in crowds, and here the masses were a torrent. Bright
banners, heroic proclamations, bold portraits flapped off the buildings.
Several of the cafes had been reconsecrated to political usage, as well
as alcoholic: the UGT had one, and so did the FAI and the POUM; it was
like a bazaar of crazed political ideas. He continued, until he reached
the splurge of freedom of the open space of the plaza itself, where the
last of the great battles of July had been fought and students and
workers and slum boys had overwhelmed the army's final position at great
loss. He traversed the martyred ground, avoiding the Hotel Colon on one
side, with its PSUC banner and its huge picture of the great Koba and
its smart NKVD troops at their machine-gun nests behind the sandbags and
the barbed wire. He headed instead to another key building in the
fighting, the Telefonica, whose facade was still pocked with bullet
marks from the battle. It was the central telephone exchange, and who
controlled it, controlled all communications in Barcelona. But before he
reached it, Levitsky stopped to check Igenko's watch: quarter to six.

He was early. He sat on a bench. A parade started up as Levitsky waited.
He looked at it with some contempt.

Parades!

He watched as the ragtag Spanish cavalry marched down the street. The
beasts were not well-trained, and the troopers had difficulty holding
them in the formation. He could see them scuffle and pull at their
reins. A shiver passed through him. Horses were such terrible creatures.

At precisely six o'clock, he crossed the wide street and entered the
exchange. He found himself in a vast central office. A man came up in
the uniform of one of the crazy anarchist groups. Anarchists running a
telephone exchange? It was madness.

Business, comrade?" ,:Of the most urgent kind," Levitsky said.

You are foreign. Come to help our revolution or to loot it?"

Does this answer?" said Levitsky, and he rolled up his right sleeve to
show a tattoo on his biceps. It was the tattoo of a black fist.

"You are one of us, then. Salud, brother. It looks as if it's been there
a few years."

" Almost as long as the arm itself. From the time before there was
time."

"What business have you?"

To place a call."

"Go on, then. While it's there. When at last we tear down the government
we will also tear down the telephone lines, and then all men will be
free."

"And so they will," said Levitsky. God: the Anarchists.

They were still the same dreamers!

He went to the counter.

A girl came up.

"How much?" he asked her. "Rather, how much, comrade?"

She smiled, so young and pretty.

"Ten pesetas."

:, The Anarchists have not yet outlawed money?" "Perhaps tomorrow,
comrade."

He paid her.

"Number six." She pointed to a wall where twenty-five or so numbered
phones were mounted, most of them in use. He went to number six, picked
up the earpiece-still warm-and hit the receiver several times. As in
Moscow, the connection was terrible, but after a time a voice came on
the line.

in N@mero, porfavor?

"Policia, " he said into the speaker.

"Gracias, " came the reply; there were clicks and buzzes and then
another voice arrived. "policia! i Viva la Revoluci6n!

Levitsky cursed him in Russian.

There was confusion and chatter from the other end, as the speaker
demanded in Spanish to know what was going on. Levitsky cursed again and
again, and after a time and some confusion, at last a Russian speaker
came on.

"Hello. Who is this?"

"Never mind, who is this?"

"I ask the questions, comrade."

"What is your name, comrade? To whom do I speak?"

"Speshnev," the man said. He sounded very young.

"The Speshnev who works for Glasanov? Of NKVD?"

"Identify yourself "

"Listen, Speshnev, and listen good. I'm only going to say it once. I
wish to denounce a traitor. A secret Trotsky pig and a wrecker."

"Most interesting."

"He's third assistant secretary in the Maritime Commission. One Igenko.
But he's a fat cocksucking rat.

He's sold us out to the Jews."

"And you have proof of these charges?"

"Of course. This Igenko was a comrade of the traitor Levitsky. Do you
know of this Levitsky, Speshnev of the NKVD? You should. Second only to
Trotsky."

"Keep talking."

"Igenko's trying to get papers together so he and his lover boy Levitsky
can take off. They'll fly the coop tonight. They're going to meet on the
Ramblas across from the Plaza Real tonight, near the stall of the lady
who sells chicken on a spit. Don't ask me how I know.

It'll be at seven. Just show up and nail the two butt fuckers yourself."

"Who-"

Levitsky hung up. He felt as if he were going to vomit.

"There," said the second undersecretary, wiping the sweat off his face.
It was excruciatingly hot in the tailor's shop, on the Ramblas,
overlooking the entrance to the Plaza Real, and the steam from the
presses in the back room hung heavy and moist in the air. "The fat one,
with the sour look, in the mottled white suit, comrade commissar."

"Yes," said Glasanov. "Do you see, Bolodin?"

Lenny Mink, standing next to him, nodded. He could see the fat guy
through the window and down across the street, standing in the crowded
thoroughfare with a nervous tightness, an aching discomfort on his mug.
He was obviously a nellie, too, with his mincing walk, and his big ass
stuck out like a girl's. His face was milky and unshaven.

"He was exceedingly distracted today, comrade cornmissar," said the
second undersecretary. "So much so that had not your phone call come
when it did, I would myself have most certainly reported it. One can
tell when a man is guilty, even if one-"

"Yes, that's fine," said Glasanov. "I'll note it in your record. Your
record will reflect your service to Security, you may rest assured. Now
the driver will take you back.

And I think you'd best tell your staff the workload is going to
increase."

"Of course, comrade commissar. We are only too happy to make any
sacrifice for the good of----@"

"No shooting, Bolodin," said Glasanov. "Tell your people. I want
Levitsky alive. Anybody who harms Levitsky is to be severely
disciplined. Is that understood?"

The fifteen other men in the room nodded.

"Bolodin, do you think you can get down and into that stall? Stay back.
We don't want Levitsky to see you. But when he approaches, you can knock
him to earth. You knock him down, do you understand, and pin him to the
street. The others will be there in seconds. But he's a clever old wolf,
he will have found a weapon by this time, perhaps even a revolver. He
will not hesitate to use it."

Lenny nodded again. He'd like to see that old guy try something smart
with him. He took off his leather overcoat. He wore the blue overalls of
a POUMISTA, and he pulled out a black beret and put it on his head.

"I'll be here, of course. Watching it, you understand."

"What if he bolts?" asked Speshnev, the young Russian "These jobs can go
all to hell if the rabbit bolts.

Why, in Moscow-"

"If he bolts, I'll catch him and snap his legs," said Lenny Mink, and
nobody disagreed with him.

"All right. Now go, go quickly. This may be our best chance, our only
chance."

They began to file out, and just as he left for the stairway, Lenny felt
Glasanov's hand on his shoulder and felt his breath warm and quick in
his ear. He turned, to see the man's eyes almost aflame with urgency.

"Comrade Bolodin, for God's sake, don't fail."

Lenny grinned and proceeded to walk on his way.

He came out of the stairway onto the sidewalk, waited for a break in the
traffic, then darted across to the broad center strip of the Ramblas.
Keeping his face low, he pushed his way through the throngs, past
somebody selling birds and somebody selling flowers and somebody selling
militia hats, sliding through soldiers and revolutionary women and young
intellectuals, and approached the old lady's chicken stall on the
oblique, maintaining it between himself and Igenko.

He ducked into it.

"Eli, sefior?" The old lady looked at him. "What is-?"

"Beat it," Lenny Mink said. "Take a hike."

"Ahhh. Who--"

"Here, take this, old one," said Ugarte, Lenny's best boy, who had
discreetly slid in behind Lenny. He handed the woman a hundred-peseta
note. He told her to have a nice cool drink at a car& for a while.

"You take the counter," said Lenny, and Ugarte moved past him, throwing
on an apron lying on the table. Lenny drew back, into the shadows. He
could see the fat man in the white suit real good. The distance was
about thirty feet. The fat man had a briefcase in his left hand.

Come on, old devil, he told himself, looking around nervously. Come on.

Just inside the main police station courtyard, Levitsky encountered two
Asaltos with German machine pistols who demanded abruptly and impolitely
to know who he was and where he thought he was going. They insisted on
papers. Levitsky let them carry on for a few seconds in Spanish, full of
their own toughness and importance, then halted them with a Russian
curse.

"NKVD, comrade," he said, fixing his eyes on the eyes of the bigger of
the two, who immediately melted like a chocolate soldier in the sun.

"Comrade Russki?"

"Da. Si, " said Levitsky. "De Madrid, no? Comrade Glasanov?"

"Ruvskis?

"Si, Russkis. Glasanov, NKVD?"

"Ah, si, si. Primo Russki."

"Da, " said Levitsky in a dead voice.

The man pointed up the building to the fourth floor. He showed four
fingers.

"Gracias, comrade," said Levitsky. He turned, went into the building
through a set of double doors under one of the porticos, found some
stairs, and walked swiftly up them. He passed several policemen, but
nobody challenged him.

At the fourth floor, he turned down the dank hall until at last he found
a huge poster of Stalin and a desk. The air was thick, where men had
been smoking, but now only a single woman sat at her desk, and near her
a hulking Spanish youth lounged proudly with his machine pistol, an
American Thompson.

He walked to the woman, whose eyes rose as he approached.

"Comrade," he announced in a clear, commanding, humorless voice, "I'm
Maximov. From Madrid. You have my wire. Where is Comrade Commissar
Glasanov?

Let's get going. I've had a long and dusty drive. I have come to take
possession of the criminal Levitsky."

He watched a great range of emotions play across her face in what seemed
to be a very short time. Finding at last her breath and her way out of
her shock to some kind of coherence, she leaped up and shouted,
"Comrade! It's a pleasure to meet you and-"

"Comrade, I asked a question. I did not come by for meaningless chitchat
of a social nature. Where the bloody devil is Glasanov? Didn't he
receive the wire?"

"No, comrade," she stammered. "We received no wire.

Comrade Commissar Glasanov is off to arrest-" And she halted, terrified.

"Arrest whom?"

The woman could not begin to tell Levitsky that Levitsky had escaped.

"No, it's-"

"It doesn't matter. Please arrange to have me taken to Levitsky at once.
I have explicit orders."

"Can it be, comrade, that Levitsky is gone? Has Levitsky escaped from
Glasanov? Comrade, tell me.,, The girl was almost white with terror.

"I have my sources," said Levitsky coldly, staring furiously at her. "I
can tell you, comrade, that Madridand Moscow-don't appreciate being made
to look silly by an old man. It sounds like wrecking, deviation, and
oppositionism."

"I can assure you, Comrade Maximov-"

"What is your name, comrade?"

"I am Comrade Levin, comrade."

"Comrade Levin, it is most urgent that I speak with Comrade Commissar
Glasanov on this matter of Levitsky. This is not a playful request, I
assure you, comrade.

I have a report to file. I am under extreme pressure from Moscow myself
I would hate to have to tell the committee secretary that in Barcelona
our representatives are sluggish and inefficient, given to Spanish ways.
It almost makes me think-"

"Comrade, accept my apologies, please. You must understand how hard we
work here, how difficult the problems are."

"And let me tell you, comrade, that in other areas of Spain our policies
are pursued with much greater Party discipline and control. Our
detention houses are everywhere. There are no Trotskyite columns, no
open denunciations of the general secretary, no Anarchist oganizations
patrolling the streets, no opposition newspapers. Moscow has noticed the
comic opera here in Barcelona. We have our sources. We are not
surprised."

"But comrade, the problems are so different here. Only here, in the
early days-"

"The problem's are no different, but perhaps the quality of the
personnel is different."

"Comrade, I can assure you the arrest is imminent.

Even now, the commissar is -------

"This would seem his only arrest."

"Oh, no. No, comrade, begging your pardon. No, we have been very
diligent. Our commissar works like the very devil himself. Night after
night. Look, Comrade Maximov, I'll show you. Come, please."

She took a key from her desk and led him back into Glasanov's inner
office.

"I'll prove it to you," she said. "I'll show you the records."

Lenny Mink watched the fat man shift the briefcase back and forth. He
kept asking people for the time. He was a mess. Lenny could almost smell
the fear. It was five past.

Come on, Teufu 1. You're dead in Spain without papers.

Without papers, the Asaltos shoot you. Come on, old devil, come to me.
This is your only hope. Now, when it's crowded, when the soldiers move
down the street, when you think it's safest.

There was a sudden pop in the air.

Lenny, startled, looked about. Pop, pop, pop. His eyes shot back to the
fat Igenko, who stood on the verge of panic amid the suddenly frozen
crowd, peculiarly reddish, as if Flares. The twilight sky had filled
with red flares, liku small pink suns that hung, floating, against the
dusk.

Music rose tumultuously in the weird spectacle; it was the
Internationale.

"Boss-" It was Ugarte.

"Shut up," Lenny said, shooting his eyes back to the frightened Igenko,
afraid he'd fled. No, he was still there.

Soldiers. One of the militias must have been heading out to the front.
Igenko stood in the pink night as the soldiers swept along the Ramblas,
on either side of him, and the crowd surged toward them to line the way,
and Igenko, against his will, was caught in the human tide.

"Fuck it," said Lenny, just as Igenko was hurled out of sight in the
masses. Trust the devil Levitsky to pull something like this.

He vaulted the counter smoothly and his long, powerful strides took him
through the running people. He bowled a man over, shoved others aside,
knocked a woman down.

Someone grabbed him.

"Hey, comrade-"

"SIM," he barked. The grabber fell back instantly.

Lenny pulled the automatic from his mono and pushed on. He hated the
idea of failure. Rage filled him. Where was the fat man?

There, yes. He'd had a glimpse, through the troops and beyond the crowd
on the sidewalk on the other side. He was right at the Arco de Teatro,
about to disappear through the arch and vanish in the windin messy old
streets of the Barrio Chino, which the Anarchists controlled.

Lenny dashed across the way, pushing through the mob of soldiers.

He could hear them yelling sporting things at him.

"Hey, come to war with us, comrade, if you're so eager."

"Come and kill the Fascists with us, brother."

"He can't wait. Come on, the POUM needs fighters like you."

But Lenny pushed through their ranks and on to the other side, ducked
through the Arco himself, and ran down the narrow street. The buildings
loomed over him: the road seemed to split and split again into a maze,
but a maze jammed with human riffraff. He halted, breathing hard. There
was no illumination, though up ahead, here and there, red lights shone
on the sides of the buildings.

But then he saw him. Just a glimpse of heft and mince, darting ahead in
utter fhght. Lenny didn't stop to consider the fragility of the
connection: he had looked down the right street at the right moment.

He caught him in a lonely pool of red light. "lvanch... ?" The fat man
turned, his face warm with expectation. But when he saw Lenny, his
expression fell apart into something ugly with terror.

"Swine," Lenny said, hitting him in the fat mouth with the pistol.
Igenko fell into a mewling heap.

"Hey. Hey, what are you doing, comrade?"

Lenny looked up; three Anarchist patrolmen were unslinging their rifles
and heading over.

"SIM," barked Lenny.

"Fuck the SIM, comrade," yelled the first. "Russian Swine had better
stay out of-"

Lenny threw the slide on his Tokarev, jacking the hammer back, and said
in English, "Another step, motherfucker, and you're dead meat."

Igenko was crying.

Ugarte was next to him, pistol out, and then another man arrived and
another and another, and then Glasanov himself The Anarchists began to
back off.

"These are simply records," said Levitsky. "A list of names. This means
nothing."

The woman's eyes fell.

"I assure you, Comrade Maximov," she began, "each name on that list is
an enemy of the state and each has been dealt with by Comrade Glasanov.
We are moving even closer to-"

"You show me a list of names on a paper and you say, here, here is your
revolution, this paper. Meanwhile opposition newspapers are published
condemning the general secretary, slandering him, and armed dissenters
swagger in the streets and drink wine in the cafes, laughing at him."

"Look," she said, opening a drawer. "Look! Do you see! This is not a
list! These are our enemies' lives!"

She pulled the pouch out.

"All these passports. They each represent an arrest.

And they will be sent back to Moscow Center by diplomatic pouches. Our
agents will be able to use them to penetrate the Western democracies in
the years to come.

Look, see for yourself."

She handed the pouch over to Levitsky; he rifled it quickly. Passports
and plenty more: official papers, work records, confiscated
identification cards, the remains of the Tomas W.'s and the Carlos M.'s,
and the Vladimir N.'s of Glasanov's assiduous underground campaign
against oppositionism.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, it appears to be impressive. One must not judge
too hastily, however."

I"r-u "Examine them, comrade. They are our evidence. We are tireless in
our efforts. We broach no treason. Comrade Glasanov is a gifted,
inspirational leader. He is a Party worker who doesn't know the meaning
of fatigue."

Levitsky studied the matter gravely.

At that moment a flare popped outside filling, the office with pink
light. Another detonated, then another. They looked to the window and
could see the spangled patterns of the starbursts glossy and spectacular
against the night sky, dwarfing even the moon.

"A parade," she said. "Men are going off to fight at the front. But we
fight here, too, comrade. We have no interest in parades."

Levitsky realized that the stupid girl was in love with Glasanov. He was
probably fucking her every night.

"Perhaps the matter deserves more study," he said. "I shall return to my
quarters at the Colon. Tell Glasanov to expect me tomorrow at nine A.M.
meantime, I'll review these documents tonight so as to better understand
the situation here and the difficulties Comrade Commissar Glasanov
faces."

"Yes. Yes, I'll tell him. Oh, listen. Listen."

Music. It was the Internationale.

"It's quite beautiful," he said. "Truly inspirational sentiments. Good
day, comrade. You serve your superior well. I shall keep my eye on you.
Perhaps the right word in the right ear."

"Thank you, Comrade Maximov, but my work is pleasure enough. I have no
desires except to serve my nation and my party."

He left quickly.

In the street, he melted into the crowd and departed the area, heading
into an Anarchist neighborhood, his cache of identities under his arm in
the stocky leather pouch.

The extent of the triumph was stunning, far greater than he had hoped
for: he had wanted out of his sortie some sort of identity card, and he
had come away with an encyclopedia of personalities. He could easily
sell half of them on the black market, where genuine papers were a
prized item, and the others would give him extraordinary operating
latitude, made more deliciously useful by Glasanov's inability to
acknowledge the loss of the documents.

In the revolutionary mob he hurried along, the sound of music ringing in
his ears, the sky behind him still pink and hot with light. He tried not
to think of Igenko.

When Igenko died at 4:05 A.M. that morning in the prison at the Convent
of St. Ursula, after sustaining the inevitable massive internal
injuries, it was greeted by his captors as something less than a
tragedy. He died badly, screaming. He had told them, as much as he
could, everything. But he didn't make a lot of sense.

"He knew nothing," said Glasanov. "That raving, that terror. He was
worthless."

But Lenny was thinking that Igenko was a clerk in the Maritime
Commission, which handled shipping. And he was thinking of Igenko's
dying words, the ones that had confused poor Glasanov.

"The gold," he had screamed. "Emmanuel came for the gold and he betrayed
me for the gold."

THE PARADE Y GOD, THOUGHT FLORRY, IF I LIVE ANOTHER FIFTY years, I'll
never forget this night. He shifted the lumpy hulk of the Moisin-Nagent
rifle from one shoulder to another-in a POUM formation, it made no
difference which shoulder one braced one's rifle against, just as it
made no difference whether one marched in step or in uniform; all that
mattered was mass and direction.

Around him, men churned ahead. In the sky above, flares burst and hung,
hissing. Each was a small sun, burning its image into the retina,
bleeding its color into the sky behind it. It was the red night, el
noche rojo, and he was part of it.

It seemed that all Barcelona had either wedged itself onto the Ramblas
to cheer the soldiers or had found space on the balconies above, and
half the musicians of Spain had been conscripted to provide music by
which to send the soldiers off to war. Flowers and confetti fell upon
them; petals drifted pinkly in the illuminated air. It was a theater of
light. Shafts rose and flashed against the sky like saber blades;
fireworks burst and crackled as the parade swept down the Ramblas.

"To Huesca! To Huesca!" came the cry from the crowds.

"Long live the World Revolution!" somebody up ahead yelled in exuberant
English.

A wineskin, circulating among the militiamen, finally arrived at Florry.

"Here, ingl@s," said a boy, handing it over.

Florry took the warm thing and held it close to his mouth and squirted
in a brief, pulsing jet of wine.

Blanco. A little bitter, yet vivid all the same. Yes. He swallowed and
passed it on. He noticed that the rifles had spouted roses and that
women had come among them.

"Hey, ingl6s, not so bad, eh?" someone yelled to him.

Yes, bravo," shouted Flon-y back, feeling excited and cynical at once.
He'd spent two crude weeks tramping about in the mud with broomsticks
with these boys-the rifles were only issued recently-and yet he felt a
part of it. What a jolly show! What a spiffy send-up! It was like '14,
wasn't it, everybody off on a bloody crusade. Pip, pip, do one's best,
and all that.

At the bottom of the Ramblas, the parade wheeled to the left in an
unending torrent under the watchful, cool eye of Christopher Columbus at
the top of his pedestal, and headed along the broad boulevard at the lip
of the port until it arrived at the station, a grand Spanish building,
all monument and stem urpose and majestic self-importance.

Within its sooty portals, however, the Spanish talent for
disorganization reasserted itself aggressively after the relative
precision of the parade. Flony found himself stalled under a vast
double-vaulted ceiling filled up with steam and noise. Half the lights
in the big cavern were off and searchlights prowled about, illuminating
rising columns of steam theatrically. It was a near riot. Suddenly, the
queue began to move. Florry advanced to the train and then the movement
broke down again, abandoning him in the throng right at the portal of
the car. He stood, one boot up on the step, his heavy rifle over his
shoulder, his kit on his back and a water bottle at his belt, like a
1914 victory poster. He felt absurd. Could not the Spaniards do one
thing efficiently?

It seemed to take forever. Good Christ, how can they hope to win a war
and finish a revolution if they cannot even fill up a train in an
orderly fashion?

"Robert! Oh, Robert. Thank God!"

Her hair was pulled back severely under a black beret and she still wore
the sexless mono and plimsoles, but her eyes had that special, sleepy
grace, and when she smiled as she fought her way through the soldiers to
him, he felt a burst of pleasure scalding as steam and thought he'd
faint. Yet he also felt himself pulled up short and breathless with
anger. Sylvia, off to watch her little hero do his bit.

"Hello, Sylvia," he said, unsure what else to say, possessing no opinion
as to what would happen next.

"I had to see you. I hated the way you just went off."

He was surprised at the anger he felt.

"God, Sylvia, is this scene really necessary?"

i Vdmanos, ingl@s! " a sergeant yelled from the car.

He was holding up the line. He stepped out to let the others file by.

"I have to go," he said gruffly. "They're getting ready to go out."

"Robert, I had to see you one last time."

"What nonsense! You were the one who pushed me away. You were the one
who wanted some room. You were the one who had to have experiences. You
paid your debt, Sylvia. Flony had his fun, bloody good from it was, too.
You owe me nothing."

"I owe you everything," she said. "I want you to know how much I respect
you for this. Like Julian, you'll write history rather than about it."

"What rubbish! You've been reading too many posters.

Nothing's happened up there in months. The only attacks are launched by
the lice. It'll simply be a time without bathing, that's all. Just like
Eton, actually."

"Robert-" i Vdmanos, ingl@.v, amigo! " the sergeant called again.

"Es la hora. El tren sale. ino quieres ser ejecutado?

The train whistle rang through the air, echoing against the stones of
the station.

"Stop that damned crying and let me shake your hand," Florry said. "You
shall have your adventures and I shall have mine."

She tried to smile but it was wrecked by the intensity of her emotion.
Florry took her hand and meant to shake it primly and ironically and
angrily after their sweet night together. But he surprised himself by
pulling her to him.

Everybody on the train was cheering and making suggestions of what to do
with a lovely young girl and he didn't give a damn. He could see her
eyes widen in surprise as he brought her close and he brought her
closer, feeling all the war gear on his back encumbering him, but he
didn't care about that, either. He crushed her body in his arms, taking
pleasure in it, feeling the give and yield of her slight bones, smelling
the soft sweetness of her, and he kissed her, hard, on the mouth.

"There," he said, speaking quite brutally. "Now that's a proper send-off
for a soldier boy, eh? Now smile. Show Florry some teeth, darling."

She looked at him, shocked.

The train whistled and began to move.

"Good-bye, Sylvia. I'll put in a good word for you to Julian. Perhaps
you and he can have tea when this is finished." He jumped up on the
doorstep of the train as it pulled out of the station. He hung there
until he could see her no longer, and then they pulled him aboard,
cheering and happy for the romantic Englishman.

He hated her. He loved her.

Damn the woman!

THE MAJOR IN LONDON, IT WAS WELL AFTER MIDNIGHT. HOLLY Browning had
become almost a vampire: he lived by night, as if the sun's touch were
lethal. He sat, isolated, chalky complected, his eyes black-ringed,
working with furious concentration on the message Vane had so recently
brought up from Signals.

The major had a gift for codes, or at least an enthuslasm for them. The
message was encrypted in the standard Playfair cipher of the British
army, and he had no difficulty pulling its meaning from the nonsense of
the letter groups that faced him. He merely compared them against a
square fonnation-five letters by five letters from the key group and
extracted, off the diagonal, the bigram of each two-letter unit. The key
group, curiously enough, was always drawn from a verse of standard
English poetry; the code was made secure by changing the key-the
verse-each week, by prearranged schedule.

That week's verse happened to be from one of the major's favorites,
Rupert Brooke. "If I should die, think only this of me," it went,
"there's some foreign field that's forever England."

Sampson's dispatch yielded its secrets and its purposes swiftly and
cleanly as the letter groups tumbled into words, the words into
sentences. When the major was done, he sat back. It was a longish
document, nicely crafted, tightly constructed, succinctly covering
recent developments.

Yet it struck the major with a peculiar, cold authority.

He looked to the fire, which had burned low, and felt the shame come
across him like a shudder.

A soft noise sounded in the darkness and he looked up to see Vane
standing silhouetted against the illumination of the open door.

"Yes, Vane?"

"Sir, I wondered if there's a reply?"

"No, I think not," said the major, and as effortlessly as he had
arrived, Vane began to slip away.

"Vane, stop. Do come in.

"Sir, 1---"

"No, I Insist."

Vane padded vaguely through the darkness and took the leather chair
opposite Holly Browning's desk.

"Drink, Vane?"

"No, sir."

"I've got some very fine brandy. I've some whiskey.

I've got a bottle of scotch barley somewhere and I've-2' "Thank you,
sir, but--2' "No, that's fine. Suit yourself." He removed the bottle and
a glass from his desk, poured himself a finger of brandy, brought it up,
and swallowed it quickly. He remembered the stuff from 1916, when extra
rations had been issued before the big jump-off at the Somme. It had
certainly came in handy that day.

"It's very good, Vane. Are you sure you won't have any?"

"No, sir."

"As you wish. Good heavens, these have been long days, haven't they?" He
had no idea how to make conversation.

"Yes sir. If I may say, sir, you really are working too hard. Wouldn't
want to damage one's health."

"Working?" the major said, pouring himself another finger of the brandy.
"Actually, I'm not working at all.

Sampson's doing the work. Sampson and poor Florry."

"Perhaps you should take a holiday, sir."

"Er, perhaps I should. Perhaps I will, too. Vane, tell me. Have you ever
been to Moscow?"

"No, I haven't, sir."

"All right. Come with me. I'll show you something."

The major rose and walked from behind his desk to the window, a journey
of just a few paces. There, he threw the heavy curtain. They looked from
MI-6's old Broadway offices just a few blocks toward the Thames and the
gaudy, crenellated buildings of Parliament. It was utterly peaceful, a
serene composition off a Yule card. The moon, a bright half circle,
shone in the sky at the center of a blur of radiance and its cold chill
touched everything, especially a sheath of new-dusted snow that lay upon
the roof of Westminster Abbey.

"Vane, what do you see?" "Nothing, sir. Silent London. That's all."
"Look over at Whitehall."

"One can hardly see it, sir. All the lights are out."

"They are, indeed. Think of it, Vane, all those empty offices, locked
and silent. All those chaps gone home, now in bed or reading or working
at their hobbies or off to the theater, what have you. But the truth is,
at this precise moment, so certain is the British government of its
place in the world and the stability of its empire, it can actually
afford to cease to exist for a full twelve hours.

Every day, the British government disappears for twelve hours.
Extraordinary, isn't it? A daylight government."

Vane said nothing, as if the thought had never occurred to him.

"Vane, in Moscow in the winter of 'nineteen and again in 'twenty-three,
the lights were never out. They blazed away each evening until dawn.
Those chaps were figuring out ways to beat us. They were, Vane.
Strategems, ploys, plots, subversions. They were like Wells's Martian
intelligences, cool and implacable. It used to haunt me, those burning
lights. Our people in Moscow with the embassy, they tell me that the
lights bum brighter than ever these nights."

"Surely, sir, they are merely attempting to figure out ways to get their
electric plants to cease from conking out every two weeks or learning
how to get their harvests in on time under that terrible-@"

"No, Vane. They are burning with fury, with fire, to destroy us. To have
what we have. Or, rather, to take what we have from us. It obsesses
them. It obsesses this man Levitsky, the master spy."

"I'm sure you are his match, sir."

The major issued something very like a chuckle. Levitsky's match? How
rich!

"If I am very lucky," he said, "and if my people perform up to their
very, very best, then yes, perhaps I have a chance against Levitsky."

"You knew him well, sir?"

Another jest. Poor Vane had no idea how inadvertently droll he had
become.

"Levitsky and I had quite a few sessions in the cellar of the Lubyanka
in 1923," said the major, remembering. "A number of highly interesting
conversations."

"I'm sure you taught him a thing or two, sir."

The major looked at the moonstruck landscape. Oh, yes, he'd taught
Levitsky a thing or two! He shook his head. A set of memories unspooled
in his skull and he remembered the passionate conviction in the Jew's
eyes, the emotional contact, the intensity, the glittering intelligence.

"May I ask, sir, what brings Levitsky to mind?"

"He's in Spain," said the major. "He's in Barcelona, or so Sampson
reports."

"Yes sir."

"Yes, you see how it all fits, how I said it would fit. His agent goes
to Spain and communicates with home base via Amsterdam. But there comes
a time when communication isn't quite enough; the campaign has become
more complex, the plans more intricate, the possibilities more numerous.
And thus does Levitsky travel undercover to Barcelona to confer with
Julian Raines. God, Vane, if Florry could catch the two together! That'd
be it. No one in government could deny Raines's complicity. And we could
take Florry the last step. We'd then be done with it altogether!"

"Yes sir."

The major was trembling with repressed wanting. He felt himself so
terribly, terribly close.

"Let me tell you, Vane, what sort of a man this Levitsky is. So you have
some idea as to what it is we're up against. Within days after his
arrival to take over the NKVD operations, he claimed his first victim.
He ordered the arrest of a Soviet clerk named Igenko. Igenko was picked
up, interrogated, and is surely dead by this time."

"Yes sir."

"It sounds quite mundane, doesn't it, Vane, the Soviet Russian system in
normal operation. A clerk is suspected of vague 'crimes,' and in days
he's dead."

"It's revolting, Sir."

"Actually, it's quite a bit more than revolting, Vane.

You still don't know the half of it. I remember Igenko, too, from 1919.
It was so long ago."

"This Igenko and Levitsky: they were connected?"

"Yes. And surely that was Igenko's 'crime.' He knew Levitsky, and thus
he was a risk to Levitsky's operation.

Levitsky is so important he must be protected at all Costs."

"Could they have been comrades, sir?"

"More than that, Vane."

"Lovers, perhaps, sir? Would they be poofs?

"More again, Vane," said Major Holly-Browning, dark halls of government,
the sleeping looking out at the city under its lacy snow, its bone-cold,
moonstruck radiance. "They were brothers."

Part II.

JULIAN HUESCA IN THE COLD REAR OF A TRUCK HAULING HIM FROM THE railhead
at Barbastros to the firing line, and amid a crew of largely drunken
militiamen, Florry remembered the last time he had seen Julian Raines.
It had been in June of 1928, nine years earlier, Honors Day at Eton, a
June afternoon. The sixth-formers, liberated that morning at
matriculation from the rigors of the college, had gathered with their
parents on the lawn of one of the yards, near the famous Wall, for a
last mingle or whatever before commencing with the lives to follow.
These lives usually meant university or something promising in the City
or at Sandhurst; however, not for Florry. He knew by then he'd spend the
summer boning up on engineering and math at a place that tutored dim
boys just furiously enough to get them by the India service exam. He
knew, in other words, he'd wasted it all.

A bright and lovely day it had been, too, a touch warm, under a sky of
English blue and a breeze as sweet as a perfect lyric--or was this his
wretched memory playing its wretched trick on him, in the way a
generation insisted that the summer of '14, wet and hot and muggy, had
been a rare masterpiece of temperate beauty? Florry didn't know. What he
remembered was the misery and shame he felt, in counterpoint to a
gathering so full of hope and ambition and confidence-the earth's
natural heirs pausing for just a second before assuming their rightful
place-and had stood off, the failed scholarship boy, with his mousy
mother and his uncomfortable clerk of a dad while glossier types laughed
merrily and quaffed great quantities of champagne on the lawn and told
school stories.

"Robert, can't you introduce us to your friends?" his mother had said,
but before he could answer, his dad surprisingly sensitive, In
retrospect-had replied, "There, it isn't necessary."

"Well, now he's all fancy Eton, you think he knew dukes and the like,"
his mum said. "He talks like one."

"Sir, maybe the three of us could go off and get a pint," he'd said.
"They've a nice pub in the town."

"Robert, can't say as I have a thirst," his dad said. "But if you'd
like. Just the three of us, to celebrate our Eton chap."

Florry then led them on an awkward pilgrimage through the crowd with an
excuse-me here and a beg pardon there, his eyes down, his face hot and
drawn. He was exceedingly worried that his hated nickname "Stinky," from
a bad spell of bed wetting when first he'd arrived--would come up at him
within his parents' earshot.

But something far worse happened.

"Good heavens, Robert, can these be your parents?"

It was the first time that Julian had spoken to him in six months, and
Florry looked up in weird, passionate misery. Julian stood before him,
having appeared from God knows where, having suddenly, magically
materialized-it was a gift for dramatic entrances, uniquely
Julian's-blocking the way. Julian's skin was flushed pink and his fair
hair hung lankly across his forehead, nonchalant in a way that many
younger boys imitated, from under an Eton boater worn atilt on his head.
He had on one of those absurd, smug little Eton jackets, too, with its
white piping, and it looked dashing and perfect.

It had been most peculiar. Julian, the form's swankiest boy, had taken
up Florry abruptly, been his closest and most trusting friend for nearly
three years, then six months earlier had 'just as abruptly dropped him.
It still hurt; in fact, it absolutely crushed Florry and he'd watched
helplessly as his studies disintegrated and his chances at a university
scholarship, once so close, had simply vanished.

Thus Julian's sudden appearance was at once wonderful and terrifying.
Was this to be a sort of reconciliation, a readmission to favor?
Florry's knees began to shake and his breath came sharp as a knife.

"I say, Mr. and Mrs. Florry?" Julian bent forward, past Florry, and
Florry was yet unable to identify the tone and did not know what course
the next moment or so would take. "I'm Robert's friend, Julian Ra'nes."

He paused, as if to tighten the suspense.

"I wanted to say hello to you. It's an honor to meet you. ), Julian
bowed, shook dad's slack hand and kissed mum on hers. Florry could see
the poor woman's eyelashes flutter: a gent like Julian had never paid
any attention to her.

"I must say," said Julian, "it's a shame Robert mussed his opportunity
here. It's not often that a chap from your class has the chance. We'd
all so hoped Robert would prove out. But alas, he hasn't. Off to India,
Stink?" Julian smiled in the excruciating silence of the moment. "Well,
it's probably better that way. You won't be dogged by it, old man. Well,
best of luck."

And with that little masterpiece of destruction, he was off. He had not
looked at Florry after the first second, yet in less than a minute he
had transformed Florry's failure from a general one to a specific one,
given it special shape and meaning and inserted it forever into his
parents' memories.

But Florry surprised himself by not crying. He simply swallowed and led
his parents onward.

"You're lucky to have such fancy friends," his mum said. "Did you see
how he kissed my hand? There, nobody's ever done such a thing."

"A bit cheeky, you ask me," said his father. "Robert did graduate, did
he not? First of our lot to get even half so far. Well, Robert, there's
still India. You'll get your chance yet. What's that he called you?"

"It's nothing, Dad," Flony said. "Just a schoolboy name."

"Damned silly," his father said.

Florry managed a dry heroic smile, but-and later he hated himself for
this last weakness-looked past him back into the mob one last time: into
Eton through the gates and the crowd of boys and their parents-and he'd
seen Julian amid the form's handsomest youths, laughing, sipping
champagne ... and then lost sight of him, and that was the end of it.

Thus when the truck halted and the driver came back and shouted,
"Ingl@s. Si, ingl@s. i Vcimonos! " and he'd climbed down to find himself
hard by a seedy, battered old country house, he discovered in himself a
curious mixture of apprehension and loathing. He knew he was at La
Granja, near the English section of the line around Huesca. Somewhere
hereabouts he would find his friend and enemy, the man he was sent to
stop.

Mobs of soldiers loafed about in the sun, most of them scruffier looking
than hobos. In the yard, a dozen different languages filled the air. The
largest crowd had formed up about a fire, where a cook was ladling out
huge helpings of some sort of rice dish. Near the great house, a tent
had been set up with a huge red cross painted on its roof, and Florry
could make out wounded soldiers lying on cots. The house itself bore the
marks of battle: one wing was smashed to rubble and most of the windows
had been broken out. The ubiquitous POUM initials had been inscribed
across its facade in garish red paint, in a spidery, gargantuan
penmanship. Yet for all the noise and the numbers of men, the scene was
strangely pastoral: it had no sense of particular urgency or design. It
was as so much of the Spanish revolution, that is, primarily improvised
and quite ragtag. No sentry questioned him or challenged him and there
seemed to be no office for new arrivals. He simply asked the first
several men he saw about the English, and after a time, someone pointed
him in more or less the right direction.

He was directed beyond the house, through an orchard, and across a
meadow, perhaps a mile's walk in all. At last he came to a dour little
redhead sitting on an appropriated dining-room chair in the middle of a
field, sucking on a pipe, and hacking at what proved to be an ancient
Colt machine gun.

"I say," Florry called, "seen a chap about calling himself Julian
Raines? Tall fellow, rather fine-boned.

Blond."

The man didn't bother to look up.

After a time, Florry said, "Er, I was addressing you, sir."

The man at last raised his face, fixing Florry with shrewd, dirty-gray
eyes.

"Wouldn't have a spare potato-digger bolt on you, mate? This one's about
to bleedin' snap."

"I assume 'potato digger' is slang for the weapon?"

"You got it, chum. They said they'd send one up."

"No, they didn't say anything about that."

"Public-school man, eh?"

"Yes. My bloody accent, is it? Afraid I can't much help it."

"Your pal's up top the hill, chum. Just go on up."

"Oh. Thanks. Thanks awfully."

"Think nothing of it, chum."

Florry marched up the hill, dragging his rifle with him.

At the crest, he saw before him a broad brown plain and beyond that a
range of glorious white mountains and halfway between himself and the
mountains there lay a doll's city of brown structures crouching behind a
wall from which there issued, lazily, a few columns of smoke.

Huesca itself, the enemy city.

Florry looked down the hill where a group of men huddled around a
cooking fire behind a rude trench, and cupped his hand to his mouth and
The tackle sent him hurling down, rolling with bone crunching racket,
over rocks and bushes and branches.

He came to a rest against a stunted tree, all tangled up in his
equipment, hurting and scraped in a half dozen places. There seemed to
be a flock of birds fluttering through the trees.

"You bloody idiot," someone nearby was shouting at him.

Florry blinked in shock.

"What on earth-"

"Them's bullets whippin' about, you bloody fool," screamed his
assailant, no less than the redheaded runt of the other side of the
hill. "Blimey, mate, don't you know a bloody prank? Don't they have
bloody humor at that awful school of yours Christ,'e goes and stands
against the crestline!"

"Eh?"

"Come on, then."

Florry, in his confusion and embarrassment, became aware of a circle of
faces above him.

"Billy, you awful toad, playing games with some innocent swot," came a
voice of piercing familiarity. "Good heavens, fellow, don't just lie
there like the fallen Christ awaiting resurrection. Get your scrawny
bones up and give us some account of yourself."

A lovely apparition in mud and pale whiskers stood above him. He wore a
small automatic pistol at his waist and some kind of many-buckled
leather Burberry. He looked like a Great War aviator, all dash and
style, more than any kind of infantryman, even to the scarf-silk,
naturally-and the puttees and the hollow, noble sunburned face. His hair
was almost white-blond from the outdoor living, the eyes still their
fabled opaque blue.

"Hullo, Julian," said Florry, in spite of himself excited.

And a little nervous.

"Good God, it's Stinky Florry of the old school.

Stinky, can it really be you?"

""E said'e was a chum of yours, Julian," said the runty redhead. "If I'd
known it for a fact, I wouldn't have knocked 'im down before Bob the
Nailer invited him to tea."

"Had Bob the Nailer known he was an Eton man, Billy, I'm sure he would
have shown a degree more politeness," said Julian with what Florry began
to see was a kind of mock snootiness that must have been his style up
here. "Robert, you've already met the disgusting Billy Mowry, who
actually calls himself a commissar.

He's the only man I've ever known who's actually read Das Kapital, which
is less impressive than it seems because it's the only book he's read.
He's not read my book, for example. He's not even heard of me, or so he
claims."

"Comrade," said this Commissar Billy to Florty, "if you can work out a
way to keep your fancy chum's mouth glued tight, you'll have served the
revolution heroically. Anyhows, glad to have you here. We need all the
fighters we can find, whatever the class. I reckon you'll bleed just as
red as any of us. I'm boss fellow, or so it says somewhere. Don't ask me
why; these foolish fellows elected me." There was something like
warmth-though not much of it-in his voice.

"Only to shut him up about Karl Bloody Marx, his patron saint. Come on,
dear boy, to my quarters. You can meet these other fellows later;
they'll be the first to admit they're not important enough to waste our
time now."

There was much laughter, and Florry saw that part of Julian's job here
in the trenches was to make the boys laugh.

"Now," said Julian, drawing him off, "tell Julian why on earth you've
come halfway across Europe to die in mud among louts and lice. I thought
one fool in our form was enough. God, Stinky, you can't have turned into
a bloody Communist, can you? You don't believe all their nonsense, do
you'?"

"Christ, Julian, it's good to see you," Florry surprised himself in
suddenly blurting. He could feel Julian's chann like a tide sweeping in
to engulf him.

You hate him, he told himself You'll destroy him, he told himself.

"Look at me, Stink. Yes, by God, it is you. And what a present from God
you are. Let me tell you, old man, this bloody giving oneself to the
revolution is a good bit of trouble. It's a picnic in the mud among Java
men. Good fellows, but the blokes haven't even read Housman, for God's
sake. And with your usual flair for the dramatic, you I've managed to
come upon something unique in history: it's the only time a city has
besieged an army. Why, it's-----@"

"Julian, before we go any farther, I must tell you something." Oh, God,
I do hate it when someone says they must tell me something. From the
look on your face, you're about to tell me you've managed to get
yourself listed ahead of me in Mother's will. I can forgive you
anything, Stinky, except that. Now keep low here. First rule: never
stand against a crestline. Bang, Bob the Nailer has potted you. Now,
what was it you were going to tell me. Can it wait at least until-"

"Please, no. I must get this out. You must know."

"Lord, you're not still ticked at me for the awful thing I said on
Honors Day. Stink, I'd just had a rare turndown from a bloody
trollop@---Jack Tantivy's sister, as I recall, awful girl-and I was
drunk and looking for somebody to hurt. Lord, Stink, how I've often
regretted that. You're not out here for revenge, lo these many years
later?

Here-@' He pulled out the little pistol, snapped it prime, and handed it
to Florry.

"Go on then," he said dramatically, closing his eyes.

"Do the deed. I deserve it. I can be such a cad. I hurt people all the
time, Stink. Pull the trigger and rid the world of the awful Julian."

"You bloody idiot."

"Ali, Stink, that's the spirit. Give as good as you get."

Florry saw that the pistol was the little Webley automatic, in .25
caliber.

"Here. Take the bloody toy. I've a Webley myself. The big revolver. When
it comes to shooting, I could blast the moon out of the sky."

"A four-five-five! Topping! Now that I envy you. A bloody big
four-five-five! Christ, I'd love to turn it on a Moorish sergeant. Or
pot a Jerry or an Eyetye captain.

What fun! War's great fun, Stink. Better than school ... better even
than poetry."

Florry exploded. "Julian, I hate your poetry! I hate "Achilles, Fool.'
You've destroyed the talent you had at Eton with debauchery and sloth.
You haven't written a good verse in years."

Julian's blue eyes held his for the longest time. Then he smiled.

"Well spoken, Stink. Hate it myself It's no bloody game when it's your
own rump they're shooting at. Yes, as a poet I'm finished, I agree. I'm
halfway through an awful poem called"Pons,' and I've no end at all for
it.

It'll remain forever undone. Come on, we'll have a tot and I'll show it
to you and we can have a good laugh over its utter dreadfulness. And
some day we'll go back to Barbastros to the whorehouse. Now that's a
pleasure you'll have to experience. These revolutionary tarts, Stink,
they're utterly enchanting. They take your shooter in their bloody
mouths! Extraordinary!"

"Julian." Florry idiotically, wearily, repeated.

"Now, Stink, there is one thing I absolutely have to know." He paused.
"How is Mother?"

Some days, Bob the Nailer was more active than others; like so many
things Spanish, it seemed to depend entirely upon the whim of the sniper
himself If he awoke in an indifferent mood, he might prang away
indiscriminately, manufacturing only enough noise to keep his own
sargento and priest off his back. If he awakened with the fire of
zealotry moving in his bones, he might crawl close enough to do some
real damage, and make things in the English section's crude trench at
least interesting.

Curiously Florry soon came to hope for interesting days. For Bob the
Nailer was like a morale officer; he made the time in the trenches
bearable, because when you are ducking bullets, you may be risking death
but you are also blissfully unaware of rain, cold, mud, and all the
other disgusting elements of the life of static warfare.

It was '14-'18, again, the cold, wet living in mud hovels scooped from
the earth, with only the occasional scurrying patrol into no-man's-land
to liven things up, the occasional calling card from Bob to keep you
honest.

It was as if the tank hadn't yet been invented, and in a certain way it
hadn't. Jerry couldn't get his Pzkpfw Ils down here, Billy Mowry
allowed, because the Spanish stone bridges were too old; the rumbling of
a heavy vehicle upon them would bring them crashing down, dumping Jerry
and his tin toy in the drink. And of course bloody Joe Stalin wouldn't
allow any T-26s up here where it was largely a POUMISTA show. But Florry
almost wished for a tank or two; like Bob the Nailer, they'd make things
more interesting-and boredom was almost as dangerous as the Fascists.

There was only one cure for boredom. It was Julian, who, whatever his
horrors of the past, his history of cruelty, would not allow himself to
be hated any more than he would allow anyone about him, particularly
Florry, to appear put out.

His flamboyance and natural outrageousness seemed to cloak him in
special grace and he was always happy, happier even than Billy Mowry, a
true believer.

"I say, Billy, do you know why I joined this POUM thing of yours?"
Julian baited on a day so like every other day it would have no place
within a week or on a calendar.

Billy Mowry, sucking on a pipe while filling sandbags, delivered up the
sour face of a man about to face an execution, paused, and finally
sprang Julian for the pounce.

"No, comrade. Pray tell us."

"Ah. You see, it happened like this. I saw the bloody great initials
POUM on the banners outside this hotel on the Ramblas where I was
rusticating one summer's day, and I said to myself, why, these silly
buggers cannot even properly spell the word POEM, and as our century's
fifth greatest living poet, I went in to correct them and the next thing
I knew, here I was picking lice as big as hobnails off my balls,"
Everybody laughed. God, Julian.

Julian's true enemy, however, wasn't fascism or party politics or even
war ii, general: it was time. Julian was the only one of them who could
vanquish time. He could turn the months into weeks, the weeks to days,
the days to hours. He could rip through the numbers on the clock and the
pages of the calendar; he could make them forget where they were and how
long they'd been there and how long they would be there. That was his
special, most lovely gift. And as Florry settled into the trogiodyte
life it was Julian who freed him from his bondage to the calendar: and
when Florry looked at such a document in what seemed to be his third or
fourth week on the line he was stunned to discover that not only had
January turned to February but February had turned to March and that
March was soon to turn to April. It was, however, still 1937.

"Ain't we low on wood?" Commissar Billy asked, part of the ritual of the
sameness of days. "Whose bloody turn is it to scrounge some up?"

"I'll go," said Julian, shucking's an et.

"Here, I'll come along," said Florry, grasping his first chance to
confront Julian alone.

"Stink, you do have a use then, don't you?"

But it wasn't a joke. The night was coming and without wood there'd be
no fires and no warmth. But by this time there was damned little wood.
The ground behind the trenches had been picked clean for hundreds of
yards.

With their comrades' best hopes along as baggage, and a godsend from Bob
the Nailer-sprang! the bullet rattled off the rocks a goodly distance
away-the two clambered out of the trench and began to wander about the
thickets and over the hills that lay behind them.

Florry steeled himself toward the hatred he felt he properly ought to
feel and set out to trap Julian into some sort of acknowledgment of his
treason.

"I say, Julian, I hope when the revolution's secure here, it'll move to
England. Chance to set things right at last."

