Florry took the warm thing and held it close to his mouth and squirted in a brief, pulsing jet of wine. Blanco Blanco. A little bitter, yet vivid all the same. Yes. He swallowed and pa.s.sed it on. He noticed that the rifles had spouted roses and that women had come among them.
"Hey, ingles ingles, not so bad, eh?" someone yelled to him.
"Yes, bravo," shouted Florry back, feeling excited and cynical at once. He"d spent two crude weeks tramping about in the mud with broomsticks with these boys-the rifles were only issued recently-and yet he felt a part of it. What a jolly show! What a spiffy send-up! It was like "14, wasn"t it, everybody off on a b.l.o.o.d.y crusade. Pip, pip, do one"s best, and all that.
At the bottom of the Ramblas, the parade wheeled to the left in an unending torrent under the watchful, cool eye of Christopher Columbus at the top of his pedestal, and headed along the broad boulevard at the lip of the port until it arrived at the station, a grand Spanish building, all monument and stern purpose and majestic self-importance.
Within its sooty portals, however, the Spanish talent for disorganization rea.s.serted itself aggressively after the relative precision of the parade. Florry found himself stalled under a vast double-vaulted ceiling filled up with steam and noise. Half the lights in the big cavern were off and searchlights prowled about, illuminating rising columns of steam theatrically. It was a near riot. Suddenly, the queue began to move. Florry advanced to the train and then the movement broke down again, abandoning him in the throng right at the portal of the car. He stood, one boot up on the step, his heavy rifle over his shoulder, his kit on his back and a water bottle at his belt, like a 1914 victory poster. He felt absurd. Could not the Spaniards do one thing efficiently?
It seemed to take forever. Good Christ, how can they hope to win a war and finish a revolution if they cannot even fill up a train in an orderly fashion?
"Robert! Oh, Robert. Thank G.o.d!"
Her hair was pulled back severely under a black beret and she still wore the s.e.xless mono and plimsoles, but her eyes had that special, sleepy grace, and when she smiled as she fought her way through the soldiers to him, he felt a burst of pleasure scalding as steam and thought he"d faint. Yet he also felt himself pulled up short and breathless with anger. Sylvia, off to watch her little hero do his bit.
"h.e.l.lo, Sylvia," he said, unsure what else to say, possessing no opinion as to what would happen next.
"I had to see you. I hated the way you just went off."
He was surprised at the anger he felt.
"G.o.d, Sylvia, is this scene really necessary?"
"Vamanos, ingles!" a sergeant yelled from the car. He was holding up the line. He stepped out to let the others file by. a sergeant yelled from the car. He was holding up the line. He stepped out to let the others file by.
"I have to go," he said gruffly. "They"re getting ready to go out."
"Robert, I had to see you one last time."
"What nonsense! You were the one who pushed me me away. You were the one who wanted some room. You were the one who had to have experiences. You paid your debt, Sylvia. Florry had his fun, b.l.o.o.d.y good fun it was, too. You owe me nothing." away. You were the one who wanted some room. You were the one who had to have experiences. You paid your debt, Sylvia. Florry had his fun, b.l.o.o.d.y good fun it was, too. You owe me nothing."
"I owe you everything," she said. "I want you to know how much I respect you for this. Like Julian, you"ll write history rather than about about it." it."
"What rubbish! You"ve been reading too many posters. Nothing"s happened up there in months. The only attacks are launched by the lice. It"ll simply be a time without bathing, that"s all. Just like Eton, actually."
"Robert-"
"Vamanos, ingles, amigo!" the sergeant called again. the sergeant called again. "Es la hora. El tren sale. No quieres ser ejecutado?" "Es la hora. El tren sale. No quieres ser ejecutado?" The train whistle rang through the air, echoing against the stones of the station. The train whistle rang through the air, echoing against the stones of the station.
"Stop that d.a.m.ned crying and let me shake your hand," Florry said. "You shall have your adventures and I shall have mine."
She tried to smile but it was wrecked by the intensity of her emotion. Florry took her hand and meant to shake it primly and ironically and angrily after their sweet night together. But he surprised himself by pulling her to him. Everybody on the train was cheering and making suggestions of what to do with a lovely young girl and he didn"t give a d.a.m.n. He could see her eyes widen in surprise as he brought her close and he brought her closer, feeling all the war gear on his back enc.u.mbering him, but he didn"t care about that, either. He crushed her body in his arms, taking pleasure in it, feeling the give and yield of her slight bones, smelling the soft sweetness of her, and he kissed her, hard, on the mouth.
