“No, comrade,” she stammered. “We received no wire. Comrade Commissar Glasanov is off to arrest?” And she halted, terrified.
“Arrest whom?”
The woman could not begin to tell Levitsky that Levitsky had escaped.
“No, it’s?”
“It doesn’t matter. Please arrange to have me taken to Levitsky at once. I have explicit orders.”
“I–I-I-”
“Can it be, comrade, that Levitsky is gone? Has Levitsky escaped from Glasanov? Comrade, tell me.”
The girl was almost white with terror.
“I have my sources,” said Levitsky coldly, staring furiously at her. “I can tell you, comrade, that Madrid ? and Moscow ? don’t appreciate being made to look silly by an old man. It sounds like wrecking, deviation, and oppositionism.”
“I can assure you, Comrade Maximov?”
“What is your name, comrade?”
“I am Comrade Levin, comrade.”
“Comrade Levin, it is most urgent that I speak with Comrade Commissar Glasanov on this matter of Levitsky. This is not a playful request, I assure you, comrade. I have a report to file. I am under extreme pressure from Moscow myself. I would hate to have to tell the committee secretary that in Barcelona our representatives are sluggish and inefficient, given to Spanish ways. It almost makes me think?”
“Comrade, accept my apologies, please. You must understand how hard we work here, how difficult the problems are.”
“And let me tell you, comrade, that in other areas of Spain our policies are pursued with much greater Party discipline and control. Our detention houses are everywhere. There are no Trotskyite columns, no open denunciations of the general secretary, no Anarchist oganizations patrolling the streets, no opposition newspapers. Moscow has noticed the comic opera here in Barcelona. We have our sources. We are not surprised.”
“But comrade, the problems are so different here. Only here, in the early days?”
“The problems are no different, but perhaps the quality of the personnel is different.”
“Comrade, I can assure you the arrest is imminent. Even now, the commissar is?”
“This would seem his only arrest.”
“Oh, no. No, comrade, begging your pardon. No, we have been very diligent. Our commissar works like the very devil himself. Night after night. Look, Comrade Maximov, I’ll show you. Come, please.”
She took a key from her desk and led him back into Glasanov’s inner office.
“I’ll prove it to you,” she said. “I’ll show you the records.”
Lenny Mink watched the fat man shift the briefcase back and forth. He kept asking people for the time. He was a mess. Lenny could almost smell the fear. It was five past.
Come on,
There was a sudden pop in the air.
Lenny, startled, looked about. Pop, pop, pop. His eyes shot back to the fat Igenko, who stood on the verge of panic amid the suddenly frozen crowd, peculiarly reddish, as if ?
Flares. The twilight sky had filled with red flares, like small pink suns that hung, floating, against the dusk. Music rose tumultuously in the weird spectacle; it was the Internationale.
“Boss?” It was Ugarte.
“Shut up,” Lenny said, shooting his eyes back to the frightened Igenko, afraid he’d fled. No, he was still there.
Soldiers. One of the militias must have been heading out to the front. Igenko stood in the pink night as the soldiers swept along the Ramblas, on either side of him, and the crowd surged toward them to line the way, and Igenko, against his will, was caught in the human tide.
“Fuck it,” said Lenny, just as Igenko was hurled out of sight in the masses. Trust the devil Levitsky to pull something like this.
He vaulted the counter smoothly and his long, powerful strides took him through the running people. He bowled a man over, shoved others aside, knocked a woman down.
Someone grabbed him.
“Hey, comrade?”
“SIM,” he barked. The grabber fell back instantly. Lenny pulled the automatic from his mono and pushed on. He hated the idea of failure. Rage filled him. Where was the fat man?
There, yes. He’d had a glimpse, through the troops and beyond the crowd on the sidewalk on the other side. He was right at the Arco de Teatro, about to disappear through the arch and vanish in the winding, messy old streets of the Barrio Chino, which the Anarchists controlled.
Lenny dashed across the way, pushing through the mob of soldiers.
He could hear them yelling sporting things at him.
“Hey, come to war with us, comrade, if you’re so eager.”
“Come and kill the Fascists with us, brother.”
“He can’t wait. Come on, the POUM needs fighters like you.”
But Lenny pushed through their ranks and on to the other side, ducked through the Arco himself, and ran down the narrow street. The buildings loomed over him: the road seemed to split and split again into a maze, but a maze jammed with human riffraff. He halted, breathing hard. There was no illumination, though up ahead, here and there, red lights shone on the sides of the buildings.
But then he saw him. Just a glimpse of heft and mince, darting ahead in utter fright. Lenny didn’t stop to consider the fragility of the connection: he had looked down the right street at the right moment.
He caught him in a lonely pool of red light.
“Ivanch …?” The fat man turned, his face warm with expectation. But when he saw Lenny, his expression fell apart into something ugly with terror.
“Swine,” Lenny said, hitting him in the fat mouth with the pistol. Igenko fell into a mewling heap.
“Hey. Hey, what are you doing, comrade?”
Lenny looked up; three Anarchist patrolmen were unslinging their rifles and heading over.
“SIM,” barked Lenny.
“Fuck the SIM, comrade,” yelled the first. “Russian swine had better stay out of?”
Lenny threw the slide on his Tokarev, jacking the hammer back, and said in English, “Another step, motherfucker, and you’re dead meat.”
Igenko was crying.
Ugarte was next to him, pistol out, and then another man arrived and another and another, and then Glasanov himself. The Anarchists began to back off.
“These are simply records,” said Levitsky. “A list of names. This means nothing.”
The woman’s eyes fell.
“I assure you, Comrade Maximov,” she began, “each name on that list is an enemy of the state and each has been dealt with by Comrade Glasanov. We are moving even closer to?”
“You show me a list of names on a paper and you say, here, here is your revolution, this paper. Meanwhile, opposition newspapers are published condemning the general secretary, slandering him, and armed dissenters swagger in the streets and drink wine in the cafes, laughing at him.”
“Look,” she said, opening a drawer. “Look! Do you see! This is not a list! These are our enemies’ lives!”
She pulled the pouch out.
“All these passports. They each represent an arrest. And they will be sent back to Moscow Center by diplomatic pouches. Our agents will be able to use them to penetrate the Western democracies in the years to come. Look, see for yourself.”
She handed the pouch over to Levitsky; he rifled it quickly. Passports and plenty more: official papers, work