"You do?" said Julian. "That's a bit lefty, isn't it, old man? I think
it's a revolting idea. I mean, Billy Mowry is a natural-born leader but
if he tries to take my mother's coal mine from her and give it to some
committee, I'm afraid I'd have him hanged from the nearest willow."

"But justice is-"

"Justice is ten thousand a year, free and clear, and lots of pretty,
idiotic young ladies with whom to do nasty, lascivious things. That's
justice, old man. No, inside this revolutionary, there's a Tory who'll
inherit a nice little chunk of England some day."

"Well, why on earth are you here, then?"

"Why, I just wanted to count, thank you very much."

"You always counted, Julian. If anyone counted, Brilliant Julian did."

Julian drew a great charge out of that!

"Hab!" he laughed. "Yes, that's what everybody always said, which just
goes to prove how bloody little everybody knew! Bloody Brilliant Julian,
everybody's favorite cleverboots. Lord, Stinky, how I hated that boy.

That's why this war is such a godsend. I wasn't the young beauty
anymore, except of course to Mother. But to the rest of the world, I'd
become an adult with little crinkles on my pretty face. How awful. I
kept expecting to do something great-great beyond my little book of
absurdly famous verses-and the others kept expecting it too. Yet it
somehow never happened."

"But, Julian, everybody loves you," Florry found himself saying, half in
admiration and half in hate.

"Oh, not everybody, Stink. Even Brilliant Julian's picked up his
enemies. If you only knew."

"What enemies?" Florry pressed. "Who could hate Julian?"

"I'll never tell," Julian said coyly.

"Unburden yourself, old man. Bob the Nailer could prong you at any mom-"

I say, Stink, speaking of unburdening, have you had a woman recently?"

"Julian!"

"I thought not. Your type never does. Too bloody noble or decent, or
some such. Listen, chum, take it when it's offered, that's my advice.
You can sort it all out later.

Take it when it's offered. That's all you owe anybody."

"Actually," said Florry, feeling that Julian had somehow maneuvered him
into spilling his secrets, but unable to stop himself nevertheless,
"yes, I did. I met a young woman on the boat. We had an adventure
together. We ended up ... well, in the-"

"In the sack. Stink, boy, that's the way! And what's this lovely
creature's name? I may look her up myself, you wouldn't mind, would
you?"

"Sylvia. Sylvia Lilliford," Florry confessed uneasily.

I'm actually rather gone on her. I thought I might even marry her if it
all works-"

"Marry her! Good heavens, you can't be serious. Why, I absolutely forbid
it, not until I've had my way with her.

I shall steal her from you, Stink. I'll make her mine, you'll see. Tell
me, does she have nice fat titties? Which way do they point? When she
scrunches them together for you do they seem somehow bigger? I've
noticed that-"

"Stop it, damn you." Florry was surprised to discover the passion in
himself "You're being quite unpleasant."

"Oh, look what I've gone and done. I've made the poor lovesick bastard
angry with me. Flony, mate, your Julian's only jesting, surely you can
see that, can't you?"

"You shouldn't speak of her that way."

"Ali, Stink, you've more Eton in you than even a prig like me, who was
born to it. God, I envy you your illusions. Listen, here's a smashing
idea. Suppose we all go on furlough together. That is, the three of us.
To some little seaside place. We can have a nice holiday. I'll pay for
it. I swear to you I'll not touch the lady. I may even bring one along
for myself, a dusky dark Spanish girl with a mustache and titties the
size of cabooses. And she and I will drill ourselves dizzy while you and
your Sylvia have tea and discuss Auden. It will be delightfully
civil-Hello, what's this?" He had stopped suddenly and pointed off, and
Florry followed his finger into a mass of brambles where there seemed to
be a kind of bundle or something.

It was a statue of a saint-and it was wood.

"A saint. The Lord has sent us a saint to rescue us our trespasses,"
Julian preached.

"It looks old," said Florry. "It could be worth a fortune."

"Up here, it is worth more than a fortune," said Julian, in theatrical
reverence. "It's worth a night in front of a warm fire, which is as rich
as a trench rat ever gets. A saint has brought us the gift of fire. We
thank thee, O Lord, in your munificence."

And Florry felt his chance to pin down Julian slither away.

There was to be an execution. It seemed that a patrol had captured three
Fascist soldiers and their officer digging potatoes in no-man's-land.
The soldiers, peasant louts without politics, were rapidly converted to
the Republican cause. The officer, after interrogation, was to be shot.

"Oh, won't it be fun. We'll actually see one of them die. Oh splendid,"
sang Julian. And as it happened, the shooting was to occur on a day
after Julian and Florry had undergone sentry-go and so they were free to
watch the fun. Uneasily, Florry acceded to Julian's demand.

The next morning, after a few hours of sleep, they followed a path
through untended orchards, unplucked rows of corn, fields of
hypertrophied mangoes and sugar beets, now pulpy beyond use. The war had
come just before harvest and the fruit and vegetables lay everywhere,
rotting and corpulent. It was something Florry hadn't noticed before,
and now, a little bleary from fatigue, he saw the unharvested bounty as
a sort of curse on their enterprise. He was surprised to discover how
nervous he was.

When they at last reached the great house, it was almost too late.
Crowds of soldiers milled excitedly in the courtyard, but nobody quite
seemed to know what to expect. At last, they located a higher officer
stretched out upon a chaise longue in the orchard, his muddy riding
boots splayed listlessly before him as he wrote in a notebook with
furious intensity. In fact, his wrist and the tight grip on an old pen
seemed the only thing intense about him: his knuckles were white as the
pen flew across the creamy pages of the book.

They stood, waiting to be noticed, but for the longest time no such
recognition came, and at one point Julian took a breath as if to speak,
but the man halted him with a finger raised suddenly like a baton,
without bothering to look up.

At last he lifted his eyes and confronted them. His face was one of
those ancient, wise creations that only wars or revolutions seem to
manufacture: it was a mass of fissures and erosion, all pain, fatigue,
and thought. All the lines in it pulled it downward, as though gravity
had a special influence.

"Yes, comrade?"

"Would you be Steinbach?" asked Julian.

"I would."

"I'm Raines."

"English, are you?" The man spoke with a sort of vague European accent.
He was balding and thick and looked almost like the abandoned tubers
they'd seen rotting in the fields. His belly bulged tautly through his
open, sloppy tunic. Under the tunic and against the pressure of the
stomach there stretched a thick, dirty wool turtleneck sweater which, at
his neck, seemed to catch and contain his jowls like a cup placed under
a spigot.

"Yes. Yes, I am, comrade-"

"And your friend?"

"English too, comrade."

"Now, what is it, Comrade Raines?"

"We've come to see the show," said Julian arrogantly, perhaps at his
worst. "Nobody out there knows where it's to be held. Could the comrade
perhaps inform us" It's good to watch one's enemies perish."

"You're very bloodthirsty. The poet, eh?"Achilles, Fool,' isn't that
it?"

Julian was pleased.

"I am he. The world's fifth greatest living poet."

"I would have put you seventh, I'm afraid, comrade. In any event, the
'show' will be held out front in just a few minutes. You shall't miss
it. I hope you enjoy it."

Florry's eyes had beheld Steinbach's and made an extraordinary
discovery. One of them was glass: a dead brown orb floating in a sea of
flesh. It's what gave him the queer, vexing look, as if he were somehow
not quite respectable. And the other eye seemed doubly bright, as if to
compensate for what was not there.

"You," Steinbach suddenly said to Florry, having caught the pressure of
Florry's studious glance upon him, "are you a poet, too?"

"No, comrade. A fighter."

"A believer in the revolution?"

"Yes.

"A public-school revolutionary!" Steinbach laughed.

"Now I've seen everything."

Steinbach went back to his notebooks and Florry simply stood there for
some time before it occurred to him they had been dismissed. At last he
turned. But as he turned, he was astonished to notice what the fellow
had been laboring so passionately over in his notebooks.

"Did you see that?" asked Julian. "He was drawing pictures of bridges.
Damned curious. Perhaps he was an architect or some such."

"Coolish fellow. Not exactly inspirational."

"Something of a legend, however. The intelligence nabob. You'll see.
Seventh! Now sixth I would have accel)--"

At that point a flatbed truck pulled into the yard, and the soldiers
were drawn to it as if it were to distribute candy or mail.

But instead, after just a bit, a delegation emerged from the stable. At
the center, Florry could see a puffy-faced young lieutenant in Fascist
gray. His hands were tied behind him. He was led roughly along.

"Julian, I think I'm going to head back. I'm not sure I can watch-"

"Oh, you must, chum. Really, it'll be a smashing experience. It'll give
you something fabulous to write about. I may even incorporate it into my
new poem."

"I've already done an execution piece. I've already seen an execution."

"Why, you are an expert, then."

Yet Florry thought he'd be physically ill. The fat officer was tugged to
the truck, and a dozen or so rough pairs of hands pushed him up where he
stood, his knees quaking. He was weeping.

"Fascist pig!"

"You bloody bastard!" "Blow 'is fookin' brains out!"

The cries rose.

"I wonder who the lucky chap is gets to pull the trigger," Julian said.

"Really, this is--2'

At that point, somebody climbed aboard the truck. It was the stout,
one-eyed Steinbach who'd been drawing bridges in the orchard.

"Death to Fascists," he shouted.

i Viva Cristo Rey!" shouted the tied man, as Stein bach pushed him to
his knees. Steinbach had the revolver out and with a cinematic flourish
showed it to the crowd, drawing their cheers. He cocked it and Florty,
stupefied and mesmerized, watched the physics of the thing: how the
fluted cylinder ticked in the light as the hammer's retraction drew it
around so that a charge was placed beneath its fall.

Steinbach pushed the pistol against the quaking officer's spine and
fired. The sound of the shot was muffled in the intimacy between muzzle
and flesh. The man pitched forward on the truck bed, face a sudden
blank. Steinbach stood over him and fired three more times into the
man's body. Florry could see black splotches where the spurt of flash
scorched the uniform.

The cheers were enormous.

Steinbach leaped off the truck with surprising agility.

"Take the dog away," he shouted. Meanwhile, the smoking body lay flat
and inert on the truck, its total death like an ugly charin that kept
the crowd away.

Florry watched as Steinbach strode through the men and went back to his
chaise longue. He sat down again and began to draw.

"What a piece of work is Steinbach," said Julian.

The sound of a shell awakened Florry, and he bolted conscious in a
shower of dust. He was back in his bunker.

He blinked in the flickering candlelight, barely remembering his final
collapse into an oceanically vast and dreamless sleep.

"Easy chum," said Julian, close by.

"What time is it?"

"Near dawn."

"Good God, I've missed sentry-go."

"No matter. Schedule's off."

Julian, in the candlelit bunker, semed queerly agitated.

Florry hauled himself up from the warmth of his sleeping blanket and sat
back against the earth wall, amid a welter of hanging water bottles,
bayonets, bombs, and knives, and asked for a cigarette.

Julian gave him one, lighting it. Florry could see his hands tremble and
feel his eyes upon him, hot and bright, almost sad.

Florry inhaled, the glow suffusing the narrow space with weird, ominous
illumination for an instant. His head ached, and he was ravenously
hungry.

"Stinky," Julian said, "tonight we attack. After five bloody months of
waiting, it's the big one. The Anarchists on the other side of the city
go at nine, then the German battalion at ten, and we jump off at
ten-thirty.

It's a terrible plan, one of those fancy, clever things that Royal
Marines couldn't pull off with a month of rehearsal, a three-pronged,
clockwork masterpiece that'll be a ball's up from the start. This time
tomorrow we're dead. But I must say, I feel rather good about it. No
more of this awful mudbath living. It's over the top for us, Stink."

Florry felt a curious sense of relief slide through him. Yes, he
welcomed it, too, to be done for a time with the damned trench and also
with his other confusions.

All right, Florry thought. If you're truly a spy, you won't risk your
bloody neck in a battle for a silly Spanish city that nobody ever heard
of.

"Well, it's bloody wonderful, if you ask me," said Florry. "I'd like a
fair chance at the bastards in a fair fight."

Julian laughed.

"Damn you, Stinky, your Eton fairness will get us both kippered. If
you've a chance, shoot 'em in the guts with your rifle and stick 'em in
the throat with your spike and maybe you'll come out of it."

"I wonder why now," said Florry. "One supposes it was in the cards ever
since we got up here, but why now, so suddenly?"

"Who knows how their brains work?" wondered Julian. "Generals are all
the same, you know. Ours or theirs, it makes no difference. But listen
here. I've hired a boy who's about to leave for the rear. I've some
messages to send, perhaps you'd like to say something to lovely Sylvia
before the balloon goes up, eh? Say it quick. He's leaving shortly," He
slid out, leaving Florty alone. Flor-ry pawed through his kit, found
paper and pen, and, squinting in the candle I ight, quickly scrawled his
message.

APRIL 26, 1937

SYLVIA, I've no right at all to the feelings I hold for you, but I hold
them anyway. We are about to go out to battle and I wanted to tell you.
In another life, perhaps.

ROBERT FLORRY Drivel he thought, and almost threw it away, but then he
thought how much easier it would be to die without regrets, having at
least made his idiotic declaration.

Then he felt the need for another note, another bit of unfinished
business.

APRIL 26, 1937

SAMPSON, A chance to push the inquiry forward tomorrow night. We're
throwing a party and our chap the poet is invited. I'll know by his
behavior, one way or the other. Good hunting!

FLORRY He folded it and scratched Sampson's address on the Ramblas.

He crawled out and found Julian chatting with a boy in the lee of the
trench.

"Can he take another one?" he whispered. "A professional thing to a
Times chap I'd signed up to do a piece with."

"I suppose. Why not?" said Julian. He spoke quickly to the boy in
Spanish and Florry was mildly surprised to learn that he spoke it so
well.

The boy folded the messages into a pouch on his belt and at last darted
off.

"Where on earth did you find him?"

"Oh, I'm smashing at scrounging up things, Stink, old sport."

"Will he get through?"

"Oh, Carlos will get through. He's very good at that sort of thing. Used
him before, he's always made it.

Well, Stinky, ready for the big parade?"

"To march at the head of it, in fact," Florry said, happy at last.

THE CAFT GRAND ORIENTE WAS PACKED THAT NIGHT with the children and the
ideals of the Revolution. But there was also murder in the air.

Someone will die tonight, Levitsky thought. He felt the violence in the
atmosphere, rich and potent. There would be blood on the pavement and
screaming women and furious men with drawn revolvers. But for him at
least, the long wait underground was over. It was time after the months
of boredom to move.

He took a sip of the green schnapps. It was wonderful.

The girl sat with a group of young POUMISTAS at a table near the bar.
They were all gay and lively, full of everything, themselves mostly, but
hope and politics, too; or maybe it was only fashion for them, a game.
They wore their blue overalls and had militia caps tucked into the
epaulets. Yet still the girls were slender and quite lovely, especially
the Lilliford girl, the loveliest of them all. But she held the key to
the next step on the way to Julian Raines.

Levitsky was well behind them, sitting with his back to the wall.
Getting to the Oriente had been easy, once he THE GRAND ORIENTE left his
shelter in the Anarchist neighborhood. SIM agents were everywhere with
their NKVD advisers, and he'd been stopped twice by Asaltos, as the
Revolutionary Assault Troops brought in from Valencia were called, but
in each case his papers had gotten him through.

Still, it was frightening. How tight was Glasanov's net?

Well, it was a net, that was clear, but was it not drawn and gathered?
Perhaps it had been at the start; but Levitsky knew the longer he
waited, the looser it would become.

Now, a clever man, a man with his wits and a little presence and a nice
selection of identities, could get through. It must be driving poor
Glasanov insane. With a battalion of NKVD troops, he could have closed
the city down and gone through it like an archivist, examining each
alley, each hallway. In days, he'd have him back.

However, with only a skeleton of NKVD people, but mostly earnest,
unpracticed Spaniards, Glasanov was doomed.

Glasanov, I will be the death of you, Levitsky thought with a wicked
little smile.

"Comrade? Another schnapps?" asked the waiter.

"No, I think not."

"We close soon, comrade. The curfew. Not like the old times."

"I see. Thank you."

"You took as though you've had a rough time of it, comrade."

"Some Anarchists. Working men who a year ago never spoke above a
whisper. They were feeling mighty about their new world a few days ago
and demonstrated their enthusiasm to an old man who wouldn't sing their
song or dance to their tune in an alley. They said I looked too
bourgeois for my own good."

"Ay. Crazy ones, they're all over the place. These are terrible times,
comrade."

"But interesting," said Levitsky He took a last look about the room. The
smoke in here made his eyes smart. Behind the bar, the mirror stood
streaked with grease. The light was amber, almost yellow, shining off
the walls and from the flickering candles and the weak bulbs in the
glass cups mounted near the ceiling. The place was crowded-all the
better with men and women in uniform, with braids and berets and caps,
with automatic pistols and boots, the fighters nut-brown from their days
in the sun out at the firing line, the theorists pale from long days of
argument and negotiation. They were all getting drunk and the air
seethed with boasts and charges and challenges and lyrics and verses. He
knew it: of course, easily. It was Petrograd in '17, while the great
Lenin was waging his war of bluff and maneuver against Kerensky and the
provisional government.

He looked back to the girl's table. He didn't think any of them at the
table were NKVD. He could not, of course, be certain, but after so many
years, he believed he knew NKVD on sight: something furtive and sly in
the eyes, a certain inability to relax, a certain sense of one's own
authority.

No. The waiter, maybe. Surely he informed for someone, but purely out of
opportunism, not ideology.

Who else9 Perhaps that man over there in the black Anarchist's beret who
was, Levitsky had noticed, less drunk than he pretended, and whose eyes
never ceased to roam.

But Levitsky had to move. Fifteen minutes to curfew.

Yes, it was time for the devil to move to the girl.

He got up, edged through the crowd, standing patiently when a couple
rose between himself and her and he waited for them to pass by. When
they were gone, he proceeded meekly. He slipped next to her and bent to
her; she had not yet noticed.

She was a lovely girl, but he could see the gaiety was forced, she was
not happy at all, as were the other young POUMISTAS. They were all
excited about an upcoming battle.

"The battle is an imperative process of history," a young man was
saying. "Your friend must take his chances like any comrade."

"If we take Huesca tonight, we take Barcelona tomorrow," said an older
man, some sort of Poumist leader.

"And the revolution lives," said the boy.

"I just hate the waste," be heard her say.

"Ah. Fraulein Lilliford?" Levitsky said pitifully.

She turned quickly, looking up.

"Good lord, Sylvia, who on earth can this be?" someone at the table
inquired.

"Herr Gruenwaid, no?" he said. "From the ship, the vasser, the boat,
ia?" He began to jabber in excited German.

"Hell Gr-uenwald, my God. Oh, you look so different. I do apologize for
staring. It's-"

"Ja, Missy Fraulein."

"Look, do sit down-"

"Sylvia-!"

"This man was in the sinking with us. He's been through a lot," Sylvia
said tartly. "Sit down, Herr Gruenwald. You look terrible. I'd heard
that you'd been arrested by-"

"Ja. Polizoi! Old business, a mistake, hah! Really hit an old man. My
head-it vasn't zo good before, but now is kaput. Krazy in der head! Hah!
" He laughed abrasively and looked about the table to enjoy the shocked
befuddlement of Sylvia's new friends.

"Well, it sounds drea4ful," said Sylvia.

"Good heavens, Sylvia, your collection certainly grows by the day. A
mad, decrepit German cabin boy!"

"Shut up, Stephen," said the older man at the table.

"The old fellow has had a rough enough time. One can tell from looking
at him."

"Mr. Gruenwald, you look famished. May I buy you something to eat? What
are you going to do?"

"Ach! kh-er, Gruenwaid wait for papers, zen ship out. Nein, missy, I
haben zie-haf place to stay. Und food. Ah, my head, it aches so bad
zumtimes. Bombs.

The Great War. To end all wars ja? Metal plate ja?" He tapped his skull,
smiled broadly.

"Missy Fraulein, it's, ach, zomething zo stupid. It's mein frau. My
wife, ja? She is still in Deutschland and, ah, I have no vord from her.
And of course, here, hah! politics gets in da way. Dere is no
Deutschland embassy-"

"No, of course not. They are for the other side."

"I vish to zumhow send vord dat--dat I am all right.

Ja. I remember from boat. Mr. Florry a journalist; he vas goink to zee
Mr. Raines, another journalist. Ja? Perhaps such an intelligent fellow,
Herr Raines, the journalist, he know a way to reach my poorfrau in
Deutschland ja."

"But Herr Gruenwaid, I'm afraid that's impossible."

Levitsky, looking past her in the mirror, saw four men in overcoats
enter. The largest of them was Glasanov's Amerikanski.

"Julian Raines and Robert Florry have joined the militia. They are at
the front, at Huesca."

"Ach, a fighter," Levitsky said, thinking, the fool! The utter idiot!

Bolodin stood with his men at the front of the room, looking through it.

Levitsky could not look at Bolodin in the mirror.

Bolodin would have that extremely fine-tuned sense of being observed; he
would feel the eyes upon him and swiftly locate their owner.

"Look here, let me make some inquiries for you," Sylvia said. "There are
many Germans in our party. Perhaps I can locate somebody who knows a
method of communication."

Bolodin was moving through the crowd. Levitsky kept his face down, his
body hunched as if in rapt attention to what she was saying. He tried to
concentrate on exits. He could dash for the back; no, they'd have him,
strong young Bolodin would have him and smash him down.

Bolodin approached; there were suddenly secret policemen all around.

"Comrades," somebody was saying, "you'll excuse if we ask to see your
papers."

"And who are you," one of the POUMISTAS said defiantly. "Perhaps it's we
who should ask to see your papers."

"I am Ugarte, of the Servicio de Investigaci6n Militar.

We are responsible for the security of the revolution.

You excuse this boring formality, of course. One has to take so many
precautions these days. There are so many spies about."

"The revolution is in far more danger from Russian secret policemen than
from anybody in the POUM," said Sylvia. "You show us your papers."

"There are no Russians here. I don't understand why our brothers and
sisters in the Marxist Unification Party are so difficult," said the
policeman. "One would think they hadn't the revolution's best interests
in mind."

It suddenly occurred to Levitsky: they mean to kill these children. It's
part of Glasanov's "I don't think we need to resort to extreme methods,"
said the smooth young secret policeman. "If, perhaps, we could all go
outside and get this settled quickly and quietly with a discussion,
then-"

Bolodin stood at an oblique angle to Levitsky, his face impassive, his
eyes hooded, almost blank. He had not looked at Levitsky at all. He was
looking instead at the older man called Carlos.

"I am Comrade Carlos Brea, of the executive committee of the Party of
Marxist Unification, and I will not-"

"Comrade Brea, your reputation proceeds you. Surely you can understand
the point of a few mild security precautions. We mean nobody any harm;
we mean only to establish identities and then walk away."

Bolodin quietly separated himself. Levitsky watched as he pushed his way
through the crowd and exited into the street.

"Well," said Brea, "I'll go with you to our headquarters.

Let the others stay. They have worked hard enough for their pleasure."

"That's the spirit of cooperation. Indeed, the comrade is to be
congratulated. Who says the different workers can't function together?"

"Carlos, don't go," said Sylvia.

"I'll be back in a few minutes. I'm sure the SIM can guarantee my safety
in front of witnesses."

"Of course, Comrade Brea."

"Carlos, some of us will go along."

"Nonsense. Stay here. I'll be off, the rules, after all, must apply to
everyone."

He rose and, with a smile for the youths at the table, threaded his way
out with the policemen.

"I don't like it at all," said one of the men. "They are getting more
and more brazen. It's a very disturbing trend."

"We ought to arrest a few of them and-"

Sylvia turned to Levitsky. "Perhaps you could meet me someplace tomorrow
night, Herr Gruenwald. In the meantime, I'll make some inquiries and-"

Then they heard the shots from the street and a second later a woman
came in shrieking, "Oh, God, somebody shot Carlos Brea in the head, oh
Christ, he's bleeding on the pavement!" in the panic, and the grief, and
the outrage, Levitsky managed to slip away. He knew he had to get to the
front now to get to Julian. And he also knew who had shot Carlos Brea.

THE ATTACK THEY COULD HEAR THE DIVERSIONARY ATTACK OF THE Anarchists on
the other side of the city: the heavy clap of bombs, followed by the
less authoritative tapping of the machine guns. The plan called for the
Anarchists to go in first, from the west. The Fascists would rush
reserves over to meet that assault; then the POUMISTAS and the Germans
of the Communist Thaelmann Brigade would jointly rush the city from the
east.

Florry shivered in the rain: it had turned the trench floor into mud and
made its walls as evilly slick as gruel.

It would be a terrible ordeal to scramble up and out. He peeked over the
parapet. In the mist and dark, the Fascist lines were invisible.

"Do you think they know we're coming?" somebody asked.

"Of course they know we're coming," said Julian cruelly. "D'you think
they can keep a secret on the Ramblas? That's the ' fun of the evening."

"Julian, do be quiet," said Billy Mowry strictly. "It's only a few
minutes now."

"Yes, commissar, of course, commissar," said Julian.

"Do you know," he said to Florry, not dropping his tone a bit, "in the
Great War they kicked footballs toward the Hun. Perhaps we ought to kick
copies of the bloody great Das Kapital." "Julian, damn you, I said stuff
it," yelled Billy Mowry. "Touchy chap," Julian said. "I was feeling
quite gallant, too. Best to go into battle with a quip on one's lip.!"
eh, Stinky?"

"I'm too wet for quips," said Florry.

"Yes, well I'm too frightened not to quip. Hush me if I bother you. But
I cannot seem to stop chatting. Dear old Julian, never at a loss for
words."

It was odd; the wait affected each differently. Florry felt sleepy with
dread; he could not force himself to think about what lay ahead. Julian,
on the other hand, could not think of anything else.

"Gad, I wonder which will be worse. The machine guns or the wire. In
France, the men hated the wire. It would snare them and they'd be hung
up like department-store mannequins. The more one struggled, the more
one was sucked in. My poor father at the Somme ran into a bit of he
stuff. Ghastly, eh?"

"I know about your father. Can't you recite some poetry or something?"
Florry said.

"Ah, poetry. Yes, poetry before battle. How English.

And I'm supposed to be rather good at poetry, aren't I?

How about, "In the end, it's all the same/In the end, it's all a game.'
Hmmm, no, all wrong. Somehow it doesn't feel much like a game about now.
What about, "We are the hollow men/We are the No, that's not appropriate
either. Er,"If I should die, think only this of me, there's some corner
of a foreign field that's forever POUM.' Good heavens, how appalling!
Trouble is, they don't write any good war stuff anymore. It's out of
fashion. They only write antiwar stuff, no help at all to a bloke about
to go over the top, eh? I feel like something cheerful and powerfully
seductive, something that would make me hungry to die for somebody
else's party and someone else's country."

"I don't believe that poem has been written."

"Hasn't, has it? Well, you haven't read the reat"Pons'

yet. If I ever can put a tail on the beast, it'll move me from seventh
greatest living poet on up to third. And if bloody Auden should drop
dead of a dose of clap from some Chineeboy, why then I'm second. Gad how
exciting!"

"Recite a line, then."

"Hmm. All right.

Among the Druids, in the Druid hall, the.fireflickers, shadows fall.

The past, an icy castle, slowly settles, while they boil the future in
their kettles.

And death was inches, dark was all Florry waited. "Go on."

"Out of words, old man. That's where it stops."

"God, it's brilliant, Julian."

"What's it mean , Jules?" said the man on the other side of Julian.

"Now, Sammy, don't you worry. It's just words."

"Ready boys," came Billy Mowry's call through the rain. "It's almost
time."

"How's that for inspiration! At least in an aristocratic army, the
officers can quote a line of verse at the key moment."These in the hour
when heaven was falling'-"

"That's about mercenaries, old boy," Florry said through chattering
teeth, "who took their wages and are dead. We are not mercenaries. At
any rate, if we are, the pay is bloody low."

"Au contraire, chum, it's bloody high. A clean soul.

Freedom from one's little secrets, eh? From the little men inside one
who are always clamoring to get out, eh?"

"All right, ]ads," Billy sounded calm in the rain, "it's time.,, "Good
heavens, it is, isn't it?" Julian said. He reached inside his tunic and
pulled out what appeared to be a ring on a chain, brought it swiftly to
his lips and kissed it.

"There, now I'm all safe," he said. "My old dad was wearing it at the
Somme day he cashed in. Wedding ring.

It's my lucky piece. Never done me wrong. Care for a smooch, Stink?"
"Thanks, no. I don't think my lips are working." "Tally-ho, then. Good
hunting, and all that rot."

"Luck to you, old man," said Florry, unsure how be meant it. "I'll tell
you my secrets one day, too." And he became lost in the struggle to get
himself up the wallhe'd lost some strength-but with a sliding, grunting
kind of athletic twist, he suddenly achieved it, staggered onto wet but
solid ground, and found himself standing up, pretty as you please, in
front of the trench in which he'd cowered for weeks. It was both a
curiously liberating and curiously vulnerable sensation. All up and down
the line, in the ghostly mist, men were rising' shaking themselves off
like wet terriers, unslinging their rifles, and facing their death. They
were like the children of the Hydra's teeth, Florry thought, his fancy
education delivering him a fancy metaphor at just the right time:
half-mythical creatures slouching out of some dimly remembered far ago
time and place. A hideous joy cut through Florry as he slid the great
bayonet-heavy Mosin Nagent from his shoulder and brought it to the high
port.

Bombs-grenades-hung on his belt and he wore his Webley at his hip.

"Pip, pip," said Julian, next to him, with a wicked smile that Florry
could see through the murk. "I do believe the glorious adventure is
about to commence."

Indeed it was. The line, like some kind of creature itself, began to
move out across no-man's-land.

Florry no longer felt the cold or the wet and once or twice stepped into
a huge cold trough, the water slopping over his boot tops, but it meant
nothing. They moved steadily through the mist, toward the Fascist lines.
He could feel the incline beginning to rise under him and the heavy,
sloshy weight of the clinging mud grow at his feet.

The plan was simple yet dangerous: to approach silently-the rain helped
them here-to the wire at the outer limits of the Fascist lines, cut it,
get inside it, and hurl a wave of bombs, then leap into the trench
before the Fascists had a chance to recover from the blasts. It all,
therefore, depended most fragilely on surprise, but the soldiers moved
like knights to Florry's ears, clanking and lumbering in the dark. Yet
from beyond there was no response.

They seemed to have been walking for hours. Had they lost direction like
souped-in aviators and now beaded the wrong way? These thoughts nagged
at Florry as he fought through a mass of brush and up a little gulch;
for a moment, he was entirely alone. He felt as if he were the last man
on earth.

"Jolly fun, eh?" Julian, close at hand, muttered in a stage whisper.

At last they got through the vines and Florry realized with a start that
they had covered the ground and had made the wire, which curled cruelly
before them in the steady rain. It all had an underwater slowness to it,
the steady pelt of the rain, the soaked, heavy clothes, the mud-heavy
boots, and now men crouched with the deliberation of scientists to ready
themselves for the final few feet. In the slanting sheets of water that
descended out of the sky upon them, Florty made out the figure of one
fellow scurrying ahead with a kind of lizard's urgency. Billy Mowry, a
hero as well as a leader, took it upon himself to scamper up the slope
to perform the most dangerous task, the cutting of the wire. He lay on
his back under the evil stuff and Florry could see the snippers come out
and begin to twist and tug at the strands. Florry knelt, the fingers of
one hand nervously playing with his rifle. With his other, he pulled a
bomb off his belt. It had two pins. Cradling his rifle against his
shoulder, he pulled the easy one out and let it drop.

Now he had only to yank the hard one and throw it in four seconds.

With each snap of Billy Mowry's clippers another strand of the wire
popped free. Florry could feel his own breath rasping in his chest. His
knees felt like warm j'elly.

How could he be so hot and so cold, so dry and so wet, at once? He could
feel each raindrop individually strike against his skin; a million, a
trillion of them. And from the Fascists, there was still nothing, though
they were less than thirty-five or forty paces away, gathered about
their cooking fires.

Hurry, damn you, Billy Mowry, Florry thought.

Sylvia came into his mind suddenly. We had a night, didn't we, darling.
Whatever there wasn't, there was that.

He could feel the tension in his thighs like steel springs cranking
tighter and tighter. The bomb was growing in weight, deadening his arm.
The rifle leaning against him seemed a long ton of coal.

Hurry, damn you, Bill Mowry, hurry!

The last snip sounded and Billy Mowry pulled himself up, peeling back
the wire. He wore heavy engineer's gloves. His face, even in the dim
light, shone with inad excitement and zealotry. He looked insane, like
Jack the Ripper.

Julian dashed through the gap first. All right, that's one for him.
Would a spy risk the first bullet, the first thrust of bayonet? Flony
rose and scrambled after, feeling a singing in his ears. He could feel
men clumping through behind him, slipping and straining in the mud. A
wonderful strangeness passed over them all: it felt like some huge
opera, all stylized and abstract and mighty with song and mass and
chorus. It seemed incredible; they were doing it! The excitement poured
through Florry's veins and a great hope blossomed like an exotic flower
in his imagination and The first shot seemed to come from very close by.
It was a spurt of flame just at the horizon, accompanied by a loud
percussion. Perhaps there was a yell, too, with the noise of the rifle.
And then an instant of horrified silence as if each side were unwilling
to believe what was about to happen. A second later, a hundred shots
spattered out, an attack of fireflies, brief novas of light and sound in
the whizzing rain.

Florry was astounded by the cold beauty of the gunfire.

He seemed suddenly to be among clouds of insects and could not quite
understand what was happening. The bullets struck all about him, kicking
up puffs of spray.

Billy Mowry, just ahead, rose and hurled a bomb. It detonated behind the
parapet with a flash and perhaps there was another scream lost in the
ring of the burst. But the fire on the militia did not lapse in the
least.

"Bombs, boys," Mowry screamed, fussing with another.

"Throw your fookin' bombs!"

Florry remembered the treasure he clutched, and yanked on the second
pin, certain that at any second a bullet would come along to bash his
brains out. The pin would not budge, though he twisted it insanely. He
looked down at it: he had been turning it the wrong way!

Reversing direction, he got the thing out with a tug and a grunt, and
the effort transfigured itself into a toss as he heaved it forward where
it immediately disappeared in the dark. He dove back to the earth and it
suddenly seemed as if the foundations of the planet had become unbolted.
Explosions burst behind the parapet, a chorus of them, three or four or
five or six, then far too many to count.

"Again, boys, again!" shouted Mowry.

Florry got the pins out of another bomb and hurled it off, too, feeling
all the while the buzz of bullets. He threw himself back and tasted the
sandy grit and pebbles of the earth pressing against his lips when
suddenly quite close up, the powerful clap of another bomb shook him.
The Fascists were throwing the bloody things, too.

The blast was orange and hot and stung him with a harsh spray of
pebbles. The echo died reluctantly and he could hear moaning and
pleading in the ringing in his ears.

Miraculously, he realized he was unhurt. He picked his rifle up,
shouldered it, and fired. It bucked against his bones and he threw the
bolt quickly, ejecting a spent shell, and fired again.

He was aware that Billy Mowry had risen to fire steadily on the Fascist
position with his Luger. Mowry suddenly slipped back, clutching his
knee.

Florry felt sick. Without Billy, they were lost.

"Damn!" howled Mowry, coming to rest in his tumble near Florry. "Pranged
again. The fookers." He looked a Florry. "Get going, damn you. You're
dead for certain i you stay here."

Florry picked up his rifle and began to scramble witt the mob toward the
ridge. Around him, men were clawing their lugubrious way up the slope
through wha seemed a sudden, blessed respite in the firing.

Florry reached the sandbag parapet and jumped over landing heavily in
the Fascist trench, ready to get ul close and jam his monstrous bayonet
into somebody': guts, preferably an Italian or a Moorish colonel or @
Falangist executioner. He was full of murderous exultation and rage; at
the same time, he felt terrified. But thi trench was deserted; there was
nobody to stick. Hi looked up and down it and could see only his comrade
tumbling in like parachutists, as eager for combat as hi and as equally
disappointed.

Off to the left, there seemed to be a gap in the trencl wall of some
sort. He moved quickly to discover it was @ communications trench, that
is, a sort of gutterlike pat] scooped out of the dirt to facilitate
low-profile movemen between the different trenches. He began to work his
wa, through the litter and the mud, heading deeper toward thi Fascist
position, when a shot flashed in the dark and thi bullet whipped with a
thud into the trench wall near him f le answered with a shot at the
noise and got a bomb of his harness. He pulled the two pins and hurled
it dowi the way, falling back. The explosion was as bright as flare,
fragmenting his night vision and filling his ear with a roar. He sat up,
dazed, wondering what on earth ti do, when someone grabbed him.

"Eh?"

"No, no. Stay here. They'll be back soon enough." I was Julian. One arm
hung limply at his side.

"You're hurt!"

"It's nothing. A piece of shrapnel or something gave me a shaving cut on
the arm. Brilliant Julian will never play the viola again.
Congratulations on surviving."

"Terrifying, wasn't it?"

"Gloriously full of fear. I'm afraid to check my pants.

They may be wet and one doesn't want to humiliate oneself in front of
the servants."

"I'm sure they're dry as the Sahara."

"We seem to have won, by the way. That fellow Jones is dead. He caught
one in the head and went down as if he'd been ... well, as if he'd been
shot in the head. Several others are variously messed up, including our
beloved Billy Mowry, whose leg has been perforated.

But he always gets banged up; otherwise, he's indestructible. When he
was a babe, his mother dipped him by the knee into a pot of socialist
marmalade, thus rendering him invulnerable to capitalist bullets."

"Will they come back, do you think?" Florry asked.

"Oh, shortly. They'll have to get the priests to whip up their frenzy,
but they'll come. God, if they had mortars, they could wipe us out in a
second. If they had tanks, they'd squash us like insects. Lucky for us
these chaps don't know any more about fighting a war than our chaps do.
I say, did you get yourself a Fascist?"

"I-I don't know. Maybe."

"I caught one with my bayonet. He's farther down the ditch. Ghastly, but
interesting. There was so much blood.

I had no idea a man had that much blood in him. You look rather ill."

"It's all so-"

"Elemental. Yes, isn't it, rather."

A bugle sounded off in the distance where the Fascists had retreated.
Florry saw shapes scrambling about far off, yet they were too indistinct
to waste bullets on.

"They must be massing for their show. I can't imagine they're too happy
about all this work on a wet night."

Dust spurts began to kick to life all about the sandbags, just as the
noise of high-pitched, rapid typing rose from the dark. Julian and
Florry ducked back, hearing the crack-crack-crack of projectiles rushing
through the air above them.

"They've a Maxim, damn them," said Julian. "We'll not be going any
farther tonight. But we'll have some bloody sport when they attack. Oh,
I wish I could get my hands on a Vickers or a Lewis instead of this
neolithic implement," Julian said, clapping his crude Russian rifle with
disgust. "Why is it the bloody nasties have all the fancy toys?"

"Florry!" someone whispered. "'Eh?"

"Bloody Billy wants to see you."

"Where is he?"

"Back down the trench, by the bunker."

"All right. Pass the word, I'm coming."

Florry crawled off, past the shapes of the other section men in the
trench. In time, crawling over litter and junk, he reached the Fascist
bunker. He ducked into it, finding it as crude as their own quarters.
Billy sat on a cot, his bloody leg up and swaddled before him.

"You all right, commissar?"

"Ah, it's nothing I won't survive, the fookers. Listen, old man, I want
you to tell the chaps on the left to keep their ears open. Keep track of
them, Florry, chum, don't let them wander away. I'm worried. There
should have been a lot of shooting on our left, where the German
battalion was to have hit the line farther down. Nobody's heard
anything. I'd hate to think of us in the middle of this picnic by
ourselves, eh? And of course our bloody Colt at last snapped its fookin'
bolt, so we've no automatic weapons."

Florry was surprised Billy had chosen him for this tiny smidgen of
responsibility; why not the far more experienced Julian?

"And especially watch bloody Julian. You can see the bloody madness in
his eyes. He's liable to get himself kippered on something harebrained.
He thinks he's Lord Cardigan and Winston Churchill rolled up in one. If
he's to die, let him die for something beyond his own bloody vanity."

"Right-o, Billy."

"Now get back there, and send word if you hear anything. And get ready.
The Fascists are sure to hit us back tonight."

Florry scurried out.

He went on back and spread the word. But someone had vanished.

"Where's Julian?" ""E said'e wanted to do a bit of poking about, and off
le went."

"Christ, you let him go?"

"Aw,'n you could stop 'is majesty when 'e's got 'is leart set on
something', chum?"

Florry supposed he couldn't. He looked down the communications trench
through which Julian had purportedly disappeared. The seconds ticked by,
turning to minutes.

They heard bugles again. The Maxim began to pepper the air over their
heads.

"Damn him," Florry cursed. "And if he's out there when the bastards hit
us, what then?"

E's kippered certain, that's wot. Relax, chum. The bloke figured to
catch 'is doin' something' bloody ignorant."E's too bloody brilliant for
this 'ere world."

Well, here it was. Julian off on some mad toot, sure to buy it in the
neck.

Leave him, he thought. Leave him and be done. It solves everything. Your
life can continue. Your obligations have been met. Everybody's happy.

Yet what Florry discovered himself saying surprised himself as much as
the men to whom he spoke.

"Look, I'm going to mosey down there a bit, see if I can't rein him in,
all right? Sammy, you keep watch."

"Florry, chum, no point Mo fancy cents getting' kip pered the same
night."

"I told bloody Billy I'd look after the fool."

"Florry, mate, it's bloody fool- "

"Shut up! " Florry barked, suddenly furious at the man.

"I told damned Billy, don't you understand?"

"Christ, chum, no need to get so worked up."

Florry could see nothing down the trench except some broken timbers and
eerily reflective puddles. About twenty yards ahead it took a jagged
dogleg off to the right and vanished from his vision. He set down his
rifle, which would do him no good in close quarters, and pulled out the
Webley.

"Don't be gone long, chum. No tellin' when Billy's going to pull us
back. I don't think we're here for the season."

"Yes. I'll just be a while."

He began to creep forward edgily, feeling his way with his hand in front
of him. He advanced for what felt like hours in this fashion-it was more
like fifteen minutes while the odd shot popped overhead and the odd bomb
exploded in the far distance. He had begun to feel like a Nottingham
miner in the deepest, loneliest shaft. He imagined he could hear the
groaning of the walls and smell the dust heavy in the air as the cave-in
threatened.

Damn you, Julian, where the devil are you? Why do such a foolish thing?

At one point something moved just ahead, and Florry brought his pistol
up; it was a rat, big as a cat, with filthy rotten eyes and quivering
whiskers. It perched on its hind legs barring the way. Fiorry hated
rats. He felt about on the gummy trench floor for a rock, found one,
pried it free, and hurled it at the beast. The throw was off and the
thing just stared balefully at him with what seemed to be Oxbridge
arrogance. A university rat, eh? A bloody Trinity College rat. Finally,
bored, it ambled haughtily off.

Florry was surprised to discover himself breathing hard at the ordeal.
Gathering his nerves back in a tight little bundle, he proceeded along,
adding rats to his worries. He clambered over a broken timber. A body
lay nearby but Florry could make out nothing of it in the dark, so
coated with mud as it was; it was like a sack of sodden rags. He went on
farther. There was no movement and the only sound was the splashing of
the drops into the puddles.

"Julian? Julian?" he whispered.

There was no answer. A fusillade sounded above, and then an angry reply.
The Fascists were getting ready to counterattack. At the same time, a
mist rose to cling to everything, a kind of ghastly soup lapped
everywhere in the trench.

"Julian?" He thought Julian was probably back by this time, full of
marvelous stories and having appropriated a flask of Fascist brandy and
treated the troops to a sip.

Damn you, Julian, so like you! And here I sit out on a bloody limb.

"Julian!" he whispered again. How far out was he?

How close to their position? The urge to retire grew heavy and tempting.
It was almost an ache. But he knew somehow that he could not. He could
not abandon Julian, not here. He was bound to him in peculiar ways.

He squirmed ahead a few more feet, tripping through the mist. He reached
another zigzag in the trench. He eased around it.

"Shhh! God, they're right ahead, Stink."

"Jul-"

"Shhh! Do you know I heard you the whole way? It's a good thing they're
not paying attention."

Julian was crouched in a niche in the wall.

"Thank God you're all right. Come on, Mowry says they'll attack any
moment."

"Of course they will. Now listen here, they won't come through this
trench because it zigs and zags so furiously and because they'll assume
we have it covered. They'll be above, moving through the mist. When they
go by-"

"Julian!"

"Just listen, chum. They'll go by and we can squeeze ahead another few
yards or so. It's not far off. I was almost there. And I'll chuck a bomb
into that Maxim gun.

"Julian, no. Christ. Listen, Mowry says the attack is all fouled up. We
may be out here all by ourselves. The Germans never jumped off. We're
out on a limb."

"Well, if that doesn't just prove you can't get good help any more. The
cheeky bastards."

"Come on, we've--@' But Florry was stunned into silence by the awkward
shambling noise of a large body of men beginning to move up ahead.
Julian pulled him back into the niche and they lay in the mud, enwrapped
in each other. Flon-y could barely breathe. He felt his heart throbbing
and his chest aching. He pressed himself into Julian's chest and sensed
the heart pumping madly. They could hear the low squish-slip of boots
moving through the mud close by, but Florry was too scared to focus.
Whispered commands in Spanish flew softly through the mist like
sparrows. There was the jingle and clink of equipment, the occasional
harder clack of a bolt being thrown.

Each second Florry knew they'd be discovered. Wave after wave passed by.
They must have gotten reinforcements. A whole army seemed to be creeping
by above them through the mist.

"Get ready," Julian commanded, at last disconnecting himself from
Florry. He began to slither down the trench with the bomb in his hand.
Florry followed, cocking the Webley.

A sudden spatter of shots announced the beginning of the attack. Florry
heard the pop and snap of rifle bullets and the bursting of bombs. With
the cover of the noise, Julian rose and began to close the distance to
the main trench with manful strides. Florry hurried after him.

The Maxim opened fire from quite nearby: its clatter was tremendous. It
poured bullets out into the night at an incredible rate and seemed to
Florry like some industrial instrument for the manufacture of wickets or
camming gears, sparking and laboring mightily in its moorings. He could
see Julian pluck the first pin from his bomb and then begin to slide
toward the gap that marked the intersection between their trench and the
larger enemy one.

What happened next happened fast, particularly after the long, slow
miner's descent toward it. A youth appeared as Julian stepped into the
trench and pointed his rifle at him. Florry, just behind Julian, shot
the young man in the face.

"Good show!" shouted Julian, bounding ahead and pulling the second pin,
as he lobbed the bomb underhand toward the sound of the machine gun. In
another instant he was back, knocking Florry flat. The burst, so close,
lit the sky with burning fragments and hot wind and hurt their ears. The
Maxim quit abruptly.

"Come on," yelled Julian, clambering past him. Florry rose. There seemed
other dark shapes coming from the Fascist position at them and he fired
his remaining five chambers of four-five-five at them, driving them
back, and turned to race after Julian.

"Come on, Stink," screamed Julian, pulling him along.

He was delirious with joy. "Good Christ, man, but that was bloody
marvelous, that was more bloody fun than old Julian's ever had! Blast,
you potted him right in the bloody snout!"

But Florry felt only queasy and ashamed. He'd seen the boy's face in the
spurt of flame and he knew he was perhaps fifteen, with a vague sprig of
mustache. The bullet had smashed into his brain, that huge
four-fivefive, heavy as the Liverpool Express, shattering the whole
upper quadrant of his face. He lay in a slop of mud and blood, utterly
defunct. Christ, why couldn't it have been a Moorish sergeant or a
German colonel, why a silly, dim little child?

Julian was yanking him along savagely. Explosions and gunfire seemed to
be coming from every direction in the dark. Weird illuminations lit the
horizon. The trench seemed endless. Bullets pranged into the dirt or
thunked against the sandbags, making a peculiar hop-hop sound.

Julian suddenly leapt back, pinning him to the ground.

He heard, besides the thumping of Julian's heart, the heavy sound of a
mass of men running through the mud.

It must have been the attacking party, unsupported since the destruction
of the Maxim GLILL.

"Listen. We'll nevei- i-nake it back. I think there's a party of them up
ahead in the trench."

"Ah! The bastards."

"Yes. Unsporting of them, eh? Why don't we crawl about a hundred meters
or so out on the left. If we stay low, we should be all right. When they
pass on by, we can return to our own lines. All right?"

"You clever chap."

"Brilliant Julian, always thinking. Come on, then."

Julian pulled himself out of the trench and pivoted to offer Florry a
hand. Florry, thus assisted, scrambled out.

Julian shimmied away, and Florry began to It was as if he were at the
center of an explosion. There was no pain, only the stunned sense of a
tremendous blow to the throat knocking him down, filling his eyes with
light and drama. He fought for strength but could find none; he put his
hand to his wound and was further stunned to discover his fingers were
wet and black.

God, he'd been shot. He lay, waiting for death. The blood flowed over
his tunic. The numbness and incoherence spread.

Julian appeared, inches from his eyes.

"I'm dying," Florry said.

"Can you move?"

"I'm dying. Go on, get out of here."

"Ah, rot, Robert. I'm the hero here, I'll make the dramatic suggestions,
the glorious sacrifice, all right? Lord, you're a mess, Stinky. You look
worse than when you pissed yourself up in fifth form."

