Tapestry of Spies Part 12

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?"

"Everybody is observed. The NKVD is everywhere, just like the SIM."

"They are the same, one supposes."

"I am not observed regularly regularly. I've some freedom."

"All right. 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 right 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. "Ivanch, it's wonderful that you're here."

The fat man smiled. "And I want you to know, whatever you do. Whatever Whatever. It's all right. Do what you must. Do you understand?"

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 counterplan 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 up it, toward the Plaza de Catalunya. Oh, the cafes were 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 ma.s.ses 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed 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. G.o.d: 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?" 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.

"Numero, por favor?"

"Policia," he said into the speaker. he said into the speaker.

"Gracias," came the reply; there were clicks and buzzes and then another voice arrived. came the reply; there were clicks and buzzes and then another voice arrived.

"Policia! Viva la Revolucion!"

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.

"h.e.l.lo. Who is this?"

"Never mind, who is this?"

"I ask the questions, comrade." 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 a.s.sistant secretary in the Maritime Commission. One Igenko. But he's a fat c.o.c.ksucking 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 loverboy 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 b.u.t.t-f.u.c.kers 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 a.s.s stuck out like a girl's. His face was milky and unshaven.

"He was exceedingly distracted today, comrade commissar," 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 a.s.sured. 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 h.e.l.l if the rabbit bolts. Why, in Moscow-"

"If he bolts, I'll catch him and snap his legs," said Lenny Mink, and n.o.body 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 G.o.d'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.

"Eh, senor?" 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 cafe for a while.

"You take the counter," said Lenny, and Ugarte moved past him, throwing on an ap.r.o.n 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 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?" Russki?"

"Da. Si," said Levitsky. said Levitsky. "De Madrid, no? "De Madrid, no? Comrade Glasanov?" Comrade Glasanov?"