a place where you can hide. And as for the papers ? well, it’s not my line, but I can certainly try.”
“And one last thing. That watch. The watch is important to me.”
“Why, yes. Of course. You gave it to me, of course. I give it back.”
“Thanks, old friend.”
Levitsky took the thing from Igenko, quickly strapped it to his wrist.
“Here. Take what little money I have now,” Igenko said. He pushed over a wad of pesetas. “I’ll get the gold tomorrow.”
“Are you observed?”
“Everybody is observed. The NKVD is everywhere, just like the SIM.”
“They are the same, one supposes.”
“I am not observed
“All right. I’ll move to another bordello tonight. Can you get back to me tomorrow?”
“I–I think.”
“On the Ramblas, across from the Plaza Real. Among the stalls in the center. There’s one where an old lady sells chicken on a spit. Do you know it?”
“I’ll find it.”
“Meet me there at seven. Carry a briefcase. You have a briefcase?”
“Yes.”
“If you think you’ve been followed, carry it in your right hand. If you know it’s safe, carry it in your left. Do you understand?”
“Yes. Right, danger; left, safe.”
“As it once was in politics.”
“Please be careful, Ivanch. Please.” He touched Levitsky’s thigh in an absentminded way.
“Ivan Alexyovich, if you help me, we can both get away. You and me, we’ll get out, in just a few days. We’ll go to America together.”
“Yes.”
“Go now. Hurry, so that you aren’t missed at the Colon.”
Igenko stood to leave, but paused. “Ivanch, it’s wonderful that you’re here.”
The fat man smiled. “And I want you to know, whatever you do.
Levitsky looked at him. “I’ll do what I have to, Ivan Alexyovich.”
Igenko hurried out.
Levitsky stood up slowly, feeling the ache in his ribs. You are an old man. You are nearly sixty, much too old for this.
He turned and saw himself in the mirror. He snapped the light out quickly, for he could not look upon his own face.
It was a question of timing, of careful calibration. Levitsky had decided that six was the ideal hour; an hour later and they would have too much time to think, to plot out the various possibilities, to counterplan against his game. An hour earlier and they might not be able to bring it off: the system would break down somewhere and he’d pay his dear price for nothing.
Accordingly, he left the barrio at five the next afternoon, at last reaching the crowded Ramblas and turning up it, toward the Plaza de Catalunya. Oh, the cafes were jammed this bright late afternoon, beginning to fill up for another evening of celebration. All revolutions always love themselves first; it is a rule. As he climbed along the central strip, walking among the trees and benches and stalls and street lamps, the busy density of the place momentarily dizzied him. The hunted man is safest in crowds, and here the masses were a torrent. Bright banners, heroic proclamations, bold portraits flapped off the buildings. Several of the cafes had been reconsecrated to political usage, as well as alcoholic: the UGT had one, and so did the FAI and the POUM; it was like a bazaar of crazed political ideas. He continued, until he reached the splurge of freedom of the open space of the plaza itself, where the last of the great battles of July had been fought and students and workers and slum boys had overwhelmed the army’s final position at great loss. He traversed the martyred ground, avoiding the Hotel Colon on one side, with its PSUC banner and its huge picture of the great Koba and its smart NKVD troops at their machine- gun nests behind the sandbags and the barbed wire. He headed instead to another key building in the fighting, the Telefonica, whose facade was still pocked with bullet marks from the battle. It was the central telephone exchange, and who controlled it, controlled all communications in Barcelona. But before he reached it, Levitsky stopped to check Igenko’s watch: quarter to six. He was early. He sat on a bench. A parade started up as Levitsky waited. He looked at it with some contempt.
Parades!
He watched as the ragtag Spanish cavalry marched down the street. The beasts were not well-trained, and the troopers had difficulty holding them in the formation. He could see them scuffle and pull at their reins. A shiver passed through him. Horses were such terrible creatures.
At precisely six o’clock, he crossed the wide street and entered the exchange. He found himself in a vast central office. A man came up in the uniform of one of the crazy anarchist groups. Anarchists running a telephone exchange? It was madness.
“Business, comrade?”
“Of the most urgent kind,” Levitsky said.
“You are foreign. Come to help our revolution or to loot it?”
“Does this answer?” said Levitsky, and he rolled up his right sleeve to show a tattoo on his biceps. It was the tattoo of a black fist.
“You are one of us, then. Salud, brother. It looks as if it’s been there a few years.”
“Almost as long as the arm itself. From the time before there was time.”
“What business have you?”
“To place a call.”
“Go on, then. While it’s there. When at last we tear down the government we will also tear down the telephone lines, and then all men will be free.”
“And so they will,” said Levitsky. God: the Anarchists. They were still the same dreamers!
He went to the counter.
A girl came up.
“How much?” he asked her. “Rather, how much,
She smiled, so young and pretty.
“Ten pesetas.”
“The Anarchists have not yet outlawed money?”
“Perhaps tomorrow, comrade.”
He paid her.
“Number six.” She pointed to a wall where twenty-five or so numbered phones were mounted, most of them in use. He went to number six, picked up the earpiece ? still warm ? and hit the receiver several times. As in Moscow, the connection was terrible, but after a time a voice came on the line.
Levitsky cursed him in Russian.
There was confusion and chatter from the other end, as the speaker demanded in Spanish to know what was going on. Levitsky cursed again and again, and after a time and some confusion, at last a Russian speaker came on.
“Hello. Who is this?”
“Never mind, who is this?”
“