Somehow Julian got him turned over onto his belly and aimed in the
proper direction. Florry floundered along ineffectively and Julian
shoved him on, half-pushing, half-pulling him. Above them, bullets tore
through the night, occasionally popping with a rude sound and a cloud of
spray into the wet ground. They seemed to move groggily for the longest
time, but at last they reached a less barren area, where gullies and
thick brush offered them some protection and Julian got him up and
stumbling along.

Behind them, another machine gun opened up.

"Damn them, they've brought another gun up. Come on, Stinky."

But Florry was at last spent.

"I don't think I can make it."

"Of course you can, old boy. Here, let me take another look. I don't
even think the thing hit you square. These bloody Spaniards can't do
anything right. A lot of blood, and you've messed a very nice tunic, but
if you'll just-"

"Julian, shut up. I can't make it. I'm going to pass out."

"Now, none of that. Come along."

Please, go on. Go on, damn you, you always were the brilliant one.
Julian, why did you cut me? At school, you cut me dead. You filthy
bastard."

"Long story, old sod. No time for it now. Do come on, then, I think I
see some of their chaps moving this way.

We're going to end up practice for pig sticking if we don't-"

"Go on, damn you. Christ, it hurts."

"Wounds are supposed to hurt. Every sod knows that.

Now come along."

"Think of England, old boy. Think of the wonderful piece you can write
for Denis Mason. You'll be the toast of Bloomsbury."

"Oh, Christ."

"Think of Sylvia, old man. Think of the beautiful Sylvia."

"I can't think of---2' "Think of her titties, old man. Great soft
titties. Think of squashing them about in your fingers while she tells
you she wants you to do it harder."

"You filthy bastard!"

"Think of her wonderful cunt, old man, all wet and fishy and warm. Think
of grousing it out as a piggy snorts after truffles. That should revive
your interest in living."

"You filthy fucker, Julian. I ought to-"

"Yes. that's the spirit, chum. Come along then." "Julian, you bastard-"
"Stink, she's just quim. Damned good quim, I'd bet, but quim just the
same. Come on, old boy."

Up ahead, they saw figures on the crestline coming toward them.

COMRADE MAJOR BOLODIN LENNY MINK FELT GOOD, FOR ONE THING, IN THE SOUR
aftermath of the Levitsky debacle, he had received a promotion from the
desperate Glasanov. He was now a major in the SIM and had control of his
own unit. But he had other reasons for his joy. For in the matter of
Levitsky, he had a considerable edge on everybody else. He knew that the
chances of spotting the old Jew randomly were almost nil; Levitsky was
simply too smart for that, too shrewd, too much the devil. But Lenny
knew why he was here. To see his boy.

To get the gold.

Lenny had figured it out. The old Jew was after the same thing he was.
What else could explain the desperation and the cunning and the courage
of the old man?

Old devil, Lenny thought, you're not so special. Just another Jew on the
track of a big score. You'll see your boy and he'll tell you, huh? He'll
point you in the right direction. You've just got to find him.

And his boy was English.

Thus it took no great powers of deduction but only simple cleverness to
identify and establish surveillance on the several concentrations of
Englishmen around Barcelona. For surely the old devil would be found
sniffing in their fringes. These were not many: there was, first off,
the press corps, a group of gray-suited cynics that gathered each night
in the cafe de las Ramblas and sat nursing whiskeys and grousing
bitterly about their assignments and their editors and exchanging
sarcastic bets on the outcome of it all. Lenny ordered that Ugarte, his
number one, who did all the talking, take up a nightly position there.

"Suppose I get bored, boss?"

"I break every bone in your body. Every single one, no?"

Ugarte had a particularly unpleasant laugh, more a whinny, which he
issued at that point, partially to conceal his extreme nervousness.
Bolodin frightened him, too.

"Look," said the American, leaning across and pinching him playuly. "You
do what I say, when I say it, and you'll come out of this okay. Okay?"
He spoke English because among Ugarte's attainments was the language.

"Si, yeah, boss."

Lenny's other trusted aid was Franco, called Frank for obvious reasons,
an ex-butcher who had beaten his wife to death in 1934 and was freed
from his life sentence in August of 1936 by the libertarian Anarchists,
who did not believe in prisons. Lenny stationed him outside the British
consulate.

Both men carried with them hand-drawn copies of the original etching
from the 1901 Deutsches Schachzeitung, as adjusted and improved by
Lenny's suggestions after having seen the old man at close range in the
cell. It was a reasonable likeness. Lenny knew therefore that if things
went as they should, it would only be a matter of time before one of
them tumbled across the old man. He had a hunter's confidence and a con
artist's patience.

He positioned himself on the Ramblas, across from the third and most
likely spot where Levitsky might be counted on to appear: the Hotel
Falcon, the enemy headquarters, with its flapping red POUM banner. It
was full of Brits. These were the idealistic kids who came to take part
in the revolution but didn't quite have the guts to join the fighting.
They always came here, no place else.

As he sat in the 1933 Ford, he conceived the idea that it was like some
kind of fancy college club or something, and there seemed to be a lot of
screwing and drinking and singing going on. It was a party or something.

Lenny sat outside it day after day, smoking the Luckies he bought on the
black market, quietly watchful, utterly imperturbable, in his blue serge
suit, his almost handsome, almost ugly, blunt features calm and under
control.

He merely watched and smoked.

It was on the third day when he noticed her.

She was pretty and slim and lively. Everybody liked her, he could tell.
She was the sort of girl you could like a lot.

I never had a girl like that, he thought.

In time, he grew to hate her. She made him think of who he was, and what
he was, and he didn't like that one bit. It was her eyes, those sleepy,
calm, knowing gray green eyes, and the way she stood, so ladylike and
refined, and the way she listened so intently. She seemed to work for
their English-language newspaper, The Spanish Revolution, which they
sent out, and it meant she knew everybody. One night, Glasanov had them
do a crash job on some guy named Carlos. They picked him up at the Grand
Oriente and the girl was there. Lenny hung back. He didn't want her
looking at him. He was so close to her, yet he kept his face down, not
looking at anything because he was somehow ashamed.

The next day, a boy showed up and handed him a note from Ugarte which
said he'd seen Levitsk-y; he'd been calling himself Ver Steeg and
claimed to be a Dutch j'ournalist and was heading out to the front. The
boss had better get out there fast.

Lenny looked back at the girl. The POUM people were all low today
because of poor Carlos.

He thought, You bitch, someday I'll be really fucking big and then
you'll know who I am.

Some day I'll have gold. And I'll -have you.

NEWS FROM THE FRONT THE INTELLIGENCE AND PROPAGANDA COMMISSAR OF THE
Twenty-ninth Division, as the POUM militia was called, issued his
communique about the glorious victory at Huesca a day and a half later
at his headquarters at the big, battered house at La Granja. The
recipients of the news were a crew of mangy reporters who had spent the
intervening hours in transit to the front by any means possible, in the
hope of actually seeing something.

The statement was typed and posted on a bulletin board outside militia
headquarters. It read, Our troops advanced in perfect order in a series
of well-coordinated movements until in several places around the city,
the Fascist lines were broken. In this new situation, they inflicted
grievous casualties upon the enemy, taking from his stores much valuable
war mat&riel. It was another example of working people, in service to
the revolution, triumphing against all odds and defeating the
German-Italian-Rebel Combine. Many prisoners were taken and much of
intelligence value was also removed.

Later in the morning, our troops, sensing they had achieved their
tactical goals, repositioned themselves so as to consolidate their
gains.

"In other words," said the Reuters man, "it was another bloody muck-up."

"What I'm wondering," said the man from the Standard, "is bloody why the
whole thing was tossed together at the double time. They usually don't
like to move so fast, they like to take their bloody time. Mahana, eh?

Always bloody mahana."

"God, the Spanish. Anytime you've got the Spanish and the Italians in
the same war, you've got the potential for a comic opera on a grand
scale."

There were several reporters, however, who did not take part in the
cynical give and take, perhaps because they were new to the front or new
to war reporting or new to Spain. One of these was a tall, elderly
Dutchman of intellectual carriage named Ver Steeg-Ver Staig, the
pronunciation went, he informed them, his only utterance thus far-who
worked for a Dutch press syndicate.

He appeared to listen intently to all that was said and when at last the
bulletin's author, Commissar Steinbach, appeared to answer, however
obliquely, questions, this spry old fellow moved to the front of the
crowd. I "Comrade Steinbach, we hear rumors that the Thael- i Mann
Column of the PSUC Militia did not enthusiastically support the POUM and
the Anarcho-Syndicalists in this attack, even though the worker's
militias have been theoretically combined under one leadership," the
Daily Mail man began.

"Is this an essay or do you have a question, Mr. Janeway?" Comrade
Steinbach replied with an icy gleam in his famously bright good eye. I
"The question, Comrade Steinbach, is, first, did the Communist militia
aid in the attack, and second--2' Steinbach, a witty man whose
incisiveness of mind was as famous as his bright eye, enjoyed these
sessions, and interrupted swiftly. "Each militia performed its duties
outstandingly," he said. "The Anarchists were brilliant, the Communists
heroic, and our own Workers Party troops solid as a rock. There is
sufficient glory for each." He smiled.

"Is it not a fact, comrade," asked Sampson, the Times man, "that your
forces are in exactly the same situation that is, the same trenches-as
before the attack?"

"Certain modifications of our positions were necessary late in the
attack as a means of consolidating our advances."

"In order, if I may follow up, to consolidate your advances, you had to
abandon them?"

"It is well known that the Times will write whatevei, it chooses,
regardless of the truth, Comrade Sampson, so why bother to press on this
issue?" He smiled blandly.

"We've heard that the German troops of the Thael Mann Brigade, under the
command of Communist Party commissars, never left their trenches, thus
isolating your people in the Fascist parapets, and that the slaughter
was awful."

"Good heavens, how do these terrible rumors get started? Fifth
columnists, gentlemen, fifth columnists spreading lies. In fact,
political solidarity was observed throughout the operation. Losses were
acceptable."

"Why was the attack put together so hastily?"

"The attack was organized at a non-nal pace."

"Comrade Steinbach, you know as well as we do these things are prepared
weeks in advance. It seems clear this one was thrown together in less
than forty-eight hours.

What's the reason?"

"The attack proceeded normally."

"Is it true that the Twenty-ninth Division-that is, the POUM militia and
the POUM itself-has staked its survival on breaking the siege at Huesca,
and as external political pressure against POUM mounts, so will the
pressure to take Huesca?" Sampson asked.

"This is a purely military situation; it has no political ramifications.
I suggest you check with the Central Committee at Party headquarters in
Barcelona for any political questions."

"Will we be able to tour the battlefield?"

"In due time."

"Will you release casualty figures?"

"It would serve no purpose."

"Were British troops involved in the action?"

"The British centura of the POUM militia--excuse me the Twenty-ninth
Division-had a brave and leading role in the drama. The centura is a
unit of roughly one hundred men, who have been a proud part of the
militia since August of 1936. These were among the most ardent troops in
the attack."

At last the Dutch reporter spoke.

"Were there any British casualties?"

Steinbach paused a second.

"It is with deep regret," he said, "that I announce the death of a
revolutionary fighter of great heroism, idealism, and discipline. He was
also a great poet and scholar. Julian Raines, author of the famous poem
"Achilles, Fool,' was killed in action in the attack against Fascist
troops on the outskirts of Huesca."

There was a gasp.

"Also," Steinbach continued, "a British writer named Robert Furry
perished."

The press party moved to the trench and Steinbach showed the
correspondents the line of attack through a brass telescope.

"As you can see, gentlemen," he said, "it's terrible terrain to cross at
night, but our brave fighters were able to get within bomb range before
being spotted. You can see the redoubt."

"Keep your 'eads low, boys," called a redheaded Cockney captain with a
bloody leg. "Bob the Nailer don't give a bloody damn who you are."

"Is that where the Englishmen died?" asked Sampson.

"Bloody right," said the runty little man. "Up there.

Comrade Julian went out alone to bomb an enemy machine gun. His chum
went out after him. They sent the gun to hell, but neither man made it
back."

"I say, captain," said Sampson, "what's your name?

And what part of England are you from."

"Legion, chum. And I'm from all over."

"Hmmm. So there are no bodies?"

"No. But no man could survive up there," said Steinbach.

"Perhaps they were taken prisoner," said a young American
correspondent-to some laughter.

"I'm afraid prisoners are seldom taken on this front," said Steinbach, a
special, almost magical vividness coming into his good eye. "We all feel
his loss keenly.

He was one of those special men. You are all familiar with his
poem"Achilles, Fool,' which has been taken to express the confusion of a
generation. Well, perhaps by the end, Comrade Raines had solved his
confusion."

"What about this other chap?"

"Only Julian Raines is important, as the symbol of a revolutionary
generation who, rather than living his life in the comfortable
circumstances of his birth, instead chose to come to Spain and risk
everything for his beliefs."

"Sounds like you're trying to get one more drop of blood out of the poor
wasted sot," said the Reuters man' "Gentlemen," said Steinbach, coyly
pretending to shock, "you are too cynical. Let me read you from Comrade
Raines's last, unfinished poem. It's called"Pons' and was discovered
among his effects."

Steinbach took out a sheet of paper, cleared his throat, and read:

... if i should die, think this of me, Wher'ere I rest, men one day will
be free.

"Good Christ, that's from the man Auden called the most promising voice
of his generation? Come on, Steinbach, get your boys to give it a little
distinction before you put it out."

Again there was much laughter, and even Steinbach seemed to take part in
it. He was able to laugh because he knew it was a good story and they'd
use it. Salvage something out of this bloody mess, if only one more
martyr for the English left.

When it came his turn, Levitsky worked the telescope back and forth
across the scaggily vegetated ridge near the city, a good half mile off.
He could see brush, gulches, mud, and the Fascist line of sandbags
running across the crest. It was, as this sly one-eyed propagandist
Steinbach had said, terrible terrain for an attack at night, in the
rain.

Julian, you idiot. To die like a flea among millions of fleas in the mud
hath of hi@vtory.

He stepped back, turned for a second, and looked where the Englishman
Sampson stood, a hard, trim young man with narrow, suspicious eyes and
precise, perhaps military manners and authority. Sampson smoked a pipe
and took notes with impressive efficiency and wrote beautifully, it was
said. Levitsky, a little shaken perhaps, tried to adjust to the
immensity of his loss and, worse, the hideous resonating irony of it.

I was so close. I came so far, I was so close.

It had been snatched away by Julian's utter stupidity.

How could he be so ftivolous with his own life? And poor Florry's, too.
God knows, Florry had reason to follow him, but it was all such a bitter
waste.

He went back to the instrument. Nothing. It was just the same, scruffy
no-man's-land. Did he expect to see the dead rise?

"Mr. Ver Steeg?"

It was Comrade Steinbach, calling from the group of reporters farther
down the trench. "We are returning to La Grania. You don't want to be
left up here if a Fascist bombardment begins."

"Ah," said Levitsky. Yet he did not at once move. For if Julian were
gone, there was nothing left to do, except save himself.

If Koba's hounds are to hunt me, let them hunt me hard.

"Best get going', chum," said the little English captain, then turned
away and headed back to his men gathered at the other end of the trench.

But Levitsky suddenly felt naked and vulnerable.

Without his mission, he was just a man. His death, which might have had
political meaning, suddenly had only a personal one. It was as if his
life, in all its fragility, had been handed back to him.

He started up the trench and as he was drawing near the ladder, he
ducked into a bunker scooped in the wall.

It was filled with gear; two men slept noisily.

Several bombs lay on the table, iron eggs with checkerboard surfaces. He
made his decision in a split second, and snatched one up and put it into
his hip pocket. He gripped the thing out of sight. It felt heavy and
authoritative in his hand. He could remember flinging them by the dozens
into White positions during the civil war.

"Comrade!"

Levitsky turned. It was the English captain.

"Forgot this, old man," he said, holding out Levitsky's notebook. "Sure
you ain't too old for this sort of thing?"

Levitsky smiled, took the notebook, and headed out after the other
reporters moving back through the scrubland to La Granja.

By the time he caught up, they had come through the orchard and into a
meadow. Ahead, through the line of trees, Levitsky could see the big
house with its red tiles.

In the courtyard the reporters milled around amid the soldiers, all of
them waiting to be served a meal. The smell of rice and chicken from
nearby cook pots filled the air. There was much laughter and
camaraderie. Levitsky could see the Britishers teasing the American
about his prisoner question and he could see the French reporters
arguing strenuously among themselves over some political point.

And he could see Comrade Bolodin, with one man, walking toward him.

His first impulse was to run.

Don't, he told himself. You old fool, stay calm. Let's see him pull his
NKVD card here, in the center of a POUM encampment.

Levitsky began to slide through the crowd.

The big American was drawing closer. They'd grab him first, then pull
the cards-guns, too, probably-and haul him away. He only had a few
seconds. He put his hand in his pocket and removed the bomb. He held it
muffled in his coat and with his other hand managed to get the first pin
out. He continued walking through the crowd toward the big house; then,
abruptly, he turned aside and headed to one of the three smaller
buildings off to the side. A guard saw him coming. ialto! Arsenal!

"Eh?" said Levitsky, approaching. "No hablo... iar,@enal! " repeated the
guard.

Levitsky nodded, pulled the last pin, and in one swift motion tossed it
through the window. The guard dropped his rifle and began to run
screaming. Levitsky ran in the other direction.

The first blast was muffled; the second lifted him from his feet and
threw him in the air. He landed, stunned.

Men ran in terrified panic. Smoke filled the air. The small house
blossomed flames.

"Run! Run! There's more to blow!" somebody shouted. A pair of hands
picked him up. He looked up into the face of the young British reporter
Sampson.

"Go on, old man! Get out of here! Run for your bloody life." Levitsky
ran around the side of the big house and through the orchard. Behind
him, there was another detonation.

He turned into a gully and began a little jog down the creek bed. The
mountains in the distance were cool and white and beautiful. -Amigo?

A man in a trenchcoat stepped from behind the trees.

He had an automatic.

"Comrade Amigo. Manos arriba," eh? " said the man smilingly, gesturing
for Levitsky to raise his hands.

"No hablo, " protested Levitsky blandly.

The man smiled and relaxed as he came near and seemed to lower the
pistol, and Levitsky knew this meant he was about to hit him. When the
man lashed out suddenly with the pistol, meaning to crack Levitsky
sharply across the cheekbone, Levitsky broke the blow with one hand and
with the other struck upward, driving the crucifix nail into the man's
throat.

The man fell back, gasping, his eyes filled with stunned astonishment
that such an old fool could hurt him so terribly. The pistol fell into
the dust. The man went to his knees, trying to hold the blood into his
throat with his hands. He tried to cry out but couldn't. He tried to
rise, but couldn't.

Levitsky knelt next to him and carefully placed the point of the nail
into the ear canal, and plunged it inward.

With a convulsion, the man died. Levitsky quickly plucked his papers
from the breast pocket, finding him to be one Franco Ruiz, according to
a SIM identity card. He pulled the body into the brush and picked up the
pistol, a short-barreled .380 Colt automatic. He hurried down the creek
bed, finding himself surprisingly impressed with Comrade Bolodin. The
American was smart, yes, he was.

He'd found him, and with a better man than Franco Ruiz, he would have
taken him.

Night was falling as Levitsky hurried along the creek bed. He almost
froze. He had no exact idea where he was headed other than east, away
from La Granja. He shivered as the cold rose to penetrate his coat. The
creek bed crossed under a country road after a while, and he chose the
road, his feet acquiring an urgency that seemed almost involuntary. On
either side in the twilight, the empty fields fell away, their crops
unharvested, their farmers driven away. Several miles off a shell or a
bomb exploded and now and then came the crackle of shots outside Huesca,
but otherwise there was no sign of war in the strange, empty stillness
of the land. The Pyrenees off on the left had become indistinct, a wall.
Beyond them lay France, and freedom.

You cannot walk across the mountains, old devil, be told himself When it
grew too dark to continue, he found a deserted stone barn and hid in the
straw for warmth. He awoke early the next morning and proceeded on, the
hunger gnawing away at his stomach. He was stopped once by a squad of
forlorn militiamen who cared more whether he had food to share with them
than for his papers. Twice more he came across groups of militia, but
they paid him no attention. Finally he came to a larger road. Before
him, he could see the plain stretching out for miles, bleak and flat,
gnarled here and there with clusters of rock.

Who could want such desolation?

He waited by the side of the road until at last a vehicle came along, an
empty lorry driven by two men. He hailed them.

"Comrades?" he asked.

"Spi-echen she Deutsch, Kamrade? " came the reply from one of them, a
youth of about twenty.

"Yes, of course, comrade. I am Ver Steeg, of the press.

I was at the front and missed the lorry back to Barcelona.

Perhaps you are headed in that direction?"

"Yes, comrade," the boy said. "Hop aboard. We've got some wine and a
little cheese."

Levitsky squeezed into the cab, and the lorry rumbled on through the
bright afternoon. The driver's companion was another youth; they were
two earnest German Jewish refugees who'd come to fight with the
Thaelmann Column against the Hitlerites. They were political na@ffs, and
Levitsky, exhausted, listened with bland interest to their slogans and
enthusiasms, their gross misunderstandings and their outright
fabrications. They believed Koba and Lenin were great chums, the spirit
of the latter filling the heroic skull of the former. The enemies were
all "Oppositionists," who must be tirelessly liquidated, so that the
Revolution could be guided by the brilliant Koba. They also thought,
somehow, the Anarchists, the bourgeois manufacturers of munitions, and
the Catholic church were behind Hitler and Franco and Trotsky. It was
the routine nonsense the Party had been grinding out more and more
lately. They talked of the big explosion at La Granja. And they talked,
finally, of the miracle. "You've heard of the miracle, Comrade Ver
Steeg?" "Alas, no," said Levitsky, politely, uninterested in miracles.

"The luck of the English, I suppose," said one of the boys.

"Yes, yes?"

"Talk about resurrections. It's enough to turn one to priests and nuns!"

"Go on."

"Two dead Englishmen walked back from the dead. A poet and his comrade.
They lay in the brush. The Fascists came and set up a machine-gun post.
They lay there, the poor devils, for forty-eight hours, one of them hurt
and bleeding. Everyone thought they were dead. A single move, a single
breath, and they'd have been shot."

"What happened?" Levitsky asked laconically. At moments of great
excitement he was capable of extreme calm.

"When the second night fell, they crawled in. Two full days after they'd
been lost, they returned. They went to the hospital at Tarragona."

"Tell the comrade what the poet said. He must be an amusing man. It's on
everybody's lips, a famous line."

"Yes, he must be witty, even if he fights for the POUMISTAS. He
said,"The tea was simply rotten over there and the limes had not been
freshly cut, and so we returned."

THE CLUB THEY KEPT HOLLY-BROWNING WAITING FOR MORE THAN half an hour. He
sat with the coats in the anteroom under the cold, unimpressed eye of
the doorman, awaiting his soft summons. He sat ramrod stiff on the
hardback bench-no soft waiting-room chairs for him, thank sand kept his
eyes fixed furiously on a blank point in space some six feet ahead.

At last the doon-nan came for him.

"Sir James?"

"Yes."

"Will you follow me please, sir."

"Thank you."

The doorman led him to a chap in livery-Holly Browning knew him,
actually, he'd been in the army, a sergeant, and won the DFC in Flanders
in '15 before catching a lungful of mustard-who in turn escorted him
with elaborate dignity through the study, the dark, almost Moorish bar,
the dining hall, and up the club's stairs to its private suites.

The railing was mahogany, richly polished; the walls silk damask of
floral print, exquisite, the stairs carpeted in a Persian pattern dating
from the fourteenth century.

Yet it was all threadbare, tatty, a bit musty. Things never changed in
clubs until they had to or were shocked brutally into it. But in the
normal course of events one day was not remotely different from the
next; again, that was as it should have been. Indeed, that was the very
point.

They reached at long last the top of the stairway and made stately,
muted progress down the hall, coming finally to a certain closed door.
The servant knocked briskly, heard a quick, "Come in," and opened the
door.

"Major Sir James Holly-Browning," he announced.

Holly-Browning entered to discover C, as the chief of MI-6 was called,
and another man in a beautifully cut suit. The two of them looked as old
schoolish as possible; and they were. C's guest was, like C himself, a
former naval officer. He was, like C himself, short and pink and bald
and beautifully if conservatively dressed. And he was, like C himself,
the head of an intelligence service.

But there the similarities ceased: he was director-general of MI-5,
which specialized in matters of domestic security where MI-6 specialized
in foreign espionage and counterespionage. They were, in other words,
opposite sides of the same coin.

The two of them were enjoying enormously big cigars as the debris of
their luncheon was cleared away by two Hindu boys.

"James, how very good of you to join us. He's about to serve the brandy.
Would you care for a tot?"

"No thank you, sir," said Holly-Browning primly. He was shocked to find
the two of them together.

"Look, do sit down."

"Thank you, sir," said Holly-Browning, taking the open chair.

"James, you know Sir Vernon."

Sir Vernon was said to be the most affable man in the intelligence
departments, though his critics said this amounted primarily to great
skill at parliamentary bootlicking. An unfair charge: Sir Vernon had
been superbly efficient nabbing Hun spies in the '14-'18 thing, a coup
he'd brought off primarily by opening their mail.

"By reputation," said Holly-Browning.

"Glad you could join us on such short notice, James," said C. "Of
course, Sir."

"I told Sir Vernon you'd be glad to update him on the Julian Raines
case. It is, after all, an area of domestic concern."

"Sir, if I may, it is primarily a Section V matter. That is,
counterespionage operation against the Soviet Union.

It is not a matter of domestic security."

"Ah. An interesting point," said Sir Vernon. "I quite see Sir James's
point. But after all, we are not competing, but we are colleagues, are
we not?"

"Please, James," said C. "It's rather important."

"Of course, sir," said Holly-Browning. He turned and as mechanically as
possible apprised Sir Vernon of developments in the situation, most
crucially the placing of an agent-whom he did not name-in Julian's close
company, and summed up the sparse contents of Sampson's reports.

"And your man is reporting regularly?" asked Sir Vernon.

"He has not been the most habitual of correspondents, no," said
Holly-Browning.

"Ummmmm," nodded Sir Vernon. "Nicely done.

Damned fine job."

"You can see, Vernon," said C, "that the fluidity of Raines's
circumstances somewhat prevents us from mounting the kind of thorough
surveillance MI-5 would be able to mount at home."

"Can't be helped," said Sir Vernon. "You'll pardon an Americanism, but
you can't play cards you don't hold.

This fellow up close to Raines. He's a professional?"

"Alas, no," said Holly-Browning. "Of no great gifts or brilliance. Under
the circumstances, however, he is what was available. He is a card we
did hold."

"And right now?"

"At present, according to our man in Barcelona, Raines and our agent and
a curious girl who stands somewhere between them are in Tarragona, a
seaside resort fifty miles south of Barcelona. Our agent was nicked at
the front; so was Raines. They are recuperating."

"Well, it certainly sounds encouraging," said Sir it Vernon. "It's not
qu' e how we would have handled it, but in the main you seem to be doing
rather well, Sir James."

"Thank you, sir," said Holly-Browning.

"You see, James, Sir Vernon and I have just concluded a rather lengthy
session of negotiation. That's why you are here."

"Yes?"

C continued. "Sir Vernon thinks the Julian Raines matter should be
turned over to Security Service. Of course, we cannot agree. Sir Vernon
has suggested that he might approach the Parliamentary intelligence
Committee and-"

"But good lord, sir, if that happened, it would all be out in the
second. There'd be a scandal, the left would make a martyr out of
Raines, the papers would get a hold of it, the-"

"I quite agree," said C. "Gentlemen, I merely want to make certain that
all data that is pertinent to MI-5 matters arrives at MI-5 headquarters,
that's all," said Sir Vernon. "I think we all agree on the ultimate
disposition of the case, but it seems equally certain that Julian Raines
will have information of great import to us."

"And so you see, James," said C, "we have cut a deal.

The deal is that we will continue to run the operation and you will
continue to do what is best. But all reports must be sent on to MI-5,
for their analysts. Is that understood?" "Yes sir," said Holly-Browning,
furious. "It's not really so bad," said Sir Vernon. "It's a good deal
better than having a bloody MI-5 snoop in the middle of everything, eh,
Sir James?" He smiled.

Holly-Browning nodded politely. But something vexing occurred to him,
clouding his smile. Who had informed MI-5?

TARRAGONA BELIEVE ME," SAID JULIAN, FLOLDING UP A GLASS OF CT4AMPAGNE
and blinking in the sun, "I've been dead and I've been alive and alive
is better."

"Hear, hear," said Florry, hoisting his own glass.

"To life, then, darlings, the death of us all," Julian toasted.

Even Sylvia drank, though not as lustily as her two companions.

"And how's the neck, Robert?" she asked.

Florry looked at her shyly. She had not said much to him.

"It's on the mend. Another inch or so and he'd have nipped an artery.
But he missed, it whizzed through, and here I am."

"To Spanish marksmanship!" said Julian grandly, which accounts for the
presence of a full two-thirds of this lovely grouping."

"We were just awfully lucky," said Florry. "Halfway through the second
day, a foraging party was less than fifty paces off. We were cooked."

"And then some wonderfully ingenious fifth columnist touches off the
POUM magazine at La Granja, and all the Johnny Fascist types totter off
to watch the smoke rise and cheer for their team." Julian greedily drank
more champagne. "Here's to luck, Julian's wonderful luck," he toasted
again, this time removing his father's wedding ring from under his shirt
and holding it, on its chain, out for them to see. "This little beauty
didn't do him much good, but it's come in handy for us, eh, Stink?"

Florry smiled wanly. "Indeed," he said.

"Well put, old sport."

"Do they treat you decently in that awful hospital?"

Sylvia asked politely.

"The Spanish, it seems, can do nothing well except cook," said Florry,
somewhat relieved to turn to a neutral subject. "Three times a day, they
wheel in huge steaming, wonderful meals. Meanwhile men die because
nobody thinks to change their bandages."

"The future is definitely behind schedule in Spain," said Julian. "I
don't believe the present has even arrived."

Florry sat back in the wheelchair. Sylvia and Julian had contrived to
spring him from his great bay of bleeding boys for this outing, and they
wheeled him down the two blocks of Tarragona's own Ramblas here to the
Esplanade high above the sea. Before him stretched a mile of white sand,
a rumpled mess of a Roman arena, and the sleepy, tepid Mediterranean. A
few bathers dabbled in it, a few more lay in the sun. The breeze was
fresh and salty; gulls flipped and fluted on it. A statue of Christopher
Columbus stood proudly atop its pedestal, as at the foot of Barcelona's
Ramblas.

"It's lovely here," said Florry.

"An odd town, Tarragona," Julian said. "It seems the revolution hasn't
quite reached it. Or if it has, it got rather bored and left early, like
Noel Coward at a dreary party."

Florry looked past Julian, in a splendid white linen suit, to Sylvia.
Damn you, he thought. Her gray green eyes were sleepy yet lively; she'd
done something to her hair, giving it a kind of frilly, lacy delicacy,
and she'd put away her blue overalls and found a pretty dress. How had
she met Julian? What was she doing with him while Florry lay in his bed?
Was she with him?

He looked back to Julian, slugging down the champagne.

Damn you, Julian. You just go on, don't you?

"Barcelona is no longer a party Noel Coward would enjoy," she said. "The
city's ugly. There's a vileness to it. Someone shot Carlos Brea right
outside the Car& Oriente. It was horrible. Someone shot him from a car.
The bullet hit him in the head. They don't know who did it, but
everybody says it was the Russian secret police. Poor Carlos."

"Carlos Brea?" said Julian. "The POUM intellectual?

Poor sot. Spoke to him at length. Wanted to use it in a piece."

"Julian, you're such an awful cynic," she said, and Florry thought he
could hear the love in her voice and see a radiance in her eyes.

They seemed such a wonderful English couple, the tall, blond, elegant
poet-soldier who just as easily could have been a banker or a diplomat,
and his beautiful, fair woman, as cool and poised as an impeccable
statue. They looked so good together that Florry envied them their
perfection.

"Have some more of the bubbly, old boy," urged Julian. "Do you think it
was easy to find this stum. Good God, I had to pay a fortune."

"Bottoms up," said Florry, finishing the glass, feeling the buzz in his
nostrils.

"Look, you two," said Julian, "eat up and enjoy. I've got to be off."

"Where are you going?" Sylvia asked.

"To see about a car. I'll be back. I told the chap I'd see him at two.
Besides, you two must have scads to talk about."

He rose from the bench with a smile and darted off down the Ramblas.
Florry watched him slide along, graceful and fair. Then he turned back
to the sea. Now, just the two of them, he felt all ridiculous.

"Is it so hard to be alone with me?" she said. "We were alone together
for quite a while, as I recall. You were never so tongue-tied."

"You must think me an awful fool."

"Vvlby ever do you say that?"

"The note I sent you. You received it?"

"Yes. It was lovely. I still have it."

"The soldier lad's last declaration before battle. God, you must think
me the idiot."

"I think nothing of the kind. Do you want me to push you along the
promenade?"

"No."

"Do you want some more champagne?"

"No.

"What about some of this food?"

"No.

"Well, what do you want, Robert? Tell me straight out."

You, of course."

She said nothing.

"Or have you forgotten?"

"I haven't forgotten. It was quite lovely, wasn't it?"

"It was the best."

"Should you tax yourself, thinking about these things?

Shouldn't you concentrate on-"

"Stop it. Don't say that. It's all I think about. You're with him now,
is that right?"

"Oh, Robert, you're such an idiot. He's a charming man. He's no more
interested in me than in the man in the moon. Julian's quality. I'm just
a daughter of the bourgeoisie with a bit of inherited money for a year's
adventuring. He likes you better than he likes me. He loves you, in
fact."

"But you'd be with him instead of me if that's what he wanted?"

"Please, Robert. Don't put yourself through this.

There's no point to it."

"Thinks have become complicated."

"Not if you don't permit them to, Robert."

Flony could no longer look at her. Her beauty was hurting him more than
his throbbing neck would. He could feel her very close and very still.
He could smell her. He could not get the night at the Falcon out of his
mind: he remembered how good it felt, how it seemed to straighten the
world all out for him.

"I suppose you'd best wheel me back now, Sylvia," he said. "I find I'm
quite weary."

"Of course, darling. May we visit you tomorrow?"

We!

Flon-y wished he could say simply no, damn you, and be done with it. But
he heard himself saying yes, yes, of course, it would be great fun, and
as she wheeled him around, he saw Sampson across the street, watching.

It took a day or so, but at last Sampson managed it. He applied for
permission with the Republican Propaganda apartment to do a profile of
wounded Englishmen fighting valiantly on the side of Justice, and the
office itself suggested a series of possibilities. Florry was the third
of them, and he lay in the bay and watched as Sampson came in with his
official escort and plopped down beside one of the other boys and
proceeded to interview him at grindingly boring length. Even the lad
himself, an ex-miner from Wales who'd been hurt fighting with the
International Brigade near Brunete, soon grew uninterested in his own
answers. By halfway through the second interview, the Republican press
officer had given up in disgust, muttering darkly about English
pedantry, and thus when, late in the afternoon, Sampson finally
approached Florry it was alone and in privacy; most of the other
patients in the bay had been wheeled out to watch the sunset, their one
pleasure, and those that remained were beyond caring.

"Ah, Florry," said Sampson with a smug yet prim grin, "and how's the
wound?"

"It's all right," said Florry bleakly. "They're going to let me out in a
bit. No bones broken, no arteries smashed.

There's very little they can do now they've drained it except let it
heal. A scratch, really."

"I shouldn't imagine it felt like a scratch at the time."

"No, it did not."

"Look, I brought you a present. A copy of Tristram Shandy, by your
friend Mr. Steme. God, I despise literature. Full of nonsense, if you
ask me, but I thought you'd like it."

He handed the book over and Florry took it gruffly.

"Ah, old sport. They're beginning to wonder in London if perhaps you
haven't forgotten why you're out here."

"I haven't forgotten."

"Good. Then do you think it would be possible-"

"Look, I spent five bloody months with Julian Raines, day in and day
out. In battle, he was the bravest of us all.

Now would a Russian spy risk everything for ... for nothing? For his
enemies? By all odds he should be dead.

Tell your bloody major to find another candidate. Now go away."

"Robert, you've been such a wicked boy. No reports, no communications,
no anything. I've had to keep awfully busy covering for you. But far
worse, you've allowed yourself to become utterly sentimental about all
this. I had expected so much. I thought you were the stuff of heroes.
You were my idol."

"Sampson, it wears thin. I'm terribly tired."

"Look, Florry, old sport, sorry to be such a bother.

Just a few minutes more, all right? Let me put some things to you?"

"Christ!"

"The attack was betrayed. The attack you fought in.

Did you know that?"

"I've heard rumors, yes. But there's-"

"Look here, I was up there. It was quite clear that the general
headquarters issued attack orders quickly, if for no other reason than
to prevent the Communist brigades from getting counter instructions from
Barcelona as to whether to obey the orders or not. Yet the Communists
nevertheless knew to tell their troops not to go. Somehow they knew, eh?
They'd gotten the word. Because someone had reached them. Ah, see? It
all fits together."

Florry looked out. Yes, the damned message. Julian and his "boy" who
disappeared with the message.

"Then there's the issue of the magazine. Somebody blew the POUM
magazine, eh? Someone knew where to plant a bomb. The explosion of that
magazine all but ends POUM's chances for a spring offensive. And where
would the saboteur have gotten the information? Why@ from a helpful chap
potting about at La Granja."

Florry said nothing.

"Now as for one other thing. There was a chap called Carlos Brea, who
was coming into prominence in the POUM party. Yes?"

Florry said nothing.

"Anyway, this chap was murdered. Suddenly one night. Damned strange. But
not strange when you consider that someone had interviewed him and
realized how important he was becoming. And who was that chap?"

It was Julian.

"It means nothing."

"Julian is communicating with Levitsky, somehow.

Robert, I can see it in your face. Like a cloud. Robert, in your heart,
you know it to be true. You've felt it in him.

Down low, down, far, far away. A reserve. A coldness."

"They would risk him to betray a silly attack and to kill one man? It's
nonsense," he said, wishing he believed it utterly.

"Perhaps there's a bigger job. A job we can't even begin to imagine, old
man. But don't you see, he's giving us no choice in the matter. He's
here for the Russians. He spies on their enemies for them. And when he
goes back to England, he'll spy on us for them. You can see it, can't
you, old man?"

"I can't see anything."

"He's fogged your brain, old man. With the woman.

That's the point of the woman, to keep you utterly befuddled and from
seeing him perfectly for what he is.

He understands where you're weakest and he's got you there. You look at
him, and all you see is the man who's bedding down with your-"

"Stop it! You go too far."

"Robert, listen to me. He's to be stopped. No longei just stopped in the
general sense, but stopped in the mosi specific sense. You can do it,
can't you? At the front, You're going back to the front, you can see
that it happens. You can see that it's your duty to-@' "Sampson, old
man, I'm going to tell you one more time. Leave. If you don't, so help
me, I'll call the guard and tell him who you really are and they'll put
you against a wall and shoot you."

Sampson looked at him for the longest time. Then small smile played
across his face.

"All right, Robert. I'll go. But watch, old man. Keef your eyes open.
And you'll see who owns the heart o Julian Raines."

Florry was permitted to leave the hospital in the nex days and given a
convalescent leave of two weeks. In th( lobby, Sylvia was waiting for
him. And so was Julian.

"You and Sylvia must come on holiday with me," sa'( Julian. "I've found
a beautiful old resort down the coas at Salou. It'll be great fun. Come
along, old man. You owe me. You saved my life and therefore you canno
deny me anything."

"Julian, I'm still awfully spent. I wouldn't be muci company. I just
want to sit in the sun."

"Then sit in the sun you shall. I'll bring you champagne and caviar
every day. Sylvia will read to you. G( on, put it on your furlough form,
right there at thi bottom. Oh, don't be a prig, Stink. It'll be fun.
Look, ii two weeks, we'll be back in the trenches."

"Robert, you look so pale," she said. "It would be s( good for you."

They arrived, by Julian's car, that afternoon. It was glorious old
hotel, isolated against a blue bay on a broad lip of sandy beach, under
a stony cliff. The hotel was an old villa, rambling and white under its
mandatory crown of red tiles; the staff were old men, mostly, who called
the few guests comrade awkwardly, as if they wanted no part of the
future. They preferred the ordered past, and pretended revolution had
never happened.

Florry settled into a huge room with a balcony overlooking the sea. Each
day when he awoke he'd find a pot of thick coffee and a pot of hot cream
and a red rose in a vase outside his door. It was a civilized way to
begin the day, after the trenches. He'd sit out on the balcony with a
book-besides the Sterne, Sylvia had brought him Dickens and Kipling,
which he preferred-and read in the sunlight, losing himself in the
thickets of literature and the hot and healing sun. At eleven, the howls
of delight would rise from the spongy clay tennis courts where Julian
and Sylvia, who occupied suites down the hall, would play, their yelps
punctuated by the hollow plunk of the ball on the racquet.

At noon, the three would lunch together on the veranda where they were
fed fish and rice and a crisp blanco.

Then they'd change and bathe by the sea, lazily wasting the afternoon
stretched upon the white sand. The war seemed far off, and almost by
mutual consent they excluded it from the frame of their consciousness.
There was only the sun and the sea, the balmy breezes, and one another.
The afternoons were long and slow, under flawless weather. The sky
curved overhead in azure radiance, cloudless and immense. The water was
calm and warm. it seemed to be so lovely, and yet it was not. A peculiar
rhythm soon established itself, almost like a tide, remorseless and
implacable. Yet what was so peculiar about it all was that it went, like
the larger war, completely unspoken of, as if by compact.

One half of the rhythm was the Florry rhythm: on a Florry day, she'd
hang on his every word, her eyes radiant with attention. She'd ask him
questions about every aspect of his life, his school, his parents. He
found himself divulging intimacies and secrets he had told no one in
years. He found himself at night thinking of new stories he could tell
her to make her squeal with laughter and delight.

"I just love to hear you talk," she said.

But there were also Julian days, not so many at first and not quite
vivid enough, when they did come, to merit comment; yet still they
occurred, and Florry would seem not to exist to her. She wouldn't meet
his eyes and she'd hang on Julian. He could see her seem to bend toward
him, as if to absorb him. They had their little secrets, Sylvia and
Julian, their little jokes, and on these days he could see a light in
her eyes he never saw when she was talking to him. She seemed to be
achieving a total oneness with Julian, as if, somehow, she were sinking
into him.

Damn you, Julian.

He began to think how perfect the world would be if Julian were not
around. If only by some stroke Julian could be removed, and not exist at
all.

Yet the next day, she was his again and he felt the pleasure and the
triumph of her attentions.

One afternoon, he felt unusually strong and asked if anybody cared to
come with him on a walk. Julian said no, he'd prefer to try to drink the
world dry of bubbly, but Sylvia rose with a smile for him. It was a
Florry day.

They walked down the beach. They reached the base of the cliff in a
matter of minutes and walked along it. The sand under their feet was
white and dry and fine. The cliff towered above them, chalky and
wrinkled, its crown bridged in greenery a hundred feet up. Florry felt
prickly and unsure of himself.

"How's the neck?"

"Oh, it seems all fight. It's stiff, but if I understand the doctor
correctly it will always be stiff."

"You've got some nice color now. You seemed so pale in the hospital. You
looked so awful there. With those other wounded boys about."

"I hated the hospital. I've already put it out of my mind. I keep
thinking about the battle."

"Julian says you were very brave."

"Julian cares about that. About being brave. Do you know, I really
don't. It has no interest for me."

"Julian says the war is going badly."

"I suppose it is."

"Julian says that unless the POUM cracks the siege of Huesca, then the
Soviet Union will take over the revolution. God, it's so confusing.
Julian says that--2' "Do you know, Sylvia, I don't really care what
Julian says."

"Why, Robert, what a terrible thing to say. He admires you so. He's your
closest friend."

"Ummmm," was all Florry could think to say.

They walked on in silence.

"What is bothering you, Robert?" "I'm just tired, I suppose."

"Well, you shouldn't say unkind things about Julian."

"Which of us, may I ask, do you prefer?"

"Why, I love you both, Robert."

"Do you go to him at night?"

"Robert. What a rude question."

"Rude or not, do you?"

"Of course not."

"But then you're not coming to my room, either."

"You feet terrible. You've told me yourself. You're too weak. You've had
a hellish experience."

"I'm getting stronger.,, "Well, if that's what you want, then I shall
come tonight."

After dinner, Florry read on his balcony until dark. He was in an odd
mood, and thought he might write. He had not thought of writing in some
time, when once it had been all he lived for. In his kit, he found paper
and pen.

He filled the pen and faced the blank paper.

"I came to Spain," he began, "in the beginning of January 1937 because I
wished at last to take a stand against Fascism and Spain seemed to be
the only place avail-"

Rot, he thought.

I came to Spain, he thought, because a bloody British major said he'd
throw my precious hide into Scrubs if I didn't. When I got here, much to
my ignorant surprise, there was a war on and I'm right in the middle.

He wrote on the page, slowly, and with much deliberation, "I hate
Holly-Browning, I hate Holly-Browning."

Then he crossed it out and wrote the truth.

"I hate Julian Raines."

He looked at his watch. There was a knock on the door.

Florry quickly tore up the piece of paper, and felt embarrassed and
silly.

He wondered why Sylvia was so early.

"Stinky, get you out here, for God's sake," came Julian's cry through
the door. "You'll never guess who's here! You've bloody got to see
this!"

"God, Julian----2' "This instant, old son!"

Florry threw open the door and discovered himself face to face with a
man of aching familiarity. There, chunky and self-effacing, stood a
young man in the uniform of a Republican captain. Then Florry placed the
face and the body and made the discovery that it was the officer Comrade
Steinbach had executed on the flatbed truck at La Granja.

"Salud, comrade," said the captain, kissing him.

EVEN IN TARRAGONA, IT HAD CHANGED. LEVITSKY picked it up immediately; a
change, somehow, in the air.

Certain fashions had altered: the mono, for example, was no longer the
garment of the day. Fashionable people dressed for dinner. Motorcars had
been freed from their garages: everybody who was anybody had a shiny
black auto. The revolutionary slogans had somewhat faded. A different
feeling gripped the city.

The POUM and the radical Anarcho-Syndicalists no longer articulated the
spirit of the times; they seemed, somehow, on the run themselves.
Instead, the PSUC, the Communist Party of Catalonia, which six months
earlier had some five hundred members, was the new gang at the top,
swollen with membership and influence and ties to the government. The
new slogan seemed to sum it all up: "First the war, then the
revolution."

Koba knew: he didn't want radical regimes spouting off like absurd tea
kettles. The truth is, Koba isn't revolutionary at all, that's all
illusion. He's a realist, a cynic.

Koba wants there to be only one revolution, in Russia, his own.

21. EM THE HOSPITAL Levitsky sat in a seedy, dark seaside bar just off
the Ramblas and could see a group of bitter young POUMISTAS in their
suddenly outr6 monos sitting in the gloom, trying to figure out over
unto what was happening. Why were they denounced on the radio, called
traitors in the posters, followed ominously by NKVD and SIM goons,
eavesdropped upon, wiretapped, strip searched, hounded? Murdered?

It was beginning. Koba's emissaries had prepared well.

Whatever Glasanov's failures in apprehending Levitsky-that sure death
sentence if it leaked out-the man was a professional when it came to
organizing terror.

His drink arrived. The schnapps was minty, sweet, almost smoky. If I
ever truly become an old man, I'll do nothing except fuss over chess
problems and drink peppermint schnapps. I will drink a lot of peppermint
schnapps.

He looked at his watch. It was close to one. All right, old man, time to
move.

Finishing the schnapps, he remembered a time when he didn't need
schnapps for courage: his beliefs had been enough. But that was when he
was a young man.

He stepped out into the salt air, blinking at the hot sunlight. It was
so temperate here; June was a lovely month.

Taking a breath, he headed up the street, turned left, and walked
another two blocks. He came after a time to the graveyard. The markers,
white, without ornamentation, looked fresh as baby's teeth against the
grass. He walked in. It was completely quiet. Levitsky walked the ranks
of the dead and came to graves that looked freshest.

"So many," a voice said.

Levitsky turned, to face an old man.

"Are you the caretaker?"

"Yes, sefior. The boys who die at night in the hospital are brought here
in the morning."

"Yes, I know," said Levitsky.

"You are perhaps looking for a certain person?"

"No. I meant merely to pay my respects to the fallen."

"So many. I hope they die in a good cause."

One has, thought Levitsky.

He walked back, stopping once to rest. Getting old. An Asalto gave him a
curious look but let him pass. When he reached the hospital, he went in.

"What business, have you, sir?" asked the nurse.

Another young German Jew, she did not call him cornrade anymore.

"I seek after my son. His name is Braunstein. Joseph.

He was fighting with the Thaelmann Column, but I have been told he was
wounded."

"Just a moment, please."

The girl went to her list. Levitsky sat down on a chair in the lobby.
Soldiers milled about.

"Herr Braunstein?"

"Please. We left Germany in 'thirty-three. It's just Mr. Braunstein now.
You have news of my son? He is all right? They told me at Party
headquarters in Barcelona that-"

"Mr. Braunstein, I'm sorry to inform you that your son Joseph
Braunstein, wounded May twenty-sixth outside Huesca, died last night of
his wounds. He never recov-"

"Ahhhhhh. Oh God, no. Oh God, Oh God. Please. I must ... Oh, God, I-"

He faltered, dropping to one knee.

