“Two weeks ago you hated him. Now you love him. Now you’ll risk yourself to perform some foolish romantic gesture in his memory. You really are a fool, Robert. But you certainly won’t risk me.”
“He was my friend. I must help him. Very well, I’ll go by myself. Perhaps I can talk the chaps into letting me in. I’ll see you at the station. We can travel by?”
“Robert?”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have raised my voice. It’s just that?”
“God, Robert, the virtue in you is appalling. It’s actually quite repugnant.”
“You have no idea how many times I let him down, Sylvia. How I let him down, how I betrayed him. How at the moment when he asked me for one thing, I could not do it. Perhaps we had better leave separately tomorrow. You go your way, and I’ll go mine. I’m going to get that ring one way or another.”
“Robert, you are such a bloody fool. I shall get your bloody ring for you then, if it means so much.” She was quite angry.
They left early the next morning, a doddering, nittering couple, fascinated into open-mouthed dumfoundment by all they saw about them. They pointed gawkishly at soldiers. They asked foolish questions loudly, in English. They tried to find a good cup of tea.
It was only a matter of hours. The train for the frontier left at one. They took a tram across town.
“Salud, senor,” said the conductor, accepting Florry’s peseta piece.
At the hotel, it went with surprising ease. Sylvia’s bag had been stashed and they went to look for it. Florry stood in the lobby stupidly, waiting until it came. It was a mahogany room, full of flowers, quite civilized in feeling. He looked about. There seemed to be no one of interest in the lobby. There were no secret policemen or Asaltos. At last the bag was produced.
“Splendid,” said Florry heartily, and he gave the boy an enormous tip.
They went outside and found a cab.
“There,” he said, “you see, it was easy.”
“It was stupid,” she said.
“It took us a bloody five minutes. It cost us nothing. We’ve done it. We’ve made it. We’ll be at the station in minutes. Nobody saw us.”
He was almost right. One man had seen them standing outside the hotel, and only one. Unfortunately, it was Ugarte.
38
UGARTE
Ugarte’s chance to redeem himself in the eyes of his boss came at around twenty minutes to one. He was sitting slouched like the pimp he’d once been on the steps of the cathedral watching the hotel; all sensibly gave him wide berth, for he was a dangerous-looking man, chewing a toothpick with the arrogant sullenness of one who is willing to commit violence. As he brought his eyes up in a lazy scan of the crowd ? it was that close, another second and he’d have missed them entirely ? he saw a tall gentleman of obviously foreign extraction and his missus blinking confusedly as they attempted to negotiate, bag in hand, their way toward the street and eventually a cab.
Ugarte’s eyes beheld them, almost dismissed them, then almost lost them in the crowd, and then at last brought them into focus for study as they bobbed awkwardly through the crowd: yes, perhaps. They looked older and graver, somehow; he’d been expecting glossy, beautiful children, and these two dodderers were gray and halting. Yet as he watched them he became aware of how much of the illusion of age was merely the result of profound fatigue, amplified by the gauntness of hunger. And that, furthermore, there was a queer theatrical dimension to them: he sensed their strain. They were not, not quite, who they seemed to be.
Ugarte’s dilemma became vivid. Comrade Bolodin’s instructions had been precise: observe, but do not intercept unless absolutely necessary. At first chance, contact headquarters. Retain observation. Do not apprehend.
Ugarte was most anxious not to offend the great Bolodin, whom he loved and feared as no man he’d ever met in his life. Yet he watched with a sort of hypnotized dolor as they entered the vehicle, closed the door, and it pulled away. His eyes felt hooded and sleepy, his brain damaged. What was involved here was something quite beyond his experience: a decision.
Then, without willing it, his feet begin to move. He found himself racing back through the crowd, pushing his way into the street. He waved down a car and pulled his SIM card. Terrified eyes met his.
“The station!” he shrieked, “or it’s your death!”
When he got there, he could not find them. He had a moment’s terror. It occurred to him he could lie about the whole thing. He could deny it had ever happened. Bolodin would never know. That’s what he would ?
Then he saw them. As they pushed their way through the crowds, they moved with uneasy tentativeness that was almost their best disguise. He watched as they made their way. They reached Via 7 where a huge train was loading. They showed their tickets at the gate and were admitted. Ugarte looked up to the black sign under the numeral seven that displayed destinations and saw a long list, the last entry in which was PORT BOU (LA FRONTERA).
Ugarte leaped ahead through the crowd. He pushed his way along, under the few revolutionary banners that nobody had gotten around to removing yet, and made his way toward the set of iron stairs against the far wall of the station which led up to a balcony, a door, a window, clearly some sort of station headquarters. At the top, there stood a young Asalto with a machine pistol.
“Fool,” yelled Ugarte, shaking with excitement. He pulled out his SIM card again, feeling very much like a real policeman. “Do you know what this means? I could have you shot! I could have your family shot! Out of the way!”
The boy, a Valencia bumpkin, seemed to melt, and Ugarte pushed his way into the room where several bored and seedy but vaguely official-looking men sat at desks.
“I command you in the name of the people,” said Ugarte, who had heretofore only commanded low women in the name of his wallet, “to delay train number seven. Now, where’s a telephone?”
Lenny did not panic when the call came, nor did he stop to quiver at the closeness, the tentativeness, of the connection to his quarry. He simply knew what had to be done next and set about to do it. He knew that if Florry were leaving, the gold was leaving, presumably among his effects, or perhaps by way of a shipment, melted down in some innocuous way. He knew that the gold was most vulnerable when it was being moved, because guile, not armed guards, were the essence of the GRU operation. Whatever, he knew that the answers rested with the man Florry, who had to be persuaded, somehow, to share his knowledge. Lenny did not doubt that he could convince Florry to cooperate but what terrified him was the danger of discovery. He wanted to separate Florry from his secrets at his leisure, far from inquiring eyes. He had decided, therefore, to allow the man to leave the country and to take him in France.
Lenny left instantly for the station. In fact, he was packed and ready in more ways than any of the men who worked for him or any of the men he now worked for could possibly know. He had planned toward this day for some time, and the planning was exquisitely complete. It was not merely a question of a bag, a change of clothes, and a tin of toothpowder; he had such a bag, but sewed into its lid were, first, a British passport in the name of Edward Fenney, an expensive forgery, and, second, fifteen crisp thousand-dollar bills U.S., his savings from various unofficial activities in Barcelona.
The plan was simple: Comrade Bolodin of the NKVD/SIM would board the train and Mr. Fenney would
