Tapestry of Spies

commissar, Florry thought; too bad he’d picked the wrong party.

Damn these boys: could they not get it bloody over? Florry’s knees had begun to knock and his breath came in little pinched sobs and his eyes were wide open like upstairs windows into which flew birds and clouds and everything on earth. Sylvia leaned or almost huddled against him; he could feel her trembling and wished he could at least hold her or offer her some comfort in this terrible moment.

“?Preparen para disparar!” barked the sargento.

The boys attempted to come to a formal position and lifted their rifles to aim. The muzzles wobbled terribly, because the weapons were so heavy. One of the idiot children had even fixed a bayonet to his rifle.

Sylvia had begun to weep. She had collapsed against him, yet he could not hold her because his hands were tied. He looked about. His eyes seemed magically open ? the forest, filled with low beams of light and towering columns of mist and soft, wet, heavy air, seemed to whirl about him.

Let it be clean, he prayed. Let it be clean.

“Apunten,” the sargento barked.

“The bastards,” Florry heard himself saying.

Then they heard the noise.

“Esperan. ?Que es eso ruido?”

At first it was a far-off putter, almost something to be ignored. Yet it rose, persistent, the labored sound of an engine ? no, two, perhaps three ? climbing the steep road of Tibidabo.

“Es una camion, sargento,” one of the boys said.

“?Carrajo! Bueno, no disparen,” the sergeant said, looking about in confusion. The soldiers let their rifles droop.

Through the trees, they saw the vehicles, big and cumbersome, loaded with troops as they lumbered by.

“Asaltos,” somebody whispered.

Just beyond them, the trucks halted. An officer got out and the men climbed down in their clanking battle gear. Their bayonets were fixed. They formed into a loose attack formation, rifles at the half-port, and began a jogtrot up the hill toward the amusement park. Two men at the rear of the column carried a Hotchkiss machine gun and tripod.

“The Stalinists have caught up with Steinbach,” Florry murmured.

Sylvia collapsed to the ground, but only Florry noticed. At the top of the hill, there was no suspense. The firing started almost immediately. They could hear the dry, rolling crack of the rifles and the stutter of the Hotchkiss gun.

“They’re really giving it to them,” Florry said.

He turned back to the firing squad. The sergeant was clearly bewildered, not sure where his duty lay. But the boys of the little unit weren’t: they were at the point of panic with the gunfire so close.

Florry watched as the sergeant struggled with his indecision. And then he said, as if having at last conquered himself, “?No! ?La hora de su muerte esta aqui!” He pointed at Florry melodramatically.

“?Muerte!” he said, raising the pistol. Then he slumped forward with a spastic’s drool coming from his inert face and thudded heavily to the earth. Behind him, the boy who’d crushed his skull stood in shocked horror for just a second before pitching the rifle into the brush and heading out at a dead run. His compatriots studied the situation for perhaps half a second, then abandoned their weapons just as resolutely and fled just as swiftly.

Florry rushed to the rifle with the bayonet, bent to it, and in a few seconds of steady sawing had himself free. He slipped the bayonet from the gun muzzle and ran to Sylvia to cut her free.

“Come on,” he said, picking up the sergeant’s automatic, “we’ve got to get out of here.”

Up top, the shooting had at last died down. Florry and Sylvia pushed their way deeper into the forest, away from the trucks, and found the going nearly impossible for the bracken and the undergrowth. In time, they were swallowed up by the trees and seemed far away from everything. And soon after, they came to the rusty tracks of the disused funicular, by which in calmer days Barceloneans had traveled to the amusement park and the church up there. Descending its gravel bed was easier than trying to fight their way down through the undergrowth, and by noon, they had reached the base of the mountain. The houses were sparse at first, but within a bit they found themselves in what must have at one time been a fashionable district, on a serpentine street flanked by great houses that now seemed deserted.

They forced the gate on one of these and went out back. The house was secure against the return of the owners in some distant, better future, but in the servant’s quarters, a door gave way to Florry’s shoulder and they were in and safe.

36 TIBIDABO

By the time Comrade Commissar Bolodin and his men arrived at the top of Tibidabo Mountain, the fighting was over. As Ugarte pulled the big Ford to a halt by the assault guard trucks a few hundred feet below the gate of the amusement park, Lenny could feel his rage beginning to peak; it seemed to be replacing itself with some other feeling, odd and sickening. Lenny felt as though he might vomit. Suppose, he wondered, the ache in his stomach watery and loose, suppose they were dead? Suppose his deal was all fucked, shot dead by gun-happy assault guards from Valencia “protecting” the revolution from traitors.

“Ah! Comrade Bolodin,” someone said with great smug cheer. Lenny turned to discover a gallant young Asalto officer, his arm in a sling, a cigarette in his mouth, cap pushed back cockily on his head. The youngster looked sunny as a valentine: he couldn’t wait for the compliments to come raining down on his handsome head.

“Captain Degas, of the Eleventh Valencia Guardia de Asalto,” the young officer introduced himself, snapping his heels together with a flourish and coming to a kind of mocking attention. “You’ll see, comrade commissar, that the problem of the Fascist traitors, chief among them the notorious Steinbach, has been solved.”

“Any prisoners?” Lenny demanded in his rude Spanish.

“I regret to inform the commissar of the Servicio de Investigacion Militar that resistance by the traitors and spies was formidable, and that the taking of prisoners proved imposs?”

Lenny smashed his stupid, smart young face with the back of his hand, watching the man spin backward and drop, a look of stunned surprise and sudden shame running quickly across his brilliant features.

“Stupido,” Lenny barked. “Idiot. I ought to have shot.”

He was aware of the Asaltos going silent all around him. He felt their curious and shocked eyes.

“Explanations,” Lenny barked.

“We’re stationed down the mountain in Sarria. An informant told us a band of POUM traitors was hiding up here and agreed to lead us to them. We were acting under the strictest revolutionary orders issued by the government and signed by the commander of the Servicio de Investigacion Militar, that is, Comrade Commissar Bolodin himself.”

“Bring this informer.”

“Ramirez,” the captain shouted.

A second or so later, a seedy-looking Spaniard in a black jacket was brought over. He held his cap nervously in his hands. Lenny listened as he explained: he was the caretaker of a nearby estate. With the people gone, he got by as best he could and was out late the night before when a truck pulled into the park and he realized that it was being used by traitors. He’d seen a tall man in a suit and a girl get out of the truck.

“?Ingles?”

“Yes, perhaps ingles.”

“With a mustache?”

He was not sure. But the man had a dark suit and blondish hair.

“Pay the man,” Lenny said. “He did his duty. You should have contacted us. It’s