"There," he said, speaking quite brutally. "Now that"s a proper send-off for a soldier boy, eh? Now smile. Show Florry some teeth, darling."
She looked at him, shocked.
The train whistled and began to move.
"Good-bye, Sylvia. I"ll put in a good word for you to Julian. Perhaps you and he can have tea when this is finished." He jumped up on the doorstep of the train as it pulled out of the station. He hung there until he could see her no longer, and then they pulled him aboard, cheering and happy for the romantic Englishman.
He hated her. He loved her.
d.a.m.n the woman!
13.
THE MAJOR.
IN LONDON, IT WAS WELL AFTER MIDNIGHT. HOLLY-BROWNING had become almost a vampire: he lived by night, as if the sun"s touch were lethal. He sat, isolated, chalky complected, his eyes black-ringed, working with furious concentration on the message Vane had so recently brought up from Signals. had become almost a vampire: he lived by night, as if the sun"s touch were lethal. He sat, isolated, chalky complected, his eyes black-ringed, working with furious concentration on the message Vane had so recently brought up from Signals.
The major had a gift for codes, or at least an enthusiasm for them. The message was encrypted in the standard Playfair cipher of the British army, and he had no difficulty pulling its meaning from the nonsense of the letter groups that faced him. He merely compared them against a square formation-five letters by five letters-from the key group and extracted, off the diagonal, the bigram of each two-letter unit. The key group, curiously enough, was always drawn from a verse of standard English poetry; the code was made secure by changing the key-the verse-each week, by prearranged schedule. That week"s verse happened to be from one of the major"s favorites, Rupert Brooke. "If I should die, think only this of me," it went, "there"s some foreign field that"s forever England."
Sampson"s dispatch yielded its secrets and its purposes swiftly and cleanly as the letter groups tumbled into words, the words into sentences. When the major was done, he sat back. It was a longish doc.u.ment, nicely crafted, tightly constructed, succinctly covering recent developments.
Yet it struck the major with a peculiar, cold authority. He looked to the fire, which had burned low, and felt the shame come across him like a shudder.
A soft noise sounded in the darkness and he looked up to see Vane standing silhouetted against the illumination of the open door.
"Yes, Vane?"
"Sir, I wondered if there"s a reply?"
"No, I think not," said the major, and as effortlessly as he had arrived, Vane began to slip away.
"Vane, stop. Do come in."
"Sir, I-"
"No, I insist."
Vane padded vaguely through the darkness and took the leather chair opposite Holly Browning"s desk.
"Drink, Vane?"
"No, sir."
"I"ve got some very fine brandy. I"ve some whiskey. I"ve got a bottle of scotch barley somewhere and I"ve-"
"Thank you, sir, but-"
"No, that"s fine. Suit yourself." He removed the bottle and a gla.s.s from his desk, poured himself a finger of brandy, brought it up, and swallowed it quickly. He remembered the stuff from 1916, when extra rations had been issued before the big jump-off at the Somme. It had certainly came in handy that that day. day.
"It"s very good, Vane. Are you sure you won"t have any?"
"No, sir."
"As you wish. Good heavens, these have been long days, haven"t they?" He had no idea how to make conversation.
"Yessir. If I may say, sir, you really are working too hard. Wouldn"t want to damage one"s health."
"Working?" the major said, pouring himself another finger of the brandy. "Actually, I"m not working at all. Sampson"s doing the work. Sampson and poor Florry."
"Perhaps you should take a holiday, sir."
"Er, perhaps I should. Perhaps I will, too. Vane, tell me. Have you ever been to Moscow?"
"No, I haven"t, sir."
"All right. Come with me. I"ll show you something."
The major rose and walked from behind his desk to the window, a journey of just a few paces. There, he threw the heavy curtain. They looked from MI-6"s old Broadway offices just a few blocks toward the Thames and the gaudy, crenellated buildings of Parliament. It was utterly peaceful, a serene composition off a Yule card. The moon, a bright half circle, shone in the sky at the center of a blur of radiance and its cold chill touched everything, especially a sheath of new-dusted snow that lay upon the roof of Westminster Abbey.