"Orderly," the girl shouted, "call a doctor. This man is ill. Please,
please, Herr Braunstein, I'm so sorry. Please.

Here, please, come with me. Come in here."

He stood up.

"They said it was only a minor wound. Oh, God, he was a flutist. He was
studying music in Paris. Oh, such a wonderful boy. I told him not to
come-Oh, God, he was such a wonderful boy."

She led him back into the inner office, where there was a couch. A
doctor came by.

"I'm terribly sorry about your son," he said. "But you must understand,
the war is terrible. It kills in the thousands. But it kills for a
purpose."

"Oh, God."

"Here, take these. Rest here, for a time. Your son died ri hung Hitler.
Can't you take some pride in that, Herr Braunstein?"

Levitsky took the pills into his mouth, pretended to swallow. He lay
back.

"Look, just stay here for a time, Herr Braunstein.

When you feel better, you can move. Perhaps we can find out where they
put your son. Then you can-"

Levitsky closed his eyes until they left. He waited another five
minutes, then rolled off the couch. Spittin out the pills, he went
swiftly to the filing cabinet against the wall, opened the drawer marked
F, flipped through the files.

There was no Florry.

Damn the Spanish! Of course their files are out of date.

Hopelessly balled up. Damn them, the fools. You'd think He sat back
down.

Failure. Another failure.

"Are you feeling better now?"

"Yes, miss. I think I had better go."

"Herr Braunstein, we could perhaps take you someplace? Where are you
staying?"

"No. Thank you, miss. I'd best be off."

She led him out through the outer office.

"Here," she said, halting at her desk. "I found this for you."

She opened her drawer and removed something. It was a medal.

"It's the Cross of the Republic. I thought perhaps you might care to
have it."

"But it is yours."

"My brother's. He won it last year. But he died in the defense of
Madrid. Here, I want you to have it. Your son earned it, after all."

Levitsky seemed suddenly to falter again.

"Are you all right?"

"Could I perhaps have a glass of water. My throat feels very dry."

"Yes, of course. I'll get it."

She rushed off. Levitsky could see the file on her desk.

It said FLORRY, ROB'T. (BRIT.); 29TH DIV.

He opened it, his eyes scanned the Spanish until at last he came to an
entry that read, "Liberaci6n, 5.22.37 Perml . so, Cab de Salou.

When the girl arrived with the water, he drank it swiftly and started to
leave.

"The medal. Sir, you forgot the medal."

"Thank you, miss," he said and took it.

He left for Cab de Salou later that afternoon. But he "Yes?"

"This medal."

"Yes, seiior?"

"It belongs to that boy over there, Braunstein. Would you plant it under
his marker."

with these Germans to help them ... stopped at the graveyard and found
the old man.

"Yes," said the old man, and Levitsky hurried off. it had not occurred
to him to wonder why Florry's file had been out on the desk rather than
in its drawer. The reason was that it had been flagged by express order
of SIM. Comrade Major Bolodin himself was on his way to pick it up.

THE MISSION IT'S ABOUT TANKS, COMRADE FLORRY. AND IT'S A13OUT bridges.
And it's about our future."

The speaker was a portly yet studious figure of a man in a turtleneck
sweater of bulky knit, whose girth was in no way disguised by the
garment, or by the raffish Sam Brown belt complete with heavy Star
automatic he sported. He rose to greet Flony with an insincere smile as
Florry entered Julian's room.

"Glad you could join us," said Comrade Steinbach, his dead eye blank and
glitterless, his other fiendishly alive.

"How's the wound?"

"It's fine," said Florry, sure Steinbach cared little for the answer.
"Stiff. A messy scar, that's all."

"You've met my friend Portela. Under slightly different circumstances,
if I recall."

"In considerably better shape now than when last seen," said Florry. "I
had thought the Church had a monopoly on resurrection."

"Nothing so miraculous," said Steinbach. "It was simple theater, the
little charade with the pistol. We had to shoot him, in case there were
spies about. No one could know he was my agent, just returned from a
long, dangerous passage behind the lines."

"Welcome back to the living, Comrade Portela," said Florry.

The dapper young Spaniard clicked his heels together with the precision
of a comic general in an operetta, and bowed stiffly at the waist.

"Buenas noches, Comrade Florry," he said. "It is a pleasure to accept
your compliments." For a brave spy, he was a bit on the pudgy side.

"Vvrhy don't you sit down, Comrade Florry? I believe it will be an
interesting evening," said Steinbach.

Florry sat.

"We've figured out how to win the war in Aragon with a bloody big bang,"
said Julian. Florry had seen Julian like this before: weirdly animated,
beside himself with giddy joy. Julian could hardly control himself He
was still in his dinner jacket, but he paced the room like a panther,
clasping and reclasping his arms about himself.

Somehow he disgusted Florry.

"As you know from most intimate experience," said Steinbach, "our
militia has taken the leading role in the siege of Huesca, supported
most enthusiastically by those organizations such as the Anarchists, who
share our political philosophies and our passion for the revolution and
our belief in freedom. But because we cannot crack Huesca, we are called
traitors, secret Fascists, counterrevolutionaries. The lies are repeated
often and loudly; people are beginning to believe them. I need not
specify who is telling these lies, but they are the same people who
arrest or assassinate our leaders. There was fighting in Barcelona early
last month. The pressures against us are mounting terribly. A saboteur
destroyed our magazine. My ears are still ringing from the blast!

And so we must crack Huesca. Not merely for our honor but for our
survival."

"Huesca," said Portela, "is the key."

"We must break the city before the Fascists can lift the siege. To do so
would be to considerably lessen the pressures upon ourselves. To do so
would be to save the revolution from the men in the Kremlin. And to keep
it for the people. Perhaps worth dying for, eh?"

Florry nodded lamely. It seemed all gibberish to him.

Where do I stand on this? he wondered. Whose side am I on? What do I
care about? What matters to me?

"Do you know why we attacked Huesca the night you were wounded,
comrade?"

"No, comrade."

"Because Portela reached me with information that a German engineering
brigade had almost completed reinforcing a bridge in the mountains on
the only direct road between Pamplona and Huesca. When they are done,
the bridge will be able to support the weight of the Pzkpfw German tank.
We attacked because we had to get into the city before the bridge was
finished. We failed. It's clear now why: the attack was betrayed."

"And there are tanks?"

"Thick as flies, old man," Julian said. "Jerry has a bunch of the filthy
beasts in the mountains, and he wants to spring them on us. And now he's
fixing the rickety old bridge with a nice bundle of fine Krupp steel.
Old Jerry's using Spain as a bloody lab and he wants to see how his
gadgets work."

"When will this bridge be finished?" he asked because he knew he was
supposed to.

"It will be finished three days from today. Today is the thirteenth. And
on the sixteenth of June, those tanks will come out of the mountains and
they will deploy into an assault formation on the flat plains around
Huesca and they will be supported by mechanized eighty-eightmillimeter
high-velocity guns and they will chew our militia to pieces. Then
they'll crash through the gates of the city and free it. It will be a
great victory for the Fascists. And it will be great victory for the
Communists.

And we shall pass into history, Comrade Florry."

"Unless somebody unfinishes that bloody bridge," said Julian. "Sounds
like fun, eh, Stink?"

"Surely this bridge is guarded," said Florry warily.

"My goodness, yes," said Steinbach, his good eye wide with astonishment.
"The Germans are very thorough, as many of us learned in 1914. They've
got a special unit of crack troops at the bridge itself as well as a
reinforced battalion of very tough Moorish legionnaires bivouacked
nearby. But most importantly, they've built a concrete bunker at the
bridge and fitted it out with a brace of Maxim guns. Any guerrilla
attack would fail. And we could never get the Russian bombers to help us
by bombing the target."

"I have a very good idea you're about to ask me a great favor."

"Oh, it's lovely," said Julian. "Oh, Stinky, you'll just love it."

Julian, you idiot, Florry thought. You've bought it all, haven't you?
Their propaganda, their insane conviction, their love of themselves and
their cause.

"There happen to be in Pamplona two Englishmen in possession of an
extraordinary credential. They are representatives of Sir Oswald
Mosley's British Fascist Union, on a fact-finding tour in Nationalist
territory, and Generalissimo Franco has issued them a carte blanche
fight-of-travel pass. These two gentlemen may travel unimpeded anywhere
they wish in the White zone.

Franco himself says it."

"Imagine," said Julian, suddenly producing his small I ident occurred
.25 automatic, "imag'the Stink, if a sad acc to those two lads and those
documents fell into our hands, and we used them to examine this miracle
of modem German engineering at the bridge and we just happened to be
there when a band of guerrillas led by Lieutenant Portela attacked. And
suppose, Stinky, we were able to knock out that gun bunker, so that the
guerrillas could come down and plant their lovely little dynamite
charges. Pootl As if in a dream, the bridge has vanished and Jerry's
toys are stuck up in the mountains and cannot come to the rescue of
Huesca. And the bloody Russian secret policemen in Barcelona have got to
explain to their bosses what went wrong."

"In three bloody days? How? Do we fly?"

"You could make it, Comrade Florry. Just. You leave for the front
tomorrow morning. You'll be there by late afternoon. You cross tomorrow
night at nightfall, near Zaragossa. Portela has arranged for a truck to
get you into Pamplona by the morning. Sometime that afternoon or in the
evening you'll intercept the two British Fascists. Early the next
morning, the morning of the sixteenth, you set out for the bridge by an
auto we've secured for you. You should make it in three hours. It's
tight, I grant you. But it's always tight. It was tight in July, when we
started this thing. It will be tight till the end."

"Who are these Englishmen?" asked Florry.

"Chap calling himself Harry Uckley. Ex-British army officer. Actually an
Eton man, a few years before us. A footballer, they tell me.,, "From the
old school," said Florry.

"He and a chap called Dyles, sitting pretty as you please in Pamplona
with their fine uniforms, hobnobbing with Jerry, guzzling unto, and
chasing the sefioritas.

Stinky, it'll be such fun. Do join me. You see, the two who replace the
unfortunate Harry and his chum have just got to be old Eton boys. The
other Brits in the militia haven't got the polish. Can you imagine poor
Billy Mowry trying to pass at Eton? Good heavens, out of the question."

"It's much to ask," said Steinbach, "but these are hard times. The
hardest times, perhaps."

"It is the right thing, Stink. It really is."

"A bridge," said Flon-y, in private bitterness.

"What say, Stink? What heroes we'll be. How Sylvia will be impressed
with her two brave boyos, and all the rest of the sefioritas!" He smiled
loonily.

Florry looked at them. Julian, whom he did not know, not really, Portela
whom he did not care to know, and finally Steinbach whom he did not
like. Fools, all. But he could not face saying no to something Julian
had already said yes to. He could not face Sylvia having said no.

Oh, blast, he thought. In for a penny, in for a pound.

"Let's drop the bastard into the river like a smashed birdcage," he
said.

Later, near eleven, Florry went to her room and knocked.

There was no answer. He knocked again, louder.

After a while, he felt quit idiotic. He went back to his room. But he
could not settle down. Where in God's name was she? He was going off in
the morning to risk everything. Where was she?

He went to Julian's room and knocked. There was no answer. He knew he
ought to settle down, what with WEE tomorrow coming. But this business
with the girl was going too far. He went down into the lobby.

"Have you seen Miss. Lilliford," he asked the porter, who spoke no
English. "Pretty lady," he said slowly, as if in adding space between
the syllables the man would be able to comprehend him. "Sehorita. Alucho
bonita sehorita. "

"Robert. There you are!"

He turned. The two of them were just coming in.

"We went for a walk. We came looking for you but you'd disappeared."

"I was in my room."

"Oh, we thought you'd be in the bar. Time for a last drink, eh?"

"I think not, Julian."

"Listen, old man, you'll want to get a good night's sleep tonight. Busy
times ahead."

"Of course."

"Well, I must leave you two lovebirds. Goodnight, darling," he said, and
gave Sylvia a kiss.

When Julian had gone, Florry said, "I thought you were coming to my
room."

"I'm Sorry. I was on my way when I ran into Julian.

Robert, please calm down. You look terribly agitated.'@ "Well, where
were you? Where did you walk to? What did you-"

"Robert, it was just a stroll. He told me he was leaving tomorrow. And
that you were, too. He was very charming but very vague. What on earth
is going on?"

"It's nothing. Yes, we've got to go back to the war tomorrow."

"God, it was over so soon. I'll miss you both so much.

You know, I've really had a wonderful time here and-"

"Sylvia, I want to marry you."

"What?"

"I want to marry you."

"Robert, don't be ridiculous. Here? Now? In the middle of this?"

"No, I want you to be my bride."

"Vv'hy, absolutely not. Not until I think about it."

"We're going off on a job tomorrow. It'll be quite dangerous, or so they
say. It's a special thing."

"For whom?"

"Our old outfit. The POUM people. I can't tell you more. But I want you
to be my wife. I want to marry you when I get back. So that you'll be
mine forever, all right?"

She shook her head in wonder.

"I love you, Sylvia. Do you understand that? Let me tell you, I'm not as
charming as he is, but I love you in a way he never will. What he's good
at is getting people to care for him. That's his special talent. I don't
have it. But in the long run, I'm better for you, Sylvia, don't you see?

Really, "Robert. Please."

"Do you love him?"

"Yes. But in a different way than I love you. I respect him. It all
means so much to him, the revolution, the war.

He's so passionate. That's a part of his charm."

"You don't know him, Sylvia. When he gets bored with you, he'll cut you
loose. He doesn't really care about other people."

"Robert, 1-"

"Please. I must know. Tell me now. If you want, I'll go away forever.
Just tell me. I can't stand this business in the middle."

She looked at him.

"I won't marry you, Robert, because of Julian. But I shall make love to
you. Julian thinks he's going to die.

That is what he told me. I think I'm in love with him, not that it
matters to him. But I will make love to you if you promise me you will
watch him and protect him on this job coming up tomorrow. I know you
want more, but that is the only thing I can give you."

Their sex had an intensity that was almost brutal. It felt to Florry,
after his long hunger and his despair and'n his pain, like a battle. It
was all muscles and sweat; it was work. He wanted to taste her and he
did and it drove her wild, like an animal. He wanted her to taste him
and she fought him and he forced her down and made her do it.

When they were done they lay there, smoking cigarettes in the dark. They
did not quite touch.

Finally he said, "I love you," and waited for her to respond and she
didn't.

"I've lost you, haven't 1?"

"I'm not sure. I don't know. I'm going to do a lot of thinking. I'll
wait in Barcelona. I have to sort this out."

"Maybe I'll get killed and you won't have to be confused."

"Don't talk like such an ass.,, "I think I'm going to my room. I've got
some plans to make."

"All right."

"I'm going to tell Julian about this. I think he should know."

"All right. Do you want me to come?"

"No. Good-bye, Sylvia. I'll see you in the morning."

Florry paused at the door to Julian's room. Odd, he thought he heard
talking.

He waited. No, it was quiet.

He knocked.

"Good God, what fool can be pounding on my door at midnight? Go away,
Wee Willie Winkle, the children are fast asleep."

"Julian, it's Robert."

"Stink, there's plenty of time to talk later."

"Julian, it's important."

"Christ." There was some stirring inside.

Finally the door opened a bit and Julian, looking frazzled, leaned out.
A puff of the warm Mediterranean sea breeze inflated the curtain behind
him and mussed his hair.

"Love to have you in, old man, but people would talk.

Now what on earth is this?"

"Julian, look, I wanted to tell you. Before tomorrow, before we leave."

"God, Stink, from the look on your bloody face I believe you have
finally succeeded in getting yourself listed ahead of me in Mother's
will."

"No, Julian, it's serious."

"You've sprained your thumb and thought better of tomorrow. Odd, I've
just stubbed a toe and come to the same conclusion. Quite natural, old
man, and-"

"Julian, I've just come from Sylvia. We've been together. Do you see
what I'm saying? But I think she would really rather be with you. We've
actually had a row. I just want you to know."

"All right, Robert. That's actually less interesting news to me than you
might suppose. Now, good God, go to bed, you fool."

Florry stood there and started to walk away, thinking about Julian's
luck and his own lack of it. Julian had her and it meant nothing; he'd
lost her and it meant everything. He hated Julian for that, most of all:
his sublime indifference. And then he noticed what it was that had him
feeling odd, feeling peculiar, feeling unsettled about the whole scene.

It was something borne on the sea breeze from Julian's room.

It was the scent, however diluted, however mixed with other odors, and
however much Florry willed it not to be, of peppermint.

Florry stood rooted to the floor. He looked up and down the corridor.

Julian, you filthy bastard, he thought.

And then Florty realized what he must become.

He must become a spy.

He went swiftly to the door next to Julian's. The hotel was largely
empty: the chances were that the room would be empty, too. He tried his
own key, which didn't work.

He opened his pocket knife and slipped it into the doorjamb and pushed
mightily; the door popped open with a snap. He stepped in, preparing an
excuse in case he should have roused someone, but saw instantly the beds
were unused and the room immaculate. He pulled the door behind him and
walked through the darkness to the balcony. He eased open the french
doors and stepped through. Before him, the formal gardens radiated an
icy glaze in the patina of the white moon like a dream of a maze.
Beyond, the sea, a sheet of dazzled glow, altered its surface
microscopically under the pressure of the light. The wind was soft yet
sure.

The leap to Julian's balcony was about six feet and it never occurred to
him to look down or to believe he couldn't make it. He slipped off his
shoes, climbed over the railing, hung for just a second as he gauged the
distance and prepared his nerve, and then with a mighty push flung
himself across the gap, snaring Julian's railing with his hand and the
balcony ledge with his foot. He climbed quietly over, edged along the
wall. The door was slightly open.

"You've never wavered?"

The bloody voice. Unfilled with jangled Germanisms, unaddled with
madness, but the same--or different. Calm, somehow; the accent vague,
the tone sympathetic,

assuring, oddly filled with conviction.

"Of course I've wavered," said Julian, distraught. "I've hated myself I
revolt myself Who do you think I am, a bloody saint?"

"No, of course not. You are only another weak man such as myself."

"Not such as yourself. You're a bloody inspiration. I'm just sullied
flesh."

"You must be strong."

"Ah, God." Julian seemed to arch with agony and disbelief Florry had
never heard him so close to losing control. His voice was full of
tremulous emotion.

"You cannot help yourself," said Levitsky.

"No, I can't," said Julian. "I try. But you've got me wholly, totally."
He sounded angry now.

"You'll come in the end to accept your other self, your true self You'll
see how your mission is the most important part of you. How all the
misrepresentations, the lies, the deceits-how they make you stronger
over the longer course. You will understand things you might not
otherwise. Your sensitivities are increased, they are keener more
perceptive. It means you are special. You'll come in the end to define
it as a strength."

Florry could stand no more.

That was it, then-utterly and irrevocably. Damn them. Damn them both.

He retreated swiftly, slipping back across the gap and quickly put on
his shoes. He checked his watch. It was almost one. The car would come
at nine tomorrow and by nightfall they'd be off. it was time at last to
read Tristram Shandy.

In the morning, Florry went down to the lobby. Julian and Sylvia were
already talking.

"Oh, hullo, Stink. Just saying our good-byes."

She was watching him talk, her eyes radiant with love and submission.
She hardly looked at Florry.

"Well, look, here comes the car and bloody Steinbach and his chum
Portela. I suppose I should let you have a last minute alone. May 1,
Robert?" He kissed Sylvia lightly on the cheek, then backed off.
"Good-bye, Sylvia.

It was splendid."

He turned and went out to the car.

"Sylvia, can you do me one favor?" Florry said.

"Yes, Robert."

"Look here, it's so silly, I borrowed a copy of Trivtram Shandy from
this chap Sampson in Barcelona. A newsman of The Times. I know it sounds
silly, but I'd like to get it back to him. Do you think you could drop
it off You'd find him at the cafe de las Ramblas."

"Yes, Robert, of course."

"Thank you. And I shall see you-ah, the week of the twentieth, shall we
say? At the Grand Oriente. At eleven in the morning? Tuesday, shall we
say?"

"Yes. I'll be there."

He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her.

"This would be so much bloody easier if I didn't love you so much."

"I wish I loved you the way you require, Robert. I wish didn't feel you
had to own me. Watch after yourself Watch after Julian."

Florry turned and left for the car. He would not look back. He could
feel his Webley against his side in the shoulder holster. He'd oiled and
cleaned it. And loaded it.

iylya LA ANARAUFA!

LEVITSKY SAT IN THE SQUARE AT THE CAFT. HE WAS VERY tired. He ordered a
cup Of car@ con leche. He looked about. It could have been any village
in Spain. It was called Cabrillo de Mar, about ten miles out of Salou on
the road to Lerida. Soon a Twenty-ninth Division staff car that would be
taking Florry and Julian Raines on their mission would pass through the
village on the way toward the front.

He was so tired of traveling. Yet there was one last thing to do.

The coffee arrived. He poured the milk into it, mixed it until it was
thick, and then took a sip: delicious. As you get old, certain comforts
matter more.

You should get going, he told himself. Back to Barcelona. Finish it. Why
wait?

I wait because I am tired. And because I must see.

Go on, old man. Leave.

No. He had to see the car and know they were off. It was the old
empiricist in him, that unwillingness to trust what he hadn't observed.
He wondered when he would feel the triumph. Or would he feel it at all?
He had done it, after all; but at such cost.

Sacrifices. Old man, you are the master of sacrifice. Let no man ever
say the Devil Himself doesn't understand two things: the theory of
history and the theory of sacrifice. However, perhaps in this century
they are the same.

He felt eyes on him and looked up. A member of the Guardia Civil was
headed toward him. It was a pockmarked boy with a Labora machine pistol
slung over his shoulder. He wore a khaki mono and a gorilla cap with a
red star on it. He looked stupid.

"Salud, comrade," called Levitsky.

The boy regarded him, and Levitsky, bleary eyed, could feel the hate.
What was it, the battered way he looked? The smell of peppermint? His
clear foreignness?

"Your papers, comrade," said the boy.

Levitsky got out a passport.

"A foreigner?"

"Yes, I'm an international," Levitsky said, and knew instantly he'd
blundered.

"Are you English? Russian?" asked the boy.

No, comrade. Polish." "I think you're Russian."

"No. No, comrade. Long live the revolution. I'm Polish."

"No, I think you're a Russian." He swung the machine pistol over onto
him.

"Hands up," he said. "You're a Russian, here to take over. Get going."
The gun muzzle looked big as a church bell.

Levitsky rose. The boy walked him across the square.

The boy seemed to hate Russians for some reason. Or perhaps it was
something else: he had just wanted to parade somebody through the square
at gunpoint with his shiny new weapon to show off for the girls of the
town.

As he walked he could sense something odd about this place: the slogans
smeared on the stucco walls in the hot sun had a kind of stridency to
them he hadn't noticed in other such villages. He translated.

FREE THE LAND UP THE CNT FAIFOREVER THE REVOLUTION NOW He soon found
himself in the Guardia Civil station---or what had once been a Guardia
Civil station and was now littered and looted and clearly in the
possession of some sort of People's Committee for Order. The boy put him
in the one cell of the dirty little building overlooking the square.

They were waiting, the boy had explained, for the sargento, who would
take care of everything. Levitsky told himself he really ought to get
some sleep. You're an old man, comrade, he thought. Almost sixty; you've
still got something to do. You need your rest.

And thus he was situated when a car did in fact appear in the square, It
was not, however, the car he expected; it was another vehicle
altogether, and when it drew to a halt and its door popped open, two
thuggish Spaniards in overcoats got out, checked around, and nodded into
its dark interior. Comrade Bolodin emerged.

Levitsky drew back. Trapped.

As the two thugs came inside, Levitsky quickly dropped to the straw bunk
and turned toward the wall, wrapping himself in the blanket. He heard
the two newcomers arguing with the boy. The men kept saying SIM, SIM,
over and over. No, the boy kept saying, FIJL, which was the Federaci6n
Iberia de Juventudes Liberatati6n, the radical anarchist youth
organization.

The boy, in short, wouldn't listen to them because they were the enemy,
here to take over the revolution from the people in this small seacoast
village.

"Sargento, " he kept saying. "Sargento.

The two men after a time returned to the car, and Levitsky heard one of
them speak in heavily accented English to Bolodin.

"Sefior Boss, this snot-nose kid, he say is nothing he can do until his
sergeant come."

"Christ," said Bolodin. "You show him the picture?"

"Boss, this kid, he is having a machine gun. Is no toy."

"You moron. I ought to turn him loose on you."

"Sorry, Comrade Boss."

"Don't"Sorry, Comrade Boss' me. I didn't drive here half the night from
Tarragona for the old goat to hear you say you were sorry. Just get over
there and wait." Levitsky was impressed. Bolodin had penetrated his own
motives and taken his inquiries to the hospital, on the belief that
Levitsky would be hanging around wounded Englishmen. Now he was up here
on the road to Cab de Salou showing the picture of Levitsky from
Deutsche Schachzeitung. If he showed it to the boy ... They walked over
to the car& and commandeered a table near the sidewalk. Levitsky watched
as Bolodin put his feet up on the railing and pulled out a brightly
colored pack of cigarettes, plucked one out, and quickly lit it. He did
not offer smokes to his companions, who sat on either side with the
nervous alertness of bodyguards.

Levitsky looked at his watch. It was about nine thirty.

The boy said the sergeant came in at ten. He looked around the cell for
a way out and could see none. The boy sat in the front room with his
machine pistol. He looked straight ahead.

Another locked room. As if the first weren't terror enough, he had to
play the same "Boy. Hey, boy. Come here," Levitsky called.

The boy grabbed his weapon and came back. He had sullen, stupid eyes and
seemed bullheadedly frightened of making a mistake. His khaki uniform
was too big; still, he was lucky to be here, and not out in the trenches
somewhere, or caught by opposing factionalists and stood against the wal
I.

"Duruttl?" Levitsky suddenly asked, naming the Anarchist hero killed
leading a column of Anarchist troops in the Battle of Madrid late last
year.

The boy looked at him suspiciously.

"Si, Dur-utti," he said.

Viva Durutti!" said Levitsky with enthusiasm. He gave the Anarchist's
double-fisted salute. He'd actually known this Durutti in Moscow in 1935
at the Lux. The man was a hopeless dreamer and lunatic, exactly the sort
of uncontrollable rogue who'd become a great hero in the civil war, but
utterly worthless at any other time. The Anarchists were all like that:
wedded to absurd notiotis of a stateless society.

"You're an Anarchist, no?" he asked.

"Si, I'm an Anarchist. Long live Anarchism. Death to the state!"
proclaimed the boy.

Levitsky saw just the slightest chance.

"I'm an Anarchist also," he said carefully, hoping his Spanish was
right.

"No," said the boy. "Russians can't be Anarchists.

Russians are all gangsters. Stalin is the head gangster."

"I'm Polish," said Levitsky. "A Polish Anarchist."

The boy looked at him darkly.

"Revoluci6n si, la guerra no, " Levitsky added, hoping again to
approximate the idea of the Durutti slogan.

"Si, " said the boy.

"Comrade," said Levitsky. "Por favor. Look at this."

He smiled slyly.

He rolled up his sleeve, past the elbow. There on his right biceps a
black fist clenched in ardent fury, ready to smite the governments and
policemen of the world. The tattoo dated from 1911. He and several
others of the Party had been trying to organize the Trieste mill workers
but at every step of the way they were opposed by an Anarchist
organization that loathed Bolsheviks. Levitsky had been directed to stop
them, for their irresponsibility could so enflame the policemen of the
Continent that revolutionary activity would be impossible for months.

He'd penetrated their secret society under an alias and been tattooed
with the black fist as part of his rite of passage. When after months of
careful maneuver he had finally met the ringleaders in a Trieste car&,
he'd betrayed them to the police. They were taken off and most of them
had died in prison.

The boy looked at the mark on his arm, his eyes widening in wonder.

"Salud, comrade," said the boy.

"Si. I salute. I salute Bakunin. I salute the great Durutti.

I salute Anarchism!"

The boy went and got a key and opened the door and embraced him.

"Est i libre, hermano, " the boy said. "ilibre! " Free, he was saying.
"One Anarchist may not lock up another Anarchist. Est6 libre. i Viva la
anarquia! "

Levitsky could see the American Bolodin through the open doorway,
sitting at the cafe, and beyond that he could see an elderly man in
Guardia Civil uniform head across the square, and at that same moment, a
black Ford, the Twenty-ninth Division staff car, with Julian Raines and
Robert Florry in the rear, pulled through the square and disappeared
down the road and out of town.

11 i Viva la anarquia! " said Levitsky, and he meant it, for dark forces
had been loosed in the world.

He embraced the boy and, seconds later, slipped out. 24.

TRISTRAM SHANDY, THE MAJOR WAS EXTREMELY NERVOUS. HE COULDN'T
concentrate, he couldn't sit still, he couldn't take tea. His stomach
felt sour and uneasy: dyspepsia, that scourge of the office animal. By
the end he had given up all pretense of organized activity and simply
stood at the window, looking down the five floors in late afternoon to
the street. He stood there for several hours. He felt if he moved he
would somehow curse his enterprise and fate it to catastrophe.

Finally, the black car pulled up and he watched as the queer, eager
figure of Mr. Vane popped out. Vane moved with appropriate dispatch into
the building. The major thought his heart would burst, but at the same
time he felt the killing imperative to maintain a certain formality for
the proceedings. Thus he seated himself at his desk, turned on the
light, took out and opened his fountain pen, removed from the rubble a
sheet of paper, and began to doodle. He drew pictures of flowers.
Daffodils. He could draw beautiful daffodils.

He heard the opening of the lift and the slow, almost stately progress
of Mr. Vane, who advanced upon him as a glacier must have moved down
from the Pole during the Age of Ice. At last the door to the outer
office opened; there was a pause while the orderly and precise Mr. Vane
took off his coat, hung it on a hanger-buttoning the top button, of
course, for the proper fall of the garment--and hung the hanger on the
rack; then put his jaunty little Tyrolean in his desk drawer, the second
one on the right hand side.

"Sir. Major Holly-Browning?" The man stood in the doorway with the
practiced diffidence of a eunuch in a harem.

"What! Oh, I say, Vane, I didn't hear you come in.

You gave me a start. Back already, then?"

"Yes sir."

"Well, that's fine. Any difficulty?"

"No sir. Well, actually, sir, the plane from Barcelona was slow in
getting off the ground. Then I must say I had crisp words with an F.O.
chap at Heathrow who insisted that he take the pouch all the way to
Whitehall before opening it."

"You should have called me."

"I prevailed, sir."

"Then you've got it?"

"Yes sir."

"Well, why don't you set it on the table? Then perhaps you'd like to
freshen up, perhaps get a bite. I want to finish this damned report
before I get to it."

"Yess'r. Here it is then, sir. I'll be back shortly. Please feel free to
call me if you want anything."

"Yes, Vane. Very good."

Vane set the thing on the table near the window. He turned and left and
the major did not look up to watch him. He listened to him leave. He
continued to play at working for some minutes. He told himself he would
wait fifteen minutes- He did not want to rush, to queer the thing with
impatience. He had waited quite a bit, after all.

The last observation had the effect of sending him back. He set the pen
down. The daffodils were forgotten.

He remembered the dark cellar of the Lubyanka in the year 1923.

He remembered the Russian sitting across from him, the eyes bright with
intelligence and sympathy. It had been a brilliant, patient performance,
seductive and terrifying. Levitsky had invited Holly-Browning to resist,
to argue; and each argwnent had been gently and delicately deflected.
The man was a genius of conviction; he had that radiant, enveloping
charm that reaches out through the brain and to the heart; it enters and
commands.

It was very late in the interrogation, and Holly Browning was reduced to
bromides.

"The British Empire is the most benevolent and compassionate in the
history of the world," he recalled saying, filled with exhaustion and
regret.

The Russian listened, seemed to pause and reflect.

"I would never deny that. Of course it is. Yet are you not being awfully
easy on yourself? Are YOU really willing to examine the reality of it
for another point of view? I think you may find the results intriguing."

The first betrayal had been a betrayal of the imagination. Yes, with
Levitsky as his guide, the major had allowed himself to imagine: imagine
the Raj from the point of view of a Hong Kong coolie, making do with
eleven children on less than a penny a day; or imagine the world of
Johnny Sepoy, sent around the globe to die for a king he didn't know, a
faith he couldn't understand, an officer he didn't respect, and five
rupees a week; or a textile worker, breathing the dust of a Leeds woolen
mill, his lungs blacking up, coughing blood at thirty, dead at
thirty-five; or ... "The realities of empire," said Levitsky, "are
considerably different depending upon one's proximity to the apex of the
pyramid of power." He smiled. Warmth and love poured from his eyes. He
touched the major on the shoulder. The major loved the touch. He loved
the strength and the courage of the man, he loved him in the way that
soldiers in a trench for months on end can come to love one another, in
a sacred, not profanely physical, way. Their ordeal in the cellar had
joined them.

"I can feel you trying to understand," said Levitsky. "It takes a heroic
amount of will. You're probably the bravest man in the world, James;
you've faced death in battle a hundred, a thousand times. Yet what you
do now, that is bravery, bravery of the will."

The major felt the passionate urge to surrender to the man. It was so
very late and they had been together for so very long.

"Think about it. You have been offered a chance to join an elite. One
does not look twice at an offer to join an elite, and to live a life
untainted by corruption and exploitation. It's a powerful elixir."

The truth is, as Major Holly-Browning knew, most men are willing to be
spies against their own country. In his way, Julian is not so
extraordinary after all; treason, in its way, is quite banal. A careful
recruiter, a Levitsky, nursing the grudge and resentment that all men
quite naturally feel toward their social betters and toward the freaks
of circumstance and luck that explain triumph and failure in the world,
can take a clerk and manufacture a spy in a weekend.

The shame began to suffuse the major. He could feel it building. He was
so ashamed. He had been so weak. He had yielded.

"Yes," Major Holly-Browning had said to Levitsky in the cellar of the
Lubyanka at the end of their very long trip together in 1923, "Yes. I
will do it. I will spy for you." When he spoke, he believed it. At the
center of his being, in his heart, in his brain, in his soul: he
believed it.

The escape, coming by freak luck the next day, changed nothing. When
eventually, after a series of colorful but now almost completely
forgotten adventures, the major reached home, he had taken a
convalescent leave and gone to the hills of Scotland and lived like a
hen-nit in a cottage high up for a year. It was a place without mirrors.
For a long time, the major could not deal with the image of his own
face.

Now at last, with a timeless sigh, the slow and easeful acceptance of
the firing squad by its victim, he rose and with exaggerated calmness
walked to the table. He seated himself and looked at the object. it was
Trivtram Shandy, by Laurence Steme.

The major reached up to the lamp, deftly unscrewed and removed the bolt
holding tight the shade, then removed the shade. He snapped the light
on, filling the normally dark old office with unpleasantly harsh light.

He found a piece of paper, took out his fountain pen.

He held the book in his hands and looked at it for some time, trying to
remain calm.

Am I here?

Levitsky, am I here at last?

He opened the book to the front endpaper, where Florry had written his
signature and a date, January 4, 1931, thus informing the major he had
chosen to start at page 31 and use the key of four.

The major opened up the book to page 3 1. He bent the covers back
against the spine, feeling it break. With @ straight razor he sliced the
page away from the others ano held it up to the blinding light from the
bulb. Like a sta over Bethlehem, a tiny flash winked at the major. It
was pinhole under the letter L. The major wrote down the letter L. He
turned fou pages further into the volume and repeated the process This
time, the tiny, almost imperceptible perforation denoted the letter E.
The next letter located was V. And then an L "Damned queer," said Major
Holly-Browning. "I should feel joy. Or some such. Triumph. The
lightening of the load, all that. Instead, I'm just damned tired." He
had no desire to do anything at all, much less share his triumph with
his new partners at MI-5.

"Can I get you some tea, sir?" said Vane.

"No. I think I'll have some brandy. And I'll get it. Do sit down, Vane,
I insist.,, "Yes sir."

Vane primly arranged himself on the sofa, a study in rectitudinous
angles. Holly-Browning rose, feeling the creak and snap in his joints of
so much recent disuse, and went to his side table, opened the drawer.
But suddenly, he didn't feel like brandy. He wanted something stronger.

He removed a bottle of Bushmill's and poured two rather large whiskeys.

"There," he said to Vane.

"But sir-"

"No. I insist. Whiskey, Vane. It's a celebration."

"Yes sir."

"Vane, I want you to look at this."

"Yes sir."

He handed over the sheet to Vane, who read it quickly.

"Well, Sir, I should guess that ties it."

"Yes, it's what we've been looking for: the final, the irrefutable piece
of evidence. The last chink in the wall.

Florry spotted Raines reporting to his Russian case officer, overheard
the conversation, and took notes.

Damned fine job, Florry. Florry worked out, Vane, you know he did."

"Yet Sir, if I may, it seems to me we got awfully good service out of
our man in Barcelona. Young Sampson."

"Er, yes, Vane. I suppose I shall have to recommend that he come aboard
full time now."

"Who knows, major? He could end up sitting in your chair someday."

"Not too bloody soon, I trust, Vane," said Holly Browning.

But Vane had lurched on to another topic. "I say, Sir, Florry says
here,"Step to be taken.' What can that mean?"

"You know damned well what it means, Vane."

"It's bloody brilliant, sir. You took a vague young fool and made an
assassin of him inside a half-year."

"So I did, Vane. So I did."

"I say, sir, could I have another few drops of the bloody whiskey?
Crikey, it's like an old friend coming home after the war, the taste of
it."

"Er, yes, Vane. Please, help yourself."

Vane went and poured himself a tot, swigged it down aggressively.

He turned. The major had never seen him quite so flushed and mussed
before.

"Here's to hell, sir. Where all the bloody-fookin' traitors belong so as
to roast on a spit into eternity. We sent him there, by damn, and by
damn I'm proud to be a bloody-fookin' part of it. And here's to Major
Jim Holly Browning, best bloody-fookin' spy-catcher there evei was." He
laughed abrasively.

"Do you know, Vane, I believe I'll drink to that," said Major
Holly-Browning.

Levitsky, he thought.

It started in the Lubyanka in 1923. Now on Broadway in 1937, I've
finished it.

Levitsky: I've won.

BEHIND THE LINES THERE," SAID PORTELA. "DO YOU SEE IT?"

Florry lay on the pine-needled floor of the forest and studied the
Fascist lines across the valley in the fading light. With his German
binoculars, he conjured up from the blur a distinct view of the trench
running in the low hills, the odd outpost or breastwork. But the terrain
was generally bleak and scorched; it had the look of wasted, untitled
land, its farmers fled as if from plague.

"It's quiet here," said Portela, "with all the fighting up around Huesca
or down near Madrid. This is where I cross. Zaragossa is not far. My
people wait in the hills beyond. You'll see, comrades."

"Good show," said Julian, theatrically chipper. He stood in the trees
like one of Our Gallant Lads at the Front in a 1915 West End melodrama.
He had been in such a mood since they left, hearty, solicitous,
irrepressibly British. He was almost hysterical with charm.

"Time to go, comrade?" he called to Portela cheerfully.

"Atv bags are all packed."

"Comrade Julian, you are like a hungry dog. I've never seen a man so
eager. But we must wait until the night."

"Blast!" said Julian. "Stink and I want to get crackie here, eh, Stink?
Have at the beggars, over the top, the sort of thing."

Carrying on like a child. Performing antically f( anyone who would pay
him the faintest attention. Beir Brilliant Julian on the center of a
stage designed for hi] and him alone.

Florry issued a deeply insincere smile, as if he, toi were richly amused
with Brilliant Julian, but he was E poor an actor he could find no words
to speak, out of fe, of speaking them transparently. Instead, he turned
h back, using his pack as a sort of pillow. He could St. through the
pine needles above a patch of sweet, cris blue sky. He hunkered against
his pack, thinking ho, odd it was to be wearing a peasant's rough garb
an boots and be sleeping on a pack that contained Burberry, a blue suit,
and a pair of black brogues. Soo he had fallen asleep.

"Robert?"

Florry started. Julian loomed over him, starin intensely.

"Yes, old man?"

"Look, I want to say something."

"Yes?"

"Portela's sleeping. That man can sleep anywhen Look, old boy, I've got
an awfully queasy feeling that m luck's run its string. I don't think
I'm going to make back."

You swine, thought Flony. You deserve an award f( your performance
rather than the four-five-five I'm going to put in your head.

"You'll make it. The bullet hasn't been made th, could bring down the
brilliant Julian."

"No, no. And my feelings are never wrong about thes things. You will. I
won't. Somehow this little gimcrack"--he held out his father's wedding
ring on its chain-"has lost its charm. I can feel it. I know it."Pons'
shall go forever unfinished."

He smiled. His teeth were white and beautiful, his face grave and
handsome. He had such high, fine cheekbones and glittery blue eyes.
Julian, we mere mortals peep about your bloody ankles.

"I wanted to tell you about Sylvia. I want it straight between us. Do
you understand there's nothing between us? She's yours. I'd never touch
her, is that understood?

The two of you: it's so right."

"Yes, Julian. Yes, I do understand."

And Florry did. For he knew that Julian could not betray him for love.
But as for politics, that was something else. For Florry, over the long
day's drive, had finally reached the final implication of Julian's
treachery.

The bridge attack would fail. And that meant Florry would die. Julian
would kill him. Even now as he addresses me, he addresses me as the
executioner talking to the victim, assuring him that the drop of the
gallows trap is nothing personal, but purely in the best interests of
the Party "Good, chum," said Julian. "And when I'm gone, you remember
that." "I will, Julian," said Florry, "I will."

You bastard, he thought, surprised himself at the cold loathing he felt.
You betrayed me at school. You betrayed me with Sylvia. Now you will
betray me at the bridge. The difference is that I know it this time and
I will stop you.

"Sylvia deserves somebody dogged and solid with virtue. And that's you
and it's grand. Be good to her."

"I'm sure in twenty years we'll all get together at the Savoy over
cocktails and laugh about this conversation."

"I'm sure we won't," said Julian.

They crouched in the forest. It was time. Florry found himself breathing
heavily.

"Comrades," said Portela, who had blacked his face out under his black
beret. He carried an American Thompson gun. "For you," he said. "Salud."
He got a flask out from under his cape and handed it over. "From Comrade
Steinbach. For the English dynamiters."

He handed it to Julian, who sniffed at the snout voluptuously. "God,
lovely. Whiskey. Wonderful English whiskey. Bushmill's, I believe. To
the bloody future," he toasted, taking a bolt, "that ugly whore." He
handed the flask to Florry.

Florty threw down a swallow. It was like the brown smoke from a thousand
English hearths.

"Shall we go then, lads?" said Julian, and they were off.

Portela led them down the slope and out into no man's-land. A mist had
risen, and the three men seemed to wade through it. Oddly, up above, the
stars were clear and sharp, shreds and flecks of far-off, remote light.

Florry was last in the file. He had the Webley in his hand. and a
four-five-five in each chamber. He was just behind Julian.

Wait till you get beyond the lines. Wait till Portela leaves you. Wait
till you get to the truck. Wait till you've changed into your fine
English suit. Wait till you're in the truck and setting off to Pamplona.
Then lift and fire.

Clean. Into the back of the head. It'll be much easier than the boy in
the trench.

Then what? he wondered.

Then you go on. To the bridge.

That's absurd.

They waded through the mist. The silence fell upon them heavily. The
mist nipped and bobbed at his knees.

Portela halted suddenly, turning, and waved them down.

Florry knelt, sinking into the mist. For a second, all was silent and
still. Then there came the low slush of boots pushing their way through
the wet, high grass, and -no, another, Flor-ry made out the shape of a
soldier three, four-advancing toward them in the fog. They were Fascists
on patrol, somber men in great coats with German helmets and long
Mausers with bayonets. Florry tried to sink lower into the earth, but
the men continued their advance, gripping their rifles tightly, their
eyrn peering about. Florry thought of Julian: had he somehow alerted the
NKVD who had in turn alerted the Fascists?

If they find us, Julian, I'll kill you here, he thought, his hand
tightening on the bulky revolver.

It was ghastly, almost an apparition, like a post patrol in some Great
War legend, the tall soldiers isolated in the rolling white fog. Florry
suddenly saw that they were Moorish legionnaires, huge, handsomely
fon-ned men, with cheekbones like granite and eyes like obsidian.
Savages. They'd just as soon cut your guts up as look at you.

They preferred the bayonet. At Badajoz, they'd put thousands to the
blade, or so the propaganda insisted.

Florry gripped his Webley so tight he thought he'd smash it: what an
opportunity for Julian, and so early on!

A single noise, a cough, the smallest twitch, and the bloody thing was
over. Florry brought the revolver to bear in the general direction of
Julian. If Julian made a noise, he'd He heard the footfalls growing
louder.

He could hear them talking in Arabic. They laughed among themselves only
feet away, and Florry fancied he could smell the cheap red wine on their
breath.

They halted fifteen feet off.

More laughter.

More chatter.

Florry could feel his heart beating like a cylinder in an engine block.
The sweat ran hotly down his face, though the night was cool. He lay
hunched on the mist, and its moisture soaked him; he could see the
damned glow of the Webley barrel.

The soldiers laughed again, and then began to move away. In minutes they
had vanished altogether.

Florry felt a stream of air whistle out of his mouth in pure an so imat
relief. He thought he might begin to tremble hard he couldn't move. But
before him first Portela with his Thompson and then Julian with his
small .25 automatic rose. He came off his knees and creakily climbed to
his feet. Julian flashed the old Great War high sign: thumbs up, chum.

Portela began to move up the slope and the two Englishmen followed. In
the fog they stayed closer together and Portela motioned for them to
hurry. They seemed to be walking in milk and Florty had lost all contact
with where they were. Had they reached the Fascist line yet? Shouldn't
they be crawling? What was going on?

Suddenly there was a noise. They sank back into the fog again, There was
the chink of something falling and some laughter. Then Florry heard the
sound of running water-it was a man nearby pissing in the fog.

Something tapped his shoulder: Portela, gesturing him to rise quietly.
Florry stood and the three began to walk swiftly ahead. They were on
flat ground, it seemed, and They were in the yard of a small house.

I'@ Quin estti? " came a call.

"Perd6n, " Portela answered. "Estamos perdidos.

Somos de la Tenth Division."

"Ha!"

A man leaned out the open window, a cigarette in his mouth.

He yelled something Florry couldn't follow.

Portela yelled back. The two argued back and forth for some time.

Suddenly another voice screamed out. "ihombre v.,' Calltios, carrajo!
iqu@ pensliis, que es unafiesta? " said something under his breath.
Portela The first man muttered a reply. The two conversed in low tones.

he iode Chingas las muchachas en Zaragoza por mi, ieh, amigo? Hay unas
guapas alli. "

"Tendr@ los ojos abiertos, " called back Portela. "Les dir@ su mensaje.
"

"Adi(is, amigo.

"Si. Adies, amigo, " called back Portela, and began to walk smartly
away. Florry and Julian hastened after.

From inside the hut came the sound of raucous, dirty laughing. all,
until they They walked on, climbing a low stone w found themselves in an
orchard. Portela took them down its ghastly ranks, around some deserted
buildings, and down at last a road. They halted in the lee of a wall.
"ipor Dios! " said Portela, crossing himself several times feverishly.
"My prayers were answered tonight." ,11 didn't think you were quite
allowed to pray, old " said Julian. "That's for the other side."

man, "I have been an atheist since 1927," Portela said, "but on this
night we needed the help of God, and so we got'it."

"How extraordinary," said Julian. "Do you mean there was actually danger
involved in all that?"

"I thought once we passed the patrol we were behind the lines. But then
I took us straight to their company headquarters."Hey, where you go?' a
fellow asks me. "To Zargossa,' I tell him."Many pretty girls there.'"You
lucky you got leave,' he says."Fuck one for me.'"You men, shut your
mouths,' yelled the major. God in heaven."

"Good heavens," said Julian. "I thought it was all arranged."

"Come, the trucks are this way."

Florry slid the revolver out of its holster. It was just a matter of
time now. Surprisingly, what worried him most was explaining it all to
Portela. He knew he could do the thing: raise the pistol, fire it into
the back of the head.

Once you have shot a man in the face, you can do most anything.

They reached a farmyard.

Florry saw two trucks.

What "Well, old man, looks like we won't be able to tell school stories
on the way into Pamplona. Ta-ta." And with that, Julian scurried off.

"It's safer," said Portela. "This way at least one man gets through,
no?"

"Y-yes," Florry heard himself saying, as he watched Julian climbing into
the rear of the first truck. "Much safer."

THE CLUB CHICAGO IT TOOK LEVITSKY NEARLY A FULL DAY TO GET BACK To
Barcelona, and nearly five hours into the evening-it was the evening of
the fifteenth-until he found the man that he needed.

He began his search in the Barrio Chino, among the gaudy prostitutes and
the cheap nightclubs that plied their trade regardless of the official
revolutionary austerity imposed on the city. Levitsky was not interested
in women, however, or in companionship of any sort.

Bolodin would know he had just missed his quarry at Cabrillo del Mar; he
would certainly deduce that the running man would seek safety in the one
city he knew. Levitsky estimated that he had very little time left.

The wolf is near, he thought.

A girl came and sat at his table in the Club Chicago.

"Salud, comrade," she said.

She asked him a question in Spanish.

"Ingl@s, porfavor, " he said.

"Sure. Ingl@s. You wish a girl for the night? Me, maybe? Some good
tricks I know."

