Night Soldiers

Khristo caught Lubin’s wrist and forced his arm down. Lubin turned and seemed to be looking at him but his eyes were sightless with excitement. “Sublieutenant Lubin,” Khristo said, emphasizing the rank, emphasizing that there was order, even here, “give me your weapon, please.”

Lubin opened his mouth to speak and the laugh poured out again. With difficulty he controlled it, shutting his eyes.

“Now,” Khristo said.

“I cannot, Lieutenant.”

They both looked down at the hand, which was frozen shut on the pistol. Khristo took hold of Lubin’s chubby fingers and forced them open, one at a time. From the back of the house came the sound of splintering wood as the SIM men ripped the door apart. Lying on the floor, the old man pointed at Lubin. There was red foam on his lips. “You will walk in blackness,” he whispered. “Forever and forever. I curse you. I curse you.” Lubin giggled and Khristo smacked him on the ear, which turned bright red. The SIM man with the pitted face came downstairs, a baby in the crook of one arm. His other hand towed a woman along by the hair. “This one was upstairs,” he explained, “trying to throw her baby out the window.”

After some confusion, they got everybody sitting on the floor of what had once been the reception area of the embassy. Ilya managed a count. The SIM men had things to say in a Spanish that none of the four NKVD could understand, but the people sitting on the floor turned gray and lifeless. They sent Lubin back to the Citroen, one of his fingers swollen to double its size, apparently broken by Khristo. Finally, a moving van rolled up to the back door and the SIM took charge of their prisoners.

Driving back to Gaylord’s Hotel, Ilya informed them that Operation SANCTUARY would continue, though it would be more efficient than it had been that morning. All over Madrid, Nationalist supporters and Falangists were hiding out in embassies, under diplomatic protection. So, now that they’d cleaned out the first group of refugees from an abandoned embassy, they were going to staff it with Soviet intelligence officers playing the part of Finnish diplomats. Taking the enemy into custody would be a lot cleaner and simpler that way. The SIM, he continued, had a similar operation going at the southern edge of the city: a tunnel, which supposedly traveled belowground all the way to Nationalist lines, in fact went only a few hundred yards, then surfaced in the midst of a courtyard where a gang of SIM operatives was waiting. Word was now being spread among the Falangist cells that their members had been betrayed to the enemy, they should flee to the Finnish embassy, where they’d be protected, or use the tunnel that reached the Nationalist lines.

The shift in policy made sense to Khristo. Using Andres against the Falange was a long-term operation. The new approach was clearly intended to accelerate and intensify the covert effort against the enemy inside the city. Mola’s four columns were sharpening the pressure on Madrid; SANCTUARY was clearly an NKVD response. When Yaschyeritsa had lifted the deadline for the effort against the Farmacia Cortes group, Khristo’s relief had been tempered by a nagging anxiety: perhaps they were, for their own reasons, maneuvering him. Now, he felt, he could relax. He hoped silently that they did not ask him to serve as a Finnish diplomat-he didn’t think he had the stomach for it. He didn’t look like a Finn, he told himself, he was dark, not fair.

Buenas noches, mis amigos. Buenas noches, todos los peleadores bravos que puedan oir ma voz. Y buenas noches, Madrid. Hay veinte horas, y la hora para el jazz hot …

The young woman played with the radio until music flowed into the little room below the eaves. Andres said, “It is the singer Bessie Smith. You will like it.” Khristo didn’t exactly like it, it made him sad. The voice of a blues singer, stark, with only a piano, bass and drums to fill in the spaces, reached through the crackle of the nighttime static and touched his heart. He could not understand the words, but the sorrow of it was all too clear. Enough grief for one day, he thought. The nasty scene at the Finnish embassy refused to leave his mind, and he and Andres had decided to drown their war in a bottle of Spanish gin.

They’d split the cost of the bottle and taken it back to Andres’s garret at 9 Calle de Victoria. For him to be there, with Andres and his American girlfriend and the German woman called Renata, was very much against the rules. But he was tired of the rules. He was tired of a lot of things. He stared at the bottle, which had a Spanish matador on the label, his expression rigid with pride of manhood, indifference in the face of death. For Khristo, the more he drank the gin, the less he liked the matador.

Andres’s girlfriend was called Faye-it was her idea to play a card game called cribbage. The four of them sat around a small table with a pegboard at the center and tried to make their cards add up to thirty-one. Such achievements were rewarded by the advance of a small stick in the pegboard. He had no idea if he was winning or losing-he did know that the smarmy matador on the gin bottle had nearly destroyed what little mathematical ability he possessed. Renata, his partner, looked at him in despair from time to time.

The four of them spoke English as they played-it turned out to be the only language they had in common other than Spanish, which they had to work at all day long. The American girl had already stifled a giggle at his peculiar diction and he’d looked up sharply, only to be signaled by Andres that no discourtesy had been intended. She certainly was different. Had caught him staring at her at one point and had stared right back. God save her, he thought, from ever visiting Bulgaria, where such looks had meanings he was sure she didn’t intend. Did she? No.

“I went to University City today,” she said casually.

For a moment, the game stopped dead. There was heavy fighting in the university area, where one of Mola’s Moorish columns had breached the city’s defenses. The Army of Africa, Franco’s original striking force, had already captured the bus and tram terminals in the suburbs.

“What?” Andres looked at her with horror.

“You heard me.”

“Perhaps you want to be killed. La Pasionaria will announce it on the streets-a courageous death, our American sister, no pasaran. “

“Well, they asked me to go at work. So I went.”

“Why? Who asked you?”

“A woman at work was pregnant, the baby started coming early and the labor was very bad. So they sent me to bring back the husband, who was holding the College of Agriculture.”

“What a war,” Renata said.

“I met a group of British machine-gunners-I’m playing the jack of clubs-and they told me the Moors have been holding the College of Medicine for several days.”

“Really?” Renata said. “That I had not heard.”

“It’s true.”

Renata put a five down on the jack, and moved their peg.

“This fellow, an Oxford man, by the way, told me the Poles in the Dabrowsky Brigade won it back for an afternoon. A shambles, they said. The Moors built fires in the hallways and roasted the laboratory animals on their bayonets and ate them. Now they’ll all get rare diseases. The Poles chased them out by putting hand grenades on the elevators and sending them up to the floor they were holding.”

Khristo shook his head in disbelief. “What a war.” He echoed Renata, knowing the phrase must be correct.

Faye smiled grimly. “Fifth floor,” she said. “Travel accessories, kitchenware, hand grenades.”

“What is?” Khristo asked.

“Oh, you know. Department store elevators.”

“Ah,” he said, feigning knowledge.

It was his turn to play. He tried to concentrate, but the cards in his hand made no particular sense, a random collection of numbers and pictures. From across the table, Renata said, “Forward, comrade. And we shall gain a final victory.” He looked up from his cards, but her smile was gentle and encouraging. The telephone rang, the jingling of a tiny bell in two short bursts. All four reacted to the sound. It rang again. Andres moved toward the corner, where it was mounted on the wall.

He picked up the receiver and said, “Si?” Listened for several seconds, then said, “Momentito, por favor.” Left the handset dangling from its cord and walked over to Khristo and said quietly, in Russian, “Someone wishes to speak with you.”

Khristo carefully laid his cards face down on the table. A tiny muscle below his eye began to run like a motor. Nobody, nobody, knew he was there. He searched Andres’s face for a sign but the man’s expression had gone cold. In that moment, they silently accused each other of betrayal. Then Khristo pushed