moment when pauses were fatal. Florry, you have not learned the lesson of your century: you have not learned to kill.
Florry studied the maze of the graveyard. He could pick out no forms remotely human in the baroque, marble confusion and the weird colors from the stained-glass of the cathedral above it. It was all jumble and shadow. A few candles flickered.
Damn you, Harry!
He began to move through the grass in a duckwalk, feeling absurd and incredibly excited at once, but not particularly frightened. After so much of wondering and doubting and waiting, the elemental simplicity of killing or being killed seemed almost a luxury.
“Chum, I’m going to kill you.”
The whisper was from quite near. Florry halted, freezing up against a marble angel’s wing. Harry was close by, calling softly, utterly confident.
“Come on, now, chum. Just another step.”
The voice was indistinct and blurred but seemed to be coming from a congruence of obelisks off on the left a few feet. Florry peered into the dark, trying to make sense of it. He had an immense urge to stand up and shoot at the voice and be done with the business.
Yet he held back. Patience in these affairs was everything. Harry was the man of action, the pugilist, the footballer; the urge to move would overwhelm his imagination surely. Florry knew he’d come. Come on, Harry, boy, come on.
He lay still, waiting.
“Robert? Robert, are you there?”
It was Julian, standing in the gate in the moonlight like an utter ass, as if he were posing for a sculptor.
“Robert, I say, are you there?”
In the light of the cathedral, Julian made a wonderful target and he knew that Harry Uckley would fire in a second or so. Julian and his insane conviction that the real physics of the universe did not apply to one so charming and brilliant. His bravery, which was also utter stupidity.
Florry heard the snap of a revolver cocking amid the maze of marble slabs, perhaps made louder by the looming cathedral walls above them, and then he heard a tick as the hard butt was steadied against the stone.
“Robert, I say, old man, are you here?” Julian called again.
Florry leaped to his feet, raised the Webley, and fired three times in the rough direction of Harry Uckley. Yet curiously he did not hear the sound of the shots but only felt the sensations: the buck of the revolver, the spurt of muzzle flash out beyond his hand, the sudden flooding odor of burned powder. He did not hear because he heard something else instead, the huge and powerful clanging of the midnight bells whose thrill of vibration seemed to fill the air with a kind of blanket of sound, dense and muffling. He ducked back to earth, the bells continuing: they were up to five now. Florry rolled sideways, sure a bullet would come winging at him, and astonishingly discovered a rampaging shape passing by him headed like a crazed bull toward the gate.
He fired, taking the man down.
The bells tolled twice more, then ceased, their echo lapsing after several more seconds.
“Robert?”
“Yes.”
“Christ, are you all right?”
“Yes, you bloody idiot. God, Julian, you just
“The pathetic thing is, they haven’t pistols in those bloody great holsters. Only arsewipe. Let’s see what you have bagged.”
They rose and walked swiftly to the fallen man. Harry Uckley in the grass, a glassy blackness in his eyes, breathed slowly.
“It was a lucky shot that dropped me,” he said. “I’d have had you sure if the bloody olives hadn’t taken my Luger. They didn’t trust us.”
“Are you in pain?”
“No, it’s rather numbing. Cold. You’ll see when your time comes. Are you reds?”
“I suppose,” said Florry.
“I’m damned glad an Englishman pulled the trigger, not one of these olive-eating bastards. They took my Luger, damn their souls to hell.”
“Yes, Harry,” said Florry, aware that Harry no longer breathed. “Well, that’s bloody that,” he said, surprised at the bitterness he felt. “Another great triumph for the Republic.”
Now for Julian, he thought. He cocked the pistol.
“Sorry, old man,” said Julian, just behind him. Florry felt the cold circle of a pistol muzzle against his neck. “There’s to be a change in plans.”
28
MIDNIGHT
They drove through the city for a time, until at last they reached its outskirts. The traffic increased. The road was jammed with armored cars and lorries filled with Asaltos. Twice the vehicle was stopped but Lenny simply pronounced the password ? “Picturebook” ? and they were passed on. Whistles blew; there was the tramping of feet on the wet pavement in the dark. It was a night of ugly, ominous magic, a night of history. Lenny figured even Levitsky, hands manacled, mouth taped, would see that something was about to happen.
Then they pulled into the courtyard of a large house. More troops milled about. But they took the old man straight through the house, across the courtyard, and to a smaller house. The tape was ripped off. He was stripped naked. The manacles, however, remained.
Lenny looked at the old man and was surprised at the body. It was chalky white and mottled with discolorations. His feet and hands were veiny blue and white and hideous. His muscle tone was flabby. His cock was long and flaccid and his balls two dead weights. Where was the strength? Where was the will? This was just an old white-headed geezer who probably couldn’t open a jar of pickles without help. The great Levitsky! Trotsky’s right- hand man. Kolchak’s nemesis, hero of the underground, Cheka terrorist, Yid spy-master! Lenny laughed. A single blow would send his old bones flying apart.
Levitsky looked cold and numb. His face didn’t show much except that he knew he was going to catch it but good. Lenny wanted to hurt him. Lenny felt powerful and beyond fear next to this old geezer.
“Old Yid,” he said in Yiddish, “I’ve got plenty of trouble for you now. You think you’ve seen trouble? Put the blindfold on him.”
Blackness engulfed Levitsky. He felt the thing being tied tight behind him. He was led outside, pulled along by several pairs of hands. His feet crossed mud and straw.
“Step up here,” they told him. He felt himself climbing crude steps. The smell of straw and mud was everywhere. He knew he was in a rough building. It was very cold.
At last Bolodin spoke.
“You know,” he said, speaking in Yiddish. “I’ve seen guys like you. They had ’em in New York. Tough, I give you that. Smart, too. Guts. Lots and lots of guts. Now I could have this kid here smash you until morning. When he gets tired, I could do the smashing myself.”
Bolodin laughed again.
“And that’s just what you want. You’re one of these guys, the more you get smashed, the more stubborn you get. You feel pure. The pain makes you clean. You’re a pilgrim, the blood you shed gets you into heaven. Sure, I know. I’ve seen plenty of it before.”
He took a deep breath. The old man’s head didn’t move.
Lenny studied him carefully. The old man was still.