"No. But I have some money for you."

"For me?"

"Yes. Listen carefully. Now, in the time of the revolution, you have
been liberated. You work for yourself, correct?"

"I am a free worker."

"But it was not always so. It was not so before July.

Once you worked for a man. A certain man controlled you and all the
ladies."

"Before July."

"Yes. Before July."

"Suppose it were so?"

"Suppose this man had a name."

"He was called only the Aegean."

"The Aegean is gone?"

"Who knows?"

"This man would leave all he had built up? He would leave it?"

"Leave it or die. His kind was placed before walls in the early days of
July and shot." "You say he is gone. Yet oddly a ship full of illegal
cigarettes attempted to reach Barcelona in January. it was sunk by the
Italians. Yet clearly the owner of the ship hoped to make a great deal
of money from the contraband. It sounds exactly like the sort of thing
this Aegean chap might be interested in. So perhaps this fellow isn't as
far gone as you maintain."

"I know nothing of such things."

"And the man who owned that ship. It is said in some quarters that he
owned this place-and other places in the barrio."

"Who is asking these questions?"

"Perhaps this fifty-peseta note will convince of my friendship."

She took the bill and stuffed it down between her breasts.

"So. A friend."

"I have something to sell him. But it must be tonight. If it's not
tonight, it has no value. It could make him a very important man in
times to come. And it could make the girl who helps him very important
in times to come."

"I'll be back. I must talk to someone."

He took out a five-hundred-peseta note, tore it in half, and gave her
one piece.

"Show him this. And you get the other," he said, when I meet the Aegean
comrade."

Levitsky then sat alone for a time. Two other tarts came by; he shooed
them away and ordered another peppermint schnapps.

At last the girl returned.

"Upstairs," she said. "And you better not be carrying no gun or knife or
they'll cut you open."

"Salud," he said.

"My money, comrade."

He tore the remaining half in half again, and gave it to her. "You get
the last piece when I get there."

They went in the back and up the steps into a decrepit hall leading to a
small room.

"The man you seek is behind the door. My money."

He gave it to her and she left quickly.

Levitsky opened the door and stepped into darkness.

A light hit him in the eyes. He heard an automatic pistol cock.

"Search him and check his wallet," the voice commanded.

A form approached, patted him down, and quickly relieved him of his
money.

"You are a very rich man in these revolutionary times," said the voice.
"Don't you know that capital is against the spirit of the people?"

"An astute man flourishes in any climate," said Levitsky.

"So he does. It's said some weeks ago a certain bold man came to possess
a great many identification documents obtained illegally from particular
foreign visitors to this country. Some of these documents were sold on
the black market for a considerable sum. But you would know nothing of
this?"

"How would a poor man such as I know anything of these criminal
matters?"

"Perhaps the purchaser of the documents marked the bills with which he
paid the anonymous seller. And perhaps the first piece of the bill you
gave the girl had the mark."

"What an amazing coincidence," said Levitsky.

"It's said the man removed these documents from the headquarters of the
head Russian stooge policeman. I would like to meet this man."

"He must be an amazing chap," said Levitsky.

"Imagine walking out of the main police station with twenty-eight
confiscated passports under the names Krivitsky, Tchiterine, Ver Steeg,
Malovna, Schramfelt, Steinberg, Ulasowicz-"

"Very impressive memory." "Thank you, comrade."

"You perhaps have more documents? A very lucrative market. The hills of
Barcelona are loaded with aristocrats in biding who desperately need new
identities.,, "Alas, I have no documents today. I have not paid a visit
to the police station lately and have no plans to do so in the future.
What I have, rather, is a scrap of information."

"For sale?"

"You would not trust anything given as a present.

"Probably I would not." "I am told that there is in Barcelona a sinister
underground antirevolutionary organization called the White Cross. It's
said the White Cross may have ways of reaching Generalissimo Franco's
intelligence staff v' ia a hidden wireless." "I, too, have heard of
such an organization. They would pay dearly for crucial military
information that an astute man had gathered."

"Yes, they would. I have something to sell you for ten thousand pesetas
that you may sell an hour hence to the White Cross for one hundred
thousand pesetas, assuming, of course, you have ways of reaching the
White Cross."

"There are always ways, senor But how can I trust you?"

"Play my trick on me. Give me half the money. That is, literally, half
if you fail to make a sale to the White Cross, you can come take it from
me and kill me. I'll wait downstairs. If you can sell it, come to me
with the money."

"And why should I not simply take your information and kill you without
paying you?"

"Because you would have to tear it from my heart. And you do not have
time to do so this night."

There was a long pause.

"Pedro," the voice behind the light finally directed.

"The money. As he says."

There was shuffling in the darkness, and the sound of bills being peeled
out and tom. It took a few minutes.

Then, with a slithering sound, the packet of bills slid across the floor
to his feet. Levitsky bent, picked up the wad, made a quick show of
counting it off.

He smiled. "I'm sure your friends in the White Cross will be pleased to
infonn General Franco's intelligence staff that at quarter to noon
tomorrow, sixteen June, two English dynamiters traveling under stolen
identity papers in the names of Uckley and Dyles will be present at the
new tank bridge at kilometer on the road between Pamplona and Huesca.
The point of their presence is to sabotage the gun position for a
guerilla attack on the bridge. And at one that same afternoon, the
soldiers of the POUM and the UGT and the FAI militias will make another
assault on the city of Huesca."

Julian had told him. And now Julian must die.

Levitsky sat downstairs, having another peppermint schnapps. He felt
exhausted. The goal glimpsed that evening in Moscow when his strange
companion let slip the information of Lemontov's defection had at last
been achieved. What GRU wanted, GRU had gotten. What happened now-to
anybody--d'd not matter. Levitsky, however, strangely took no pleasure
in it. He didn't feel anything except hollowness. He felt, if anything,
only old.

It's getting to you, old man.

Levitsky had not wept in years. Yet he found a last old tear in his dry
bones for the dead: Julian and poor Florry.

Igenko. The Anarchists in Trieste. Foolish old Witte.

Tchiterine. Maybe worst of all his father, dead and gone these many
years, slaughtered by Cossacks in the time before there was time.

Tata. Salud. You were a man.

He had another swallow of the schnapps. He was turning into an old
shikker, boring and stupid and sentimental, an old fool. It was as if
the discipline, the pission, the absolute fury of a life had at last
spent itself, leaving nothing.

Then he realized with a start that tomorrow, June 16, was his birthday.
He would be sixty years old.

"Old one."

Levitsky looked up into a set of dark features, smooth and sleek and
Mediterranean. "You are right. Our friends were quite impressed. Here is
your money." "Fuck your money," said Levitsky. "And here's an old ftiend
of yours," said the Aegean, laughing.

"Hello, old putz. I got you at last."

Levitsky looked into the face of Comrade Bolodin and then two men
grabbed him and took him.

PAMPLONA JULIAN STOOD IN THE IMMACULATE CIRCULAR PARK WHERE the Avenida
de Carlos III and the Avenida de la Baja intersected in the lovely
center of the Carlist city of Pamplona. It was midafternoon, June 15, a
glorious day. The sky was Spanish blue, subtly different from English
blue in that it is paler, flatter, less voluptuous, more highly
polished. ,"Sieg heil, " said Julian, enjoying the theatricality of it,
to a fair-haired, blue-eyed young chap who was but one of the dozens of
Pamplona Germans, all sleek, smooth-looking professional soldiers with
glorious suntans in the crisp blue uniforms of the Condor Legion Panzer
companies.

Florry sat on the bench in the park not far from where his partner
flirted with the young Jerry, and loathed himself Another bloody
failure. Julian had not come in gun range since they'd separated, until
now, except that he was also within gun range of the entire Condor
Legion as well. God damn you, Julian Raines, and your absurd lucky ring
around your neck: it seemed to sum him up, that foolish talisman against
the vicissitudes of reality, Julian believed in it, and in believing in
it, seemed to force the world to believe in it.

Florry watched intently. It was not particularly amazing that Julian
could speak so passionately with the young German. To begin with, his
German was brilliant and he was himself blond and blue-eyed; but perhaps
more important was the force of his performance. It was not just that he
was now scrubbed and combed, in a beautiful double-breasted gray
pinstripe suit, but it was something deeper. He was too pitch perfect
and nuance pure for fiction or artifice. He was not, really, acting. He
had simply willed himself to become a new and different man on the
streets of Pamplona.

After a while, Julian began to show off. He offered the young man a
cigarette, lit it for him with his Dunhill, and made humorous
observations at which the German laughed heartily. He had even found a
pipe someplace, and he gestured emphatically with it.

God, thought Florry.

After a time, Julian and the young officer shook hands, threw each other
a gross deutscher salute, and walked amiably away from each other.
Julian returned and sat down.

"Interesting chap. Says the Jerry armor doesn't stand a chance against
the Russian T-26s. That's why they're pulling them out of Madrid for
this little show up here."

"Christ, I thought you'd never finish," said Florry.

"He's just been up to the bridge. His unit is near there.

Says we must visit; it's a marvel of engineering. The Fiihrer would be
proud."

Florry shook his head.

"Come on, Stink, you've got to enjoy this. Think what a tale it'll make
for your and Sylvia's grandpups. Won't believe a word of it, though, the
little ghastly rodents.

Hate kids, myself So bloody noisy."

"What on earth did you tell him?"

"We're mining engineers. Out from the fatherland to advise the bloody
olive-eaters on their mining techniques. Know a bit about mines, too. My
mother owns one somewhere. Any sign of our pals?"

Florry, from his vantage, looked across the fountain and the street,
through the leafy trees and to the hotel on the corner. It was an
elegant old place, rather Parisian in appearance. It had been his job to
keep it watched, while Julian sported about with Jerry.

"Nothing," he said. "A few Condor chaps. It seems to be unofficial Jerry
headquarters," he said.

"The Moseley brutes will love it. What utter swine. To give up their own
country to rub bums with German Java men tarted up in Sigmund Romberg
unifon-ns. I loathe traitors. "

Florry kept his eye on the hotel.

"Sieg heil, " Julian suddenly blurted, as two more officers suddenly
came by in gleaming black jackboots.

"Handsome chaps," Julian said after they passed. "Pity they're all such
pigs."

"There," said Florry suddenly, squinting in the sunlight.

He could see them in front of the picturesque doors of the hotel, a
short, squat, and blunt fellow who must have been Harry Uckley and
another who must have been his companion Dyles. It was the uniforms that
gave them away: they wore their silly Moseley black shirts and jodhpurs
and black riding boots.

"What charming uniforms," said Julian. "So refined."

Florry felt a queer roar in his mind. No matter what, he'd have at
Julian.

I'd Julian. "Time for some real fun "All right,' sal now, eh?"

But the fun did not start for quite some time. They followed the two
down the wide, tree-lined Avenida de Carlos III at what seemed a prudent
distance, perhaps two hundred paces, until at last they reached their
appointment: an office off the called San Miguel, near the cathedral,
which wore the proud banner of the Falange Espagnole, the violent
right-wing Spanish brotherhood that, like the POUM, supplied its own
militias to the fighting.

Florry and Julian found shelter down the street at a bench under a tree
and waited. By 4 P.M. Julian grew bored and went for a walk. For a time
he browsed in the shop windows while Florry sat furiously, vulnerable
and absurd, awaiting his return. He was gone about half an hour.

"I say," he said when he returned, "look what I've bought. Rather
spiffy, eh?"

He opened a small sack and removed a tie.

"I've always loved this pattern," he said. It was a dark green and dark
blue arrangement of diagonal stripes.

"But it's the Fourteenth Lancastershire Foot, and if Roddy Tyne ever
caught me with his regiment's tie, he'd have a bloody kitten."

"It's quite nice," said Florry. "I've never paid much attention to
ties."

"Nice? Chum, it's magnificent. Don't you think it goes well with this
suit." He held it against the gray pinstripe.

"Julian, I'm trying to keep an eye on-"

"It does, doesn't it?"

"Well, yes, I suppose it does."

"Good, thought you'd agree."

He quickly untied the tic he was wearing-a solid burgundy thing-and
rethreaded his collar with the regimental tie, quickly put a small,
elegant Windsor knot into it, and pulled it tight.

"There. Really feel much better. This awful pink thing'@--he held up the
burgundy like a rotting fish- "has been bothering me all day. Can't
think why I bought it. Is the knot centered, old man? It's a beastly
thing to do without a mirror."

"Julian! Look!"

Harry Uckley and his chum Dyies had emerged in a crowd with a group of
Falangists and stood chatting and lounging about two hundred paces down
across the street.

"About bloody time," said Julian.

It had taken almost forever: Uckley and Dyles went off to eat with the
Falangists at a large, unruly restaurant down the way. The dinner lasted
for hours, and more than a little wine was consumed. Then it was time to
sing, and Florry and Julian heard the ringing words of the Spanish
National Anthem, the bloody Horst Wessel song, some Italian Fascist
ditty, on and on until quite late. When the partv broke up at last, it
was close to midnight and a light rain had begun to fall. The two
Englishmen separated with a last round of hearty good-byes from the
Falangists, and headed off down the street.

Across the way, from the shadows, Flony and Julian watched as they
ambled along, talking animatedly, their boots snapping on the pavement.

Uckley and Dyles passed by directly across from them, and for the first
time Florry could see them clearly. Harry Uckley had a thick-set,
loutish grace, that pugilist's carriage that took him forward to the
balls of his feet as he walked. He laughed at something the thinner,
more ascetic Dyles had said, and it was an ablative little percussion of
a laugh.

"I see it now," said Julian, in a whisper. "The cathedral. They're off
for a bit of praying."

Of course. Harry Uckley would be Catholic.

"Come on," said Julian. "While I was off, I spotted a quicker way."

They dashed across a cobbled street, cut down an alley.

The rain was really beginning to fall now. As they moved, they threw on
their Burberrys, crossed another street, and then saw it. it was a
Gothic thing and first seen in the dimness looked immense and almost
prehistoric, an awesome great hunk of gaudy, lacy stone, its spire
climbing toward God himself above.

"Here. We'll stop them here," said Julian, slipping inside the gate.
Florry watched his hand disappear inside his coat to emerge with the
small automatic pistol.

And I'll stop you, Julian, Florry thought.

"Put this bloody toy to work at last," Julian said, throwing the slide
of the pistol.

Florry felt the Webley somehow come to fill his hand.

His thumb climbed the oily cold of the revolver's spine, curled around
the hammer, and drew it back, and he could feel the cylinder align
itself in the frame. The hammer locked with a tensile click.

"Here they come now, our lovely Eton boys," said Julian. It was so. The
two men, hunched against the rising chill and the fall of the rain, came
across the square in the white cold light of the moon, hurrying to make
midnight mass.

Florry stepped beyond Julian, his revolver leading the way. "Beg
pardon," he said, with absurd civility, and stepped from the gate into
the moonlight. The two men saw him and seemed to halt for just a second.
The street behind them was deserted. From inside the cathedral came the
sound of chanting.

"Harry Uckley," Florry said.

"Who's that, eh?" called back Harry, still coming on.

His voice filled with the sudden cheer of a man who recognizes a
companion. "A mate? Christ, Jimmy, that you, blast it all?" "No it
isn't, old sport," said Julian.

Harry understood in an instant, much more quickly than poor Dyies. He
seemed to make a sudden lurch for his own pistol, but it was all feint,
and as Flon-y, fifteen feet away, brought the Webley up to fire, Harry
instead gripped his companion by the arm, catching the poor man in utter
surprise, and with a strong thrust whirled him at Florry and Julian in a
crazed spin.

Julian's little automatic fired almost instantly, the sound a tap lost
quickly in the vastness of the night, and the man sagged wretchedly as
Florry ducked at the collapsing apparition that was between himself and
his target and made to re-aim, but saw it was no use. Harry, fleet as
the devil, had turned to flee and ran zigzagging like a footballer
across the cobblestones in the shadows.

Florry took off after him, cursing the man for his cleverness, and got
close enough to see Harry hit the stone wall of the graveyard abutting
the cathedral and get over it in a single, clawing scramble. He himself
careened toward the gate, raincoat flapping like a highwayman Is cape
behind him, and slid through it, low.

Damn you, Harry Uckley. If you get away, it's all up, damn you.

Florry knew he should have just done the job of murder. Just shot him
cold; that's what the job required.

But he could no more shoot even scum like Harry Uckley cold than Julian
Raines.

Bourgeois decadence again, the soft, yielding custard center of the
middle-class man, the slight pause at the moment when pauses were fatal.
Florry, you have not learned the lesson of your century: you have not
learned to kill.

Florry studied the maze of the graveyard. He could pick out no forms
remotely human in the baroque, marble confusion and the weird colors
from the stainedglass of the cathedral above it. It was all jumble and
shadow. A few candles flickered.

Damn you, Harry!

He began to move through the grass in a duckwalk, feeling absurd and
incredibly excited at once, but not particularly frightened. After so
much of wondering and doubting and waiting, the elemental simplicity of
killing or being killed seemed almost a luxury.

"Chum, I'm going to kill you."

The whisper was from quite near. Florry halted freezing up against a
marble angel's wing. Harry was close by, calling softly, utterly
confident.

"Come on, now, chum. Just another step."

The voice was indistinct and blurred but seemed to be coming from a
congruence of obelisks off on the left a few feet. Florry peered into
the dark, trying to make sense of it. He had an immense urge to stand up
and shoot at the voice and be done with the business.

Yet he held back. Patience in these affairs was everything. Harry was
the man of action, the pugilist, the footballer; the urge to move would
overwhelm his imagination surely. Florry knew he'd come. Come on, Harry,
boy, come on.

He lay still, waiting.

"Robert? Robert, are you there?"

It was Julian, standing in the gate in the moonlight like an utter ass,
as if he were posing for a sculptor.

"Robert, I say, are you there?"

In the light of the cathedral, Julian made a wonderful target and he
knew that Harry Uckley would fire in a second or so. Julian and his
insane conviction that the real physics of the universe did not apply to
one so charming and brilliant. His bravery, which was also utter
stupidity.

Flon-y heard the snap of a revolver cocking amid the maze of marble
slabs, perhaps made louder by the looming cathedral walls above them,
and then he heard a tick as the hard butt was steadied against the
stone.

"Robert, I say, old man, are you here?" Julian called again.

Florry leaped to his feet, raised the Webley, and fired three times in
the rough direction of Harry Uckley. Yet curiously he did not hear the
sound of the shots but only felt the sensations: the buck of the
revolver, the spurt of muzzle flash out beyond his hand, the sudden
floodin odor of burned powder. He did not hear because he heard
something else instead, the huge and powerful clanging of the midnight
bells whose thrill of vibration seemed to fill the air with a kind of
blanket of sound, dense and muffling. He ducked back to earth, the bells
continuing: they were up to five now. Florry rolled sideways, sure a
bullet would come winging at him, and astonishingly discovered a
rampaging shape passing by him headed like a crazed bull toward the
gate.

He fired, taking the man down.

The bells tolled twice more, then ceased, their echo lapsing after
several more seconds.

"Robert?"

"Yes.

"Christ, are you all right?" ,: Yes, you bloody idiot. God, Julian, you
just stood there-"

"The pathetic thing is, they haven't pistols in those bloody great
holsters. Only arsewipe. Let's see what you have bagged."

They rose and walked swiftly to the fallen man. Harry Uckley in the
grass, a glassy blackness in his eyes, breathed slowly.

"It was a lucky shot that dropped me," he said. "I'd have had you sure
if the bloody olives hadn't taken my Luger. They didn't trust us."

"Are you in pain?"

"No, it's rather numbing. Cold. You'll see when your time comes. Are you
reds?"

"I suppose," said Florry.

"I'm damned glad an Englishman pulled the trigger, not one of these
olive-eating bastards. They took my Luger, damn their souls to hell."

"Yes, Harry," said Florry, aware that Harry no longer breathed. "Well,
that's bloody that," he said, surprised at the bitterness he felt.
"Another great triumph for the Republic."

Now for Julian, he thought. He cocked the pistol.

"Sorry, old man," said Julian, just behind him. Florry felt the cold
circle of a pistol muzzle against his neck.

"There's to be a change in plans." 28.

MIDNIGHT THEY DROVE THROUGH THE CITY FOR A TIME, UNTIL AT last they
reached its outskirts. The traffic increased. The road was jammed with
armored cars and lorries filled with Asaltos. Twice the vehicle was
stopped but Lenny simply pronounced the password-"Picturebook" -and they
were passed on. Whistles blew; there was the tramping of feet on the wet
pavement in the dark. It was a night of ugly, ominous magic, a night of
history. Lenny figured even Levitsky, hands manacled, mouth taped, would
see that something was about to happen.

Then they pulled into the courtyard of a large house.

More troops milled about. But they took the old man straight through the
house, across the courtyard, and to a smaller house. The tape was ripped
off. He was stripped naked. The manacles, however, remained.

Lenny looked at the old man and was surprised at the body. It was chalky
white and mottled with discolorations. His feet and hands were veiny
blue and white and hideous. His muscle tone was flabby. His cock was
long and flaccid and his balls two dead weights. Where was the strength?
Where was the will? This was just an old white-headed geezer who
probably couldn't open a jar of pickles without help. The great
Levitsky! Trotsky's right-hand man. Kolchak's nemesis, hero of the
underground, Cheka terrorist, Yid spy-master! Lenny laughed.

A single blow would send his old bones flying apart.

Levitsky looked cold and numb. His face didn't show much except that he
knew he was going to catch it but good. Lenny wanted to hurt him. Lenny
felt powerful and beyond fear next to this old geezer.

"Old Yid," he said in Yiddish, "I've got plenty of trouble for you now.
You think you've seen trouble? lut the blindfold on him."

Blackness engulfed Levitsky. He felt the thing being tied tight behind
him. He was led outside, pulled along by several pairs of hands. His
feet crossed mud and straw.

"Step up here," they told him. He felt himself climbing crude steps. The
smell of straw and mud was everywhere. He knew he was in a rough
building. It was very cold.

At last Bolodin spoke.

"You know," he said, speaking in Yiddish. "I've seen guys like you. They
had 'em in New York. Tough, I give you that. Smart, too. Guts. Lots and
lots of guts. Now I could have this kid here smash you until morning.
When he gets tired, I could do the smashing myself Bolodin laughed
again.

"And that's just what you want. You're one of these guys, the more you
get smashed, the more stubborn you get. You feel pure. The pain makes
you clean. You're a pilgrim, the blood you shed gets you into heaven.
Sure, I know. I've seen plenty of it before."

He took a deep breath. The old man's head didn't move.

Lenny studied him carefully. The old man was still.

"You've got a piece of information," Lenny said. "The name of a guy.
It's your most precious treasure. It means more than your life. I want
it. I got to figure a way to get it out of you, right? So I ask myself,
what does this old Jew fear? Everybody fears something, even the Devil
Himself. I have to find something so special to you, so much a part of
you, so deep in you that getting away from it becomes even more
important than your treasure.

"So what would this be? Pain? Nah! Torture? For most, not for you.
Death. The fear of death? No. If you die before I get what I want, you
win. You'd love that, wouldn't you? It's how your mind works. I've
thought a lot about that, how you think. I'm the world's greatest living
Levitsky expert. Nights I stay up thinking about how to get this piece
of information out of Levitsky.

"And then I figured out where to look."

Lenny paused again, still enjoying his discovery.

"You know where? I'll tell you, this is really interesting.

I "I looked inside ... of me. You and me, Levitsky, we're the same guy.
Jewboys born in that cunt Russia. We left her, went somewhere else to
make a better life. We learned to be hard. We learned to do what was
necessary.

We learned to look and see the world for what it was and deal with it as
it was. We learned not to be afraid. We learned how to hurt. We became
big shots. We forgot everything. Or almost everything. But when I'm a
kid and even when I'm a young shtarker in the gangs and even when I'm
making my hits and everybody in the city is scared of me and even when I
come over here and get in this racket, there's one thing I don't ever
forget. Because always it scares me. I don't like it now, even. Being
this close to it makes me nervous. And I bet you don't like it so hot
either."

He smiled.

"Remember, old man. What, fifty years ago? With me it was only thirty
years ago. But you remember it just like I do. They came in on the
horses. Always with the horses. The horses so big and so tall they could
smash a kid to pieces in the snow. And there was no place to run and
maybe you were lucky because they only felt like doing a little killing
or maybe you were unlucky because they wanted to do a lot of killing.
And they came galloping through. And I remember the horses. Big as a
house, all muscle and steam and power. I saw my two brothers go under
the hooves, old man. Just sucked under and gobbled up, like a machine,
and they come out the other end, all smashed into the snow."

At last the old man spoke.

"That was in the time before there was a revolution.

We changed all that. We made a revolution."

"Yah! A revolution! Get him! Tonight, old man, tonight there's no
revolution. It's 1897, it's forty years ago. And the horses are coming,
old man. They're coming."

He ripped the blindfold off.

Levitsky saw he was in the loft of a stable, over a pen.

It was maybe twenty feet to the ground and as he watched, a gate was
opened.

In they came.

"The Spanish have lots of cavalry, old man. They like horses, and there
are plenty of them left around. These beauties are mean as hell. They
haven't been fed in a week. Instead, I got a guy, he comes in and he
whips lem. He whips 'em hard. He plays sirens for 'em and he honks horns
at 'em. Oh, these horses are mad. These horses are crazy. You never saw
any horses like this, old man."

He brought Levitsky to the edge of the loft.

Beneath him, the old man could see them. They bucked and jostled and
rubbed together, a seething, almost singular thing. Their cries came up
at him and their dusky smell and their ugly violence.

"You want to go down there, old man? You'll drive @em crazy. They'll
crowd in over you. Their hooves are really sharp. Old man, you want to
go pet the horsies tonight?"

He held Levitsky farther out.

What am 1, Levitsky thought, an old man. God help me, I'm no devil. He's
going to throw me down there.

God help me.

He remembered them smashing through the village. It was so long ago.

"Hah, old man. You going to talk? I'm getting tired of holding you."

Levitsky spat in his face and Lenny threw him into the pit.

He fell for a long time, screaming, but then the rope caught him and
jerked him backward with a terrible explosion of light and pain; it was
tied to the manacles.

He hung in the pen, his shoulders wrenched the wrong way, the pain
radiating out from the pressure. But worse, he was in the center of the
horses, only the rope preventing him from descending the last few feet
to the muddy floor of the pen.

A horse's breath, steamy and rancid, flushed across his face. The beast
nudged him with its big head and as it nudged, the pain was terrible on
his shoulders. Another horse smashed its flank against him. He swung on
the pendulum of his rope and shoulders, bashing against another beast
which screamed, leaped to its hind legs, and kicked savagely at
Levitsky, crushing against his sternum. The horses were being driven
into a frenzy; they were everywhere around him, nipping and bucking and
kicking him. They were so huge; he was so weak.

He remembered the Cossacks. It was a day when they felt like a lot of
killing. He remembered the animal bucking over his father and saw the
flash of blade, the spurt of blood. He smelled the burning huts, but
most of all he remembered the cries and screams of the horses ... He
awakened.

He lay on the floor of the barn. Bolodin was over him.

"You passed out, old man. You fainted. I must be right.

You must be plenty scared." He turned. "Get him up."

They lifted Levitsky and brought him back to the edge of the loft. The
horses had quieted.

"The lamp," said Bolodin.

The one called Ugarte picked the kerosene lamp off a table.

"Go ahead," commanded Bolodin.

The boy threw it into the pen; it smashed and the kerosene, flaming,
spread across the floor. The horses went insane. They twisted and leaped
and yelped in their terror of the fire. The flames rose, showing red in
their mad eyes and against their sweaty flanks.

"Okay, old devil. Back you go."

The rope was tied to his manacles. Bolodin held him out over the animal
pen, which had become the site of grotesque frenzy.

"They'll rip me apart!" shrieked Levitsky.

"Down you go, old devil. To your own private pogrom.@, "No. No. Please.
Please."

It seemed as if an incredible light had come into his mind. He struggled
to tell the man what he wanted to know, but it was as if he could feel
himself being sucked down. It was as if his mind were shattering. He
would not go.

"Please. Please, don't do this to me."

They laid him down.

"So talk," said Bolodin.

He looked up at Bolodin as if at a stranger. He had no idea what the man
wanted. Nothing made sense. The light in his mind was growing in its
blinding intensity.

"He's not saying anything," said Ugarte.

"Water," said Bolodin.

The liquid, icy cold, flooded over him, into his eyes and throat. He
felt it going into his nose and entering his body. He was dying. It was
all slipping away, in a confusion of water and pain and horse's screams
and the freezing wind and the straw beneath him.

"The name, old man. The name of the boy you recruited."

The question was crazy, it made no sense.

Levitsky thought he was drowning. He could feel the fluid in his lungs
and the will to surrender choking through him. There was nothing else.
He was drowning, the water was sucking him down. He could see only
lights flashing. His life was over; he was barely conscious. He was
sinking.

Then strong arms had him. They gripped him tightly and pulled him up. He
could feel a man's hands on him, bringing him to air. The pain was so
bad. There was so much pain, endless and unyielding. The hands had him.

"Florry," he gasped. "God, Flony, it's you."

Lenny checked the list he'd made from Glasanov's files. Yes, Florry, a
Brit, in the POUM, a journalist originally. It all fit. He was one of
the two guys who'd been at the seaside hotel, too, the one Levitsky had
probably been trying to reach. He figured the guy would be at the
Falcon.

"Comrade Bolodin?" The call came from down below.

"Yes," Lenny called back in Russian.

"Commissar Glasanov says it's time to go."

Lenny looked at his watch. Yes, it was 0430. It was time to move on the
Falcon.

"Comrade, what do we do with the old one?"

Lenny looked back to the old man, naked and shivering, his eyes black
and crazed and staring madly into nothingness.

"Give him to the horses," he said.

THE OBERIEUTNANT JULIAN PLUCKED THE REVOLVER FROM FLORRY'S HAND.

He had a queer light in his eyes and seemed wickedly, marvelously
excited.

"You fool, the Guardia will be-" Florry began.

"Oh, I hardly think so, what with those bells coming along to mush all
our noise. No, this is a fine and private place, Stink, for our little
talk."

Florry could see the muzzle of the small Webley .25 automatic upon his
chest.

"Where were you going to shoot me, Stink? Head, I'd bet. Well, then,
that's where I shall shoot you."

"You bastard," Florry said. "You sold us all out to bloody Joe Stalin
and his goons. God help you, Julian.

No one else will. It doesn't matter. Shoot me and be done. They know in
London. I've told them. You're a dead man."

Julian smiled softly in the pale, weird light of the cathedral.

"Were you going to give me a chance, old man? No, I'd bet not. Just pot
me, eh? I wouldn't even know what hit me; I would simply cease to
exist."

"Damn you, you-"

"God, wonderful," he said. "It's priceless. Stink, you're such a rotten
actor. I could see the loathing in your eyes since you arrived here.
God, Stink, you'd never make a spy."

Florry just looked at him, thinking How do I get at him? He tried to
gauge the leap. It was too far.

"Any last words for Sylvia, Stink?"

"You filthy swine," said Florty. "There's nothing you can give me you'll
not catch yourself You're a dead man."

"I'll tell her something quite heroic, old man. She'll be devastated, of
course. I'll comfort her. I can feel her hot tears and her trembling
shoulders. We'll be all alone.

Perhaps my hand shall accidentally brush against her breast. It'll be
quite embarrassing, but of course at moments like those one doesn't
worry about propriety, does one? And perhaps I should happen to feel her
nipple grow hard. Perhaps I shall hold her tight and as I'm squeezing
her my penis will get quite lumpy. And yet, rather than drawing away
from it, as one would expect, why, the grief-stricken thing actually
presses her mound against it. Perhaps then as I kiss the tears away from
her sweet cheeks, I shall encounter-good heavens, can this be a tongue?"

"You filthy-"

Julian raised the weapon. Florry saw its dark shape rising. Julian was
not trembling. You swine, Florry was thinking in the raging urgency of
it all, you bloody swine.

"Bang," said Julian. "You're dead."

Julian was pointing at him with his pipe.

Florry looked at him.

Julian opened Florry's revolver, tilted it, and the cartridges emptied
into his hand. He flicked it shut a@ handed it back.

"Thought I'd take it because you were so swollen w@ triumph you might
turn the bloody thing on me." I snorted with contempt. "Robert, I was so
disappointed team that you were merely human. Among your go, many
qualities there are some bad ones. Among theyour evil stupidity and your
blindness. I suppose it's if underneath it all you hated me so for
cutting you at Etc And then Sylvia came into it."

"Look, you-"

"Hush, Robert. You're so thick. Listen and learn t ways of the world. In
the first place, I know all abc your smelly little job with the voodoo
boys at Whiteha MI-5 or -6? Don't suppose it matters. I knew it wou
happen. All sorts of people have been telling me abc the 'questions'
that have been asked, the delic@ inquiries back in London and at
Trinity. Then there your awful chum Sampson, the world's most revoltii
prig. He was at university, you know, one of those awl chaps who had a
brief flirtation with the Apostles ai then veered right. Everybody knew
he'd signed on withe voodoo boys. I must say I was crushed you'd agre to
join them."

"They say you're a spy. They have proof. I ha proop"

"And you believed it. Still, one supposes that ii remarkable you didn't
pot me when you had the chan in the trenches. May I ask, old man, why
not?"

"I had to have proof. Then I heard you with tl Russian-"

"Oh, tiptoeing about in the dark, are we? How seed Robert. How sadly
seedy, like some two-bob-a-d@

vate inquirer who specializes in divorces for the smart set."

"I heard you tell Levitsky that-" "is that what he's calling himself
these days? When I knew him best, he was Brodsky the poet. He was a
wonderful poet, by the way. Met him in 'thirty-one at Trinity.

Sent me a note admiring some verses and included one of his own. Well,
one thing led to another. When I ran into him at the hotel he said he
was a journalist for Pravda.

We had a jolly good reunion. He's quite a chap--"

"He's a bloody GRU-"

"Listen, chum. Listen and face the ways of the world. He was my lover,
old boy. My first, my best. I'm queer, you blind sot. God, Robert, you
are so thick sometimes."

Florry looked at him. He felt his mouth hang open. He blinked, thinking
perhaps it was some dream. Something odd and chilled and huge moved
through him, a glacial sense of regret, white and vast and glazed with
ice.

"I say, don't look so stricken. Why on earth do you think I cut you at
school, Robert? I bloody found myself wanting you. Your body. I wanted
to do things. It was more than I could stand, and I had to get away. Who
do you think I was writing to the night of the attack? My current lover,
a sailor in the merchant fleet whom I had not seen in a devilish long
time."

"But the women," Florry said, still half disbelieving.

"Of which there have been exactly one, old man. A chamben-naid who
rather insisted when I was thirteen. It was disgusting."

"But all the lies. All the boasts. Why?"

"Florry, chum, being a queer, in case you don't know, i illegal. One can
end up in the Scrubs. And there's Mother, whom it would kill, and
there's the hallowed memory of Father, the martyred hero of the Somme.

Ami There's all manner of relatives. And there's the bloody will, old
man. Brilliant Julian does not need to lose his little chunk of England
by being branded the Oscar Wilde of 1937. Actually, I rather like girls.
They're perfect fools, but enjoyable in their silly ways. They usually
have wonderful senses of color, which I admire deeply.

Men have no sense of color at all."

Florry wasn't sure he believed him.

"All right, old man. You think I'm lying? All right, here, I'll prove
it. Put out your hand and close your eyes, and you shall get a big
surprise."

"Julian, I-"

"Don't worry, old man. It won't be John Thomas. Now there's a good boy,
you needn't bother with the eyes."

He put something in Florry's hand.

It was the small automatic.

"It's all cocked. It's only been fired once, into that Dyles fellow.
Now, Robert, if you still believe Brilliant Julian is a terrible
Comintern nasty, then you must do your duty. England demands it. Come
on, now, make up your mind, old man. This is, after all, the second
chance I've given you." He made a show of closing his eyes.

Florry felt the pistol grow heavy in his hand.

Finally, he handed it back. "You fool," he said.

"We're all fools," said Julian.

"I cannot wait to see the look on Sampson's face when-"

"No, I don't quite think that would do, chum," Julian said darkly. "I
don't really care to explain myself to the Sampsons of this world. It's
not something I'm terribly keen about. Actually, Robert, there is one
other thing that needs to be straightened out. The bridge, eh? Let's not
forget the bloody bridge."

"No, Julian. No, I haven't forgotten the bridge."

"You know, Stink, I don't think it makes a pig's whisker's worth of
difference as to who really wins out in Barcelona, the bloody POUM or
the bloody Russian lads. The truth is, I'm not even sure I could tell
you the difference. But do you know I've never really finished anything
in my life? My masterpiece"Pons' is the perfect example. I am a man of
brilliant beginnings. And I find that what I would like to do more than
anything is finish something. I would like to blow that fucking bridge
into the next world. Would you care to join me, old man?"

"Yes. Yes, let's do it. You know you always get what you want, Julian."

"Perhaps it's only that I want what I know I can get.

But see here. There is a technical difficulty. Look at this."

He handed over a document.

"Good Christ," said Florry.

"Poor Dyies had it over his heart. It was not as effective in that
regard as a Bible."

It was the travel authority, sodden with blood. It was utterly
worthless.

"Damn," said Florry. "Oh, balls. Perhaps we could somehow blur f our way
t&----"

"Won't work. Perhaps it might with the silly amateur Falangists, but the
truth is we'll be up against German professionals. I've seen them. I
spent the summer of 1933 in Gen-nany and watched all the Hitler stuff
going on. I must say, those lads won't be easy to fool."

"Then we'll-"

"Robert, listen to Brilliant Julian. Englishmen would need papers in
order to approach the bridge, and upon that premise was this mission
planned. But Germans?

German officers? Why, they could get close enough to i@ piss upon the
thing."

"But we are not Germans."

"Oh, no? Stinky, I speak it like a native and I look it a bit, too, with
my blond locks and these terribly blue eyes.

You'd do for a Bavarian, a lower, coarser sort of brute."

"I speak it terribly."

"But you do understand it?"

"Yes. I read it best of all. And papery. We'd need papers and uniforms.
How on earth could we change the whole thing in mid-course-"

"Robert, listen. It's almost one. In half an hour I'm due to meet a chap
in a Turkish bath nearby for a bit of sport. it's that nice young
Oberleutnant that I chatted up in the park. We can tell each other, you
know. I rather think we could persuade him to lend us something to
wear."

Florry looked at Julian.

"What choice have we?" he asked.

"That's the best part. None at all."

Was he a Nazi--or just a big stupid young trmy officer? Florry tried to
convince himself of the former.

He'd beaten Jews and tortured the innocent, burned books, worn
jackboots, carried torches, the whole ugly theater of the thing. It was
difficult, however, to maintain this pretense in the face of his actual
flesh, which was on the ample side, the freckles in his great white
behind, his almost feminine body, soft and shapeless. Quite a difference
once the uniform came off-. something about a naked man so defenseless
that it almost defies action.

He could hear them talking softly; it was infernally hot in here, the
steam and everything, even though he wasn't quite in the steam room
proper, but just outside, having come in a er'the o cer. He g ance at is
watc . e was dreadfully tired and yet tomorrow rushed upon them swiftly.

"Yes," Julian was saying, in German, "I have been to Dresden often. The
china is so magnificent, the old town with its gingerbread architecture
so ordered. Of course this was before the Party era. Perhaps it's all
changed now, all modem and full of factories."

The two men, swaddled in towels, sat in the steam room.

"No, Karl," said the officer. "No, it remains essentially a storybook
city. One can have the most fabulous dreams in a place like that. It's a
lovely place. My mother and I were very happy there."

"Yes. It's good to know some things haven't changed."

"It's so lovely to have found one in whom I can confide," said the young
officer. "You have such lovely eyes.

They are so pale and lovely."

"Thank you," said Julian. "It's odd how one yearns for human contact and
touch. For gentleness and sympathy."

"Yes, yes," said the officer. "Something deeper than t comradeship." I
Florry swallowed hard, pulled out Julian's automatic, and prepared to
play out the final lunatic act.

He burst into the steam and began waving the gun i about wildly,
shouting, "Attention! Attention! You are under arrest. Gestapo. Do not
move."

He pointed the pistol at the young man's head.

"It's Dachau for you, liebchen, you homosexual disgrace!" shouted
Julian, leaping up, gathering the towel about his slippery body.
"That'll teach you what the German Reich expects of its young men."

The officer began to cry. He offered no resistance, as if he knew the
inevitable had at last arrived. He had gone ashen with shame and terror.
He began to tremble absurdly. They brought him out of the steam room and
into the locker room. Julian, pulling on his suit, began to assail him
for moral turpitude.

"You swine. The army sends you out here to train these people in the
arts of war, to gain valuable experience for yourself, and to show the
world the finest of German manhood. Yet you spend your time trying to
bugger everything that moves. The KZS are too good for you."

"Please," the boy begged. "Sir. You must give me an alternative. I am so
weak, but I will not fail. Your pistol and I will end it all if only you
tell my parents that I died honorably in battle."

"There is no honor for you, swine."

The boy crawled to the toilet and became sick. Florry thought that
Julian was rather overdoing it. The naked boy wiped the vomit from his
face with a towel. The rancid odor of sweat and farts hung everywhere in
the steam. The fat boy was such a nauseating sight that Florry began to
feel ill at his plight. Julian continued to harangue him with terrifying
force, as if it were Ihis own hated flaws against which he was lashing.

"You are notfit," Julian was screaming, "to wear this uniform." He had
gathered it up.

"Bitte, Herr Offizier," sobbed the boy. "Please. Please don't do this to
me."

"You will be taken naked, as you deserve, to the civil guardhouse, and
there detained among thieves and pitnps and Communists until suitable
arrangements can be made. Is this understood?"

"Y-yes, Herr Offizier."

Julian turned to Florry.

"Have you called headquarters for a car9"

"Yes, Herr Sturmbannffihrer," said Flor'ry. "It's on the way. But Herr
Oberieutnant Von Manheim wishes to talk with you."

"That bloody fool," cursed Julian. "I trust, Herr Oberleutnant, that
without your clothes you can be trusted to remain here."

The boy only wept into his towel.

"Ah!" snorted Julian in disgust. He stepped out and Florry followed as
they raced out through the foyer of the bathhouse, stopping only to
gather the boy's uniform and boots, and then headed down the cold street
in the moonlight.

THE CAR WAS WHERE PORTELA HAD SAID IT WOULD BE;, IN a garage, on Ohte,
near the Plaza de Toros. Helpfully, it was a Mercedes-Benz, black and
spotless, all topped up with petrol.

"Ali, bravo," crooned Julian, seeing it there, gleaming in the dark.
"Splendid. By the way, old man, do you drive?"

"Good God, don't you?"

"Poorly. Dangerously. I shall smash us up, I'm sure.

You must drive. You were in the coppers. Surely they taught you such
things."

"I suppose I drove once. I haven't driven in years.

You're rich, you're supposed to have a car."

"I do have a car. I just never had to drive it. There was a man who
drove it. I wish he were here now."

"I wish he were, too," said Florry, slipping in behind the wheel. He
fiddled with the choke, turned the key, and nursed it into life.

Julian opened the garage doors behind them and Florry edged out into the
wet gray street. Dawn was beginning to break. Florry looked at his
watch. It was nearly five by THE ENGLISH DYNAMITERS now, and he was
going on his second day without sleep and the bridge was nearly one
hundred kilometers away, and where now was Julian?

Florry looked back. What the devil was he doing? The seconds ticked by
as if they weren't desperately precious until "A chtung!

The officer who emerged from the garage was imperially thin and
blindingly correct in the khaki tunic and trousers of the Condor Legion
Tank Corps. He wore a black beret, black boots, and black belt. The
Panzer skull-and-crossbones gleamed over the swastika on the front of
the beret. He had a riding crop and two utterly pale blue eyes, killer's
eyes. Odd that such a terrifying apparition was a queer poet in love
with sailor boys.

"Oh, I wish Morty Greenburg could see me now. What a hoot he'd have!" he
said.

"Where did you get the crop?"

"Oh, in there. It's one of the braces to an uncomfortable chair. Don't
suppose the owners will miss it, do you?"

Julian climbed in back.

"Pip, pip, fellow," he commanded with his crop on the seattop.

Florry drove through early-morning Pamplona, crossed the river, and
headed toward the flat Argonese plain that led to the Pyrenees. The road
climbed, but the trim little Mercedes chugged along. Ahead, the
mountains were stony and gray, still capped in winter snow.

"Now here's the plan. I am Herr Leutnant Von Paupel, newly appointed to
the front, a special engineering officer. Expert on bridges. You are
Herr--oh, pick a name, old boy."

"Brown."

"A German name, Stink. Braun. Herr Braun, of the embassy staff. You've
escorted me out from Pamplona at the general's instructions."

"What general?"

"Just say, 'the general.' It will drive Jerry crackers.

He's scared to death of generals. If anybody looks at you hard, merely
say"Sieg heil, 'and flip up your paw. And believe it. That's the trick.
You must believe it."

Florry nodded, fascinated. Of course that was the core of Julian: the
belief. In himself, primarily, and in the primacy of his needs. Julian,
the homosexual. Florry pondered it in silence.

If that is what he is, what am 1, he wondered.

For I love him, too.

In the mountains, the German military traffic picked up and it became
abundantly clear they were entering a war zone. Moorish sentries-tall,
brown, grave men with sour looks and long Mausers slung over their
capesstood watch at crossroads; trucks full of Moors made a slower way
along the road, and Florry, pushing ahead smartly, passed them. When the
men saw Julian sitting in sober Nazi regalia alone in the back of the
Mercedes, they saluted; he responded blankly, touching the riding crop
to his hat.

As they climbed into the Pyrenees, it seemed to get colder. The air was
thin and pure. Florry opened the vent and sucked in the air as he kept
turning to look at his watch at the fleeting seconds. The mountains were
white and massive now, chalky, craggy, rugged peaks and beneath them
spread the Argonese plain, a patchwork of buff and slate in the bright
sun.

They sped along the Embasle de Yesa, a high, green lake that ultimately
gave way to the Rio Aragon, along whose stony banks they passed for some
time. The jagged mountains were clearer and bolder than they had ever
been from the lowland trenches about Huesca.

I lived in a hole in the mud for five months with this man who now tells
me he has sex with boys. I never guessed it. Julian was another
illusion, it turned out, a self-created one. Or did 1, at some odd
level, really, truly i know, even if I lie to myself about it now?

Finally, they came to the bridge over the Aragon at the Puenta la Reina
de Jaca. It was a fine old girdered thing, as sturdy as a Victorian
building, and just beyond it, where the road curled almost due south
down through a final splurge of mountains toward Huesca still some fifty
kilometers off, the Germans had established a car parkexcept that it was
a Panzer park, and the things were spluttering into life, ready for the
job ahead. These were the Pzkpfw Ils, small gray tanks, no taller than a
man, with double machine guns mounted in their tiny turrets.

"Of course," said Julian, "the Russian T-26 would prang these tinpots
like the toys they are. But of course at Huesca there are no T-26s. The
Russians have seen to it."

Farther down, men were limbering up some wicked artillery pieces to
lorries. The guns, lean and long-barreled, rode on pneumatic tires and
crouched behind shields an inch thick.

Julian carried on like the best ROTC candidate in the world, pleased to
be good at this, too.

"And that, of course, is the famous eighty-eight-millimeter gun.
Supposedly the most efficient long weapon in the world. Extraordinary
velocity and penetration. They can use it with a fused shell against
planes, i with an annor-piercing shell to pot tanks, with canister to
make fish and chips out of infantry, or just good old high explosive to
smash buildings. God, Stink, I admire the Germans. They really do do
things, don't they? Bloody pity they do the wrong things. Oh, hullo
what's this. Sieg heil, Herr Major." He carelessly threw a salute at a
man by the side of the road.

"Let's go, old man," he commanded.

But Florty, driving slowly by, watching the force assemble itself,
wondered in melancholy at the odd link between him and his chum. He
thought of Sylvia, perfectly innocent of it all. He wished she were
there. What a laugh they would have once had over something quite this
silly! He gunned the car past the vehicles, fled by a sign that said
FLUESCA KM, and pushed ahead. The road was relatively clear for a time,
but after a bit they came to a small garrison town called Baiolo, and
pulled into it, under the watchful eyes of several Moorish sentries.

"God, it looks like Berlin," said Julian.

Indeed it did-, the square was jammed with gray Jerry vehicles, not only
the tanks but armored trucks With machine guns and tank tracks on them.
German specialists stood about barking orders stoutly to their
assistants who translated into Arabic. For of the vast population of the
village, nearly three-quarters were Moorish infantry, now loading aboard
the trucks with the grave look of men headed into battle.

"These would be the shock troops headed for Huesca," Julian said.

"We'd best get going," said Florry. "It's drawing near.

The bridge must be just ahead."

"You. You there!" a voice screamed at them with great authority and
Flon-y could see an ominous figure in black leather raincoat and helmet
approach with a forceful stride.

The man, some sort of senior officer, leaned into their car and said to
Florry, "Who the devil are you?"

"Herr Colonel, I'm sorry to be a nuisance," said Julian from the back.
"Von Paupel, Panzer Engineers. Poor Braun here of the embassy staff to
help me was rather hurriedly pressed into service."

"Jawohl, " barked Florry earnestly.

"I've got to get to that damned bridge," said Julian nonchalantly.
"They're worried that the thing might last only a few hours under
beating from the tanks. I must say, I had no idea Panzer Operations had
such a show planned up here."

