Tapestry of Spies

“Fuck off, you bloody sot.”

Lenny laughed.

“Look, you better help me. You’re in a shitload of trouble.”

The man spat at him.

Lenny laughed.

“You a soldier boy, huh? Nice suntan. Spend a lot of time in the trenches. Look, tell me what I want, okay?”

“Bugger off, you bloody scum,” the angry Brit said.

“Okay, pal,” said Lenny. He shot him in the face and began to roam through the building in search of somebody who had a line on this Florry.

Meanwhile, Asalto units neutralized other targets around the revolutionary city. The Lenin barracks was held the most important, because its arsenal was the largest and its troops held to be the most dangerous in Glasanov’s mind. This turned out to be an illusion; most of the arms had been moved to the front and the soldiers were largely illiterate peasant youths who’d joined for the promise of steady meals. They surrendered in the first minutes.

Among the other targets were the main telephone exchange on the Plaza de Catalunya, guarded originally by Anarchists but since the fighting in May by POUM fighters; the Anarcho-Syndicalist headquarters; the offices of La Batalle, the banned POUM newspaper whose physical plant was still a gathering place for dissidents; the offices of The Spanish Revolution, the POUM English-language newsletter; the radical Woodworkers Guild; and the Public Transportation Collective, a number of former estates seized by the youthful radicals for a variety of political purposes. In every location it was the same: the swift shocking blast of gunfire, the brutal rush by the well-trained Asaltos, and the mopping up.

The prisoners, who accumulated rapidly and were the principal booty of the operation, were swiftly separated into three categories. Leadership, including Andres Nin, POUM’s charismatic chief, and thirty-nine other intellectuals and theoreticians, were taken to special, secret prisons called, in the colloquial, checas, for careful and extensive interrogation, in preparation for what was expected to be a series of show trials very like the ones that had so shocked the world when they had been performed in Moscow. The second category, the militant, bitter rank-and-file ? that is, mostly the fiery young anti-Stalinist European leftists of all stripe and coloration that had flocked to the POUM banner ? was taken to the Convent of St. Ursula, which would rapidly earn, in the next few days, its nickname in history: the Dachau of Spain. These men were interrogated, though rather perfunctorily and without much nuance or subtlety, and then shot. The executions, as many as five hundred in the first several hours (though estimates vary), were carried out in the graveyard near the convent, hard by a grove of olive trees under a little bluff. The shootings were done in batches of as many as fifteen or twenty by special NKVD death squads, using Maxim guns mounted on the backs of old Ford lorries. The bodies were buried in mass graves gouged into the meadow.

The last category of prisoners ? those not on Glasanov’s leadership list and those lacking the fiery believer’s spark in their eyes ? were dispersed to a number of hastily improvised disciplinary centers for further interrogation and incarceration until their destinies could be determined. Included in this category were the “Milicianas,” or female members of the POUM. In many cases, these prisoners had no idea what was going on and were completely certain it was some idiotic misunderstanding that would in some way be straightened out. In this group was Sylvia. She was removed with several dozen other Milicianas of POUM and the other groups of women, many of them internationals, and taken to a wire stockade in the courtyard of a small convent near Bardolona, just north of the city. It was a jaunty, uppity mob in whose company she found herself, who bandied with great sarcasm at their Asalto guards.

“Hah. Fascist sister, how about a nice fuck?” the tough young men would call.

“Fuck your face. Or fuck your cow saint, La Passionaria,” the women would call back through the wire.

“Fascist cunts,” the soldiers chimed merrily, “can’t wait to screw Moors and Nazis.”

“I’d sleep with ten Moors and ten Nazis before I’d sleep with scum like you, with a shooter so small it would fall out.”

There was much laughter.

Sylvia did not share it. It wasn’t that the banter upset her, but she had a profound mistrust of men with guns. Although it did not occur to the others that there was danger, Sylvia was quite uneasy. She didn’t like the way the soldiers joked with them, unafraid to say anything; she did not like the loose, confident way they carried their rifles; she did not like the coarseness of the experience or the absurdity of the situation.

In the stockade, there was surprisingly little political rhetoric, as if everybody was by this time quite exhausted with politics. At the lunch hour they were brought a little wine and some bread ? no less, really, than their guards, who seemed as confused as they were ? and everybody waited patiently until somebody showed up to set it all straight.

An hour after lunch, five of the women were called out by name ? two Germans, a fiery Frenchwoman named Celeste, who seemed to be the spirit of the group, and an Italian anarchist who had actually fought at the front as a man ? and taken over to the wall and shot.

Their heads flew apart when the officer leaned over each and fired a pistol bullet into the ear as a coup de grace. Sylvia didn’t scream, although most of the others did; she simply cursed her luck and tried to figure a way out.

An hour later, another six women were led out and executed. The survivors had become by this time exceedingly morose. A few wept and were comforted by the stronger. Sylvia sat by herself, with her arms wrapped around her, and though it was warm, she felt her teeth chattering.

Then her name was called.

She stood.

“Be brave, comrade,” said one of the Belgian women. “Don’t let the bastards see your tears.”

Hands all around touched her. She was smothered in a kind of love that had been transformed radically from the generally political into the specifically personal. A woman hugged her and held her tight and told her to be brave.

“Spit in their faces,” she was told.

“Don’t give them the pleasure of seeing you beg. Long live the revolution.”

“Yes,” said Sylvia, though it had a kind of irony to her, “yes, long live the revolution.” She turned to face her suitors, two stony Asaltos with submachine guns.

They led her from the courtyard into the church, over to one of its axial chapels, where a young man with gray eyes sat writing at a small table.

“Comrade, ah, Lilliford,” he asked, not really looking up. As soon as she saw that he wouldn’t look up, she knew she was in trouble. When a man didn’t look at her, it meant he’d already seen her and been somehow hurt by her beauty, and would therefore go to great lengths to show her how unimpressed he was, or how indifferent he could be.

At last he looked up. He had pale, pimply skin and blondish hair and large circles under his eyes. Though he wore the khaki Asalto mono and a brace of pouches and holsters and belts about him, he was clearly not Spanish but some kind of Russian or European and rather pleased with his own authority.

“Yes?” she said, hating herself for the way her voice quavered.

“Please. Sit down.” He gestured to a wooden chair adjacent to his table.

“I think I’d rather stand, actually,” she said.

“As you wish.” He smiled charmlessly, showing bad teeth. “You travel on a British passport?”

“Yes. I am a British citizen. Would you please tell me on what authority you hold me and what charges have been pressed, if any.”

“No. What specifically is your connection with the Party of Marxist Unification?”

“I’m a volunteer on their newspaper. I help with the page layout and I do some proofreading for them.”

“You are not specifically a member?”

“I am not a joiner.”

He considered this for a time. “Do you sleep with the boys?”

“You can’t expect me to answer that.”

“Why would an Englishwoman become involved with Fascists and Trotskyites and?”

“These people aren’t any more fascist than I am. I don’t know where you got your ideas, but?”