Tapestry of Spies

you who didn’t do yours.”

“My apol?”

“Fuck your apologies. Now get rid of this man, and take us to the bodies.”

“This way, please, comrade. We brought them out for burial.”

Degas led him across the yard to the shed. Lenny saw that it was splintered and ruptured by gunfire, one window blackened with flames where a bomb had gone off. The smell of smoke still hung in the air.

The dead, about fifteen, lay in a row in the sun outside the garage. Most were chewed up rather badly by the machine gun and the bomb and they had the scruffy, ragged indolence of corpses. Flies buzzed about. There were puddles of blood, thick and black, all over the ground.

“That one was the leader,” said Degas. “The old man in the turtleneck. He yelled that we were Stalin’s killers. He’s the one with this.”

The boy held up a glass eye.

The little marble sparkled in his gloved fingers, the pupil open wide and black and blue.

“Throw the fucking thing away, sonny,” Lenny said.

He went to look at Steinbach. The old man had been shot in the throat and the chest and the hand. His gray sweater was the color of raspberry ice.

“We found this, too, comrade,” said Degas. “It is in English. No one here can read it.”

He handed Lenny a sheet of paper covered with a blue scrawl:

I, the undersigned, take full responsibility for that which I am about to receive and wish to establish that I was acting under orders from the highest authority. I acknowledge that I have taken from the revolution its most precious treasure and that I, and I alone, am responsible.

It was signed, Robert Florry (British citizen).

Lenny looked at it for a long moment, breathing heavily.

“Is it important, comrade?” asked Degas.

“It’s nothing,” said Lenny, putting it in his pocket. “And this was all?”

“Yes, comrade commissar.”

“And nobody escaped?”

“No, comrade.”

“And so what has happened to the tall man and the girl that that fellow told you about?”

“I–I couldn’t say, comrade commissar.”

“Did you investigate?”

“I didn’t see the point.”

“Could they have escaped?”

“Not unless it was before my men got here.”

“Have you searched the park?”

“Yes, comrade.”

“Everywhere? The woods down the mountain?”

“I sent a patrol about to check. Perhaps in the melee some POUMistas scampered away. But I do not think so. We caught them entirely by surprise. They were eating. Chicken with rice. They were in the middle of?”

He halted.

“Look, comrade commissar,” he said, his face suddenly brightening. He pointed.

Three Asaltos were entering the gates. They prodded before them with their bayonet points a sargento in the black mono of the POUM. Blood ran down his face from a wound in his scalp, but it had dried. He had a vacant, stupid look in his eyes.

“Comrade captain,” yelled one of the soldiers, “come see what we found snoozing in the woods!”

“Lucky man, Degas,” said Bolodin. “If that guy tells me what I want to know, you’ll get your medal. And you were about to be shot.”

37 PAPERS

Do you know?” she said, awakening, “I had a marvelous dream. I was back in London, in a nice flat. I had a dog. I was listening to the BBC. I was reading Mayfair. It was very, very boring. I hated to leave it.”

“Who could blame you?” he said, aware as he took a quick glance about that he had not been included in the dream. What he saw was what he’d been looking at for hours now: the dust was thick as a carpet, the furniture ruined, the walls bare and peeling. An odor of neglect clung to the room. Outside, or rather of what he could see outside in the dark, there was no movement whatsoever, though occasionally a truckload of Asaltos would heave by. He had been at the window for hours, while she slept. He had the automatic in his hand.

“Do you see anything?”

“No. But we can’t stay here much longer.”

“What time is it?” she asked. “I feel like I’ve slept for several days.”

“It’s nearly nine. The sun has been down about an hour.”

“God, I could use a bath.”

“I admire your sense of self, though I must say it’s a queer time to think of bathing.”

“I hate to feel dirty,” she said. “I absolutely loathe it.”

Florry continued to look out the dark window. His eyes burned and the fatigue threatened to overtake him. He was gripping the pistol far too tightly. A few minutes back something had snapped in the house and he’d almost fired crazily. He knew he was getting close to his edge.

“It’s the papers,” he said, “that will kill us. Or rather, our lack of them. We can get spiffy, I suppose, or at least spiffy by Spanish standards. We can clean up and look the right proper travelers. But if we get to the station and the Asaltos stop us or some NKVD chaps, then we’ve bought it.”

He could feel his teeth grinding in the bitterness of it all.

Papers. Authentication. Perhaps the consulate … no, of course not, the NKVD would be watching the consulate. Perhaps they could buy the bloody things somewhere in the quarter. But how to make contact? How to raise the money? How to make sure one wasn’t being observed or that one wouldn’t be betrayed? Florry had always run with the hunters when he was a copper. Now he was running with the hunted. He shook his head. There were no rules, as there were in the daylight world: you simply did what you had to, that was the only rule.

“I suppose we could try to walk to the frontier, traveling by night. It’s only about a hundred miles north. We might make it undetected. Then we could make it across the Pyrenees ? Good God, half the International Brigades marched over the Pyrenees, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to make it. Or we?” But he stopped.

It was absurd. One hundred miles without papers, neither of them speaking the language with any authority, the NKVD in full command of the police and hungry for foreign spies to put against the wall.

“Robert?”

“The port, Sylvia. I think that would be our best bet. I’ve been thinking about it. If we can get down to Barrio Chino, perhaps I can make some sort of contact with a foreign seaman and arrange a passage …”

“Robert, please listen to me.”

“Eh?”

“I can get us out of here.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Do you remember that chap of yours you borrowed the book from. The newspaper fellow. Sampson?”

“Yes.” Sampson! Bloody Sampson, of course!

“Yes, well he’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yes. Yes, briefly to Madrid, then back to England. His assignment was over, he said.”

Florry said nothing. Yes, it would be over, would it not? Sampson, back safe and sound, leaving them in the lurch.