Florry could feel the colonel's breath warm upon him.

"You damned engineers, if you can't build a bridge that'll hold up my
tanks, I'll see you in the guardhouse."

"Of course, Herr Colonel. But we want to get it down pat. When we move
across the Russian plains, we won't have time for mistakes. You bring
your Panzers and I'll build a bridge to hold them."

"In future, Herr Leutnant, the Panzers will get bigger," said the
colonel .

"And so will the bridges, Herr Colonel," said Julian tartly.

"Go on then. Fix that bridge. I'm planning to liberate Huesca by
suppertime."

"Yes sir." "And keep your damned eyes open, Von Paupel We've received
word saboteurs are about, English dyna' miters. It seems the reds have
fifth columnists also."

"Jawohl, Herr Colonel. Sieg h-"

"Please, leave that paperhanger's name out of it. This is a war, not
some Bohemian's political fruitcake. Now, get going."

He waved them on brusquely, and Florry pressed the gas, the car shooting
with a squeal through the square, narrowly missing a queue of Moors
filing into a huge iron boat of a vehicle. He slipped into another lane
and began to zip along. He took the Mercedes-Benz south. The country was
scruffy and severe. Off on the left an immense mountain, looking like an
ice-cream cup, bulked up, gleaming with impossible whiteness in the sun.

"Hurry," said Julian, looking at his watch. "It's after eleven."

"Somebody betrayed us," said Florry.

"Oh, Robert, rubbish. Keep driving."

"They knew."English dynamiters.' If we'd have come on with Harry
Uckley's credentials, we'd be dead. Your Russian chum. Did you tell
him?"

"He'd never do such a thing."

"You'd be surprised what he's capable of."

"Robert, he'd never do such a thing. I won't talk of it.

Some lout at Party headquarters talked too loud in a Barcelona car@-"

"It was your bloody Russian chum who-2' "HE WOULDN'T!" Julian screamed.
Florry was stunned at the passion. "He's above that, don't you see?

He's a real artist, not a poseur like me. I don't want to hear another
bloody word."

They drove on in silence. Florry could hear Julian breathing heavily in
the back seat.

I "He's different, don't you see?" said Julian. "All this is squalid and
base. Politics, compromise, bootlicking: it's all dung. Brodsky
wouldn't-2' "When I knew him he was a bloody German cabin boy.

With a plate in his head. Good Christ, Julian, the man can "Stop it. I
won't hear another WORD! Not another word, unless you want to turn back
now, chum."

Florry said nothing.

In time the land changed, yielding its arid, high stoniness to pine
forest, which spread across rolling ridges and gulches and crests like
some kind of carpet.

"What time is it?" Julian asked at last.

"It's half past eleven," he said.

"Oh, bloody hell, we shall't make it."

But they came suddenly to a slope, and a half mile down the tarmac,
flanked by stately green pines and high, shrouded peaks on either side,
they saw it: the bridge.

THE SUPPRESSION At 0600 ON THE MORNING OF JUNE 16, TWO ARMORED cars
equipped with water-cooled Maxim guns in their turrets pulled up the
Ramblas and halted outside the Hotel Falcon. The range between the gun
muzzles and the hotel's omate faade was less than thirty meters. Two
more an-nored cars went to the hotel's rear. Down the street lorries
unloaded their troops of Asaltos, and German and Russian NCO's formed
them into action teams.

At 0605 hours, the machine guns opened fire. Three of the four guns
fired approximately three thousand rounds into the first two floors of
the old hotel; the fourth gun jammed halfway through its second belt,
perhaps the only Russian setback of the day. Still, the firepower was
adequate. Lead and shrapnel tore through the hotel, shattering most of
the glassware in the cafe Moka, rippiiig up tiles and woodwork and
plaster in the hotel meeting rooms and offices, cutting through the
chandeliers and the windows. in seconds the three guns transformed the
lower floors of the building into a shambles of wreckage and smoky
confusion.

"Bolodin," said Glasanov, watching as the armored vehicles at last
ceased fire, "take them in."

Lenny Mink nodded, pulled his Tokarev automatic from his belt, and gave
the signal to the troops. He himself began to rush through the smoke
toward the shattered hotel; he could feel the men behind him, feel their
energy and tension and building will to violence. They were screaming.
Lenny reached the bullet-splintered main door first, kicked it open.
There were two bodies immediately inside, a man and a woman. He stepped
over them. A wounded man behind the desk tried to lift his rifle toward
Lenny; Lenny shot him in the chest.

Another man, already on the floor, moaned, tried to climb to his feet.
Lenny smashed him in the skull with his gun barrel.

"Go, go," he screamed in Russian as the assault troops began to pour
through the building. He could hear them on the stairs already and hear
the screams beginning to spread through the hotel as they pounded
through, beating indiscriminately, threatening, screaming curses,
smashing furniture, and in all other respects attempted to shatter the
will of their victims.

He went up the stairs himself to the second-floor offices of the Party.
The Asaltos had already been there.

Tom papers and shattered furniture were everywhere.

The smell of burned powder hung heavily in the air. The walls had been
ripped with gunfire. Two men were dead and two others wounded. Lenny
went to one of the wounded, a redheaded runty fellow bleeding from the
leg and from the scalp.

Nationality?" he demanded in English. "Fuck you, chum," said the man, in
a heavy Cockney.

"A Brit, huh? Listen," he spoke in English, too, the English of
Brooklyn, "listen, you know a guy named Florry? A Brit, I'm looking for
him."

"Fuck off, you bloody sot."

Lennylaughed.

"Look, you better help me. You're in a shitload of trouble."

The man spat at him.

Lennylaughed.

"You a soldier boy, huh? Nice suntan. Spend a lot of time in the
trenches. Look, tell me what I want, okay?"

"Bugger off, you bloody scum," the angry Brit said.

"Okay, pal," said Lenny. He shot him in the face and began to roam
through the building in search of somebody who had a line on this
Florry.

Meanwhile, Asalto units neutralized other targets around the
revolutionary city. The Lenin barracks was held the most important,
because its arsenal was the largest and its troops held to be the most
dangerous in Glasanov's mind. This turned out to be an illusion; most of
the arms had been moved to the front and the soldiers were largely
illiterate peasant youths who'd joined for the promise of steady meals.
They surrendered in the first minutes.

Among the other targets were the main telephone exchange on the Plaza de
Catalunya, guarded originally by Anarchists but since the fighting in
May by POUM fighters; the Anarcho-Syndicalist headquarters; the offices
of La Batalle, the banned POUM newspaper whose physical plant was still
a gathering place for dissidents; the offices of The Spanish Revolution,
the POUM English-language newsletter; the radical Woodworkers Guild; and
the Public Transportation Collective, a number of former estates seized
by the youthful radicals for a variety of political purposes. In every
location it was the same: the swift shocking blast of gunfire, the
brutal rush by the well-trained Asaltos, and the mopping up The
prisoners, who accumulated rapidly and were the principal booty of the
operation, were swiftly separated into three categories. Leadership,
including Andres Nin, POUM's charismatic chief, and thirty-nine other
intellectuals and theoreticians, were taken to special, secret prisons
called, in the colloquial, checas, for careful and extensive
interrogation, in preparation for what was expected to be a series of
show trials very like the ones that had so shocked the world when they
had been performed in Moscow. The second category, the militant, bitter
rank-and-file-that is, mostly the fiery young anti Stalinist European
leftists of all stripe and coloration that had flocked to the POUM
banner-was taken to the Convent of St. Ursula, which would rapidly earn,
in the next few days, its nickname in history: the Dachau of Spain.

These men were interrogated, though rather perfunctorily and without
much nuance or subtlety, and then shot. The executions, as many as five
hundred in the first several hours (though estimates vary), were carried
out in the graveyard near the convent, hard by a grove of olive trees
under a little bluff. The shootings were done in batches of as many as
fifteen or twenty by special NKVD death squads, using Maxim guns mounted
on the backs of old Ford lorries. The bodies were buried in mass graves
gouged into the meadow.

The last category of prisoners-those not on Glasanov's leadership list
and those lacking the fiery believer's spark in their eyes-were
dispersed to a number of hastily improvised disciplinary centers for
further interrogation and incarceration until their destinies could be
determined. Included in this category were the "Milicianas," or female
members of the POUM. In many cases, these prisoners had no idea what was
going on and were completely certain it was some idiotic
misunderstanding that would in some way be straightened out. In this
group was Sylvia. She was removed with several dozen other Milicianas of
POUM and the other groups of women, many of them intemationals, and
taken to a wire stockade in the courtyard of a small convent near
Bardolona, just north of the city. It was a jaunty, uppity mob in whose
company she found herself, who bandied with great sarcasm at their
Asalto guards.

"Hah. Fascist sister, bow about a nice fuck?" the tough young men would
call.

"Fuck your face. Or fuck your cow saint, La Passionaria," the women
would call back through the wire.

"Fascist cents," the soldiers chimed merrily, "can't wait to screw Moors
and Nazis."

"I'd steep with ten Moors and ten Nazis before I'd sleep with scum like
you, with a shooter so small it would fall out."

There was much laughter.

Sylvia did not share it. It wasn't that the banter upset her, but she
had a profound mistrust of men with guns.

Although it did not occur to the others that there was danger, Sylvia
was quite uneasy. She didn't like the way the soldiers joked with them,
unafraid to say anything; she did not like the loose, confident way they
carried their rifles; she did not like the coarseness of the experience
or the absurdity of the situation.

In the stockade, there was surprisingly little political rhetoric, as if
everybody was by this time quite exhausted with politics. At the lunch
hour they were brought a little wine and some bread-no less, really,
than their guards, who seemed as confused as they were-and everybody
waited patiently until somebody showed up to set it all straight.

An hour after lunch, five of the women were called out by name-two
Germans, a fiery Frenchwoman named Celeste, who seemed to be the spirit
of the group, and an Italian anarchist who had actually fought at the
front as a man-and taken over to the wall and shot.

Their heads flew apart when the officer leaned over each and fired a
pistol bullet into the ear as a coup de grace. Sylvia didn't scream,
although most of the others did-, she simply cursed her luck and tried
to figure a way out.

An hour later, another six women were led out and executed. The
survivors had become by this time exceedingly morose. A few wept and
were comforted by the stronger. Sylvia sat by herself, with her arms
wrapped around her, and though it was warm, she felt her teeth
chattering.

Then her name was called.

She stood.

"Be brave, comrade," said one of the Belgian women.

"Don't let the bastards see your tears."

Hands all around touched her. She was smothered in a kind of love that
had been transformed radically from the enerally political into the
specifically personal. A woman hugged her and held her tight and told
her to be brave.

"Spit in their faces," she was told.

"Don't give them the pleasure of seeing you beg. Long live the
revolution."

"Yes," said Sylvia, though it had a kind of irony to her, "yes, long
live the revolution." She turned to face her suitors, two stony Asaltos
with submachine guns.

They led her from the courtyard into the church, over to one of its
axial chapels, where a young man with gray eyes sat writing at a small
table.

"Comrade, ah, Lilliford," he asked, not really looking up . As soon as
she saw that he wouldn't look up, she knew she was in trouble. When a
man didn't look at her, it meant he'd already seen her and been somehow
hurt by her beauty, and would therefore go to great lengths to show her
how unimpressed he was, or how indifferent he could be.

At last he looked up. He had pate, pimply skin and blondish hair and
large circles under his eyes. Though he wore the khaki Asalto mono and a
brace of pouches and holsters and belts about him, he was clearly not
Spanish but some kind of Russian or European and rather pleased with his
own authority.

"Yes?" she said, hating herself for the way her voice quavered.

"Please. Sit down." He gestured to a wooden chair adjacent to his table.

"I think I'd rather stand, actually," she said.

"As you wish." He smiled channlessly, showing bad teeth. "You travel on
a British passport?"

"Yes. I am a British citizen. Would you please tell me on what authority
you hold me and what charges have been pressed, if any."

"No. What specifically is your connection with the Party of Marxist
Unification?"

"I'm a volunteer on their newspaper. I help with the page layout and I
do some proofreading for them."

"You are not specifically a member?"

"I am not a joiner."

He considered this for a time. "Do you sleep with the boys?"

"You can't expect me to answer that."

"Why would an Englishwoman become involved with Fascists and Trotskyites
and-"

"These people aren't any more fascist than I am. I don't know where you
got your ideas, but---2' The young commissar smiled deeply, his eyes
merry with condescension. It was his huge sense of moral certitude that
she loathed.

"My dear lady," he said through his grin, "could we not argue this all
day? Perhaps if I refrain from attacking the POUM, you could refrain
from defending it. Cigarette?"

"Thank you. No."

"You're a very attractive woman." "What on earth does that have to do
with anything'?" "It has to do only with my romantic nature. A weakness
for which I consistently apologize. So then. Let me ask you this. Could
you explain your true relationship to this illegal organization."

"It wasn't illegal until this morning."

"Times change, Miss. Lilliford. Answer, please."

"I said all I care to on the subject."

"You know, it would help if you would look upon me as a friend or at
least an interested person. I'm not without a certain amount of sympathy
in these matters.

Could I have from you please a list of all the names of your-look, why
don't you sit? I feel quite silly sitting in your presence."

"Then why don't you stand?"

He smiled again. His eyes took on the aspect of a person about to
deliver a treasured and much-rehearsed witticism. "Why are pretty women
so headstrong? All my life I have wondered this. I think that your
daddies did not spank you enough."

"Will you please get to the point?"

"Forgive my little jokes. I am not as serious as I should be. So: will
you be prepared to provide a list of the names of your coworkers over
the past six months. If you would list the names of all the people you
have-"

"You must be joking."

"In my private life, Miss. L'Iliford, I joke all the time. I am indeed
proud of my sense of humor, which is said to be rather keen. In this
matter, pretty lady, alas, no, I do not joke. Serious charges have been
raised. It's not our policy to make jokes."

"I've noticed."

"You'll cooperate?"

"Absolutely not."

"You could end up against the wall. Such a shame, a pretty woman like
you."

"You are an exceedingly slimy young man."

"You are brave now, but when the Asaltos are getting re ady to shoot
you, you may find your courage somewhat reduced."

"I'm sure you are right. You are probably an expert; you have probably
sent many women to their death. But I'm not frightened now. Not of an
ugly little man like YOU."

"Well, no matter," he said.

"I demand to see the British consul."

"Miss. Lilliford."

"This is an illegal detention. I demand to see my consul or
representative of my government."

"I am sorry to report that such a demand cannot at this time be
accommodated."

Another volley of shots crashed out; Sylvia jumped.

"You had better get used to the sound of gunfire, Miss. Lilliford, if
you expect to be a revolutionary."

The three coups de grace came immediately.

"WHY?" she said. "For God's sake, whys"

"It's a matter of discipline, one supposes. These things are ugly. I've
seen them before."

"It's so pointless and awf ul."

"It is indeed awful, Miss. Lilliford, but it is never pointless. Now let
me ask you one more question. Now wait, don't interrupt me. You may even
be surprised. The question is: If I let you go, will you do me the favor
of leaving Spain as quickly as possible?"

"You have friends, it seems, in high places. I will have a driver return
you to the city. Please, please, leave Spain as fast as you can make the
arrangements. As charming and lovely as you are, I have no desire to
repeat our conversation. I might not be able to enjoy myself as much if
I had to shoot you. And one word of advice: get out of that mono. Wear
some womanly things. Be pretty.

Return to the bourgeoisie. You will be safer."

Sylvia thought it some crude Russian prank. But in fact, at the young
commissar's nod, two guards took her outside to an unmarked car, and a
driver took her swiftly and without incident into the city. He told her
there was a nice hotel across from the cathedral; would she like to go
there? Yes, she said. She went and had no trouble getting a room. Then
she went into the Gothic quarter and found a small dress shop and she
bought a dress. They let her change in the rear.

She went back to her room and locked the door and sat breathing heavily.
Occasionally through the night there was the sound of shooting, but in
all other respects the city seemed much calmer. The sense of
oppressiveness had vanished. There was no longer any feeling of waiting
for something ominous to happen. It had.

Sylvia thought she'd been lucky. Some bureaucratic slipup had somehow
spared her. She looked at her calendar; June 16 had been a long day.

She might not have slept nearly so soundly as she did that night had she
known that her escape from the firing squad occurred not by virtue of a
slipup. In fact, somebody in high places did know her, or had that day
learned of her. It was Colonel Bolodin, commander of the SIM.

THE BRIDGE NOW LILI," JULIAN SAID, "LILI WAS A RARE BEAUTY. HER father's
estate, near Breslau, had this wonderful hunting schloss, where the old
brute went to shoot boar in the winter-and Lili and I had some exquisite
weekends there. In the spring. Oh, it was wonderful."

Florry nodded enthusiastically. His breath was ragged and dry They had
passed unnoticed beyond the first construction sheds, where the Spanish
workers had been quartered during the rebuilding. Up ahead there was
some kind of guard post and beyond that Florry could see the bridge, an
ancient rough stone arch, now buttressed smartly with a gaudy framework
of Krupp steel. Beneath it, a surprisingly mundane little river cut its
muddy way through a deep gorge, but neither Florry nor Julian cared for
a glimpse. Rather, they had by this time seen the low concrete
blockhouse that had brought them all this way.

It seemed so utterly nondescript, a prosaic little cube of concrete
ranged with gun slits. They were too far to see, but Florry guessed the
Germans had at least four Maxims--one for each slot-in the little fort.
Against and upon it now, a batch of Condor Legion troopers lounged in
their undershirts, smoking and telling 'okes.

Indeed, all about the bridge, Condor Legion officers could be seen.

"They certainly don't look as if they're expecting raiders," said
Florry. He glanced at his watch. It was five to twelve.

"Now Suzette," Julian was saying in German, "Suzette had wonderful,
wonderful breasts."

"You! You there!" The voice had a commanding ring to it.

"Why, yes," replied Julian, turning mildly.

"Just who are you?" The officer, whose hair was cut short as peach fuzz,
had a set of ball-bearing eyes and a scar running down his face as if
his head had been once disassembled, then reassembled, though hastily
and somewhat inexactly. On the one side of the line, the skin had a
dead, plastic look, an abnormal sheen.

"Herr Leutnant Richard Von Paupel, Combat Engineers Section, Condor
Legion, at your disposal, Your Excellency," said Julian crisply,
snapping off a salutethe army's salute, not the Party thing.

The half-faced officer returned the snap perfunctorily.

"I'm here as an observer, Herr Colonel," Julian said coolly.

"Ali! And for whom, may I ask?" the officer demanded.

"Certain elements, sir."

"And what is that supposed to mean? Or do you mean to have me play a
little guessing game?"

"Perhaps I'd best just say not only is the general staff interested in
the outcome of this afternoon's exercise, Herr Colonel, but equally so
are certain elements in Berlin. They have requested an independent
report on the outcome."

"You're from Security?"

"I'm not Gestapo, Herr Colonel." "if you were, I'd get you a seat on the
lead tank into Huesca. And your skinny friend in the raincoat. You're
out of uniform, Herr Leutnant," said the officer. "Your boots are not
shined."

"You'll find, Herr Colonel," Julian took up and threw back the
challenge, "that the new German hasn't time to shine his boots, he is so
busy climbing the stairway of history, as our leader directs."

"Papers, Leutnant. Or I'll have to call my guards to escort you off the
bridge. You may watch from the guardhouse. Perhaps you're the English
dynamiters the Spaniards fear so adamantly."

He nodded to two noncoms, who reacted instantly and hurried toward them
with machine carbines in hand..

"Herr Colonel," Julian began-but at that instant a roar arose in a
sudden surge, and everybody looked for a cause and could see, just a the
top of the slope, a colunm of dust.

"The panzers are coming," somebody yelled.

They must have left just after we did, Florry thought.

They were fast. He glanced at his watch. It was a minute till noon. The
blockhouse was still almost fifty yards away. They hadn't even reached
the bridge. If Portela attacked now "My papers," said Julian, "are my
blond hair, my blue eyes, my embodiment of the racial ideal. My
credentials are my blood, sir."

"Your blood is of very little interest to the German army Herr
Leutnant."

"And this-"

Julian reached into his tunic and removed a document and opened it up.

"There," he said, handing it over. "I think that should do the trick."

The German colonel looked at it intently for some seconds.

"All right, Herr Leutnant," he finally said. "You may of course position
yourself where you want. But don't get in the way. I'd hate to wire
Berlin its representatives had been squashed into strudel."

"Thank you, Herr Colonel. Your cooperation will be noted," Julian
smartly walked past the man, and Floffy trailed along behind. In seconds
they had moved beyond the last guard post and were on it, on the bridge
itself "What in God's name did you show him?"

"My party card. When I was in Germany in 'thirty-two I actually joined
up one night as a drunken lark, under the name of a chap I was quite
close to at the time, to see if I could get away with it. It was felt to
be clever in the set I was running with at the time. I used to show it
off at parties in London for laughs to prove how bloody stupid it all
was. It's a very low number, I'm told; impressive to chaps who
understand how such things work."

They turned to look at the brown water forty feet below, which trickled
under the bridge.

"Robert, old chum, I've got that funny buzz again.

About the next several minutes."

"Stop it," said Florry.

"I think my magic ring is fresh out of tricks. Tell my foolish old
mother I loved her dearly."

"Don't be an idiot, Julian."

"Say tally-ho to all my ftiends."

"Julian-"

The first shot sounded, from high in the pines.

"Shall we go, old man?" whispered Julian, removing his pistol.

A klaxon sounded from somewhere, and the call "Partisans! Partisans!" in
German arose. Yet panic did not break out among the professional German
soldiers, who instead responded with crisp, economic movements. Or maybe
it was that for Florry the entire universe seemed to slip into another
gear: a monstrous, strange slowness somehow overcame and then
overwhelmed reality. More shooting began, rising in tempo from the
occasional bang of a bullet to, several seconds later, what seemed like
a crescendo of fire. ckhouse just a few feet Julian ran toward the blo
up a puff of ahead, his automatic out. A bullet kicked dust nearby and
then another and then another. A few of the Germans were already down.
From the blockhouse there came a noise that sounded like strong men
ripping plywood apart, and Florry realized one of the German machine
guns had begun to fire. Yet still he could make no sense of events: he
could not see the guerrillas, and in fact could see nothing except some
stirred dust down the road.. nto the dark "In, in," yelled Julian, and
they ducked i little entrance of the blockhouse, immediately finding
themselves in subterranean blackness.

"Hold your fire, god damn it," somebody was shouting in the closeness of
the fortification. An electric light snapped on; Florry heard the snap
and click of gunboats being set and head the oily rattle of belts of
ammunition being unlimbered. The officer with the half-dead face was
shouting crisp orders, telling his gunner to prepare to engage targets
at a range of about four hundred meters.

Florry watched the gunners lift the weapons to their shoulders and move
to adjust their positions against the firing slots. He recognized
immediately that these weren't heavy Maxim guns at all, but some
frighteningly streamlined new weapon, supported at the muzzle by a
bipod, yet with a pistol grip rather like a Luger's and a rifle's
buttstock.

"Well, Herr Leutnant," said the colonel, "you're in luck and so are we.
I was afraid our guests might not take the bait. But they're right on
schedule. You'll get to see the new Model 34 in action against some
Spanish guerrillas who think their horses are a match for hot steel. It
should make an amusing few minutes."

Julian shot him in the throat.

Florry got out his four-five-five.

Julian shot the gunner, then he shot one of the guards.

Florry shot the other guard.

The pistol shots in the close space were painfully loud.

There were six Germans left and Julian said very calmly, "Gentlemen,
please drop your weapons or we shall kill all of you."

Flon-y saw something in the eyes of one of the other gunners and he shot
him in the arm. He went quickly to the machine carbine one of the guards
had dropped and picked it up, swinging it about on the remaining men.

"if anybody so much as breathes heavily," said Julian, my nervous
companion will shoot you all down. You stay absolutely still, do you
hear? Absolutely still."

They waited, almost frozen in the dicey intensity of the moment. Outside
the firing seemed to rise, and then there was a banging at the iron door
to the blockhouse.

"What's going on, damn you? Fire, you bastards, get those machine guns
spitting."

"Easy lads," said Julian. "Just hold it still as little mice and maybe
you'll see tomorrow."

"English fucker," said one of the Germans.

Julian shot him.

"Who's next?" he said. "I'll shoot each and every man here if I must."

The firing outside had ceased. The pause seemed to last forever, and
then there was a hoot or yelp of sheer giddy joy, and Florry heard the
thunder of hooves as the air seemed to fill with dust. A few more shots
sounded, until at last someone else pounded at the door. 11 iinglis!
Dios te ame, ven acti! "

Julian went swiftly to the iron door and unlocked it.

Portela, looking like some kind of buccaneer in a cape with crossed
bandoliers on his chest and a long-barreled Mauser automatic, ducked in.

"Get these bastard out," yelled Julian.

Florry backed off and let the Germans file past him.

When the last man had vanished, he himself climbed out.

"Go on, run, you bastards," yelled Julian in English, firing a shot in
the air. The Germans began to flee across the bridge.

"God, Stink, look at them run I" yelled Julian joyfully.

"Christ, old sport, we bloody pulled it off."

"They'll be back," said Florry darkly, for he knew the Germans would
recognize in minutes and take the offensive. Yet even as he spoke he was
astounded by the strangeness of what was happening. The bridge seemed to
swarm with an astounding crew of gypsy brigands, all in leather and
dappled with an assortment of bullets, bombs, daggers, strange obsolete
weapons, incredibly colorful costumes, all of them stinking evilly of
sweat and garlic and horses. Their leader, a hideously ugly old man
swaddled in the most absurd of all the outfits, a voluminous dress under
his leather coat, immediately threw his arms about Florry and hugged him
violently, and only when Florry felt breasts big as any wet nurse's
under the leather did he realize she was a woman. Her face seemed carved
from ancient walnut, though her eyes were bright and cunning; she had
nearly half her teeth.

"Ingl@ses, me permiter a verles. Que braios. Que cahones estos hombres
tienen. Mira los h@roes, cobardes, " she crooned into his ears, her
breath flatulent with garlic.

Florry had no idea what she was saying.

"Pleased indeed," he said.

"Gad, what a spectacle," said Julian. "What an extraordinary woman. Is
she not a woman, Stink? She reminds me rather too much of Mother."

"Let's not chat," said Florry. "Let's blow this bloody thing and get
quit of this place."

"Yes, let's go," called Portela, already shed of jacket and preparing to
monkey climb down the bridge's new scaffolding to plant his charges.

I Where's the bloody dynamite?" said Florry. ila dinamita estci aqui! "
screamed the old lady, and one of her men came ambling over with a
scabby horse laden with crates.

"It's very old," said Portela, "from the mines. B . ut when she goes,
she'll go with a bang that'll be heard in Madrid!"

"Yes," said Florry, unnerved by the old stuff, when he'd been expecting
gear somehow more professional and more military, "well, let's get
bloody cracking."

"Stink, old man, I've found a wonderful toy," said Julian. Florry looked
to him to see that he'd just climbed from the blockhouse with one of the
German light machine guns. He'd chucked his Condor Legion tunic and
wrapped himself with belts. "Light as a feather.

Bloody German genius for engineering. I'd say the perforations along the
barrel housing keep it cool from the air."

"Perhaps you'd best take some chaps down the bridge and watch for
Jerry," said Florry. "I think I'll help with the poppers."

Good show, old man," said Julian, who dashed down the bridge, the oily
belts clinking and jingling as he ran.

"ila dinamita! " yelled the old lady.

"Yes, splendid," said Florry, and he grabbed the reins of the horse and
tugged him to the bridge. "Here, Portela?" "it will do," said the
officer.

Florry shot the horse in the head; it bucked once, then sank on its
knees, its great skull forward. Florry pried a c difficulty, then beat
it case from its harness with som open with the butt of his Webley grip.
The dynamite lay nestled inside, waxen and pale pink, looking like a
batch of fat, oily candles. It smelled peculiar.

"God, it looks ancient," he said to no one in particular.

"This is a detonator," said Portela, producing something similar to a
cartridge from the pouch at his belt. "You press it into the end of one
of those sticks. Then you wire up the leads and run it back to the box.
Then you prime the box and push the lever and send the spark over the
wire. Then you get your big bang."

"And who's to lash the stuff to the bridge? This fat old lady?"

"I'll rig the one side," said Portela. "Perhaps Comrade Florry could
help on the other. We must have two charges for the great destruction."

Somehow this was a detail that Steinbach had neglected to mention. "And
I suppose those guerilla boys wouldn't be able to wire it up?"

"Alas, no."

"Bloody hell. Well, then, let's get going, eh?"

At that moment, the first sniper's bullet struck near the bridge,
followed by two more. -

"Christ," said Florry, as the old lady rose, selected a weapon from her
bewildering assortments broomhandle Mauser-and fired off across the
bridge into rocks near the treeline. Shots opened up from all around.

Florry heard Julian's machine gun begin with that absurd, fast, ripping
yelp.

He lugged the box to the railing and slung himself over it. For just a
second, he thought he'd gone too far; he almost lost his grip and could
see himself hurtling down, screaming for Sylvia as he fell, until he was
smashed to pulp on the stones below. But then he had himself and hung
for just a minute, gathering his breath. The old lady, her eyes dark
with love, touched him on the hand.

"Bien hecho, ingl6s, " she said, and laughed, showing her black stumps.

Christ, you beauty, was all Florry could think, would you be my last
vision? But he lowered himself onto the abutting structure of steel,
reaching foot by foot, finding a grip and then lowering himself again
and again by the same laborious, experimental process, trying all the
while not to look down or believe those actually were bullets whanging
against the metal or kicking into the old stone of the bridge with a
bang and a puff of dust, until at last he found himself perched like
some grubby ape in a monkey house on a gym apparatus, surrounded only by
bars and space. He clung tightly to the girders with his legs, hoping
the sweat-he had begun to perspire wretchedly-would not run into his
eyes. He was now in a forest of German iron and the word KRUPP darted
before his eyes. A shot banged off the metal. Up top he could hear heavy
firing. He tried not to look down.

"Dynamite!" he screamed.

ieh, ingl@s? "

"Dynamite, damn you!" he screamed, and in his urgency forgot his vow not
to look down. Far below the stream seemed like a green, scummy ribbon of
tin foil breaking over pebbles strewn by a child. He felt the vertigo
buzz through him. He clung more tightly than ever.

A bullet ricocheted nearby with a metallic clang.

"Aqui evtcin los cachivaches. "

Something swung blurrily before his eyes: it was a peasant's basket on a
cord. Weakly, with one hand, he plucked at it, pulled it close, and
pinned it to his body with an awkward elbow. He reached in to find two
bundles of six waxy sticks of the explosive. He pulled one out and
wedged it into the nearest joint in the girders he could find. He jammed
the other bunch in atop it and wrapped it tight into a ligature with
some long strands of electrician's tape somebody had thoughtfully
included in the basket. It looked dreadfully sloppy, the tape wrapped in
a messy sprawl about the uneven nest of sticks.

"Hurry!" someone else under the bridge called. He looked over to see the
fat Portela similarly astride a girder on the other side, working just
as desperately as he was.

What the devil does he think I'm doing? he wondered, bewildered and
flooded with bitterness.

Florry was halfway through the next load when the bullets sent his way
seemed to increase dramatically.

One pinged off the girder inches from his face and he felt the sharp
spray of fragments, winced, and almost fell.

Evidently a Moorish party had worked its way down the gorge, descended
it, and had begun to move along the creek bed toward him. Another bullet
exploded dangerously close to his head.

He twisted to see them two hundred meters away, shooting quite calmly,
three gray-uniformed, lanky figures who seemed to be potting pigeons.

"THE LEFT!" he shouted. "THEY'RE ON THE BLOODY LEFT!" Another bullet
whizzed by. "Damn you, there, there on the left!" he screamed again,
feeling the panic squeak through his limbs. Oh Christ, Christ,
Christchristchristchrist!

Above him the machine gun spoke rapidly, raining spent shells over the
railing, and the three Moors collapsed in a lazy string of bullet spurts
that kicked up clouds of dust and slate at their feet.

"Do hurry, old man," yelled Julian. "Jerry's getting ready for a push."

Florry now had only the detonator to insert. He plucked it from his
pockets and awkwardly plunged it into the exposed end of one of the
sticks, felt it crumble into the chalky stuff.

There! Ah! Now for the bloody wire. If only ... ah! He unspooled the
blasting wire and with his fingers tried to locate the posts on the
detonator. It was tricky business.

Florry kept thinking there should be an easier way.

Twice he ... almost had it ... blast, the loop coiled off. The damned
raincoat felt heavy and constricting; he wished he'd chucked the bloody
thing. He could hear the chatter of Julian's weapon and some others and
suddenly an awesome WHOMP as an artillery shell detonated hard by.
Florry shivered, shrank, and almost lost his grip on the metal. Shrapnel
sang in the air and the odor of smoke hung heavily. He had trouble
breathing.

"Stink, damn it, hurry," Julian called. Florry looked and saw that
Portela had vanished, either killed or done.

Damn him. He didn't think he could find the strength.

Finally, with a great lurch, he managed to get the wire twisted about
one of the posts and proceeded to desperately knead it tight. He found
the other one and duplicated the process, all the while experiencing the
terrible sensation of doing sloppy work, but at that second the whole
river gorge seemed to break out afresh with fire, as new troops
apparently reached it. He hoped he'd done it fight, but there simply was
no time to check.

He scrambled up the framework, the bullets popping nearby, and he knew
that at any moment he'd catch one in the spine or skull, but the Moors
shot no better than the Spaniards and he managed his destination and
with a last push swung himself over.

"Thank God," said Julian, crouched near him, the hot gun in his grip.

"Your hand, Christ," said Florry. Julian's hand was pink and scalded
where he'd been holding the barrel.

"Nothing, old man," said Julian, and Florry looked down the bridge to
see at least fifty Moorish bodies on the road.

"Get going, sport," said Julian. He pushed at Florry and Florry was off,
sprawling toward a ditch beyond the bridge. As he ran, he payed out the
wire from the spool.

He reached the ditch and skidded into it, the coat flapping around him
as he went. He looked back.

Julian was alone now, the fool, the machine gun tucked against his hip.
He fired a long burst at the hidden troops across the way and they
returned his fire, their bullets cracking at the dry soil and the gravel
around him. His hair blew free and his face and shirt were smeared with
grime.

in Venga, ingl@s, corra como el diablo! someone yelled. A man took the
spool of wire from Florry and was twisting it to the contacts on the
exploder box, an ominously crude-appearing wooden machine with a plunger
thrusting out of it.

"Come on, Julian!" Florry screamed over the edge of the gully.

Julian at last seemed to hear him, and turned and ran, just as the first
Panzer swung into view atop the far crest.

The bullets struck around him and for whatever reason his luck held yet
again, and except for a bit of a scrape above his eye, he arrived with a
mighty vault and leaped into the gully just as the first Pzkpfw 11 began
to advance.

"Blow the bloody thing," Julian shouted merrily. His hand looked like
some hideous lobster paw, puffy red and pussy and twisted, still melted
to the ventilated barrel of the weapon. He winked at Florry, as if it
were some monstrous joke.

The fellow wiring up the box at last seemed finished and gave way to the
massive old lady who, her black teeth gleaming, gave the plunger a
shove, as they all melted into the earth for protection against the
blast.

But there was no blast.

"Damn!" said Julian.

"Again," Florry shrieked. "AGAIN!"

Obligingly, the old woman lifted the plunger and again fell forward
against it.

Florry could just see the connection he'd so desperately jerry-rigged
together having come unwrapped or having been improperly done to begin
with. A black, gloomy sense of shame came over him.

"I've got to fix the bloody thing," he yelled, and began to claw his way
out of the gully.

Julian smashed him to the ground.

"Don't be a fool."

"Don't you see, I've botched it!"

"You'll botch it good if you go down there and get killed over nothing,
chum."

"If only I'd-"

"Shut up, old man. it's time to get the bloody hell out of here, bridge
or no bridge."

And indeed it was. Across the bridge, the tanks had arrived. They
scuttled down the road with their odd, insectlike approach, somehow
tentative. Their machine guns began to rake the guerrillas' side of the
gorge. Bullets peppered the earth about the trench. The guerrillas began
to edge back until the ditch petered out against the slope; it was
almost one hundred meters up the bare ground to the crest behind which,
presumably, there were horses.

A shell--one of the terrifying 88s-whistled in and exploded against the
ridge. The air was filled with noise and dust and whining metal and
heat. Another went off farther down.

A Moorish suicide squad had reached the far end of the bridge. An
officer urged them across, and they began to move forward. The old lady
pulled one of the rifles to her shoulder, fired, and one of the men slid
to the earth. The others crouched behind the railing, though one hearty
fellow made a mad dash to the cover of the far side of the blockhouse.
Farther down the gorge's edge, figures appeared and broke for the cover
of the rocks on the hillside a few hundred meters away. The guerrillas
opened fire, dropping a few, but the majority found safety and began to
fire on the trench. " Viyanse, hombres, "the old lady screamed.
"icorrani ihace demasiado calor aqui!

"Go on, Stinky," said Julian, fiddling awkwardly to get his last belt
into the open latch of his gun.

"Hurry," said Florry, scrambling out of the trench, beginning to
backpedal with the others up the slope.

It was a feeling of extraordinary vulnerability. His shoes kept sliding
in the dust and the bullets whipped and popped all around. Only the
terrible Moorish marksmanship and Julian's counterfire from beneath kept
any of them alive that mad, backward scramble up. Insanely, Florry fired
the six charges in his Webley at the chaos of running Moors, screaming
Germans, and backed-up vehicles on the other side of the gorge, to
absolutely no discernible effect.

He finally reached the top, one of the last. With a sigh of relief and
disbelief, he sank to the earth, found a rifle, and began to pot away.
He could hear the snorts and shuffles of the horses below him in a
little draw, anxious to be gone from the commotion, but it didn't
matter; what mattered now was Julian coming up the slope, raking the
opposite side of the gorge with a long burst of fire. He didn't seem to
be enjoying it much though; he looked chalky white with terror as the
bullets struck around him, but Brilliant Julian continued to climb
through the lazy puffs of sprayed dirt. He had almost made it when the
bullet took him down.

"God, Julian, JULIAN!" Florry screamed. Florry rose to run, and hands
grabbed to hold him back, but he lashed out with his Webley and felt it
strike bone and broke free. He raced down the slope.

"Go on, you fool," Julian said. He was coughing blood.

The machine gun had fallen away uselessly.

"No," Florry said. He tried to pull him up. The old lady was suddenly at
his side.

"Ingles, su amigo estli terminado. Muerto. Nadie puede ayudarle ahora.

"NO! NO!" Florry screamed.

He had Julian's limp body under his arms and tugged it upward. The old
woman helped and in seconds other men were helping, too, and they had
Julian beyond the crest and out of the line of fire.

"You'll be fine, I swear it," Florry was saying, but his hands were wet
with blood. The blood seemed everywhere on Julian. He could not yet
believe it.

"Well, Stink," said Julian, "Brilliant Julian's brilliant luck finally
went belly up."

"No. NO. You'll be fine, you've only just been nicked."

"Your imagination again, old boy."

"No. Horses. Damn you, old lady, get the filthy HORSES!"

"Easy on her, old man."

Up on the ridge line, the firing increased suddenly, and two shells
detonated. Florry was trying to wipe the sweat off Julian's grimy
forehead when the old lady leaned in with a water bottle.

"Thank you, dear," said Julian.

"Ingl@s, losfascistas cruzan la puente, tonto. Ven, ovidalo. Tenemos que
salir. Estcin por todas partes. "

"A horse," Florry said. "Bring this man a horse."

"Stinky, I hate the brutes. Smelly, filthy beasts, moody and sullen
and-" " Shut up, I'll lash you to me. I'll get you out of here, you'll
see. You've taken care of me, now I'll take care of you. Get me a
HORSE!"

"Stinky, listen. Tell all my friends to be happy. Tell them Julian's
dying from-"

"You're not dying!"

"Stinky, the bastards got me in the Spine and the lungs.

I'm half dead already, don't you see?" 11 iingl@s! i Ven! ino hay
tiempo, Ilegartin en segiindos' 1 "

"She's telling you they're almost here. Go on. Get out of here, old
sport."

"One thing, please, Stink. The ring. Take it, eh? Take it to my bloody
old mother, eh?" He smiled brightly.

Florry grabbed the ring, popped the chain, and stuffed it into the
pocket of the Burberjy.

"Now the pistol. Take it. I can't quite-my bloody arms don't seem to
work. Take that bloody pistol."

Florry, with shaking hands, removed the tiny automatic from Julian's
holster. It was such a stupid thing; it seemed ' more like a toy than a
weapon, small, almost womanish, difficult to hold in a man's hand.

"Cock it. I put in a fresh clip."

Florry snapped the slide back, chambering a cartridge.

"There now. Shoot me!"

He leveled the pistol to Julian's temple.

"Thanks, Stink," Julian said. "The bastards won't use me for bayonet
drill. Stinky, God, hold my hand, I'm so bloody scared." 11 iingl6s! "

"Julian! I love you!"

"Kill me then, Stink. KILL ME!"

"I-I can't, oh, Christ, Jul-"

The explosion was huge in his ears; it knocked him to his side. The old
lady put down her Mauser rifle. Florry looked to Julian and then away;
the bullet had pierced his forehead above his fight eye and blown a mess
out of the rear of his skull.

"Jul-,, At that moment, and for whatever reason, the bridge exploded in
a flash that was an exclamation point of sheer light, absolute,
blinding, incredibly violent; the concussion seemed to push the air from
the surface of the earth and blow Florry back to the ground. The noise
was the voice of God, sharp and total. The bridge literally disappeared
in the explosion. Stones and timbers and chunks of girder kicked up dust
and splashes in a circle for six hundred meters around. A cloud unfurled
from the blast, black and rolling and climbing. "ibravo ingl@s!" came
the cry from the men around him in the stunned second as the echo faded.
The Germans had ceased firing. "iingls bravo lo hizo! Derribe la puente.
i Viva el demoledor ingl6s! " The old lady was kissing him; others
pounded him on the back.

Well, Julian, he thought, looking at the rising cloud of smoke, you
finally finished your masterpiece.

He dropped the pistol into his coat and climbed aboard a horse. But he
could not stop crying.

Part III SYLVIA ARRESTED SYLVIA SAT IN THE GRAND ORIENTE FROM NOON TO
TWO every day waiting. It was a clean, pretty place and the afternoons
were lovely with sun. She sat outside and watched the people on the
Ramblas. There were no more parades, because the Russians didn't permit
them. But she didn't care about parades. She sat and tried to make sense
of the rumors.

The rumors were about death, mainly. The Russians could control
everything except the rumors. The rumors said that Nin had been killed
in some phony "rescue," led by the ominous Comrade Bolodin of the SIM.
The rumors said that hundreds of POUMISTAS and Anarchists and
libertarians had been buried in the olive grove of the Convent of St.
Ursula, but nobody could get close enough to the place to find out. The
rumors said that the Russians had secret checas all over Barcelona, and
that if you criticized Stalin, you'd be taken out at night to one and
never come back.

Sylvia sat and had a sip of blanco. Then she lit a cigareue. Before her,
across the Ramblas, she could see a wonderful old palm tree, its bent
scaly trunk arching skyward toward a crown of leaves. She had, in the
last seven days, grown very fond of the palm. She loved it and knew it
like a friend.

The other rumors were the more troubling. They insisted that a big
attack had been canceled even though English dynamiters had blown a
bridge deep in enemy territory. But as to the fate of the dynamiters,
the rumors disagreed. Some said they'd been killed, everybody had been
killed. Others said they had been captured, then executed. In other
accounts, they simply vanished. There was also talk that it was a setup
from the beginning, a betrayal, some more dirty business by the Russian
secret police. But what had really happened? She had to know.

It was all so different now, the new city of Barcelona.

Every third man was said to be a Russian secret policeman and nobody
would talk. Most people just looked straight ahead with lightless eyes.
There were no more red nights, with singing and parades and banners and
fireworks. The posters had all been ripped down.

Asaltos with machine pistols stood about in groups of three and four.

She shivered, feeling cold though it was a warin day.

She looked at her palm tree and out, at the dull glow of the sea which
she could just pick out beyond the statue of Columbus at the end of the
Ramblas.

"Sehora?"

"Yes?" "Something more, sefiora?" "No, I think not. Thank you."

The old man bowed obsequiously as any English butler and with the oily,
seasoned, professional humility of the servant class, backed off.

She lit another cigarette.

She felt as if she were in a kind of bubble. The events of the city no
longer concerned her. She was magically protected; she was watched over.
She was also-she could feel it-watched.

They knew. Somebody knew and had marked her out.

She felt as if she were under observation all the time. She was very
careful in her movements and had thought all about getting out. When it
came time to get out, she knew exactly what to do.

She was weeping. She had never cried before, and now, under the
pressure, she had become a weeper.

God damn them. God damn them all for making her cry. A tear ran down her
cheek and landed on the marble tabletop, where it stood bright and
solitary in the sunlight.

I'd better get out of here, she thought.

"I hate it when you cry," said Robert Florry, sitting down next to her.
"God, you look lovely."

"Oh, Robert!" she cried, and reached to engulf him with her arms.

They walked through the narrow, cobbled streets of the Gothic quarter
toward the cathedral.

"I wasn't able to save Julian."

"It's definite?"

"As definite as a Mauser bullet in the brain."

"Did he die hard?"

"No. Julian died as he lived: dramatically, flamboyantly, beautifully."

"I didn't think anything could kill Julian."

"Just a bullet," said Florry. "Nothing special about it, a silly bullet.
I'm just glad we blew the bridge. He would have liked that."

He held up the ring.

"This is all that's left of Julian Raines. Pity."

"You look terrible, Robert." "I'm so sorry about Julian, Sylvia. I know
he meant a great deal to you. He meant a great deal to me. He was--2' He
paused.

"He was what, Robert?"

"He was in a certain way not what he seemed."

"Nobody ever is. Here, let me take that awful coat."

Florry put the ring in the pocket and peeled off the filthy Burberry,
handed it to Sylvia. She was right: it was dusty and wrinkled and looked
as if it had been in battle. Though the blue suit under it was also
wrinkled, it had held its shape better; and Florry was lightbearded
enough so that from the distance his whiskers didn't show. Without the
coat, he looked surprisingly bourgeois.

"After the bridge, we rode for three days through the mountains and
forest. They chased us on horseback, a column of Moorish cavalry. We
were bombed and strafed twice. The group split up. Finally, it was only
myself and this crazy old lady. We got across the lines two nights ago
and were stopped by military policemen, but they let us go. We hitched a
ride into Barcelona late last night. We were stopped again. They let me
go, because I was British. But they arrested her. Because she was in the
wrong category."

"Yes. Yes, if one is in the wrong category, one is in queer street. The
Party is against the law. You are a criminal for having your name on the
wrong list."

"We've got to get out of here."

"Yes. There's nothing here for us anymore."

As they spoke, Lenny Mink watched from a black Ford, which shadowed the
two from a distance of about two hundred meters.

They had reached Sylv'a's room in the hotel.

"I'm all packed," she said. She took his coat and put it in her
suitcase. She knew exactly what had to be done; she'd thought about it.

"You've got to bathe and clean up," she said. "The chances are, they
won't stop you if you look middle class.

Their enemies are the working-class radical people. If you look like a
prosperous English tourist, then you're all right."

"God, it's certainly turned around, hasn't it?"

"You've got to get some sleep, too, Robert. Then tomorrow, we can-"

"Sylvia, it's my papers. They've got bloody POUM stamped all over them.
One look at them and-"

"Robert, I can help. I've got some-"

"There's a chap who should be able to help named Sampson, a newspaper
chap who-"

"Yes, Robert, listen, I've got it all planned."

"Aren't you the wonder, Christ, Sylvia. You've got it all figured out."
He felt dizzy. He glanced past her, toward a mirror, and saw a stranger
staring back, haggard and grayed. Christ, look at me.

It suddenly seemed important to tell her something.

"Sylvia, first I have to tell you something. I've meant to for weeks. I
want to tell you why I came to Spain and why Julian was so important to
me, and what I've done to him. Sylvia, listen, I have to explain-"

There was a knock at the door, sharp and hard.

He felt her tense. He pushed her back, reached under his jacket, and
slipped out the Webley. And what would he do now9 Shoot an NKVD man?
Yes, and with pleasure.

"Comrade," came the muffled voice.

"Who's there?" he called in English. "I say, who's there?"

"Comrade?"

"Sorry, old man, you must have the wrong party.

We're English."

He could sense some confusion outside. But what if they demanded papers?
He looked at Sylvia on the bed, her face numb, knowing they'd finally
caught up to her.

He could see it now. He was death to her.

He bent to her.

"I pulled the gun on you, do you hear? I made you come here. I said I'd
kill you. You never saw me before, do you understand?"

"No, Robert, God!"

"No. No, I'm an escaped criminal and I was using you to hide behind. Do
you understand? Now scream."

"No. Robert."

"Yes, scream, damn it, don't you see, it's your only chance."

"Comrade!"

"Robert, we can----"

"Shut up, Sylvia." He moved to get away from her. He cocked the revolver
and aimed at the door. He'd get the first one sure and maybe a second.
No firing squad for him.

"Comrade Florry," the voice called. "We are from Steinbach."

