Tapestry of Spies

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 Gruenwald.

* * *

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; he 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 ist 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 port 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 ill-fitting 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 it 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.

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