"Vane, what do you see?"
"Nothing, sir. Silent London. That"s all."
"Look over at Whitehall."
"One can hardly see it, sir. All the lights are out."
"They are, indeed. Think of it, Vane, all those empty offices, locked and silent. All those chaps gone home, now in bed or reading or working at their hobbies or off to the theater, what have you. But the truth is, at this precise moment, so certain is the British government of its place in the world and the stability of its empire, it can actually afford to cease to exist for a full twelve hours. Every day, the British government disappears for twelve hours. Extraordinary, isn"t it? A daylight government."
Vane said nothing, as if the thought had never occurred to him.
"Vane, in Moscow in the winter of "nineteen and again in "twenty-three, the lights were never out. They blazed away each evening until dawn. Those chaps were figuring out ways to beat us. They were, Vane. Strategems, ploys, plots, subversions. They were like Wells"s Martian intelligences, cool and implacable. It used to haunt me, those burning lights. Our people in Moscow with the emba.s.sy, they tell me that the lights burn brighter than ever these nights."
"Surely, sir, they are merely attempting to figure out ways to get their electric plants to cease from conking out every two weeks or learning how to get their harvests in on time under that terrible-"
"No, Vane. They are burning with fury, with fire, to destroy us. To have what we have. Or, rather, to take what we have from us. It obsesses them. It obsesses this man Levitsky, the master spy."
"I"m sure you are his match, sir."
The major issued something very like a chuckle. Levitsky"s match? How rich!
"If I am very lucky," he said, "and if my people perform up to their very, very best, then yes, perhaps I have a chance against Levitsky."
"You knew him well, sir?"
Another jest. Poor Vane had no idea how inadvertently droll he had become.
"Levitsky and I had quite a few sessions in the cellar of the Lubyanka in 1923," said the major, remembering. "A number of highly interesting conversations."
"I"m sure you taught him a thing or two, sir."
The major looked at the moonstruck landscape. Oh, yes, he"d taught Levitsky a thing or two! He shook his head. A set of memories unspooled in his skull and he remembered the pa.s.sionate conviction in the Jew"s eyes, the emotional contact, the intensity, the glittering intelligence.
"May I ask, sir, what brings Levitsky to mind?"
"He"s in Spain," said the major. "He"s in Barcelona, or so Sampson reports."
"Yessir."
"Yes, you see how it all fits, how I said it would fit. His agent goes to Spain and communicates with home base via Amsterdam. But there comes a time when communication isn"t quite enough; the campaign has become more complex, the plans more intricate, the possibilities more numerous. And thus does Levitsky travel undercover to Barcelona to confer with Julian Raines. G.o.d, Vane, if Florry could catch the two together! That"d be it. No one in government could deny Raines"s complicity. And we could take Florry the last step. We"d then be done with it altogether!"
"Yessir."
The major was trembling with repressed wanting. He felt himself so terribly, terribly close.
"Let me tell you, Vane, what sort of a man this Levitsky is. So you have some idea as to what it is we"re up against. Within days after his arrival to take over the NKVD operations, he claimed his first victim. He ordered the arrest of a Soviet clerk named Igenko. Igenko was picked up, interrogated, and is surely dead by this time."
"Yessir."
"It sounds quite mundane, doesn"t it, Vane, the Soviet Russian system in normal operation. A clerk is suspected of vague "crimes," and in days he"s dead."
"It"s revolting, sir."
"Actually, it"s quite a bit more than revolting, Vane. You still don"t know the half of it. I remember Igenko, too, from 1919. It was so long ago."
"This Igenko and Levitsky: they were connected?"
"Yes. And surely that was Igenko"s "crime." He knew Levitsky, and thus he was a risk to Levitsky"s operation. Levitsky is so important he must be protected at all costs."
"Could they have been comrades, sir?"
"More than that, Vane."
"Lovers, perhaps, sir? Would they be poofs?"
"More again, Vane," said Major Holly-Browning, looking out at the dark halls of government, the sleeping city under its lacy snow, its bone-cold, moonstruck radiance. "They were brothers."
Part II
JULIAN.