“As definite as a Mauser bullet in the brain.”
“Did he die hard?”
“No. Julian died as he lived: dramatically, flamboyantly, beautifully.”
“I didn’t think anything could kill Julian.”
“Just a bullet,” said Florry. “Nothing special about it, a silly bullet. I’m just glad we blew the bridge. He would have liked that.”
He held up the ring.
“This is all that’s left of Julian Raines. Pity.”
“You look terrible, Robert.”
“I’m so sorry about Julian, Sylvia. I know he meant a great deal to you. He meant a great deal to me. He was?” He paused.
“He was what, Robert?”
“He was in a certain way not what he seemed.”
“Nobody ever is. Here, let me take that awful coat.”
Florry put the ring in the pocket and peeled off the filthy Burberry, handed it to Sylvia. She was right: it was dusty and wrinkled and looked as if it had been in battle. Though the blue suit under it was also wrinkled, it had held its shape better; and Florry was light-bearded enough so that from the distance his whiskers didn’t show. Without the coat, he looked surprisingly bourgeois.
“After the bridge, we rode for three days through the mountains and forest. They chased us on horseback, a column of Moorish cavalry. We were bombed and strafed twice. The group split up. Finally, it was only myself and this crazy old lady. We got across the lines two nights ago and were stopped by military policemen, but they let us go. We hitched a ride into Barcelona late last night. We were stopped again. They let me go, because I was British. But they arrested her. Because she was in the wrong category.”
“Yes. Yes, if one is in the wrong category, one is in queer street. The Party is against the law. You are a criminal for having your name on the wrong list.”
“We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Yes. There’s nothing here for us anymore.”
As they spoke, Lenny Mink watched from a black Ford, which shadowed the two from a distance of about two hundred meters.
They had reached Sylvia’s room in the hotel.
“I’m all packed,” she said. She took his coat and put it in her suitcase. She knew exactly what had to be done; she’d thought about it.
“You’ve got to bathe and clean up,” she said. “The chances are, they won’t stop you if you look middle class. Their enemies are the working-class radical people. If you look like a prosperous English tourist, then you’re all right.”
“God, it’s certainly turned around, hasn’t it?”
“You’ve got to get some sleep, too, Robert. Then tomorrow, we can?”
“Sylvia, it’s my papers. They’ve got bloody POUM stamped all over them. One look at them and?”
“Robert, I can help. I’ve got some?”
“There’s a chap who should be able to help named Sampson, a newspaper chap who?”
“Yes, Robert, listen, I’ve got it all planned.”
“Aren’t you the wonder, Christ, Sylvia. You’ve got it all figured out.” He felt dizzy. He glanced past her, toward a mirror, and saw a stranger staring back, haggard and grayed. Christ, look at me.
It suddenly seemed important to tell her something.
“Sylvia, first I have to tell you something. I’ve meant to for weeks. I want to tell you why I came to Spain and why Julian was so important to me, and what I’ve done to him. Sylvia, listen, I have to explain?”
There was a knock at the door, sharp and hard.
He felt her tense. He pushed her back, reached under his jacket, and slipped out the Webley. And what would he do now? Shoot an NKVD man? Yes, and with pleasure.
“Comrade,” came the muffled voice.
“Who’s there?” he called in English. “I say, who’s there?”
“Comrade?”
“Sorry, old man, you must have the wrong party. We’re English.”
He could sense some confusion outside. But what if they demanded papers? He looked at Sylvia on the bed, her face numb, knowing they’d finally caught up to her. He could see it now. He was death to her.
He bent to her.
“I pulled the gun on you, do you hear? I made you come here. I said I’d kill you. You never saw me before, do you understand?”
“No, Robert, God!”
“No. No, I’m an escaped criminal and I was using you to hide behind. Do you understand? Now scream.”
“No. Robert.”
“Yes, scream, damn it, don’t you see, it’s your only chance.”
“Comrade!”
“Robert, we can?”
“Shut up, Sylvia.” He moved to get away from her. He cocked the revolver and aimed at the door. He’d get the first one sure and maybe a second. No firing squad for him.
“Comrade Florry,” the voice called. “We are from Steinbach.”
Their saviors took them down the freight elevator to the basement of the hotel and into the boiler room. There, behind the ancient furnaces, was a narrow door. It led through an ancient tunnel under the plaza into the deserted cathedral itself. Florry and Sylvia spent the day there, not a hundred paces from their rooms and not fifty paces from the furious SIM stooges outside. But the illusion of safety soon evaporated in the sullenness of their angels, who treated them with contempt. Florry was edgy; the men would not give him back his revolver, which he had yielded in a weak moment, nor were they particularly sympathetic to their plight.
“Cold chaps,” Florry muttered to Sylvia as they huddled in an obscure transept chapel beneath shrouded religious statues, waiting for the time to pass.
“Better than the Russians,” the girl replied.
Florry slept through the afternoon, surrendering at last to his desperate fatigue, but still the day passed with excruciating slowness in the dim space beneath the hugely vaulted roof of the cathedral. It smelled of piss and destruction.
Finally, at twilight, it was time to go. They crept out a back entrance to a truck. Florry and the girl were ordered into the back.
“I suppose you’ll be taking us to our legation now,” Florry said.
The man, a heavyset worker in a butcher’s smock, didn’t answer. He had a German Luger in his belt, evidently a prized possession, and he was given to fondling it, and he now took it out to do so, meanwhile ignoring Florry’s question.
The ride lasted for hours. Twice they were stopped and once there was yelling. But each time the van continued. Finally, it began to climb and Florry could feel the strain against gravity as it rose. He had a wild moment of hope that they were heading through the Pyrenees, but then realized they’d never left the sound of the city.
The truck stopped after what seemed an endless voyage up a narrow, twisting road. The doors were opened. Cool air hit Florry’s lungs; he blinked in the dark and stepped out. He had the illusion of space, oceans of it, and beyond the unlit but somehow nevertheless vibrant tapestry of the city spreading out to the horizon. As his eyes adjusted, he became aware of unreal structures immediately about, as if he were in the center of some dream city, a utopia of crazy, cantilevered streamlines, odd futuristic bulges and girders.
“Good heavens,” he said. “We’ve come to a bloody amusement park.”
“You are atop the mountain of the devil,” said one of the men close by. “From here Christ was offered the world. He did not take it. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of others.”
