“Soon they were in business. They found a family that made strong gloves from uncured hides to sell to the Greek dockworkers, and bought the business from them. They prospered. Avram went to school, then to university in Istanbul, later in Athens. He became a draftsman and an engineer. Then, in 1922, it happened again. The Greek-Turkish war, and Smyrna was burned to the ground. Almost the entire Greek population was massacred. Avram rushed home from Athens, where he had a job as a clerk in the office of the civil engineer. But he could not find his mother. She was gone. The house was gone. There was nothing. In despair, he returned to Athens.
“He was a lonely young man. He did his work and lived in a room. One day, he went to a Communist party meeting-it was a way to meet people. In time, he discovered he had a new family, a family that loved and sheltered him but, most important, a family that did not suffer injustice meekly. At party direction, he took a new job, working for a British company contracted to improve the water system in Baku. At this time, Baku was a British enclave protected by Czech mercenaries and White Guards-an imperialist island in a sea of revolution. The British could not resist Avram-his softness, apparent softness, appealed to the bullying side of their nature. He rose within the firm, and reported to the Cheka. There was, on his part, never a moment of hesitation. Spying came to him as making love comes to other men. It is his belief, in fact, that his father may have had relations with the Okhrana, the czar’s intelligence service, though his murder by the Turks was haphazard-simply one act in a village slaughter. But Avram knew them, whether they were Turkish Aghas or British officers, he always understood how they worked, where their vulnerabilities lay. Thus he was able to penetrate the Falange-simply by saying the right things to the right people, being patient, waiting for them to come to him. And thus he will find his way among the Germans. That is, if we do not kill him first.”
At first, Khristo did not entirely trust his voice. All through the history of Roubenis there were edges that cut sharply against his own life. He felt ambushed, as though the story had come out of the night and attacked him. There were people in Vidin who had lived under Ottoman rule-and it was something they simply did not speak of. And he had seen his brother die under the boots of the fascists. Poor Nikko. Poor sad, stupid Nikko and his big lip that called the world’s bluff. And when the dirty work was done, and the blood long since washed into the earth, both he and Roubenis found themselves in the service of Russia, and that was a locked room-once you were inside. Back in Moscow they had quite a taste for suffering. How well they understood it, used it, made great profit of it. Unconsciously his left hand moved from the steering wheel and traced the outline of the white pawn in his pocket. Poor Ozunov, he thought, this piece of painted wood perhaps his only estate, all that remained of his existence.
Finally, Khristo rose to the baits Sascha had strung for him all day long: “Why on earth would
Sascha laughed, a shrill, violent laugh. “God in heaven cover your ears and hear no more of this!” he cried out. “This Bulgarian dolt has been with us two years and more, yet he has seen nothing, heard nothing, learned nothing. He still thinks-this trusting child-there must be
They came to the main road, two lanes wide, that ran along the floor of the valley between the railroad tracks and the river, and turned east toward Tarragona. Khristo drove fast; the hard-sprung Citroen bounced over potholes and cracks, sometimes edging right when a car or truck came toward them. Little towns on their way were dark, though sometimes a cantina was open, light spilling from its windows onto the cobbled streets. The road veered and cornered in the towns, and Khristo downshifted aggressively, making the engine race and sing, making car music in the night. Outside Ribarroja de Ebro, there were dancing lights spread out before them and the red glow of a fire, and Khristo slowed. Then, in the middle of a long curve, a man appeared on the road, and Khristo rolled to a stop when he was clearly in the beams of the headlights.
From Sascha’s side of the car came the little popping sound made by disengaging the button and grommet that held a holster flap in place. “Just let him come,” Sascha said, fully awake and not at all drunk.
But the man stayed where he was, swaying back and forth, his palms held toward them in the universal stop command. The more Khristo stared at him, the less sense he made. He wore a khaki uniform, in the style of Republican officers yet not the same, and he had no insignia at all. His feet and lower legs were wrapped in dirty white bandages that threatened to unravel and his face was webbed with dried trails of blood that seemed to have come from a wound just above the hairline.
“Sorry, gents,” he called out, “there’s no way through.”
Khristo put his head outside the window to see better. “English?” he asked.
“American,” the man said, squinting in the light.
“What is the matter?” Khristo asked. Phrases from the tattered book came back to him.
“There’s bodies and railroad cars all to hell up there. Just before dusk, the Nazis bombed a train. Hit the engine and we went off the tracks.” He pointed at his bandaged feet and said, “Hospital train.”
“What is it?” Sascha said in Russian. “He said a bomb?”
“A hospital train was blown up.”
“Ah. That explains the bandages. He is American?”
“Yes. He must be with the International Brigade. Are we supposed to talk to them?”
“No, but we are here.”
The man hobbled over to Khristo’s window. “You’re Russians?”
“Yes,” Khristo answered.
“And you speak English?”
“A little, yes.”
He smiled. By the light of the headlamps Khristo could see that his eyes were gray and his face was young and pleasant. “My name is Robert King,” he said and stuck out a hand. Khristo shook it, reaching over the edge of the rolled-down window.
“How do you,” Khristo said. “I am Captain Markov.” He had, like all NKVD officers in Spain, a nominal cover supported by one or two documents, a nom de guerre meant only for superficial deception.
“Russians. I’ve met Italians and Germans and Danes and a Hungarian, but you’re my first Russians.”
“Do you need aid?” Khristo pointed at King’s forehead.
The man touched the place, winced, looked at his fingers. “No. Seems to have clotted up. But if you want to help, move on ahead. Go slow, it’s pretty bad up there.”
“What does he want?” Sascha asked.
“They need help.”
“Drive slowly.”
As they moved forward, King stepped aside and saluted with a clenched fist and a smile. Khristo returned both.
Sascha took a small notebook and a stub of pencil from the glove compartment. “He said his name was King?”
“Yes. K-i-n-g I think, like the ruler of Britain.”
“Ah, of course. I remember. And his patronymic?”
“Richard.”
Sascha paused in his writing. “You’re sure that’s it?” “Yes, I’m sure,” Khristo said.
They worked until dawn. It was hard, dirty work, illuminated by torches and flashlights, amid the drifting smoke of small field fires started by the bombing and a ground mist that rose like steam from the river and its banks and blew gently across the road where they labored.
To avoid the consequences of the periodic flooding of the Ebro, the builders of the railroad had designed an earthen ridge for the tracks. The embankment wasn’t very high, perhaps eight feet, but it had added to the velocity of the plunging train and sent the engine and half the cars down onto the road in a tangle of splintered wood and bent iron.
At the start of the bombing run, the train’s engineer had two choices: stop the train and have everybody run for the fields or, on the theory that a target in motion is harder to hit, give it full throttle. The engineer had taken the second option-from pure instinct for flight, no doubt-and had been wrong. He’d had no way of knowing that motion in a train is completely predictable, and even less could he have been aware of how moving trains excite bomber pilots, who usually can see little but a column of smoke for their efforts.
