Tapestry of Spies

“Stinky, I hate the brutes. Smelly, filthy beasts, moody and sullen and?”

“Shut up, I’ll lash you to me. I’ll get you out of here, you’ll see. You’ve taken care of me, now I’ll take care of you. Get me a HORSE!”

“Stinky, listen. Tell all my friends to be happy. Tell them Julian’s dying from?”

“You’re not dying!”

“Stinky, the bastards got me in the spine and the lungs. I’m half dead already, don’t you see?”

“?Ingles! ?Ven! ?No hay tiempo, llegaran en segundos!”

“She’s telling you they’re almost here. Go on. Get out of here, old sport.”

“I?”

“One thing, please, Stink. The ring. Take it, eh? Take it to my bloody old mother, eh?” He smiled brightly.

Florry grabbed the ring, popped the chain, and stuffed it into the pocket of the Burberry.

“Now the pistol. Take it. I can’t quite ? my bloody arms don’t seem to work. Take that bloody pistol.”

Florry, with shaking hands, removed the tiny automatic from Julian’s holster. It was such a stupid thing; it seemed more like a toy than a weapon, small, almost womanish, difficult to hold in a man’s hand.

“Cock it. I put in a fresh clip.”

Florry snapped the slide back, chambering a cartridge.

“There now. Shoot me!”

He leveled the pistol to Julian’s temple.

“Thanks, Stink,” Julian said. “The bastards won’t use me for bayonet drill. Stinky, God, hold my hand, I’m so bloody scared.”

“?Ingles!”

“Julian! I love you!”

“Kill me then, Stink. KILL ME!”

“I ? I can’t, oh, Christ, Jul?”

The explosion was huge in his ears; it knocked him to his side. The old lady put down her Mauser rifle. Florry looked to Julian and then away; the bullet had pierced his forehead above his right eye and blown a mess out of the rear of his skull.

“Jul?”

At that moment, and for whatever reason, the bridge exploded in a flash that was an exclamation point of sheer light, absolute, blinding, incredibly violent; the concussion seemed to push the air from the surface of the earth and blow Florry back to the ground. The noise was the voice of God, sharp and total. The bridge literally disappeared in the explosion. Stones and timbers and chunks of girder kicked up dust and splashes in a circle for six hundred meters around. A cloud unfurled from the blast, black and rolling and climbing.

“?Bravo ingles!” came the cry from the men around him in the stunned second as the echo faded. The Germans had ceased firing. “?Ingles bravo lo hizo! Derribo la puente. ?Viva el demoledor ingles!” The old lady was kissing him; others pounded him on the back.

Well, Julian, he thought, looking at the rising cloud of smoke, you finally finished your masterpiece.

He dropped the pistol into his coat and climbed aboard a horse. But he could not stop crying.

Part III SYLVIA

33 ARRESTED

Sylvia sat in the Grand Oriente from noon to two every day waiting. It was a clean, pretty place and the afternoons were lovely with sun. She sat outside and watched the people on the Ramblas. There were no more parades, because the Russians didn’t permit them. But she didn’t care about parades. She sat and tried to make sense of the rumors.

The rumors were about death, mainly. The Russians could control everything except the rumors. The rumors said that Nin had been killed in some phony “rescue,” led by the ominous Comrade Bolodin of the SIM. The rumors said that hundreds of POUMistas and Anarchists and libertarians had been buried in the olive grove of the Convent of St. Ursula, but nobody could get close enough to the place to find out. The rumors said that the Russians had secret checas all over Barcelona, and that if you criticized Stalin, you’d be taken out at night to one and never come back.

Sylvia sat and had a sip of blanco. Then she lit a cigarette. Before her, across the Ramblas, she could see a wonderful old palm tree, its bent scaly trunk arching skyward toward a crown of leaves. She had, in the last seven days, grown very fond of the palm. She loved it and knew it like a friend.

The other rumors were the more troubling. They insisted that a big attack had been canceled even though English dynamiters had blown a bridge deep in enemy territory. But as to the fate of the dynamiters, the rumors disagreed. Some said they’d been killed, everybody had been killed. Others said they had been captured, then executed. In other accounts, they simply vanished. There was also talk that it was a setup from the beginning, a betrayal, some more dirty business by the Russian secret police. But what had really happened? She had to know.

It was all so different now, the new city of Barcelona. Every third man was said to be a Russian secret policeman and nobody would talk. Most people just looked straight ahead with lightless eyes. There were no more red nights, with singing and parades and banners and fireworks. The posters had all been ripped down. Asaltos with machine pistols stood about in groups of three and four.

She shivered, feeling cold though it was a warm day. She looked at her palm tree and out, at the dull glow of the sea which she could just pick out beyond the statue of Columbus at the end of the Ramblas.

“Senora?”

“Yes?”

“Something more, senora?”

“No, I think not. Thank you.”

The old man bowed obsequiously as any English butler and with the oily, seasoned, professional humility of the servant class, backed off.

She lit another cigarette.

She felt as if she were in a kind of bubble. The events of the city no longer concerned her. She was magically protected; she was watched over. She was also ? she could feel it ? watched.

They knew. Somebody knew and had marked her out. She felt as if she were under observation all the time. She was very careful in her movements and had thought all about getting out. When it came time to get out, she knew exactly what to do.

She was weeping. She had never cried before, and now, under the pressure, she had become a weeper.

God damn them. God damn them all for making her cry. A tear ran down her cheek and landed on the marble tabletop, where it stood bright and solitary in the sunlight.

I’d better get out of here, she thought.

“I hate it when you cry,” said Robert Florry, sitting down next to her. “God, you look lovely.”

“Oh, Robert!” she cried, and reached to engulf him with her arms.

* * *

They walked through the narrow, cobbled streets of the Gothic quarter toward the cathedral.

“I wasn’t able to save Julian.”

“It’s definite?”