Their saviors took them down the freight elevator to the basement of the
hotel and into the boiler room. There, behind the ancient furnaces, was
a narrow door. It led through an ancient tunnel under the plaza into the
deserted cathedral itself. Florry and Sylvia spent the day there, not a
hundred paces from their rooms and not fifty paces from the furious SIM
stooges outside. But the illu Sion of safety soon evaporated in the
sullenness of their angels, who treated them with contempt. Flon-y was
edgy; the men would not give him back his revolver, which he had yielded
in a weak moment, nor were they particularly sympathetic to their
plight.

"Cold chaps," Florry muttered to Sylvia as they huddled in an obscure
transept chapel beneath shrouded religious statues, waiting for the time
to pass.

"Better than the Russians," the g'ri replied.

Florry slept through the afternoon, surrendering at last to his
desperate fatigue, but still the day passed with excruciating slowness
in the dim space beneath the hugely vaulted roof of the cathedral. It
smelled of piss and destruction.

Finally, at twilight, it was time to go.- They crept out a back entrance
to a truck. Florry and the girl were ordered into the back.

"I suppose you'll be taking us to our legation now," Flon-y said.

The man, a heavyset worker in a butcher's smock, didn't answer. He had a
German Luger in his belt, evidently a prized possession, and he was
given to fondling it, and he now took it out to do so. meanwhile
ignoring Florry's question.

The ride lasted for hours. Twice they were stopped and once there was
yelling. But each time the van continued.

Finally, it began to climb and Florry could feel the strain against
gravity as it rose. He had a wild moment of hope that they were heading
through the Pyrenees, but then realized they'd never left the sound of
the city.

The truck stopped after what seemed an endless voyage up a narrow,
twisting road. The doors were opened. Cool air hit Florry's lungs; he
blinked in the dark and stepped out. He had the illusion of space,
oceans of it, and beyond the unlit but somehow nevertheless vibrant
tapestry of the city spreading out to the horizon.

As his eyes adjusted, he became aware of unreal structures immediately
about, as if he were in the center of some dream city, a utopia of
crazy, cantilevered streamlines, odd futuristic bulges and girders.

"Good heavens," he said. "We've come to a bloody amusement park."

"You are atop the mountain of the devil," said one of the men close by.
"From here Christ was offered the world. He did not take it.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of others."

"Tibidabo Mountain," said Sylvia. "We've come to the park atop Tibidabo
Mountain."

"Yes," said the man. "Just the place for the trial and execution of the
traitor Florry."

BAD NEWS IT FELL TO UGARTE TO TELL COMRADE COMMISSAR BOLODIN that the
Englishman Florry and the girl Sylvia Lilliford had evidently vanished
from the hotel, despite his team's scrupulous scrutiny. But
surprisingly, Comrade Bolodin took the news stoically.

Lenny, sitting in his office at the SIM headquarters in the main police
station cleaning his Tokarev, thought this meant they were getting ready
to move the gold. Florry was back from his secret job behind the lines,
something for the hidden GRU apparat the Englishman, like his crazed
master Levitsky, clearly worked for, something so secret it would be all
but unknown to the NKVD. He knew it would be harder than it seemed.
There was too much at stake.

"Just poof," said Lenny, "and they were gone?"

"Yes, comrade."

"You talk to the hotel people"" Lenny wondered, wiping down his slide.

"Yes, comrade. Nobody saw a thing."

Lenny considered this curiously, ramming a short, stiff brush through
the barrel of the disassembled automatic.

Then he said, "People go in and out?"

"Comrade, it is a public place. My team was on all sides of the
building."

Lenny nodded, wiping down the recoil spring.

He felt rage blossom like a precious, poisoned flower deep in his head,
more precious for its containment. It was delicious. He looked at the
Spaniard and had a terrible impulse to squash his head. But he didn't
lose control. He didn't lose control anymore, he was so close to what he
wanted.

"Should we put out some kind of alert so the Asaltos or the police can-"

"No, we should not put out an alert. Then we have all sorts of other
people all asking the SIM how it does its business. And I don't like to
answer questions. Do you understand, my friend?"

"Yes, comrade."

"Don't I take good care of you, Ugarte? Aren't I a good boss, Ugarte?
I'm no Mintzer, am 1?"

Although the Spaniard couldn't know the Yiddish word, he answered, "No,
boss."

Lenny rose, embraced the Spaniard, drawing him close with one hand, and
with the other gathered between thumb and forefinger a fold of flesh
from the cheek. He held it delicately as one would a rose, and felt the
man's terror.

"Scared, Comrade Ugarte?"

"No, comrade," said the man, trembling.

Lenny smiled, then crushed his fingers together. Ugarte fell weeping to
the floor. It was not the first scream heard in those quarters.

Lenny picked the little one up.

"We can't let this bird fly," Lenny exclaimed calmly.

"You tell your gang, Comrade Bolodin is a very bus: man these days, and
he expects his special friends ii Ugarte's section to do their very
best."

Lenny could see the terror in Ugarte's eyes. "Okay Do you understand?"

"Yes." Where Lenny's fingers had come together, purple hemorrhage now
blossomed.

The little man scurried off.

Lenny sat back with his pistol. He knew where Florr would be. He'd have
to be with Steinbach, the nev' number-one gangster of Barcelona, who'd
slippe( through the big net of June 16 and whose capture wa Lenny's most
pressing official business. Clearly Stein bach was being run by GRU; how
else could he be s( effective? It was a battle between two Russian
gangs, be now saw, and he was right in the middle.

When they got Steinbach, they'd get Florry. An( Lenny knew they'd get
Steinbach. In the spirit of capi talism, the SIM had offered a great
deal of money.

And money, Lenny knew, money talks.

THE TRIAL IT SEEMED RATHER STRANGE, FLORRY HAD TO ADMIT. THAT in the
heat of its death convulsions, the POUM had chosen to liquidate him. One
would have thought they were rather busy for such trifles. But no: this
last act was crucial to them. He was surprised to discover how much
passion had been invested in such a seemingly ludicrous act.

Sylvia was led off, and the trial began almost immediately in a large
maintenance shed at the rear of the deserted amusement park, in which at
one time the park's mechanisms and gizmos had been tended. As a
courtroom it was barely adequate, certainly nothing like the elaborate
courtroom in which another innocent man, Benny Lal, had met his fate. It
was a cavernous old garage, with stone floor and a single bare bulb,
almost a clich& of illumination borrowed from the cinema, and it was
exceedingly drafty. One could see one's breath.

However, it did seem adequate, Florry had to admit, to the sort of
justice being dispensed.

The evidence was indisputable, especially as marshaled in the dry tones
of the well-informed prosecutor, none other than the one-eyed Comrade
Steinbach whose eloquence held the panel of judges-three meat packers, a
pimply teenager, and a wild-haired German youth spellbound. Steinbach,
without so much as a hello to his old chum Flor-ry, pushed ahead with
his case, as if he were eager to be done with the business.

"Is it not true, Comrade Florry," Steinbach said with the trace of an
amused, ironic smile on his lips, and his good eye radiating
intelligence and conviction, "that on the night before the attack
against Huesca on April 27 of this year, you sent a message out from the
trenches via a secret post to certain parties in Barcelona announcing
the time and direction of our efforts?"

Florry, cold and exhausted and suddenly teffified, knew the answer would
doom him. But he supposed he was already doomed.

"Yes, yes, I did. But I was trying to reach And he halted. He was trying
to reach Sylvia. To mention Sylvia would be to involve her.

But Steinbach was not interested in explanations anyway.

With a flourish, he reached into his pocket and removed a sheet of
paper. Florry recognized it instantly.

Steinbach read it in a dry tone and its romantic conceits sounded absurd
in the huge, cool shed.

"Note," said Steinbach, "how the clever Comrade Florry camouflages the
crucial military information among terms of bourgeois endearment. To
read it uncynically is to encounter a lover writing to another on the
eve of battle.

To read it in awareness of its true purpose is to see the nature of the
betrayal."

"The girl has nothing to do with this!" shrieked Florry.

"Where did you get that?"

"It was in her purse," he said.

Nor-_., Ad Damn, Sylvia. You should have thrown it out!

"And is it not true, comrades of the tribunal," he argued in his public
voice, "that the attack was betrayed, our men pushed back, our party
humiliated and weakened?"

They nodded.

"You don't understand," said Florry weakly. "It was innocent. I love the
woman. I wanted to tell her that before the fight."

"Yet the attack failed, did it not? Because the Communist Brigades of
the Thaelmann Column would not move out in support of our men and the
Anarchists. Because they had been ordered by Barcelona to stay put. I
give it to you, comrade, from one professional to another: a brilliant
stroke."

Steinbach paused, as if to catch his breath.

"Then," said Steinbach, "there is the curious business of the explosion.
Florry goes on the attack and does not come back from it; in the
intervening day, an unknown fifth columnist detonates our magazine at La
Granja.

Then, miraculously, Florry returns with a minor flesh wound. Can this be
coincidence? Or can Florry have inflicted his own wound as an excuse to
go into hiding because he knew a Stalinist agent, acting on information
he had supplied-and perhaps had been sent to enlist in our militia to
obtain-was planning the potentially dangerous destruction of our
munitions?"

Florry saw his chance. Give them Julian, he thought. It was Julian. Give
them Julian Raines, spy and traitor, neatly tied and bundled. You
believed it yourself. Yet he said nothing.

"Now we come to Comrade Florry's masterpiece. The masterpiece of the
bridge."

"I almost died on that bloody bridge!" shouted Florry.

"Damn you, a hundred good men died that day!"

"Yet the Fascists knew well in advance of the attack that it was
planned, did they not?"

"Yes, they did. We were betrayed. But not by---2' "And is it not true
that only you-you alone--of the attacking party survived?"

"Yes. Yes, but we blew the bloody thing. We dropped it into the gorge-"

"Yet is it not true, Comrade Florry, that the attack on Huesca had
already been betrayed? By you? So that the bridge itself was irrelevant?
And is it not curious, Comrade Florry, that on that same day the English
poet and socialist patriot Julian Raines was murdered? Your own friend.
Your own countryman?"

"He was killed by Fascist bullets. He was a bloody hero," Florry said.
"He certainly would never have given UP his life for you bastards if
he'd have known-"

"We have reports that place you over his body with a pistol in your
hand. Did you shoot him?"

"No.

"Who shot him?"

"An old lady. To put him out of his misery. He'd caught one in the spine
and another in the lungs. He was paralyzed and coughing blood."

"You ordered the woman to shoot."

"You bastard," said Florry. "You even turn this against me."

It's not too late, Flony thought. Give them Julian. The argument is
perfect. Julian is the spy.

"It may interest the tribunal to know that even the poet Raines had his
doubts about Comrade Flony. I produce for you now a stanza discovered in
his effects from his last poem, alas unfinished,"Pons.' " He smiled at
Florry before reading.

"Under the outer man, with his gloss, his charm, under the skin, the
hair, the teeth, among the bones, the blood, the grief, there's another
man, a secret man, who would do harm.

"Now isn't that interesting, Comrade Florry? It seems he's describing
you, does it not?"

No it did not. It was Julian describing himself and his own secret self.

"Who else, Comrade Florry, could Julian have been describing?"

Florry looked to the rafters. Give them Julian, he thought, but it
occurred to him that he was doomed anyway. They didn't have Julian. They
had him.

"I have these many hours pored over the records," Steinbach continued,
"until at last I could see the pattern.

I hold myself personally responsible for not seeing it sooner. I am an
idiot. Perhaps my trial should begin after the conclusion of this one.
But the truth is, wherever Comrade Florry or his lady friend have been
and whomever he talks to, they have an odd habit of disappearing. Each
mission he is assigned to has an odd habit of failing. And each
disappearance and each failure is another nail in the coffin of our
party."

"Sylvia had nothing to do with it," said Florry. "She's utterly
innocent."

"And yet, Comrade Florry, is it mere coincidence that when our Comrade
Carlos Brea sat at a table in the Grand Oriente, who should show up next
to him but the girl?

And within minutes, the Russian secret policemen arrive.

And minutes later, Comrade Brea is shot dead in the street by parties
unknown, in the care of the NKVD?"

Then Florry had an inspiration. "The dates," he argued. "Look at the
dates. I didn't arrive in Barcelona until the first part of January. Yet
the arrests of your people had begun before that. There, does that not
prove my innocence?"

But Steinbach was ready for this.

"Actually not. Before January there was no pattern to the arrests. The
NKVD was clearly scooping up people blindly. In fact, as one example of
their gropings, the category which suffered the most arrests was clearly
nonolitical: it was dockworkers and minor maritime or port officials.
Literally dozens of these chaps disappeared.

Then Mr. Florry and Miss. Lilliford arrive, and as if by magic, the
arrests and liquidations of POUMISTAS begins in earnest."

Florry stared at him in fury.

"I fought for you people. I killed for you. I nearly died-I would have
died-for your bloody party. A man I loved more than any other died for
your bloody party.

The girl worked for months on your silly stinking little newspaper. Why
are you doing this to us?"

"You betrayed the comrades at Party headquarters.

You betrayed the working classes of the world. You betrayed your
countrymen Julian Raines and Billy Mowry. You betrayed the future. You
and your mastelr in the Kremlin. Only we have you and not him. So you
will have to pay his debt, too."

When it came time for Florry to address the court, he had it all planned
out.

"Comrade?"

"I ask," he said, feeling very much the fool, "that since ME you are
going to kill me, you at least spare the girl. She had nothing to do
with any of this."

"If you confess, it will help," said Steinbach. "Help her, that is. You
are clearly beyond mercy."

"I cannot confess to what I have not done," said Florry.

"You ask a great deal of me."

Steinbach came over to where he was sitting and leaned over to talk more
intimately.

"You know," he said, "you'll make everybody much happier if you confess.
It would put a pretty ribbon on it."

"I cannot confess to something I haven't done," said Florry. "If you're
going to shoot me, shoot me. But let's be done with the game."

"It doesn't really matter in the end. I just thought you might care to
help the party out a bit."

Florry looked at him in dumfoundment. After several seconds his mouth
closed.

"I say," he said, "you do expect a lot! I'm innocent and you know it and
you're evidently going to shoot me. And you have the nerve to ask if I
care to pitch in?"

"I suppose it does seem somewhat much. But look at it this way: whether
you're innocent or not isn't really the point."

"it is very much to me."

"But in the larger view. You must learn to see the larger view, though
admittedly it's a bit late in the game for you. The point is, there was
a spy. Indisputedly. I know where he was, how he worked. I've spent
hours on the pattern. Yes, he was there, all right. You, perhaps six or
seven others, including the late Julian. The girl even--2' "Stop it."

"Comrade, please. We have no time for sentiment. It doesn't matter in
the long run, for just as surely as you are doomed, so are we. I am the
most wanted man in Barcelona and these others will go down with me. But
what is at stake here goes beyond us and beyond Barcelona. You see,
there are others in our struggle against Stalin for the soul of the
left. Trotsky is one, but again, the man doesn't matter so much as the
idea of the world revolution. It's worth dying for. The point, however,
is this. If we were defeated in Barcelona because our ideas were bad,
because we could not compete ideologically, because the people would not
believe in us, then our theory is wrong, and we are doomed. On the other
hand, if we were defeated because we were betrayed-because of a Judas
planted by Stalin-then our ideas remain sound and will continue to
inspire. They in fact are so frightening to Moscow that Stalin himself
leads the fight against us. That is impressive. Thus it is necessary
that there be a spy. It doesn't even really matter if he's the right
spy. Just so that we find him, try him, sentence him, and execute him.
Thus, surely you can see bow nice it would be for you to leave that
confession. That little ribbon for history. Where's your sense of duty9
Surely they taught you that at Eton9"

"Bugger Eton," said Florry. "I only care about Sylvia."

"She is a lovely thing. Florry, I was once young myself, and in love.
She was killed by Friekorps officers in Munich in 'nineteen. Raped,
beaten, shot. It cured me of my illusions. And my eye."

He smiled.

"Let her live, Steinbach, and I'll sign something."

"All right," said Steinbach. "You've made your bargain."

It took them a while to work something out that Florry could put his
name to, but in the end, the document, though more vague than Steinbach
would have preferred and more explicit than Florry wanted, was complete.

"This is utterly idiotic," he said, scratching his name at the bottom.

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. In any event, it shall eventuall be run in a
leftist newspaper someplace or other as part of our testament. You have
managed one thing, Comrade Florry. You have managed to enter history."

"History is revolting," said Florry.

The execution was set for dawn; about an hour before, they served him
his last meal, some scrawny chicken cooked in too much oil, and a large
skin of red wine.

"The chicken isn't terribly good, I'm afraid," said Steinbach. "But the
wine should prove helpful."

"I'm already numb, you bastard."

"Try not to be bitter, comrade. Surely all the men here will join you
under the ground in the weeks ahead."

"It can't happen too soon for my taste. What about the irl?"

"She's fine. Tough, that one. I'm impressed. Would you like me to bring
her by? A sort of last-minute farewell. It might appeal to your
romanticism."

"No, spare her that. This is hard enough without that.

You'll see that she gets out?"

"We'll do what we must. Would you like a priest?"

"I'm not a Catholic. Besides, I haven't sinned. And aren't you an
atheist?"

"In my dotage, I seem to have acquired the habit of hypocrisy. Then,
should I tell her anything? The obvious?"

"How would you know what was obvious?"

"I'm not so stupid, Florry. I'll tell her that you loved her till the
end. She'll have good memories of you, then."

"She's lost everybody that she cared about in Spain," said Florry.

Steinbach laughed evilly. "So has everybody, Florry."

Florry found he had no taste for the wine, which was young and bitter
anyway, but that the chicken was rather good. Steinbach had lied about
that as well as everything else. He tried to take a little nap after he
was through eating because he was still exhausted, but, of course, he
could get no sleep. It was absurd. They were going to shoot him because
they needed a demon and he was available. He was in the right category.

Yet as the time of his death neared, he found what he regretted most was
not being able to give Julian's mother her son and husband's ring. That
was the one thing Julian had wanted and the one thing he'd thought of at
the moment of his own death. It seemed like one more failure to Florry.
It was in the Burberry smashed into the suitcase in the closet of the
hotel. He brooded about this obsessively until he could stand it no
longer. He banged on the door, and after a while Steinbach came by.

Ily es'.@"

"Have you seen the girl yet?"

"No. She's resting. She doesn't know what's happening."

"Look, tell her this for me. Tell her the ring in the coat is for
Julian's mother. She's to get that to the woman, all right?"

Steinbach said he would, though his look informed Florry he thought it a
queer last request. Then he left again. In a bit, a gray light began to
filter through the cracks of the closet in which they'd locked him. He
heard laughter and the approach of footsteps.

The lock clicked as the key turned in it; the door opened. A boy stood
there with a rifle.

"Es la hora, comrade," he said.

Florry rose and was roughly grabbed by three othei boys. His hands were
tied behind his back. They fell intc formation behind him and led him
through the deserted garage.

In the half-light, the deserted mountaintop had turned ghostly. Mist had
risen and clung everywhere and the amusement apparatus, scabby ancient
machines, loomed through it. The Ferris wheel was a circle of comical
perfection standing above it all. The boys led him to the scaffolding
that was the base of a roller-coaster.

"Cigarette, Florry?" asked Steinbach, waiting with several others.

"Yes," said Florry. "God, you're not going to do it here? In a bloody
park?"

"No. The boys will take you down the hill into the forest. The grave has
been dug. Actually, it was dug yesterday morning." He lit a cigarette in
his own mouth, then placed it in Florry's in a gesture of surprising
intimacy. Then he added, "Or rather two graves."

He could see her now, in the group of men. They had gotten a cape for
her, to keep her warm, but her hands had been tied.

"You told me-" Florry started.

"I argued, old man, but the judges were insistent. You wrote that note
to her. She sat with Brea. Clearly she was involved."

"Oh, God, Steinbach, she's innocent, don't you see?

Tell them, for God's sake."

"Take them," said Steinbach, turning away. "And be done with the filthy
business."

The rough teenage boys pushed Flony along.

"God, Sylvia, I'm so sorry," he said. "It's all so unfair."

Sylvia looked at him with dead eyes. "I knew what I was getting into,"
she said.

"I love you," he said.

"As if that helps," she replied, with a little shake of her head.

They walked down the steeply sloping road away from the park surrounded
by five boys, the eldest perhaps twenty, who was the sargento and chief
executioner. On either side of the road, the dark, dense forest rose. It
was perfectly still, though the sky had begun to fill with light, and
the air was moist. The road descended Tibidabo by virtue of switchbacks,
and after they had gone around several sharp turns and had traveled
perhaps half a mile, the young sergeant halted them.

"This way," he said in polite English. He had a big automatic pistol;
the others had gigantic, ancient rifles.

He took them off the road and through the damp bracken and groundcover
of the woods. They followed a path a few hundred feet in, though the
going was awkward, given the extreme slope of the land, until they
reached a small clearing in the trees, where two shallow graves had been
scooped out.

"It's a pity, isn't it?" Florry said. "All of it. They're just bloody
fools, doing their worst. Animals, idiots."

"I say, do you mind awfully shutting up?" she said. "I don't feel much
like chatter."

The boys got them to the edge of the holes, then stood back to form what
appeared to be an extremely amateur firing squad. Each seemed to have a
different firearm, and the youngest looked absolutely sick at what was
about to happen, not that Flon-y could spare the wretched boy any pity.
The sargento was the only one among them who had any sort of
self-possession. He busied himself importantly examining weapons and
setting caps just right and making sure belts were properly adjusted.
He'd make a fine little Bolshevik commissar, Florry thought; too bad
he'd picked the wrong party.

Damn these boys: could they not get it bloody over?

Florry's knees had begun to knock and his breath came in little pinched
sobs and his eyes were wide open like upstairs windows into which flew
birds and clouds and everything on earth. Sylvia leaned or almost
huddled against him; he could feel her trembling and wished he could at
least hold her or offer her some comfort in this terrible moment.
"ipreparen para disparar! " barked the sargento.

The boys attempted to come to a formal position and lifted their rifles
to aim. The muzzles wobbled terribly, because the weapons were so heavy.
One of the idiot children had even fixed a bayonet to his rifle.

Sylvia had begun to weep. She had collapsed against him, yet he could
not hold her because his hands were tied. He looked about. His eyes
seemed magically open-the forest, filled with low beams of light and
towering columns of mist and soft, wet, heavy air, seemed to whirl about
him.

Let it be clean, he prayed. Let it be clean.

"Apunten, " the sargento barked.

"The bastards," Florry heard himself saying.

Then they heard the noise.

"Esperan. @ Que es eso ruido?

At first it was a far-off putter, almost something to be ignored. Yet it
rose, persistent, the labored sound of an engine-no, two, perhaps
three-climbing the steep road of Tibidabo.

"Es una camion, sargento, " one of the boys said. "icarrajo! Bueno, no
disparen, " the sergeant said, looking about in confusion. The soldiers
let their rifles droop.

Through the trees, they saw the vehicles, big and cumbersome, loaded
with troops as they lumbered by.

"Asaltos," somebody whispered.

Just beyond them, the trucks halted. An officer got out and the men
climbed down in their clanking battle gear.

Their bayonets were fixed. They formed into a loose attack formation,
rifles at the half-port, and began a jogtrot up the hill toward the
amusement park. Two men at the rear of the column carried a Hotchkiss
machine gun and tripod.

"The Stalinists have caught up with Steinbach," Florry murmured.

Sylvia collapsed to the ground, but only Flon-y noticed.

At the top of the hill, there was no suspense. The firing started almost
immediately. They could hear the dry, rolling crack of the rifles and
the stutter of the Hotchkiss gun.

"They're really giving it to them," Florry said.

He turned back to the firing squad. The sergeant was clearly bewildered,
not sure where his duty lay. But the boys of the little unit weren't:
they were at the point of panic with the gunfire so close.

Florry watched as the sergeant struggled with his indecision. And then
he said, as if having at last conquered himself, "ino! ila hora de su
muerte estci aqui! " He pointed at Florry melodramatically.

imuerte! " he said, raising the pistol. Then he slumped forward with a
spastic's drool coming from his inert face and thudded heavily to the
earth. Behind him, the boy who'd crushed his skull stood in shocked
horror for just a second before pitching the rifle into the brush and
heading out at a dead run. His compatriots studied the situation for
perhaps half a second, then abandoned their weapons just as resolutely
and fled just as swiftly.

Florry rushed to the rifle with the bayonet, bent to it, and in a few
seconds of steady sawing had himself free.

He slipped the bayonet from the gun muzzle and ran to Sylvia to cut her
free.

"Come on," he said, picking up the sergeant's automatic, "we've got to
get out of here."

Up top, the shooting had at last died down. Florry and Sylvia pushed
their way deeper into the forest, away from the trucks, and found the
going nearly impossible for the bracken and the undergrowth. In time,
they were swallowed up by the trees and seemed far away from everything.
And soon after, they came to the rusty tracks of the disused funicular,
by which in calmer days Barceloneans had traveled to the amusement park
and the church up there. Descending its gravel bed was easier than
trying to fight their way down through the undergrowth, and by noon,
they had reached the base of the mountain. The houses were sparse at
first, but within a bit they found themselves in what must have at one
time been a fashionable district, on a serpentine street flanked by
great houses that now seemed deserted.

They forced the gate on one of these and went out back. The house was
secure against the return of the owners in some distant, better future,
but in the servant's quarters, a door gave way to Florry's shoulder and
they were in and safe.

TIBIDABO BY THE TIME COMRADE COMMISSAR BOLODIN AND HIS men arrived at
the top of Tibidabo Mountain, the fighting was over. As Ugarte pulled
the big Ford to a halt by the assault guard trucks a few hundred feet
below the gate of the amusement park, Lenny could feel his rage
beginning to peak; it seemed to be replacing itself with some other
feeling, odd and sickening. Lenny felt as though he might vomit.
Suppose, he wondered, the ache in his stomach watery and loose, suppose
they were dead? Suppose his deal was all fucked, shot dead by gun-happy
assault guards from Valencia "protecting" the revolution from traitors.

"Ah! Comrade Bolodin," someone said with great smug cheer. Lenny turned
to discover a gallant young Asalto officer, his arm in a sling, a
cigarette in his mouth, cap pushed back cockily on his head. The
youngster loo ed sunny as a va entine: e cou n't wait for the
compliments to come raining down on his handsome head.

"Captain Degas, of the Eleventh Valencia Guardia de Asalto," the young
officer introduced himself, snapping his heels together with a flourish
and coming to a kind of mocking attention. "You'll see, comrade
commissar, that the problem of the Fascist traitors, chief among them
the notorious Steinbach, has been solved."

"Any prisoners?" Lenny demanded in his rude Spanish.

"I regret to infonn the commissar of the Servicio de Investigaci6n
Militar that resistance by the traitors and spies was formidable, and
that the taking of prisoners proved imposs-"

Lenny smashed his stupid, smart young face with the back of his hand,
watching the man spin backward and drop, a look of stunned surprise and
sudden shame running quickly across his brilliant features.

"Stupido, " Lenny barked. "Idiot. I ought to have shot.,, He was aware
of the Asaltos going silent all around him. He felt their curious and
shocked eyes.

"Explanations," Lenny barked.

"We're stationed down the mountain in Sarria. An informant told us a
band of POUM traitors was hiding UP here and agreed to lead us to them.
We were acting under the strictest revolutionary orders issued by the
government and signed by the commander of the Servicio de Investigaci6n
Militar, that is, Comrade Commissar Bolodin himself."

"Bring this informer."

"Ramirez," the captain shouted.

A second or so later, a seedy-looking Spaniard in a black jacket was
brought over. He held his cap nervously in his hands. Lenny listened as
he explained: he was the caretaker of a nearby estate. With the people
gone, he got by as best he could and was out late the night before when
a truck pulled into the park and he realized that it was being used by
traitors. He'd seen a tall man in a suit and a girl get out of the
truck.

ZINGL@s?

"Yes, perhaps ingl@s."

"With a mustache?"

He was not sure. But the man had a dark suit and blondish hair.

"Pay the man," Lenny said. "He did his duty. You should have contacted
us. It's you who didn't do yours."

"My apol-"

"Fuck your apologies. Now get rid of this man, and take us to the
bodies."

"This way, please, comrade. We brought them out for burial."

Degas led him across the yard to the shed. Lenny saw that it was
splintered and ruptured by gunfire, one window blackened with flames
where a bomb had gone off. The smell of smoke still hung in the air.

The dead, about fifteen, lay in a row in the sun outside the garage.
Most were chewed up rather badly by the machine gun and the bomb and
they had the scruffy, ragged indolence of corpses. Flies buzzed about.
There were puddles of blood, thick and black, all over the ground.

"That one was the leader," said Degas. "The old man in the turtleneck.
He yelled that we were Stalin's killers.

He's the one with this."

The boy held up a glass eye.

The little marble sparkled in his gloved fingers, the pupil open wide
and black and blue.

"Throw the fucking thing away, sonny," Lenny said.

He went to look at Steinbach. The old man had been shot in the throat
and the chest and the hand. His gray sweater was the color of raspberry
ice.

"We found this, too, comrade," said Degas. "It is in En lish. No one
here can read it."

He handed Lenny a sheet of paper covered with a blue scrawl:

I, the undersigned, take full responsibility for that which I am about
to receive and wish to establish that was acting under orders from the
highest authority. I acknowledge that I have taken from the revolution
its most precious treasure and that I, and I alone, am responsible.

It was signed, Robert Florty (British citizen) Lenny looked at it for a
long moment, breathing heavily.

"Is it important, comrade?" asked Degas.

"It's nothing," said Lenny, putting it in his pocket.

"And this was all?"

"Yes, comrade commissar."

"And nobody escaped?"

"No, comrade."

"And so what has happened to the tall man and the girl that that fellow
told you about'?"

"I-I couldn't say, comrade commissar."

"Did you investigate?"

"I didn't see the point."

"Could they have escaped?"

"Not unless it was before my men got here."

"Have you searched the park?"

"Yes, comrade."

"Everywhere? The woods down the mountain?"

"I sent a patrol about to check. Perhaps in the melee some POUMISTAS
scampered away. But I do not think so.

We caught them entirely by surprise. They were eating.

Chicken with rice. They were in the middle of-"

He halted.

"Look, comrade commissar," he said, his face suddenly brightening. He
pointed.

Three Asaltos were entering the gates. They prodded before them with
their bayonet points a sargento in the black mono of the POUM. Blood ran
down his face from a wound in his scalp, but it had dried. He had a
vacant, stupid look in his eyes.

"Comrade captain," yelled one of the soldiers, "come see what we found
snoozing in the woods!"

"Lucky man, Degas," said Bolodin. "If that guy tells me what I want to
know, you'll get your medal. And you were about to be shot."

PAPERS DO YOU KNOW?" SHE SAID, AWAKENINC,, "I HAD A MARVELOUS dream. I
was back in London, in a nice flat. I had a dog. I was listening to the
BBC. I was reading Mayfair. It was very, very boring. I hated to leave
it."

"Who could blame you?" he said, aware as he took a quick glance about
that he had not been included in the dream. What he saw was what he'd
been looking at for hours now: the dust was thick as a carpet, the
furniture ruined, the walls bare and peeling. An odor of neglect clung
to the room. Outside, or rather of what he could see outside in the
dark, there was no movement whatsoever, though occasionally a truckload
of Asaltos would heave by. He had been at the window for hours, while
she slept.

He had the automatic in his hand.

"Do you see anything?"

"No. But we can't stay here much longer."

"What time is it?" she asked. "I feel like I've slept for several days."

"It's nearly nine. The sun has been down about an hour."

"God, I could use a bath."

"I admire your sense of self, though I must say it's a queer time to
think of bathing."

"I hate to feel dirty," she said. "I absolutely loathe it."

Florry continued to look out the dark window. His eyes burned and the
fatigue threatened to overtake him.

He was gripping the pistol far too tightly. A few minutes back something
had snapped in the house and he'd almost fired crazily. He knew he was
getting close to his edge.

"It's the papers," he said, "that will kill us. Or rather, our lack of
them. We can get spiffy, I suppose, or at least spiffy by Spanish
standards. We can clean up and look the right proper travelers. But if
we get to the station and the Asaltos stop us or some NKVD chaps, then
we've bought it."

He could feel his teeth grinding in the bitterness of it all.

Papers. Authentication. Perhaps the consulate ... no, of course not, the
NKVD would be watching the consulate. Perhaps they could buy the bloody
things somewhere in the quarter. But how to make contact? How to raise
the money? How to make sure one wasn't being observed or that one
wouldn't be betrayed? Florry had always run with the hunters when he was
a copper. Now he was running with the hunted. He shook his head.

There were no rules, as there were in the daylight world: you simply did
what you had to, that was the only rule.

"I suppose we could try to walk to the frontier, traveling by night.
It's only about a hundred miles north. We might make it undetected. Then
we could make it across the Pyrenees-Good God, half the International
Brigades marched over the Pyrenees, there's no reason we shouldn't be
able to make it. Or we-" But he stopped.

It was absurd. One hundred miles without papers, neither of them
speaking the language with any authority, the NKVD in full command of
the police and hungry for foreign spies to put against the wall.

"Robert--@' "The port, Sylvia. I think that would be our best bet.

I've been thinking about it. If we can get down to Barrio Chino, perhaps
I can make some sort of contact with a foreign seaman and arrange a
passage ..

"Robert, please listen to me."

"Eh??"

"I can get us out of here."

"What are you talking about?"

"Do you remember that chap of yours you borrowed the book from. The
newspaper fellow. Sampson?"

"Yes." Sampson! Bloody Sampson, of course!

"Yes, well he's gone."

"Gone?"

"Yes. Yes, briefly to Madrid, then back to England.

His assignment was over, he said."

Florry said nothing. Yes, it would be over, would it not? Sampson, back
safe and sound, leaving them in the lurch.

"But when I gave him the book, he said something quite peculiar. It was
the address. He kept repeating it over and over again, in such a way
that I'd be certain to remember it. He kept saying,"You know you're
always welcome at my place, called de Oriente.' He said it over and over
again. Remember, he said, you're always welcome. Any of your chums, too,
always welcome.

Robert especially. Bring Robert by any time. Then he told me he was
leaving for England, but the invitation was still open. Drop in with
Robert, if you've a mind, he kept saying, called de Oriente."

Florry thought about it. He thought he remembered something about a pro
forma invitation dinner at Sampson's, but wasn't that at a villa of some
sort? Perhaps he'd moved. But it was queer, was it not? That the
priggish, awful Sampson should suddenly come on like an old school chum,
so completely out of character. What on earth-?

"Robert, what sort of man was he? It was almost as if he were giving me
a message for you. A message that I would-"

"He was telling us where to go," Florry said suddenly, realizing it.
"Yes, yes, he was. He was ... he was saving us."

There was no answer at the apartment at 126 called de Oriente, in a
quiet residential block in the shadow of Montjuich to which he and
Sylvia had traveled the next morning with surprisingly little
difficulty. He knocked again, then ran his fingers up top along the
doodamb.

"Christ," he said, almost stunned when he found the key.

They stepped into eerie silence. The place looked surprisingly neat, as
if it hadn't been occupied in months.

The furniture was coated with dust.

"Sampson didn't have much of a personal life," said Florry. "But at
least it's a place to hide out while we decide what to do next. And
perhaps we can get that bath."

"There must be something here," said Sylvia, with a note of desperation
in her voice. "If there isn't we're-9' Across the room, in the
bookshelf, Florry saw a copy off Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Steme.

He walked swiftly to it, pulled it from the shelf, and pried it open.

"Robert?"

"Sylvia, why don't you take a rest?"

"No, Robert. I must know. That damned book, it's followed us through
Spain."

He opened it. In the inside cover, someone had written, November 2, 193

He turned to page 3 1, held the book against the light, and detected the
puncture. He turned two pages and found another.

In minutes he was done.

BEDROOM FLOORBRD 3D ROW 3D SLAT, it said.

He went swiftly into the next room, peeled back the rug, found the
board, and tugged at it. With some effort he got it out. There was a
paper package. He pulled it out, pried it open. In it were two crisp
British passports, a wad of thousand-peseta notes, a wad of pound notes.
Florry examined his passport: it was a clever forgery, using the
official picture from his copper days. It identified him as a Mr. George
Trent, of Bramstead, Hampstead on Heath.

Sylvia's, equally ingenious, identified her as Mrs. Trent.

"God," she said. "That's my school photo."

"Well," he said. "It's our way out."

"And you," she said sounding stunned. "Robert, you're a spy."

"Yes," he said. "MI-6, actually."

They enjoyed a curious sense of security in the apartment, a
sensation--on Florry's part, at any rate-of having been looked after. it
was as if in this one chamber in one building in the revolutionary and
political chaos that was Barcelona a kind of separate peace had been
obtained. It was something they both needed desperately: a holiday.

The plumbing worked; they bathed. Layers of scum and grime came off
Florry and for the first time in weeks he became unaware of his own odor
or the terrible sense of crawly things at play in his thick hair. He
found a razor-wasn't Sampson the thoughtful one?-and scraped his face
clean. He looked with surprise and a sense of shock at the man who
greeted him from the steamy mirror. A tall fellow with a thatch of thick
hair, its natural lightness beginning to go to gray. Meanwhile, two
parentheses had been inscribed into the flesh of the cheeks, seeming to
seal off the prim mouth from the rest of it. A network of wrinkles
enshrouded the dulled eyes and the cheekbones stood out like doorknobs.
A starburst of pink, clustered tissue showed 'just under his collar line
where the bullet had gone through him.

Christ, I'm old, he thought. Old and battered. What happened to that
silly youth who wrote bad Georgian poetry amid the moths and pink gins
of Burma? Where did that fool go? To dust, with his chums in Red Spain.

He went to preparing his kit: he brushed off his suit and hung it out to
smooth itself over the night; it had been through so much and looked
shiny and baggy, but the English wool was tough. It would survive. It
was Julian's final legacy: aristocratic tailoring, which in fact might
get them through.

Julian. You think of everything, don't you?

Kill me, Julian had said.

Florry turned away from a melancholy recital of his own failures;
there'd be a lifetime for that if they got beyond the frontier. He
washed out his shirt and watched the grime from it cling to the basin.
He hung it on a hanger and hoped it would dry for the morning.

Wrapped in a blanket, he went out into the living room to find Sylvia in
the middle of her preparations. She'd brushed and cleaned her dress and
hung it out over a pot of steaming water.

"It'll look smashing," he said.

"Yes," she said, "I can hardly believe that tomorrow we'll be out of
here. We've got money, we've got papers, we've got the proper look. We
can buy some luggage.

Robert, we're almost-"

He sat down.

"We haven't had much time together, although we've been in each other's
company for about three solid days.

I mean, time for us. That is, if there is an us. Now that Julian's
gone."

"Robert, let's just concentrate on getting out of here now, shall we?
Let's make certain there's a you and a me before we worry about an us."

He looked at her, her neck, her gray green eyes, her mass of feathery
hair. A beauty, but someone else's beauty. He'd lost her, but had she
ever been his to begin with-or was that merely another Spanish illusion?

"All right," he said, "I won't mention it again until we're out of here.
1-1 just wish I could stop thinking about us." "if the NKVD catches you,
you'll cease it soon enough, Robert," she said tiredly.

"There is one other thing," he said. "I had just thought how nice it
would be if we had our own luggage, Sylvia.

After all, you must have had some-"

"It's at the hotel, Robert. The clothes I bought, in a suitcase. But
they will be watching the hotel."

"But can they watch it all the time? I mean, let's look at the odds.
They're looking for escaping POUMISTAS. not prosperous British
travelers. They're not looking for us. They're looking for a certain
category. We are no longer in that category, don't you see? Thus, it
occurs to me how easy it would be to simply pop in and get your bag on
the way to the station. Don't you see?"

She looked at him, and then explained as if to a child.

"It's too risky. It's a straight run to the station by tram or cab and
we can make it. If we putt around after silly bags, then we're fools and
we deserve our fates."

"Sylvia--"

"Robert, for God's sake, we can make it. Don't you see? There's
nothing-"

"I told Julian I would give his ring to his mother. His ring is in my
coat. My coat is in your bag. Your bag is in the hotel. If I could, I
would go myself, alone. But don't you see, the room is in your name.
They wouldn't let me-"

She shook her head.

"Two weeks ago you hated him. Now you love him.

Now you'll risk yourself to perform some foolish romantic gesture in his
memory. You really are a fool, Robert. But you certainly won't risk me."

"He was my friend. I must help him. Very well, I'll go by myself Perhaps
I can talk the chaps into letting me in.

I'll see you at the station. We can travel by-"

"Robert-"

"I must get that ring!" be shouted. He had never shouted at her before
and she was stunned. He felt himself shaking.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have raised my voice. It's just that-"

"God, Robert, the virtue in you is appalling. It's actually quite
repugnant."

"You have no idea how many times I let him down, Sylvia. How I let him
down, how I betrayed him. How at the moment when he asked me for one
thing, I could not do it. Perhaps we had better leave separately
tomorrow.

You go your way, and I'll go mine. I'm going to get that ring one way or
another."

"Robert, you are such a bloody fool. I shall get your bloody ring for
you then, if it means so much." She was quite angry.

They left early the next morning, a doddering, nittefing couple,
fascinated into open-mouthed dumfoundment by all they saw about them.
They pointed gawkishly at soldiers. They asked foolish questions loudly,
in English.

They tried to find a good cup of tea.

It was only a matter of hours. The train for the frontier left at one.
They took a tram across town.

"Salud, sefior," said the conductor, accepting Flony's peseta piece.

At the hotel, it went with surprising ease. Sylvia's bag had been
stashed and they went to look for it. Florry stood in the lobby
stupidly, waiting until it came. It was a mahogany room, full of
flowers, quite civilized in feeling. He looked about. There seemed to be
no one of interest in the lobby. There were no secret policemen or
Asaltos. At last the bag was produced.

"Splendid," said Florry heartily, and he gave the boy an enormous tip.

They went outside and found a cab.

"There," he said, "you see, it was easy."

"It was stupid," she said.

"It took us a bloody five minutes. It cost us nothing.

We've done it. We've made it. We'll be at the station in minutes. Nobody
saw us."

He was almost right. One man had seen them standing outside the hotel,
and only one. Unfortunately, it was Ugarte.

UGARTE UGARTE'S CHANCE TO REDEEM HIMSELF IN THE EYES OF HIS boss came at
around twenty minutes to one. He was sitting slouched like the pimp he'd
once been on the steps of the cathedral watching the hotel; all sensibly
gave him wide berth, for he was a dangerous-looking man, chewing a
toothpick with the arrogant sullenness of one who is willing to commit
violence. As he brought his eyes up in a lazy scan of the crowd-it was
that close, another second and he'd have missed them entirely-he saw a
tall gentleman of obviously foreign extraction and his missus blinking
confusedly as they attempted to negotiate, bag in hand, their way toward
the street and e ventually a cab.

Ugarte's eyes beheld them, almost dismissed them, then almost lost them
in the crowd, and then at last brought them into focus for study as they
bobbed awkwardly through the crowd: yes, perhaps. They looked older and
graver, somehow; he'd been expecting glossy, beautiful children, and
these two dodderers were gray and halting. Yet as he watched them he
became aware of how much of the illusion of age was merely the result of
profound fatigue, amplified by the gauntness of hunger.

And that, furthermore, there was a queer theatrical dimension to them:
he sensed their strain. They were not, not quite, who they seemed to be.

Ugarte's dilemma became vivid. Comrade Bolodin's instructions had been
precise: observe, but do not intercept unless absolutely necessary. At
first chance, contact headquarters. Retain observation. Do not
apprehend.

Ugarte was most anxious not to offend the great Bolodin, whom he loved
and feared as no man he'd ever met in his life. Yet he watched with a
sort of hypnotized dolor as they entered the vehicle, closed the door,
and it pulled away. His eyes felt hooded and sleepy, his brain damaged.
What was involved here was something quite beyond his experience: a
decision. Carrajo, what to do?

His misery increased.

Then, without willing it, his feet begin to move. He found himself
racing back through the crowd, pushing his way into the street. He waved
down a car and pulled his SIM card. Terrified eyes met his.

"The station!" he shrieked, "or it's your death!"

When he got there, he could not find them. He had a moment's terror. It
occurred to him he could lie about the whole thing. He could deny it had
ever happened.

Bolodin would never know. That's what he would Then he saw them. As they
pushed their way through the crowds, they moved with uneasy
tentativeness that was almost their best disguise. He watched as they
made their way. They reached Via 7 where a huge train was loading. They
showed their tickets at the gate and were admitted. Ugarte looked up to
the black sign under the numeral seven that displayed destinations and
saw a long list, the last entry in which was PORT BOU (LA FRONTERA).

Ugarte leaped ahead through the crowd. He pushed his Way along, under
the few revolutionary banners that nobody had gotten around to removing
yet, and made his way toward the set of iron stairs against the far wall
of the station which led up to a balcony, a door, a window, clearly some
sort of station headquarters. At the top, there stood a young Asalto
with a machine pistol.

11 ihalto! " screamed the boy, quaking at the apparition of the crazed
man flying toward him.

"Fool," yelled Ugarte, shaking with excitement. He pulled out his SIM
card again, feeling very much like a real policeman. "Do you know what
this means? I could have you shot! I could have your family shot! Out of
the way! "

The boy, a Valencia bumpkin, seemed to melt, and Ugarte pushed his way
into the room where several bored and seedy but vaguely official-looking
men sat at desks.

"I command you in the name of the people," said Ugarte, who had
heretofore only commanded low women in the name of his wallet, "to delay
train number seven. Now, where's a telephone?"

Lenny did not panic when the call came, nor did he stop to quiver at the
closeness, the tentativeness, of the connection to his quarry. He simply
knew what had to be done next and set about to do it. He knew that if
Florry were leaving, the gold was leaving, presumably among his effects,
or perhaps by way of a shipment, melted down in some innocuous way. He
knew that the gold was most vulnerable when it was being moved, because
guile, not an-ned guards, were the essence of the GRU operation.
Whatever, he knew that the answers rested with the man Florry, who had
to be persuaded, somehow, to share his knowledge. Lenny did not doubt
that he could convince Florry to cooperate but what terrified him was
the danger of discovery. He wanted to separate Florry from his secrets
at his leisure, far from inquiring eyes. He had decided, therefore, to
allow the man to leave the country and to take him in France.

Lenny left instantly for the station. In fact, he was packed and ready
in more ways than any of the men who worked for him or any of the men he
now worked for could possibly know. He had planned toward this day for
some time, and the planning was exquisitely complete. It was not merely
a question of a bag, a change of clothes, and a tin of toothpowder; he
had such a bag, but sewed into its lid were, first, a British passport
in the name of Edward Fenney, an expensive forgery, and, second, fifteen
crisp thousand-dollar bills U.S., his savings from various unofficial
activities in Barcelona.

The plan was simple: Comrade Bolodin of the NKVD/SIM would board the
train and Mr. Fenney would emerge to cross the frontier. However, once
in France, Lenny had still another identity into which to slip@--he
would become one Albert Nelson, citizen also of Great Britain-and it
would be as Nelson, four full identities removed from the scrawny,
furious, half-mute East Side Jewboy whose bones and furies he had
carried for so many thankless years, that he would close upon and take
his quarry and begin his prosperous new life.

He raced for the courtyard car park with extraordinary eagerness for
what lay just ahead. He could feel his heart beat and his blood begin to
sing. The moment he had glimpsed months back in Tchiterine's dying
confession had finally arrived.

But he did not even get to his car and driver before a shout came from
behind to halt. He was more surprised than angered: who dared address
the mighty Bolodin in such a haughty and commanding tone? He turned to
discover his mentor Glasanov closing on him with a look of terrible
desperation, at the same time gesturing to two of the other Russian
thugs from the new mob who had arrived in the aftermath of the coup.

Glasanov appeared almost mad with fury. Lenny had never seen him so
distraught.

"Bolodin!"

Mink fixed him with the dead eyes, waiting.

"Bolodin," said Glasanov, "damn you. We found the old man, Levitsky, in
the convent. He's been tom to pieces; his mind is gone. What are you up
to? What game are you playing?"

Lenny could think of nothing to say. It occurred to him to remove his
Tokarev and put a bullet through Glasanov's forehead, but the others
were closing too quickly in the courtyard and he could feel his driver,
reacting to the intensity of the moment, beginning to separate himself
from the car and its connection to himself.

Glasanov pointed.

"Arrest the traitor Bolodin," he howled. "He's a state criminal."

DETECTIYES NOBODY HAD BEEN INTERESTED IN THEM AND NOW THEY sat in a kind
of numbed silence in the first-class coach, alone and silent. The train
smelled of tobacco and use.

Now and then, people moved down the corridor outside the open
compartment, occasionally an Asalto. Once, one of them peeped in.

"Es ingl@s, verdad sehor? "he said.

"Si, sehor, said Florry.

"Passport, @porf,@vor?"

"Ah. Si," said Florry, handing it over.

"Muy bien, " said the man, after a brief examination.

"Gracias, " said Florry.

"Buenos dias, sehor, " said the man, ducking out.

"It was so eavy," said Sylvia.

"The Asaltos don't matter," said Florry. "In Red Spain, only the NKVD
matters."

He sat back. He felt exhausted. Could it all be done, all of it, Spain,
the whole bloody thing? He looked out the window of the carriage and
could only see steam, the tops of heads passing by under the level of
the window, and, across the via, another train. He looked at his watch.

"We're late," he said after a time.

"Does it matter?" she said. "We are on board."

"I suppose you're right. Yet I'll feel a good deal better once the
bloody thing gets going. It was supposed to leave five minutes ago."

