Tapestry of Spies

“They’ll be back,” said Florry darkly, for he knew the Germans would recognize in minutes and take the offensive. Yet even as he spoke he was astounded by the strangeness of what was happening. The bridge seemed to swarm with an astounding crew of gypsy brigands, all in leather and dappled with an assortment of bullets, bombs, daggers, strange obsolete weapons, incredibly colorful costumes, all of them stinking evilly of sweat and garlic and horses. Their leader, a hideously ugly old man swaddled in the most absurd of all the outfits, a voluminous dress under his leather coat, immediately threw his arms about Florry and hugged him violently, and only when Florry felt breasts big as any wet nurse’s under the leather did he realize she was a woman. Her face seemed carved from ancient walnut, though her eyes were bright and cunning; she had nearly half her teeth.

“Ingleses, me permiter a verles. Que bravos. Que cahones estos hombres tienen. Mira los heroes, cobardes,” she crooned into his ears, her breath flatulent with garlic.

Florry had no idea what she was saying.

“Pleased indeed,” he said.

“Gad, what a spectacle,” said Julian. “What an extraordinary woman. Is she not a woman, Stink? She reminds me rather too much of Mother.”

“Let’s not chat,” said Florry. “Let’s blow this bloody thing and get quit of this place.”

“Yes, let’s go,” called Portela, already shed of jacket and preparing to monkey climb down the bridge’s new scaffolding to plant his charges.

“Where’s the bloody dynamite?” said Florry.

“?La dinamita esta aqui!” screamed the old lady, and one of her men came ambling over with a scabby horse laden with crates.

“It’s very old,” said Portela, “from the mines. But when she goes, she’ll go with a bang that’ll be heard in Madrid!”

“Yes,” said Florry, unnerved by the old stuff, when he’d been expecting gear somehow more professional and more military, “well, let’s get bloody cracking.”

“Stink, old man, I’ve found a wonderful toy,” said Julian. Florry looked to him to see that he’d just climbed from the blockhouse with one of the German light machine guns. He’d chucked his Condor Legion tunic and wrapped himself with belts. “Light as a feather. Bloody German genius for engineering. I’d say the perforations along the barrel housing keep it cool from the air.”

“Perhaps you’d best take some chaps down the bridge and watch for Jerry,” said Florry. “I think I’ll help with the poppers.”

“Good show, old man,” said Julian, who dashed down the bridge, the oily belts clinking and jingling as he ran.

“?La dinamita!” yelled the old lady.

“Yes, splendid,” said Florry, and he grabbed the reins of the horse and tugged him to the bridge. “Here, Portela?”

“It will do,” said the officer.

Florry shot the horse in the head; it bucked once, then sank on its knees, its great skull forward. Florry pried a case from its harness with some difficulty, then beat it open with the butt of his Webley grip. The dynamite lay nestled inside, waxen and pale pink, looking like a batch of fat, oily candles. It smelled peculiar.

“God, it looks ancient,” he said to no one in particular.

“This is a detonator,” said Portela, producing something similar to a cartridge from the pouch at his belt. “You press it into the end of one of those sticks. Then you wire up the leads and run it back to the box. Then you prime the box and push the lever and send the spark over the wire. Then you get your big bang.”

“And who’s to lash the stuff to the bridge? This fat old lady?”

“I’ll rig the one side,” said Portela. “Perhaps Comrade Florry could help on the other. We must have two charges for the great destruction.”

Somehow this was a detail that Steinbach had neglected to mention. “And I suppose those guerilla boys wouldn’t be able to wire it up?”

“Alas, no.”

“Bloody hell. Well, then, let’s get going, eh?”

At that moment, the first sniper’s bullet struck near the bridge, followed by two more.

“Christ,” said Florry, as the old lady rose, selected a weapon from her bewildering assortment ? a broom- handle Mauser ? and fired off across the bridge into rocks near the treeline. Shots opened up from all around. Florry heard Julian’s machine gun begin with that absurd, fast, ripping yelp.

He lugged the box to the railing and slung himself over it. For just a second, he thought he’d gone too far; he almost lost his grip and could see himself hurtling down, screaming for Sylvia as he fell, until he was smashed to pulp on the stones below. But then he had himself and hung for just a minute, gathering his breath. The old lady, her eyes dark with love, touched him on the hand.

“Bien hecho, ingles,” she said, and laughed, showing her black stumps.

Christ, you beauty, was all Florry could think, would you be my last vision? But he lowered himself onto the abutting structure of steel, reaching foot by foot, finding a grip and then lowering himself again and again by the same laborious, experimental process, trying all the while not to look down or believe those actually were bullets whanging against the metal or kicking into the old stone of the bridge with a bang and a puff of dust, until at last he found himself perched like some grubby ape in a monkey house on a gym apparatus, surrounded only by bars and space. He clung tightly to the girders with his legs, hoping the sweat ? he had begun to perspire wretchedly ? would not run into his eyes. He was now in a forest of German iron and the word KRUPP darted before his eyes. A shot banged off the metal. Up top he could hear heavy firing. He tried not to look down.

“Dynamite!” he screamed.

“?Eh, ingles?”

“Dynamite, damn you!” he screamed, and in his urgency forgot his vow not to look down. Far below the stream seemed like a green, scummy ribbon of tin foil breaking over pebbles strewn by a child. He felt the vertigo buzz through him. He clung more tightly than ever. A bullet ricocheted nearby with a metallic clang.

“Aqui estan los cachivaches.”

Something swung blurrily before his eyes: it was a peasant’s basket on a cord. Weakly, with one hand, he plucked at it, pulled it close, and pinned it to his body with an awkward elbow. He reached in to find two bundles of six waxy sticks of the explosive. He pulled one out and wedged it into the nearest joint in the girders he could find. He jammed the other bunch in atop it and wrapped it tight into a ligature with some long strands of electrician’s tape somebody had thoughtfully included in the basket. It looked dreadfully sloppy, the tape wrapped in a messy sprawl about the uneven nest of sticks.

“Hurry!” someone else under the bridge called. He looked over to see the fat Portela similarly astride a girder on the other side, working just as desperately as he was.

What the devil does he think I’m doing? he wondered, bewildered and flooded with bitterness.

Florry was halfway through the next load when the bullets sent his way seemed to increase dramatically. One pinged off the girder inches from his face and he felt the sharp spray of fragments, winced, and almost fell. Evidently a Moorish party had worked its way down the gorge, descended it, and had begun to move along the creek bed toward him. Another bullet exploded dangerously close to his head.

He twisted to see them two hundred meters away, shooting quite calmly, three gray-uniformed, lanky figures who seemed to be potting pigeons.

“THE LEFT!” he shouted. “THEY’RE ON THE BLOODY LEFT!” Another bullet whizzed by. “Damn you, there, there on the left!” he screamed again, feeling the panic squeak through his limbs. Oh Christ, Christ, Christchristchristchrist!

Above him the machine gun spoke rapidly, raining spent shells over the railing, and the three Moors collapsed in a lazy string of bullet spurts that kicked up clouds of dust and slate at their feet.

“Do hurry, old man,” yelled Julian. “Jerry’s getting ready for a push.”

Florry now had only the detonator to insert. He plucked it from his pockets and awkwardly plunged it into the exposed end of one of the sticks, felt it crumble into the chalky stuff.

There! Ah! Now for the bloody wire. If only … ah! He unspooled the blasting wire and with his fingers tried to locate the posts on the detonator. It was tricky business. Florry kept thinking there should be an easier way. Twice