Tapestry of Spies Part 32

"Let's go, old man," he commanded.

But Florry, driving slowly by, watching the force a.s.semble 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 HUESCA 44 KM HUESCA 44 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.

"G.o.d, 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 a.s.sistants 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 Florry 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 emba.s.sy staff to help me was rather hurriedly pressed into service."

"Jawohl," barked Florry earnestly. barked Florry earnestly.

"I've got to get to that d.a.m.ned 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 d.a.m.ned 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."

"Yessir."

"And keep your d.a.m.ned eyes open, Von Paupel. We've received word saboteurs are about, English dynamiters. It seems the reds have fifth columnists also."

"Jawohl, Herr Colonel. Sieg h 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 cafe-"

"It was your b.l.o.o.d.y Russian chum who-"

"HE WOULDN'T!" Julian screamed. Florry was stunned at the pa.s.sion. "He's above that, don't you see? He's a real real artist, not a poseur like me. I don't want to hear another b.l.o.o.d.y word." artist, not a poseur like me. I don't want to hear another b.l.o.o.d.y word."

They drove on in silence. Florry could hear Julian breathing heavily in the back seat.

"He's different different, don't you see?" said Julian. "All this is squalid and base. Politics, compromise, bootlicking: it's all dung. Brodsky wouldn't-"

"When I knew him he was a b.l.o.o.d.y 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, b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, we shan'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.

31.

THE SUPPRESSION.

At 0600 ON THE MORNING OF JUNE 16, TWO ARMORED 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 ornate facade was less than thirty meters. Two more armored 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. 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 ornate facade was less than thirty meters. Two more armored 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 gla.s.sware in the Cafe Moka, ripping 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 a.s.sault 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. Torn 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.

"f.u.c.k you, chum," said the man, in a heavy c.o.c.kney.

"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."

"f.u.c.k off, you b.l.o.o.d.y sot."

Lenny laughed.

"Look, you better help me. You're in a s.h.i.tload of trouble."

The man spat at him.

Lenny laughed.

"You a soldier boy, huh? Nice suntan. Spend a lot of time in the trenches. Look, tell me what I want, okay?"

"b.u.g.g.e.r off, you b.l.o.o.d.y sc.u.m," 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 a.r.s.enal 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 La Batalle, the banned POUM newspaper whose physical plant was still a gathering place for dissidents; the offices of The Spanish Revolution 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 acc.u.mulated rapidly and were the princ.i.p.al 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 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 ma.s.s 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 internationals, 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, how about a nice f.u.c.k?" the tough young men would call.

"f.u.c.k your face. Or f.u.c.k your cow saint, La Pa.s.sionaria," the women would call back through the wire.

"Fascist c.u.n.ts," the soldiers chimed merrily, "can't wait to screw Moors and n.a.z.is."

"I'd sleep with ten Moors and ten n.a.z.is before I'd sleep with sc.u.m 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 coa.r.s.eness 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 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds see your tears."

Hands all around touched her. She was smothered in a kind of love that had been transformed radically from the generally 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 pale, 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 charmlessly, showing bad teeth. "You travel on a British pa.s.sport?"

"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-"