"Robert, the Spanish haven't done anything on time for several
centuries."

Florry agreed and closed his eyes, trying to quell his uneasiness.

But he could not get it out of his head. Why are we not moving?

By now they had almost completely encircled him, guns drawn. Lenny stood
in the courtyard, not ten feet from his car, feeling his automatic heavy
in the shoulder holster. He had no real image of the doom closing in on
him, but he knew he was in big trouble. They'd found the old man. They'd
search his case, find the passports and the money. He was a dead man.
The impulse came to go out in smoke and flame, the way Dutch Schultz
went out: he could feel the hunger for the pistol build in his fingers.

He wanted to grab it and start shooting. You always know, when you go
into the rackets, you always know something like this may happen: a
bigger gang catches you in the open, unexpected, and it's over. He'd put
the lights out on enough guys himself.

"You American scum," said Glasanov, "I've been watching you for some
time. I've seen your ambition, your deals, the hungry way you look. You
profess to be a Communist and are nothing but gangster scum. Now there's
proof you're pulling something. We'll get the truth. Take him."

The men closed to Lenny and Glasanov, led by the two big new Russians.

"Commissar Glasanov-"

"Take the American trash!" screamed Glasanov, close enough to spray up
into Lenny's face. Lenny could see the hairs in the man's nostrils and
the moles on his chin.

"Comrade Glasanov," said one of the new Russians, "it's you who are
under arrest."

They surrounded Glasanov.

"You are charged with wrecking and oppositionism.

You are in league with the Jew traitor Levitsky whom you let escape and
the puppet master Trotsky. You will be returned to Moscow immediately."

"But I-"

"Take him away!" shouted Lenny. "I can't stand to look at the traitorous
pig."

The officers lead Glasanov off "Comrade Bolodin?" the arresting officer
said. It was some new kid Lenny knew was named Romanov. He was a real
hotshot, this Romanov. Straight from the big boss himself "Yes, comrade
.

"I 'just wanted you to know Moscow knows you've been attending your
duties. They are very pleased in Moscow with the big Amerikanski."

"I'm pleased to serve the Party and can only wait to spread the struggle
to my own land."

"Good work, Bolodin," said Comrade Romanov.

Lenny turned and walked swiftly to his car.

"The station," he commanded.

His driver sped along, siren screaming. He ran through the crowd, racing
past Ugarte without a word of recognition. They were locking the gate at
Via 7, but he got by them and could see it ahead in the bellowing steam
as it moved away. He didn't think he would make it, but from somewhere
there came a burst of energy and he leaped and felt his hands close
about the metal grip hung in the last door, and he pulled himself
aboard.

"Thank God," said Florry. "Well, I hope that's the last delay."

"I'm sure it will be," said Sylvia.

The train pushed its slow way up the coast toward Port Bou, flanked on
one side by the Mediterranean and on the other by the hulking Pyrenees,
and after a time, Florry and Sylvia went to dine. They sat in the
first-class dining car over a bad paella of dry rice with leathery
little chunks that had once been sea creatures and drank bitter young
wine and attempted in their game of disguise to make clever Noel Coward
repartee for anyone in earshot.

Sylvia seemed quiet, typically distant; some color bad returned to her
face. Hard to believe two days ago they'd been standing next to their
own graves in front of the firing squad. She appeared to have forgotten
about it, or to have dispensed with it. It was something about her be
liked a great deal: this gift for living only in the absolute present,
this wonderful gift for practicality.

Flon-y looked away, out the window. He tried not to think of the dead
he'd left in Red Spain. He tried to think of the bright, beautiful
future, he and Sylvia perhaps together at last. He knew if he tried hard
enough he could earn his way back. He knew there wouldn't be the problem
over Julian anymore; he felt he could control his jealousy and his sense
of possessiveness that had mussed things up over Julian. The future
would be theirs and wonderful. They had survived. They would be the
inheritors.

"Robert." There was urgency in her voice. "Detectives."

He looked and could see them.

"Start chatting," he said.

They must have come aboard at the last stop. They were heavyset men in
raincoats with that sleepy, unimpressible look to their eyes that any
copper masters in the first few days of the job.

They came down the coach aisle slowly, fighting the lurch of it upon the
rails, choosing whom to examine and whom not to on the basis of some
strange, silent code or protocol between them. Florry stared straight
into Sylvia's lovely face without seeing it, keeping the men in soft,
peripheral focus nevertheless. Perhaps they'd arrest someone else before
they got to him, perhaps that big fellow in the raincoat sitting there,
or the But no. With their unerring instinct for such matters, the two
policemen came straight to him. He could feel their eyes on him and
could hear them thinking inglis and knew how their minds would work: a
deserter from the International Brigades or a political prisoner having
fled some Barcelona checa.

"I do hope it's a rainy summer," he said, trying to think of the most
English thing he could say. "The roses, darling. The rain is absolutely
topping for the roses."

"Seflor?" '@--and we must go to Wimbledon for the championships, I hear
there's a dreadfully good Yank fellow who-"

"Sefior?"

He felt a rough hand on his arm and looked up.

"Good heavens. Are you speaking to me, sir?"

"Si. e, Es ingl@s, i verdad sehor? "

"Si. Rather, yes. English, quite." 11 iera soldado en la revoluci6n?

"Soldier? Me? Good heavens, you must be joking."

"George, what do they want?"

"I have no idea, darling."

The man took his right hand and turned it over to look at the palm.

"Now, see here," said Florry. -Puedo ver su pasaporte, por.favor? " said
the man.

"This is most irritating," said Florry. He pulled his passport out and
watched as the man rifled it, examined it carefully.

At last he handed it back.

"You like Espafia, Sehor Trent?" he asked.

"Yes, very. The missus and I come each year for the beach. Except last
year, of course. It's nice things have settled down. You have the best
sunlight in Europe after the Riviera, and we can't afford the Riviera.,,
ZNO erafascista? "

"Good heavens, of course not. Do I look like one?"

The man's pale eyes beheld him for just a second and then he conferred
briefly with his partner.

"Espero que se divirtiera en su viaje.

"Eh?"

"To hope you have enjoyed your trip, Sefior Trent," he finally said and
passed on.

Florry took another sip of the wine, pretending to be cool. He could see
the little rills on its placid surface from the trembling in his hand.
The stuff was impossibly bitter.

He reached for a cigarette, lit it.

"That's the last of the Spanish crew," he said. "We ought to be very
close to the frontier."

"Why did he check your hand?"

"The Mosin-Nagent has a sharp bolt handle. If you've done a lot of
firing, you'll almost certainly have a scab or a callous in the fleshy
part of your palm."

"Thank God you didn't."

--mod "Thank God the scab dropped off in the bath last night."

"I think," she said, "I think our troubles are finally over."

Yes, you're right, he thought. But he wondered why it was he had the
odd, unsettling feeling of being vt atched.

"Are you cold?"

"Of course not," he said.

"You just shivered."

THE RIGHT EYE WAS GONE. SMASHED, SHATTERF.D, crushed when one of the
brutes had kicked him as he lay on the floor of the pen. The surgeon had
simply removed it, while wiring up the fractured zygoma, as the bone
surrounding it was called. The left eye remained, though its lens had
been dislocated in the same terrible blow. The old man could detect a
moving hand but he could not count fingers.

The shoulders, of course, were broken from his long session on the rope;
and the wrists, too. Additionally, he was bruised, cut, scraped,
battered in a hundred places about his old body.

But the significant damage was psychological. His memories were 'angled
and intense. He was extremely nervous, unable to concentrate. He knew no
peace. He had nightmares. He wept for no reason at all. His moods
altered radically.

And he no longer talked.

Now he lav incarcerated in plaster and bandages in a private room in the
Hospital of the People's Triumph, formerly the Hospital Santa Creu i
Sant Pau, on the Es PAVEL Avenida Stalin. The room seemed to be high and
bright; it opened to a balcony that had an unrestricted view of of
something. The sea, perhaps. Levitsky could only recognize the
illumination and smell the breeze.

He lay alone-or, it could be said, alone with historyon a sweet, cool,
late afternoon. The doctor came in, as usual, at four, only this
time-most unitsual-he was accompanied by another man. Levitsky, of
course, could see none of this, but he could hear the second, unfamiliar
snap of footsteps, and inferred from their speed and precision a certain
energy, perhaps even eagerness, as opposed to the grimly proficient
rhythm of the doctor's shoes.

"Well, Comrade Levitsky," said the doctor in Russian, "it appears you
are a tough old bird." Levitsky could sense the doctor over him and
could see just enough movement as the fellow bent. "A man your age, a
mangling such as this, so long among the horses. My goodness, nineteen
out of twenty would have died on the operating theater table." Levitsky
knew what would occur next-the flash of pain as the light hit his
surviving eye-and, indeed, a second later, the doctor's torch snapped
on. It went off like a concussive boom in his head.

"He's stable?" The second voice was harder and younger.

"Yes, commissar. At last."

"How long before he can be moved?"

"Two weeks. A month, to be safe."

"You're sure, comrade doctor?"

"In these times, it wouldn't do to make a mistake."

"Indeed. A month, then."

"Yes.

"All fight. Leave us."

"He's still fragile, commissar."

"I won't excite him."

Levtsky heard the doctor walking out. Then there was nearly a full
minute of silence. Listening carefully, Levitsky could hear the other
breathing. He stared through the milky incandescence of his single eye
at the ceiling.

At last, the young man spoke.

"Well, old Emmanuel Ivanovich, your comrades at Znamensky Street send
their greetings. You've become quite an important fellow. This man is to
be protected at all expense, they insist. But I forget myself. Pavel
Valentinovich Romanov, of the Glavnoe Razvedyvatelnoe Upravlenie.
Lieutenant commander, actually, at a rather young age, you might say."

He paused, waiting for a response. Levitsky had none, and so the young
man responded himself.

"My pride, you would tell me if you could, will be my downfall. Well,
perhaps you are right." He laughed. "It certainly was yours."

Levitsky said nothing.

"Now, I know all about you, but you know so I'the about me. Well, I'll
spare you a list of my accomplishments. But let me just say," said the
young man, with a certain hard edge to his voice, "that if you are the
past of our party, one could argue that I am its future."

The young man went proudly to the window. Levitsky followed his shape
with his one good eye. He was a soft, dark blur against the whiter
purity of the opening.

"Lovely view! That mountain. Magnificent! Not as beautiful as the
Caucasus, of course, but beautiful, nevertheless. Sends shudders up
one's spine, Emmanuel lvanovich. So, how do you like the room? It's
nice, isn't it? Indeed, yes, the very best. Do you know that doctor?

He's the best also. London-trained. No shitty Russian medicine for dear
old Emmanuel Ivanovich Levitsky.

No! Can't have it! Only the best Western medicine!"

The fellow laughed.

"Well, Ivanch," he said, allowing himself the intimacy of the romantic
diminutive form of address, something permitted under normal etiquette
only between family members, "I must be off, but I'll be back tomorrow
and every day until you're strong enough to travel. I shall guard you
like a baby and tend you like a mother."

Levitsky stared up at him furiously.

"Why?" said Pavel, with a smile. "Because the boss himself has ordered
it. Your old revolutionary comrade Koba has taken a personal interest in
this. I am, one might say, his personal representative here. Koba wants
you back, healthy and sound and chipper in Mother Russia."

He bent over the old man to complete the thought before walking out. ...
for your execution."

NIGHT TRAIN TO PARIS JUST BEFORE NIGHTFALL, FLORRY LEANED AGAINST THE
glass and made out the approach of a small station house that sat above
what appeared, in the fading light, to be a seedy beach town spilling
away in chalky white desolation down a slope to the water's edge. The
station wore a ign that said, in rusted-out letters, PORT BOU.

"Christ, we've made it," said Florry, feeling a sudden surge of
exaltation. "Look, Sylvia, has anything so scabby ever looked so bloody
lovely to you?"

The train halted at last and Flony removed Sylvia's grip from the
overhead. It was only a few seconds until they had left the train,
edging out among the crowd. Stepping down, Florty smelled the salt air
and heard the cries of the birds that must have been circling overhead.
Up ahead, he could see that the tracks ended up against a concrete
barrier; beyond that, there was a fence; and beyond that, France.

"Do you see? There's a train," he said, pointing beyond the wire to the
continuation of the track. "It must be the overnight to Paris."

"You should try to get us a compartment," said Sylvia.

"We are traveling as man and wife; to -do otherwise would appear
ridiculous."

"I say, you've thought awfully hard about this."

"I rather want to survive, that's all."

"You know, it's probably not necessary. We're out.

We could stay in separate-"

"Let's play the fiction out to London."

He could not help but laugh. "You seem to know more about this business
than I do."

They followed the drift of the passengers toward the guard post, a
smallish brick building nestled near the barbed wire by a crude
pedestrian gate-the whole affair had a rough, improvised look to it-and
a line had already formed into which they slipped. It seemed to be a
dream play set under the calm Mediterranean moon, the line of passengers
filing listlessly into the little shack under the scrutiny of sleeping
carabineros-no revolutionary Asaltos here-for a cursory examination. If
you had the passport you were all right.

Florry handed his and Sylvia's over to the man, an old-time civil
servant, who didn't give them a second look, except to run mechanically
their names off against his list. Arma defuego?

"Eli?"

"Firean-ns, Seiior Trent?"

"Oh, of course not," said Florry, remembering his vanished Webley and
the automatic he'd tossed away.

The man nodded.

"Go on to French customs," he said.

"That's it?" said Florry.

"Si, sehor. That's it."

They stepped out of the building and through the gate and into another
little shed, which turned out to contain two little booths, each with
its policeman. Florry got into one line and Sylvia the next and in time
they arrived at the tables. The officer game him a quick, lazy glance.
-No tiene equipaje a portar de Espaha?

"Er, sorry?"

"Do you have bags?" the man said in French.

"Oh. My wife has it."

"You take no bags from Spain?"

"We believe in traveling light."

The man nodded him on and he emerged to find that Sylvia had already
made it through and was waiting with her grip.

"Hullo," she said.

"Hullo. No problems?"

"No. The fellow opened the bag and began to go through it, but your
awful raincoat was in the way and the woman behind made a scene about
missing the Paris train. He was a decent chap. Rather, a lazy one. He
just waved me on."

It then occurrred to them that they were standing at the gate into
France. They stood in line to present their passports to the frontier
gendan-the who made a disinterested examination, and ultimately issued
the proper stamp.

"Bien, " he said.

"Merci, " said Florry.

It was that simple: they stepped outside the shed, and they were in
France.

"One should feel something," Florry said. "Relief, or some such. What I
feel like is a smoke."

"I feel like brushing my teeth," Sylvia said.

The French train up ahead hooted. Near it, a temporary French station
had been built, the mirror image of the Spanish installation on the
other side of the frontier.

"We must hurry," she said.

"I'll get tickets. Darling, see if there's a tobacconist's about, will
you, and get cigarettes. American, if they've got them. Pay anything.
And get some chocolate. I love chocolate."

He raced for the ticket window.

"Do you have a first-class compartment left open for Paris?" he asked in
French.

"Yes. Several, in fact; there's not many first-class travelers who leave
Spain, monsieur. Not since July."

"I only have pesetas. Can you make the exchange for me?"

"I will only charge a small percentage.

"It's only fair."

He pushed the money across to the man and waited while the fellow
figured it out and paid him back with the tickets.

"I only took a little extra."

"Fine, fine," said Florry, grabbing them and trying to quell his
exuberance.

"You must hurry; this train leaves in a few minutes."

"Believe me, this is one train I won't miss."

He turned and ran toward it, to find Sylvia waiting at the door to the
sleeping car.

"I've got it," he said. "God, look at that!"

"It's only English tobacco, darling," she said, holding up a pack of
Ovals.

"This must be heaven," Florry said. He could not stop himself from
smiling.

"I'm sorry they didn't have American. The tobacconist had just sold all
his American cigarettes to some hulking Yank."

"It doesn't matter, Sylvia. We're safe at last."

The train whistled.

"Come on, it's time to get aboard," he said.

They ate in the first-class dining car, and whatever one could say
against the French, the French knew how to cook. The meal was--or
perhaps this was merely an expression of their parched tastes after so
many months in Red Spain---extraordinary. Afterward, they went to the
parlor car and had a drink and sat smoking as the train hurled through
the darkened countryside of southern France.

"Paris by morning," said Florry. "I know a little hotel in the
Fourteenth Arrondissement. Sylvia, let's go there.

We've earned a holiday, don't you think? There's enough money, isn't
there? We haven't to face the future quite yet, do we?"

Sylvia looked at him: her gray green eyes beheld him curiously, and
after a bit, a smile came to her face.

"It really is over, isn't it? Spain, I mean," she said.

Florry nodded.

"Well," she said. "Let me think about it will you, Robert?"

"Of course."

She hadn't said no--quite. And it sounded wonderful: a fortnight of
luxury in a small, elegant hotel in the most civilized country in Europe
after what had been the least civilized. Florry sat back against the
comfortable chair, smoking an Oval. Maybe the woman would be his after
all. He felt he owed it to himself to begin to feel rather good.

But of course exactly the opposite occurred. A curious melancholy began
to seep through him. He seemed to still smell Spain somehow, or still
dream it, even when wakeful. He remembered Julian in the dust, begging
for death. He remembered the bridge exploding. The blast, for all its
fury, had meant nothing after all it had cost them. He remembered the
POUM rifles leveled at them, and the comical idiocy of the trial, and
the Communist Asaltos heading up the mountain with their Hotchkiss gun.
He remembered Harry Uckley's empty holster. He remembered the night
attack on Huesca and firing his revolver into the boy's face. He
remembered the abrupt cold numbness when the bullet struck him. He
remembered the ship digging beneath the surface and the flames on the
water.

"Robert, what on earth is wrong?"

"Julian," he said. "I wish I had not let Julian down at the end. I know
he meant so much to you."

"Julian always got what he wanted," said Sylvia with odd coldness. "And
never what he deserved."

She touched his arm. "Forget the war. Forget politics.

Forget it all. Forget Julian."

"Of course you're fight. Absolutely. One mustn't let oneself get to
brooding on things one is helpless to alter.

And I swear I won't."

But it was a lie. Even as he saw her pretty face he remembered Julian.
Hold my hand. I'm so frightened.

Kill me.

"Yes," she said. "I could not get the American cigarettes, and so I
should not feel as if I've failed, eh?"

"I say, shall we have another drink?" he said cheerfully.

"Pardon me, folks."

They turned, and looked up into the eyes of a rather large, almost
handsome man in a suit standing in the aisle.

"I hate to interrupt," he said, "the name's Fenney. Ed Fenney. I saw you
on the train out of Barcelona. I just heard the lady say she's sorry she
missed the American cigarettes. I bought them all. Look, here, take
these."

It was a pack of American Camels.

"Mr. Fenney, it's really not necessary," said Sylvia.

"No, I know how you get, missing your best smokes. I just got a little
greedy at the border. My apologies, miss.

Please, take these. You Brits and us Americans, we ought to stick
together. It's going to be us against the world one of these days, you
just wait."

He smiled. There was something peculiarly intense about him and remotely
familiar, but he seemed so eager to please that Flony found himself
accepting the cigarettes.

"Well, thanks awfully," he said. "Would you care to join us?"

"No, listen, after a long day like this, I really want to turn in. I've
calls to make in Paris tomorrow, have to be sharp. Nice seeing you." He
left.

"Robert, I'm awfully tired, too," said Sylvia.

"Well, then. That seems to be that. Shall we go?"

It was nearly midnight: they walked through the dark, rocking corridor
from car to car until at last they found their compartment. They
entered; the porter had opened the bed and turned it back.

"Not much room in here, is there?" he said.

"The French are so romantic," Sylvia said. She held up a single red rose
that had been placed in a vase by the tiny night table that had been
folded out of the wall.

Florry pulled the door shut behind him, snapping it locked. When he
turned, Sylvia had undressed to her slip and washed her hands and face
in the small basin. He went to her bag and opened it. Julian's ring had
fallen out of the pocket of his coat and worked its way into the corner
of the case. He picked it up, looked at it.

This is all there is of my friend Julian Raines, he thought. There was
little enough to it: a simple gold band, much tarnished, much nicked, as
well it should be.

The inscription inside it read, "From this day forth, Love, Cecilia." It
was dated 6-15-04.

For luck, Florry thought, and gave it a little secret kiss.

There was a knock at the door.

"Who on earth could that be?" he said.

"It's Ed Fenney, Mr. Florry," came the voice through the door.

"Oh. Well, what on earth-"

"Listen, I have an extra carton of Camels here. I might not see you in
the morning. I'd like to give them to you." "Well, it's not necessary
but--@' "It'd be my pleasure."

Florry turned, gave Sylvia a quizzical look, and turned to the door.

"Robert, don't. We don't know-"

"Oh, he's just a big, friendly American. Just a moment," he called,
getting the door unlocked, even as he wondered how this Fenney knew his
name. "You know, this is awfully damned kind---2' The man hit him in the
stomach and he felt the pain like an explosion; he hit him twice again,
driving him back, filling his mind with astonishment and, by the power
of the blows, his heart with fear.

Yet even as he fell, Florry was trying to rise, for the man had just
smashed Sylvia across the face with the back of his hand.

The big man hit Sylvia a second time, killing the scream in her throat,
and she dropped bleeding on the bed when Floi-ry, having somehow
accumulated a bit of strength, assaulted him with a desperate rugby
tackle, but it hurt Florry worse than the other and as Florry slid off,
a brute knee rose and met him cruelly flush beneath the eye with a sick
ugly sound that filled his head with sparks and scattered his will. He
began to crawl away to collect himself, but the man dropped onto his
back, pinned him with a knee as one pins the butterfly through the
thorax to the board, and had his thick hands under his throat. He pulled
his head back. Florty felt the strength and the force. He knew the man
could snap his. neck in an instant.

He could hardly breathe. He was gagging.

"Pleased to meet you, yentzer," the man hissed. "I'm your new pal."

Florry was instantly released and felt the man rise off him. Then a
powerful kick slammed against his ribs, lifting him against the wall in
the tiny room, flipping him. He tried to scream when a short sharp blow
delivered with a boxer's grace and cunning nailed the exact center of
his body and the sound was frozen forever in his lungs. He lay back, his
eyes closed, sucking desperately at the air, The man leaned across the
bed and pulled Sylvia up by the hair. He slapped her face hard twice to
bring her awake to scream, and as her throat constricted in the effort,
he rapped her there lightly to trap it. He pulled her over and her head
down.

Florrv knew he had to help her. He had to get air, and help Sylvia.

"Please," Flon-y begged. "Don't hurt her. I'll do anything. Just tell
me. I'll do it."

Please him, he thought.

The man dropped Sylvia unconscious to the bed and turned to Florry,
Florry seized Sylvia's suitcase from the corner and desperately hurled
it, but it was open and the clothes falling from it crippled the
velocity of the thrust.

The man elbowed it aside contemptuously. He walked over the litter of
clothing now spread about the floor and smashed Florry in the face and
Florry wasn't fast enough to slip the blow. Instead, head a mess of
confusion and lights, he went down to the floor. The man sat atop him.

Florry could feel the hot, excited breath and the heaving heart and the
strength and the totality of him, the overwhelming force of him.

"I know it all," said the man. "The old Jew Levitsky.

The guy at Cambridge. He told me. You're working for the reds."

Florry struggled with the idea.

"Yeah. He told me, Levitsky himself, your great buddy. And I got this,
too, fucker."

He leaned back, reached into his pocket, and pulled something out.
Florry recognized it immediately. It was the confession he'd signed for
Steinbach.

"The gold," the man said. "Where's the gold?"

"What? I-"

"Don't fuck around. The gold! God damn it, the gold."

He pulled something from his pocket, snapped it, and a knife blade
popped out. He put the icy-sharp point of the blade into the soft skin
under Florry's eye. "I'll cut you and cut you and cut you. Then I'll cut
the girl. I'll cut everybody you ever knew. The gold. The gold!"

Florry knew now he was hopelessly insane, his ideas crazed and pitiful,
his willingness to hurt absolute and unending.

"You've got it all wrong," Florry said. "It's-----2' The man's eyes
widened at this defiance and he hit Florry savagely in the face.

"No," said Florry, gasping and curling, seeking desperately for
something to put between himself and the pain, "no. It's Julian. Take
Julian, don't take me. He's the one.

Leave us alone, please, I beg you."

But the man stood above him, looming like some titanic statue. Florry
watched as the man's foot came forward until it covered his face with
its black shadow and descended onto his face. He could feel the shoe on
his nose and lips, flattening and spreading them, and he could taste the
grit and filth on the sole, little flecks and curds of it, falling into
his mouth.

Florry's fingers scrabbled desperately at the floor and the clothes
littering it as a single thought filled his head: who will help me now?

Nobody, the answer came. You are alone.

"Lick it," the man commanded in a hoarse, mad whisper. "Lick it, you
little fucker."

Florry's tongue caressed the sole of the filthy shoe exactly as his
fingers, crawling through the clothes on the floor, touched something
hard and recognized it before his mind did.

"The gold," the man said. "Tell me where the gold is, God damn you or-"

Florrv raised Julian's little automatic, thumbing back the nubby hammer,
and fired into the crotch above him and felt the boot come off his face
and saw the blood spurt. Florry fired again into the lower belly and
into the chest, the gun cracking in his hand. The blood spurted and
sprayed everywhere and the man seemed to sink back stunned and
disappointed, holding his red fingers before him, and Florry shot him in
the throat, opening a hideous wound, the larynx blown to shreds even by
a small-caliber bullet at this range. He made grotesque mewling noises.
He was spitting blood and it was coming out his nose and spilling down
his chest. Florry rose, cupping the pistol with both hands, and fired
carefully into the face; a black crater erupted in the crack and flash
of the pistol under the eye while brain tissue and red fog rose from
somewhere and he fired into the eye, shattering it. The slide on the
pistol locked back. It was empty.

In the corridor, somebody was shouting. Florry looked down at the little
pistol. It had lain in the pocket of the Burberry all those days since
the bridge, packed away in Sylvia's absurd case, a shell in its chamber,
because when he needed to, he could not use it to help Julian.

But Julian had helped him.

THE GREEN HOLLY-BROWNFNG STUDIED Tlie PROBLEM. IT WA'S A QUESTION of
angle of approach and at the same time of impending obstacles-a classic,
in other words. It called for a peculiar combination of delicacy and
power, the perfect equipoise. It called also for firmness of decision.

It was not a time for equivocation, for appeasement, for lack of will.
The situation demanded his utmost.

"Five iron, I think, Davis."

"Yes sir. Excellent selection, Sir. I'd watch the elms on the left.
There's not much air among their leaves."

"Thank you, Davis," said Holly-Browning, taking the club. He laced his
fingers together about the grip and let the natural weight of the club
head pull the shaft down; it fell, with unerring accuracy, to its
absolute perfect placement behind the ball.

Holly-Browning paused, concentrating. He let a wave of power build and
build in his blood until it almost sang in his veins and he felt the
muscles ache and tremble and hunger for release. Yet still he held it,
feeling himself-- this was quite odd-sink utterly into the ball until at
last there was nothing, nothing at all in the universe but the white
dimpled sphere and the green concave of grass embracing it and his own
will, and in a sudden, fluid, Godlike whip of power and--odd
again-terror, almost, he coiled and unleashed a blow that mashed it to
smithereens. The contact was solid and shivered up his arms as the
stroke followed its own inclinations through and came to rest all the
way around his body.

At last he lifted his head to follow the straight, clean white flight of
the ball as it rushed to the green with just the right kiss of loft and
just the right pitch of power; it bounced on the fairway, bounced again,
and struck the green, rolling slower and slower, its energy decreasing
until at last it came to a halt about six feet from the flag.

"Pretty shot, sir," said Davis.

"Thank you, Davis," said Holly-Browning, handing back the club.

"Sir, may I say, it's an honor to see a man who knows how to play the
game."

"Thank you, Davis," said Holly-Browning.

It was a bonny bright day full of elms and summer under a lilac English
sky. Major Holly-Browning's spikes gripped the moist turf as he walked.

"I say, Holly-Browning, well-struck," C called out, not without some
bitterness, for his own second shot had come to rest a oood twenty-five
feet below the green. But that was as it had been and should be.

"Thank you, sir," said the major.

In the past, Holly-Browning, an excellent golfer, had held back when
playing with his service chief, out of respect for the protocols of
rank. It was how one rose, or so many believed. But not today.

"Well, Holly-Browning, I daresay you're playing well," said C, falling
into step beside him.

"I seem to be, for some reason, sir."

Ad "Good to get you out on the links after all that time hibernating in
the office. Now that awful business in Spain is finished and we are well
quit of our bad apple."

They reached C's ball. The old man took an eight iron from his boy and,
with a great, grunting effort, chopped a shot too high; it rolled way
beyond the cup, coming to rest on the apron at the far side of the
green, easily (given C's gracelessness) three putts' distance off.

"Damned bad luck, sir."

"Ah, bloody gone. Sometimes it's there, sometime's it's not."

"You're out, sir."

"Yes, I am."

C took the putter and went to his ball. After what seemed an
interminable period bent over studying a trajectory whose subtleties he
could never hope to master, he rose, addressed the ball, and, with a
show of concentration, patted at it weakly. The ball rose over a hump in
the green, picked up speed, and began to veer crazily off, finally
petering out still a good ten feet from the cup.

"Blast!" said C. "It's certainly not my day! Go on, putt out,
Holly-Browning."

Holly-Browning moved to his ball and crouched to study his own course to
the cup. Then, having swiftly settled on a strategy, he climbed back up
and faced the little white thing, crisp and immaculate as a carnation
before him. He tucked his elbows and locked his wrists and willed his
chin to sink, almost submerge, into his chest, and with the barest, most
imperceptible of motions, he tapped the ball toward the cup. It hugged
the contours of the green, seemed to roll and glide of its own volition,
and once almost died, but then picked up a final spurt on the downward
side of the green's last little bulge and dropped in with the sound of a
wooden spoon falling onto a wooden floor.

"Good heavens, you're playing well today, Holly Browning. Been taking
lessons?"

"Actually, I haven't touched a club since July of last year," said
Holly-Browning.

If C caught the reference to the beginning of the Spanish War and the
defector Lemontov's flight to the Americans, he didn't show it. He bent
and patted out another dud of a putt, which still left him a solid three
feet shy.

"Damn. My chap keeps telling me to keep my head locked but I always seem
to look up. What do you recommend, Holly-Browning? What's your secret?"

"Just hard work, sir. Practice, all that."

"Yes, indeed. By the way, James, I thought I ought to tell you. It seems
there may be a bit of a stink."

"Oh?"

"Oh, nothing really. It's that MI-5 bunch. They seem to have found out
all about it. I thought I was done with them."

"I thought in principle they agreed with our handling of the case, sir."

"It's not a question of that, old man. It's just that their
interrogators never got a crack at the inside part of Julian's head. Now
bloody Sir Vernon has his dander up.

A terrible bother."

Holly-Browning didn't say anything.

"They've put it out that it was a personal thing between you and Raines,
with poor Florry just the errand boy in the middle."

"That quite simplifies things, sir," said Holly Browning, stung at the
injustice of it all.

"I know that, Holly-Browning. But that's what these damned security
people are: simplifiers. Everything's black and white to them."

"Yes sir."

"And, I should tell you, there are those in our own house who think
Section V ought to leave the red ]ads alone and concentrate on the gray
lads. Jerry's the next big show, eh?"

"Yes sir, I suppose Jerry is."

They had reached the next tee. Birds sang, tulips bloomed, still ponds
reflected the sun's gold touch, and vivid butterflies hung in the light.
The sky was cobalt blue, a purity the bizarre English clime permits
rarely enough. Ahead, several argyle-clad figures in plus-fours and caps
putted out on a par three, 108 yards out.

"Damn this fellow Hitler. He really has confused the world, hasn't he?"

"Yes sir, he has."

C planted his ball on the tee, took his three wood, and addressed the
thing with a waggle of his rear end, knotting his fingers into a
confusion of sausages about the club.

"And that's why I'm placing you in charge of a key operation, James.
It's a big move, James."

Holly-Browning showed nothing on his face. He simply nodded.

"It's a big job, James. Take your wife and daughters out if it suits.
It'll get you away from Broadway. Most bracing change, I say. You shall
have Jamaica station.

Damn, I must say, I envy you. Jamaica!"

The bloody colonies! An island full of niggers and flowers!

C swung. The ball popped off the tee, bending oddly in the air, its
flight weirdly crippled, and sank itself in a trap with a puff of sand.

"Damn! Damn!" said C. "I simply wasn't meant to play this bloody game.
In any event, I suppose I'll have to boost your fellow Vane up to
Section V head. He's the right chap, don't you think?"

Holly-Browning shuddered at the idea of Vane as V (a).

"A splendid idea," he said.

"And I'll bring this young Sampson in to help him.

He'll be V (b), eh? He's a bright chap; he can handle London, don't you
think?"

"Yes sir," said Holly-Browning, addressing his ball.

"Yes. Very good, sir." He drew back and seemed to lose himself in the
rush of the stroke, and felt his four iron meet the ball with the
authority of an edict from Stalin. It rose, a pill, white and nearly
invisible against the bright sky, and then fell as if dropped from the
Almighty Himself It landed square on the green perhaps two feet above
the pin and began to describe a spin-crazed curlicue over the short
grass in the general vicinity of the ... "Good Christ," said C, "it went
in! Holly-Browning, it went in the bloody hole."

"Yes, yes, it did, didn't it, sir?" said Holly-Browning, handing his
club to Davis.

THE HANGAR THE OLD MAN GREW STRONGER WITH REMARKABLE SWIFTNESS and was
well enough to travel within seven days.

The speed of the recovery stunned the British-educated doctor. Pavel
Romanov, however, something of a scholar of the lives and times of
Emmanuel Ivanovich Levitsky, was not particularly amazed; he knew the
old agent to be a man of rare resilience and will.

Yet Levitsky still did not talk.

One evening, they drove him by ambulance to the Barcelona airport well
after midnight and took him to a special, isolated hangar on the far
outskirts of the place, hundreds of meters from the terminal. He was
amazed at the activity at the obscure locality; there were armed guards
everywhere, Soviet Black Sea Marines with German machine pistols.

Inside the building, he sat ramrod stiff in a wheelchair, a blanket
drawn about him, a pair of sunglasses shielding his damaged eye from the
harsh light. He could hardly move, what with his shoulders locked in the
plaster, but he could still make out the airplane. It was a giant
Tupolev TB-3, a four-engine bomber whose fuselage had the odd appearance
of having been mounted on its sturdy wings upside down and whose landing
gear was so primitive it looked like gigantic bicycle tires.

"A big aircraft," said Romanov, laughing. "To accommodate both our
egos."

Romanov felt loquacious.

"It's a shame you can't talk, old man. We could have had some wonderful
conversations. I shall have to do the talking for both of us. Did you
know this airplane has been specially modified, with fuel tanks added
under the wings and through the fuselage. It's our only bird that can
make the straight flight from Barcelona to Sebastopol without refueling.
It's taken us a long time to get it ready for tonight."

He looked into the old man's eye for a hint of curiosity, and convinced
himself that he found it.

"You're wondering if you are so important a cargo?" he asked. "Well,
it's not quite all for you, old man."

Listening exhausted Levitsky. He sat back and settled into his perpetual
semidarkness and his silence. With an act of will, he restrained himself
from his memories, which sometimes threatened to consume him these dark
days. He had ordered himself not to think. To think was to yield to
regret, to the infinite allure of what might have been, in another
world. Be strong, old one, he told him self It is almost over.

They seemed to be taking their time on the plane. One would think they
could handle these arrangements with a good deal more precision. He was
growing impatient.

Perhaps the ground staff were all Spaniards, taken to moving slowly and
without It then occurred to him that the mechanics whose vague shapes he
had been able to discern scurrying over the vaster shape of the
grotesque airplane had vanished.

It was strangely silent. Then he heard the arrival of a car, some
far-off mutter, and with that, Pavel Romanov dipped behind him, pivoted
him, and began to push him across the bumpy tan-nac. He could smell
petrol and oil as they moved through the hangar, but in time they
arrived in a kind of smaller room off the larger one. Pavel opened the
door, dropped back, and pushed him through.

It was a small place, tight as a coffin, and pitch dark. Levitsky could
sense the close press of the tin walls. Pavel did not turn on the light.

"You have fifteen minutes," Pavel said. "And then we leave."

Levitsky listened to his jaunty footsteps snapping away; the door
closed, somehow damping down the air.

Levitsky waited and after a bit made out the sound of breathing.

"Old man." The whisper reached him from across the room and across the
years. "God, what have they done to you? They've treated you so
terribly."

Levitsky could say nothing.

"I had to come. I had to see you. Once more ... before-"

He let it I apse into silence, and just stared in wonder at the old man.

"You appear disappointed in me, old man. You sense my doubt." He stared
intently at the old mute. "I know what you're thinking. I must remember
I'm working for the future. I've been blessed enough, with that chance.

It's enough to live for. And to die for. One should not look twice at an
offer of enrollment in an elite force. One should not hesitate."

Levitsky could feel the young man's gaze and adoration upon him: his
ardor and his willingness to learn. He remembered him at Cambridge:
young, bright, callow, but incredibly eager.

He felt the young man rise and come over in the darkness. He felt the
warmth of his body, his closeness. The young man bent and touched his
hand. "The sacrifices you made. For me."

He swallowed.

"When they were so close ... I knew you'd save me. You foresaw that one
day they'd be close. You knew that rumors, suggestions, hints, leaks,
always get out, even from Moscow, and there would come a time when even
the British would begin to see through their illusions and begin to
suspect an agent in their midst.

"And so you recruited two agents. Deep and shallow.

Or no. No, I see it now." He spoke more quickly, with the excitement of
a mathematician suddenly understanding more subtlety of calculus that
had been beyond him for years. "Julian was not your agent. He was your
lover but never your agent. As I am your agent but never your lover.
Because you knew that anyone who investigated Cambridge in the year 1931
would uncover you. And so you would have to lead them to Julian and not
me."

Levitsky stared passionately at the boy with his good eye.

The boy did not seem to be able to stop talking because he would never
talk of it again: it was the pleasure of explaining that he had denied
himself and would go on denying himself for years.

"And when you learned that Lemontov had gone and the British and the
Americans knew, it was essential that you confirm for them their
suspicion that Julian was i man you had recruited."

"And they sent poor Florry. And you crossed hell reach Julian in
Florry's presence. And Flon-y inform them of his guilt. Florr-y
validated their own illusions I them. And then you made certain that
Julian would d forever sealed off from their interrogations, fore-v
beyond their reach. The case is closed. Forever. T British have their
spy and I have my future."

The young man paused, as if to breathe.

"They are pleased now," he said. "I'm due back London shortly. I'm going
into their service full time. It good, I think, to enter before the war
with Hitler. The sc vice will swell, and the ones on the inside will
rise."

The door opened.

"Almost time," called Pavel Romanov.

The young man came closer and spoke in a whisper.

"I've been reporting to them from Spain. Through a sp, cial GRU link via
Amsterdam. For the Suppression, ti Arrests. It was m ' v information
that enabled them to But he halted, as if coming at last to the thing
that trouble him most.

"It's not only that ,. Do you know what else they've had me do? Do you
know why I'm here in Spain? For gol( Ivanch. For simple gold."

Levitsky stared at him.

"They had me rent a villa and one night a truck cam by with a hundred
crates. And then another one an another one. I've been the richest man
in the world Romanov said they were afraid to move it by sea wit the
submarines and afraid to guard it because th Spaniards might change
their mind and want it bac@ So they hid it. In my villa. All these
months, my rea job has been to babysit gold, until an airplane could b,
modified. Now they can fly it out, nonstop, over a few nights."

Levitsky said nothing.

"It's just like the West, Ivanch. It's for treasure, for loot. There's
no difference. I hate it."

"Shbh!" Levitsky hissed, grabbing his hand tightly.

"I hate it," the boy said. And then David Harold Allen Sampson began to
weep.

"You must control yourself," said Levitsky hoarsely.

"You must pay the price. You must sacrifice. It is not enough to be
willing to die for your beliefs. That's a fool's sacrifice. You must be
willing to kill for them, too.

To free the world of its Cossacks, you must be willing to spill blood
now, do you understand? I sacrificed my brother. I sacrificed my lover.
I sacrificed the man who saved my life. I sacrificed myself. It's the
process of history, comrade."

He grabbed the boy and pulled his head close and kissed him on the lips.

"Time," called Pavel Romanov.

"You must reach the back rank," said Levitsky, "and give the innocent
dead their due."

The door opened and he could hear Pavel approach.

The boy whispered a last statement.

"I no longer believe in it, Emmanuel Ivanovich Levitsky, in any of it,
revolutions, politics, history. It's all just murder and theft. But I
have found a new faith to sustain me over the years. I believe in you. I
love you."

The boy slipped away into the darkness.

Pavel rolled the wheelchair across the hangar toward the aircraft,
chatting idiotically.

"I hope that wasn't too hard on you, old man. He quite insisted. What a
hero that one is. You recruited well, old fox. You recruited quality.
GRU understands, even if Koba and NKVD do not," said Pavel. "We will
sacrifice anything to save him, even you, old hero. For that young man
is the future."

And I am the past, thought the Devil Himself, as they passed under the
shadow of the great wing.

A WALK IN THE PARK IN THE END, THE GENDARMERIE CARED LESS FOR THE BODY
than the pistol. Florry explained--endiessly-that it had been his
assailant's, that he had never seen it before he was set upon and it was
just the sheerest luck that he'd managed to get hold of it in the
scuffle, He was detained three nights in Limoges, the next city along
the line after the incident, while they tried to figure out what to do
with him and while Sylvia recovered in hospital. He was ultimately
levied a stiff fine by a skeptical prefecture and admonished to leave
the province swiftly, which he proposed to do as soon as Sylvia could
travel.

As for the body of the mysterious assailant, its papers proved false and
nobody would claim it and nobody could explain it. Florry offered no
precise opinions as to who this person had been: a crazed thief,
perhaps, clearly someone with dreadful mental difficulties. The body was
disposed of in a pauper's field without ceremony by an undertaker and
his teenage assistant. Its effects including the grip, which, unknown to
them all, contained a good deal of money as well as further false
papers-simply disappeared in the uncaring clumsiness of the French rail
system.

Sylvia kept telling Florty to go on and that she would catch up to him
in Paris, but he insisted on staying. When her swelling had finally gone
down, and she was released from the hospital, he suggested they go for a
walk in the park. He had a question, he said, and he had to ask it, he
had to know the answer.

It was by this time July, a gloriously beautiful day, not as hot as the
French Julys can be but sunny and bold. No country seems more alive in
the sunlight than France, and they spent that afternoon walking around
in a beautiful park until at last they came to a bench hard by a pond in
a glade of poplars. The air was full of dust and light and the birds
were singing.

"God, it's lovely here," said Sylvia.

"Sylvia, there's something I have to ask you."

Sylvia sighed.

"I must say, I knew this was coming. I'm afraid I know what you're going
to say, Robert. That you love me. That you want to marry me. That-"

She turned to him. "Robert," she said, "you're an awfully fine fellow.
You saved my life. Twice, in fact.

But-"

"Actually, Sylvia," he said, "the question I had was something else: how
long have you been working for Major Holly-Browning?"

She missed a beat, then smiled.

"Robert, I'm afraid I haven't-"

He interrupted her. "You really are a little slut, aren't you, darting?
The major's whore, sent to make sure poor Florry does his dirty deed.
You never cared for me, except as a tool, as someone to be used. Give
the old bastard credit, he saw my weaknesses. lie knew how vulnerable
I'd be to a sweet-faced tart who kept telling me what an impressive chap
I was, who'd give me a bloody toss between the sheets. It was quite a
performance, darling, especially the way you suddenly veered toward
Julian and made me crazy with jealousy and made the job everybody so
wanted done seem feasible.

God, you deserve some kind of award."

"Robert, 1--"

"You must have thought it quite comical when I confessed I was a
"British agent.' You must have felt the contempt a professional feels
for a feckless, hapless amateur with delusions of grandeur. But it
finally penetrated, Sylvia. Do you know where you went wrong, old girl?

The bloody apartment. Sampson had a villa, for some damned reason. I
recall him telling me. That wasn't his place we went to, it was yours.
The major had it set up to get you out, not me. That's how they had your
picture for the passport. Yes, you were the major's little secret weapon
eh?"

"Robert, stop. You're all wrong, it's-"

"You pathetic little quim. It must have been hard, Sylvia, hanging
around that dangerous city that week, waiting. But you weren't waiting
for me, were you? You were waiting for word on Julian's death. You had
to know. That was the last part of your job, to make certain the poor
bastard was dead."

She stared stonily out across the pond. The terrible thing was that even
now she looked beautiful to him. He wished he could hold her to him and
make real his last illusion: that a better world could be theirs.

"Then you were too bloody good on the way out! You had it all figured.
You'd gone over the route, you knew how to handle everything. You are
something, Sylvia, I must say, you are a piece of work."

She turned back, eyes gray green, face tight and beautiful. She smelled
so wonderful.

"I don't work for your major, Robert," she said. "I swear to God I
don't." She took a deep breath. "It's what's called MI-5, actually," she
said. "Security Service. We go after traitors, Robert. That's our job.
Yes, I spied on you, because I thought you were my country's enemy. That
is the truth. Without illusions and, damn you, without apologies."

"Poor Julian. He thought we were both his friends. With friends like us,
the poor sot hardly needed enemies."

"He was a traitor, Robert. You reported so yourself in Tristram Shandy."

"I was wrong. I leaped to a conclusion. I made a mistake."

"No, you weren't wrong. No matter how brave he was at that bridge and
how he chummed up to you, he was a Russian agent. No matter what he told
you, the truth was, he was working for the Russians. He was a spy,
Robert.

He was the enemy. And you wouldn't have had the guts to deal with him if
I hadn't played my little game. Yes, Robert, I made you a killer. You
killed Julian because I made you. Because it was the right thing. You
couldn't see your duty, but I saw mine."

"You and all the rest of the voodoo boys, you're wrong. About Julian.
About everything. Julian was the only one that was right. He knew. In
the end, it was just a game."

"Stop it, Robert. You're still an innocent."

"Sylvia," he said. "You are my last illusion, and my most painful one.
God, you're a cold bitch."

"Somebody has to be, darling," she said, turning back to the water, "so
that the silly fools like you can write your silly books and feel as if
you've done something for your country. It's the Sylvia Lillifords and
the Vernon Kelis and the MI-5s that make the world safe for the fools
like you, Robert. You really are the most perfect ass I've ever met."

But he could see that she was crying.

"Good-bye, darling."

"No, don't you leave, you bastard," she spat at him.

"I'll tell it all. I went to Spain to get them. To get them all, all
those clever, bright pretty young people in the Hotel Falcon who think
revolution is so beautiful and communism is a new religion. Yes, I got
them all, by name and by number, and it all goes back to the MI-5 files.
They're dead in England, and they don't know it.

And I'll get you, Robert, I will. You think you're going to write a book
about all this, Robert? Well, we'll stop you. With Official Secrets,
we'll close you down. You'll never publish anything, Robert. You're
done, before you've even begun, God damn you, you're just like them.
Soft, a dreamer, ready to piss on your inheritance."

Florry looked at her, and realized how full of hate she was, how she was
nothing, in the end, except a kind of terrible hate.

"You've made me a clever boy, Sylvia. You've taught me some very
interesting lessons about the future. And I don't think you'll stop me
writing what I know. The funny thing is, darling, I still love you."

He smiled, then stood up and walked away, wondering if it would ever
stop hurting.

Florry went back to England and presented Julian's mother with the ring.
The old lady was still beautiful and she lived in a glorious town house
all hung with pictures of the Raines men down through the ages, but the
thing did not seem to mean much to her. She simply put it on the table
and did not look at it again. She did not appear to have been crying
much, but then weeks had passed since the news.

"Did my son die well, Mr. Florry?" she asked.

"Yes," ;aid Flony.

"I thought he might have. It's a gift the Raines men all seem to have,"
she said. "They are perfect rotters in life, but ' ey die well. It was
true of his father. Would you care for some tea?"

"No ma'am. I'd best be going."

"Do you know, they're saying awful things about my son. That he was a
traitor. Have you heard these stories?"

"Yes, I've heard the stories. They're untrue. No man knows that better
than I."

"Good. Well, if you know that, it's a start, one supposes. Are you sure
you won't stay?"

"No, thank you."

"Good-bye, Mr. Florry."

"Good-bye, Lady Cecilia."

And then she added, "Tell the truth, won't you?"

"I shall try," he said.

"You do know what the truth is, don't you, Mr. Florry?"

"I think I do, yes," Florry said.

"Incidentally, they sent me something from Spain. it was some poetry
that Julian was working on before be died. I can't think why. I always
hated Julian's poetry, and this last I can't begin to understand. I
believe the work was called"Pons.' I'd like you to have it."

"Well, I really-"

"Please, Mr. Florry. I insist. You gave me the silly ring, now let me
give you his last verse, all right?"

Florry waited patiently until the old lady returned, and took the
fooiscap. Yes, come to think of it, he'd seen Julian scribbling away in
their little bunker in the trenches.

He thanked her, took it, and left.

Only later, in his little bed-sitting room, did he look at it.

To the trenches outside Huesca, We came av comrades but stayed as
lovers.

Ourfingersfroze, our rifles jammed, And when we died, were doubly
damned, for History hadpassed to others.

It had no lesson, or only one: that the test was ours and had begun.