Tapestry of Spies

“Yes,” said David Harold Allen Sampson, “yes, I suppose you are Florry, even if you don’t have the item.”

Sampson turned out to be a youngish, gray chap with flat eyes and a vaguely chilly manner, though handsome in a certain pampered way. He had a toneless, measured BBC announcer’s voice and when he talked he tended to look away, into space, as if fixed on the stars. He looked as if he’d seen nearly everything there was to see in the world, even if he was only thirty.

“I say, Sampson, with the ship sinking and people dying all about, one would hardly have headed down to one’s cabin to dig up Tristram Shandy.”

“It’s your rudeness that convinces me. Only Eton could teach it and the bloody Bolshies haven’t got good enough yet to turn out bogus Etonians. Yes, I suppose I must believe you are Florry.”

He took a sip of his whiskey. They sat on hard chairs at a marbletopped table in the dark and smoky interior of the Cafe de las Ramblas, an old-fashioned place of high Mediterranean style much favored by the English press in the wearying heat of the afternoon when the Spaniards laid aside their furious revolution for the age-old custom of siesta.

“And now you propose to go off to the front. As a common soldier, no less. God, Florry, one would think after that awful experience with that damned boat, you’d want nothing but two weeks in hospital.”

“That’s not important. What’s important is Julian.”

“Good heavens, they didn’t tell me you were cut of such heroic stuff,” Sampson said, manfully restraining his excess enthusiasm.

“I simply want to get the business over.”

“I shall so inform them. We shall see what they say.”

“I certainly am not going to wait about,” said Florry, “for the major and his fruity assistant to make up their minds. I’m going to the Lenin barracks first thing tomorrow. Is that understood?”

“Florry, you needn’t be bloody shirty in this matter.”

“You see, I’m anxious to be on with it. Do you know why?”

“I suppose I cannot prevent you from telling me.”

“Because I am sick of the whole thing. I want to do what must be done and get on with it.”

“Good,” Sampson said. “You should know that we believe that Julian’s signup is another step in the proof, so to speak. Another whiskey? Boy! Good heavens, I’m supposed to call him ‘comrade,’ as if he’s an old school chum. Comrade! Another round, please.”

The sounds of gaiety had suddenly begun to pick up from the out-of-doors. Florry could hear a snatch of music, the rush of many voices. The afternoon sing had begun.

Arise, ye prisoners of starvation
Arise, ye wretched of the earth
For Justice thunders condemnation
A better world’s in birth.

“Wonderful sentiments, eh?” said Sampson, with his tight, prim, fishy smile. “It’s a pity they go about murdering chaps, isn’t it?”

“Get on with it, Sampson. The game isn’t amusing anymore.”

Sampson smiled. He was enjoying the game immensely.

“We have been aware for some time that the Russian secret police’s intelligence on its factional rivals ? the POUM, the Anarchists, the trade unions, the bloody parade marchers ? has been exceedingly good. In fact, there seems to be a secret war going on. Key people in the opposition disappear in the dead of night; they turn up dead, or they never turn up at all, they simply vanish. It’s just a racket, isn’t it? One mob of gangsters rubbing out another. But the Russians have got to know who to take, eh? Can’t just take anybody. And so who better to go among the enemy than a seemingly innocent British journalist with a brilliant, wondrous, easy charm? It fits with what we know. He wouldn’t report to anybody here, except some control fellow, who would send his information straight back to Moscow via the Amsterdam route that was so important to them. Then the orders go out from Moscow; there’s no direct contact between Julian and the local goons. He’s never compromised. It’s quite clever.”

Florry stared at him.

“So it’s murder, then? Yet another level of debauchery.”

“In for a penny, in for a pound. Now it appears this secret war may be moving into another, perhaps ultimate, phase. What better way, really, to get to the inner workings of POUM than to place their best agent among its militia, near to its military headquarters at La Granja? And, for the record, it doesn’t appear that he’s in any great danger. The real fighting’s still around Madrid. Out near Huesca, it’s mostly potting about in the mud. If one keeps one’s bum down, one has an excellent chance at surviving. The only thing he’s really given up is his abundant corps of female admirers. Still, one has to do what one must for the wonderful revolution, eh?”

“You’re as cynical as a whore.”

“The profession inclines one thus. And it is, come to think of it, rather a brothel. And I must say I take the cynic’s pleasure in another’s discomfort: the idea of Julian Raines potting about in the mud is quite amusing. At university, he and his lot were such dandies.”

“You knew him?”

“Everybody knew him. He has a gift for getting known, quite apart from other gifts.”

Florry took a drink of the whiskey.

“So if you must go off and be a hero for that lovely girl, then, go,” said Sampson. “Perhaps it may even work out for the best.”

It suddenly dawned on Florry how much Sampson had thought about all this. “I’ve made it easy on you, haven’t I?” he said.

Sampson smiled. Florry hated him.

“I suppose you have. You rather conveniently started where I had hoped to finish. The major’s most recent communication reached me last night. He said it was imperative that you join the Lenin Division. He left it to me to engineer a way. You spared me that, old man.”

“You are a whore, Sampson.”

“Of course I am. But one likes to think of oneself as a good whore. But let’s not part enemies, old man, even if we did go to different public schools. If you’ve a mind, do drop in, and bring that girl. I’ve rented a villa out in the Sarrea district. Big, damned drafty place, rather nice. They go for a song these days. I’ll have my man do up a nice meal. We’ll have a bash.”

Florry got up to leave. “Er, it sounds fine. Let me give you a ring on it or something.”

“Splendid. By the way, there’s one other interesting little tidbit that might be of some help to you,” Sampson said.

He turned back.

“Yes. There’s a rumor afoot that Julian’s old friend Levitsky is in Barcelona. You might keep your eye open.”

“And how would I know Levitsky? Do you think me a mind reader?”

“Good God, no. But you would know him because you arrived with him. He traveled undercover on that ship. He survived the sinking too, evidently.”

Florry looked at the fishy young Englishman who smirked up at him. Yet what he suddenly felt was the memory of an odor.

Peppermint.

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