Tapestry of Spies

through him. There was nothing else. He was drowning, the water was sucking him down. He could see only lights flashing. His life was over; he was barely conscious. He was sinking.

Then strong arms had him. They gripped him tightly and pulled him up. He could feel a man’s hands on him, bringing him to air. The pain was so bad. There was so much pain, endless and unyielding. The hands had him.

“Florry,” he gasped. “God, Florry, it’s you.”

* * *

Lenny checked the list he’d made from Glasanov’s files. Yes, Florry, a Brit, in the POUM, a journalist originally. It all fit. He was one of the two guys who’d been at the seaside hotel, too, the one Levitsky had probably been trying to reach. He figured the guy would be at the Falcon.

“Comrade Bolodin?” The call came from down below.

“Yes,” Lenny called back in Russian.

“Commissar Glasanov says it’s time to go.”

Lenny looked at his watch. Yes, it was 0430. It was time to move on the Falcon.

“Comrade, what do we do with the old one?”

Lenny looked back to the old man, naked and shivering, his eyes black and crazed and staring madly into nothingness.

“Give him to the horses,” he said.

29 THE OBERLEUTNANT

Julian plucked the revolver from Florry’s hand. He had a queer light in his eyes and seemed wickedly, marvelously excited.

“You fool, the Guardia will be?” Florry began.

“Oh, I hardly think so, what with those bells coming along to mush all our noise. No, this is a fine and private place, Stink, for our little talk.”

Florry could see the muzzle of the small Webley.25 automatic upon his chest.

“Where were you going to shoot me, Stink? Head, I’d bet. Well, then, that’s where I shall shoot you.”

“You bastard,” Florry said. “You sold us all out to bloody Joe Stalin and his goons. God help you, Julian. No one else will. It doesn’t matter. Shoot me and be done. They know in London. I’ve told them. You’re a dead man.”

Julian smiled softly in the pale, weird light of the cathedral.

“Were you going to give me a chance, old man? No, I’d bet not. Just pot me, eh? I wouldn’t even know what hit me; I would simply cease to exist.”

“Damn you, you?”

“God, wonderful,” he said. “It’s priceless. Stink, you’re such a rotten actor. I could see the loathing in your eyes since you arrived here. God, Stink, you’d never make a spy.”

Florry just looked at him, thinking How do I get at him? He tried to gauge the leap. It was too far.

“Any last words for Sylvia, Stink?”

“You filthy swine,” said Florry. “There’s nothing you can give me you’ll not catch yourself. You’re a dead man.”

“I’ll tell her something quite heroic, old man. She’ll be devastated, of course. I’ll comfort her. I can feel her hot tears and her trembling shoulders. We’ll be all alone. Perhaps my hand shall accidentally brush against her breast. It’ll be quite embarrassing, but of course at moments like those one doesn’t worry about propriety, does one? And perhaps I should happen to feel her nipple grow hard. Perhaps I shall hold her tight and as I’m squeezing her my penis will get quite lumpy. And yet, rather than drawing away from it, as one would expect, why, the grief-stricken thing actually presses her mound against it. Perhaps then as I kiss the tears away from her sweet cheeks, I shall encounter ? good heavens, can this be a tongue!”

“You filthy?”

Julian raised the weapon. Florry saw its dark shape rising. Julian was not trembling. You swine, Florry was thinking in the raging urgency of it all, you bloody swine.

“Bang,” said Julian. “You’re dead.”

Julian was pointing at him with his pipe.

Florry looked at him.

Julian opened Florry’s revolver, tilted it, and the cartridges emptied into his hand. He flicked it shut and handed it back.

“Thought I’d take it because you were so swollen with triumph you might turn the bloody thing on me.” He snorted with contempt. “Robert, I was so disappointed to learn that you were merely human. Among your good many qualities there are some bad ones. Among them, your evil stupidity and your blindness. I suppose it’s that underneath it all you hated me so for cutting you at Eton. And then Sylvia came into it.”

“Look, you?”

“Hush, Robert. You’re so thick. Listen and learn the ways of the world. In the first place, I know all about your smelly little job with the voodoo boys at Whitehall. MI-5 or -6? Don’t suppose it matters. I knew it would happen. All sorts of people have been telling me about the ‘questions’ that have been asked, the delicate inquiries back in London and at Trinity. Then there’s your awful chum Sampson, the world’s most revolting prig. He was at university, you know, one of those awful chaps who had a brief flirtation with the Apostles and then veered right. Everybody knew he’d signed on with the voodoo boys. I must say I was crushed you’d agreed to join them.”

“They say you’re a spy. They have proof. I have proof!”

“And you believed it. Still, one supposes that it’s remarkable you didn’t pot me when you had the chance in the trenches. May I ask, old man, why not?”

“I had to have proof. Then I heard you with the Russian?”

“Oh, tiptoeing about in the dark, are we? How seedy, Robert. How sadly seedy, like some two-bob-a-day private inquirer who specializes in divorces for the smart set.”

“I heard you tell Levitsky that?”

“Is that what he’s calling himself these days? When I knew him best, he was Brodsky the poet. He was a wonderful poet, by the way. Met him in ’thirty-one at Trinity. Sent me a note admiring some verses and included one of his own. Well, one thing led to another. When I ran into him at the hotel he said he was a journalist for Pravda. We had a jolly good reunion. He’s quite a chap?”

“He’s a bloody GRU?”

“Listen, chum. Listen and face the ways of the world. He was my lover, old boy. My first, my best. I’m queer, you blind sot. God, Robert, you are so thick sometimes.”

Florry looked at him. He felt his mouth hang open. He blinked, thinking perhaps it was some dream. Something odd and chilled and huge moved through him, a glacial sense of regret, white and vast and glazed with ice.

“I say, don’t look so stricken. Why on earth do you think I cut you at school, Robert? I bloody found myself wanting you. Your body. I wanted to do things. It was more than I could stand, and I had to get away. Who do you think I was writing to the night of the attack? My current lover, a sailor in the merchant fleet whom I had not seen in a devilish long time.”

“But the women,” Florry said, still half disbelieving.

“Of which there have been exactly one, old man. A chambermaid who rather insisted when I was thirteen. It was disgusting.”

“But all the lies. All the boasts. Why?”

“Florry, chum, being a queer, in case you don’t know, is illegal. One can end up in the Scrubs. And there’s