"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, G.o.d!"
"No. No, I"m an escaped criminal and I was using you to hide behind. Do you understand? Now scream."
"No. Robert."
"Yes, scream, d.a.m.n 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 c.o.c.ked 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.s.
"Better than the Russians," the girl replied.
Florry slept through the afternoon, surrendering at last to his desperate fatigue, but still the day pa.s.sed with excruciating slowness in the dim s.p.a.ce beneath the hugely vaulted roof of the cathedral. It smelled of p.i.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 b.l.o.o.d.y amus.e.m.e.nt 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."
"Tibidabo Mountain," said Sylvia. "We"ve come to the park atop Tibidabo Mountain."
"Yes," said the man. "Just the place for the trial and execution of the traitor Florry."
34.
BAD NEWS.
IT FELL TO UGARTE TO TELL COMRADE COMMISSAR BOLODIN that the Englishman Florry and the girl Sylvia Lilliford had evidently vanished from the hotel, despite his team"s scrupulous scrutiny. But surprisingly, Comrade Bolodin took the news stoically. that the Englishman Florry and the girl Sylvia Lilliford had evidently vanished from the hotel, despite his team"s scrupulous scrutiny. But surprisingly, Comrade Bolodin took the news stoically.
Lenny, sitting in his office at the SIM headquarters in the main police station cleaning his Tokarev, thought this meant they were getting ready to move the gold. Florry was back from his secret job behind the lines, something for the hidden GRU apparat apparat the Englishman, like his crazed master Levitsky, clearly worked for, something so secret it would be all but unknown to the NKVD. He knew it would be harder than it seemed. There was too much at stake. the Englishman, like his crazed master Levitsky, clearly worked for, something so secret it would be all but unknown to the NKVD. He knew it would be harder than it seemed. There was too much at stake.
"Just poof," said Lenny, "and they were gone?"
"Yes, comrade."
"You talk to the hotel people?" Lenny wondered, wiping down his slide.
"Yes, comrade. n.o.body saw a thing."
Lenny considered this curiously, ramming a short, stiff brush through the barrel of the disa.s.sembled automatic. Then he said, "People go in and out?"
"Comrade, it is is a public place. My team was on all sides of the building." a public place. My team was on all sides of the building."
Lenny nodded, wiping down the recoil spring.
He felt rage blossom like a precious, poisoned flower deep in his head, more precious for its containment. It was delicious. He looked at the Spaniard and had a terrible impulse to squash his head. But he didn"t lose control. He didn"t lose control anymore, he was so close to what he wanted.
"Should we put out some kind of alert so the Asaltos or the police can-"
"No, we should not put out an alert. Then we have all sorts of other people all asking the SIM how it does its business. And I don"t like to answer questions. Do you understand, my friend?"
"Yes, comrade."
"Don"t I take good care of you, Ugarte? Aren"t I a good boss, Ugarte? I"m no mintzer mintzer, am I?"
Although the Spaniard couldn"t know the Yiddish word, he answered, "No, boss."
Lenny rose, embraced the Spaniard, drawing him close with one hand, and with the other gathered between thumb and forefinger a fold of flesh from the cheek. He held it delicately as one would a rose, and felt the man"s terror.
"Scared, Comrade Ugarte?"
"No, comrade," said the man, trembling.
Lenny smiled, then crushed his fingers together. Ugarte fell weeping to the floor. It was not the first scream heard in those quarters.
Lenny picked the little one up.
"We can"t let this bird fly," Lenny exclaimed calmly. "You tell your gang, Comrade Bolodin is a very busy man these days, and he expects his special friends in Ugarte"s section to do their very best."
Lenny could see the terror in Ugarte"s eyes. "Okay? Do you understand?"
"Yes." Where Lenny"s fingers had come together, a purple hemorrhage now blossomed.
The little man scurried off.
Lenny sat back with his pistol. He knew where Florry would be. He"d have to be with Steinbach, the new number-one gangster of Barcelona, who"d slipped through the big net of June 16 and whose capture was Lenny"s most pressing official business. Clearly Steinbach was being run by GRU; how else could he be so effective? It was a battle between two Russian gangs, he now saw, and he was right in the middle.
When they got Steinbach, they"d get Florry. And Lenny knew they"d get Steinbach. In the spirit of capitalism, the SIM had offered a great deal of money.
And money, Lenny knew, money talks.
35.
THE TRIAL.
IT SEEMED RATHER STRANGE, FLORRY HAD TO ADMIT, THAT in the heat of its death convulsions, the POUM had chosen to liquidate in the heat of its death convulsions, the POUM had chosen to liquidate him him. One would have thought they were rather busy for such trifles. But no: this last act was crucial to them. He was surprised to discover how much pa.s.sion had been invested in such a seemingly ludicrous act.
Sylvia was led off, and the trial began almost immediately in a large maintenance shed at the rear of the deserted amus.e.m.e.nt park, in which at one time the park"s mechanisms and gizmos had been tended. As a courtroom it was barely adequate, certainly nothing like the elaborate courtroom in which another innocent man, Benny Lal, had met his fate. It was a cavernous old garage, with stone floor and a single bare bulb, almost a cliche of illumination borrowed from the cinema, and it was exceedingly drafty. One could see one"s breath. However, it did seem adequate, Florry had to admit, to the sort of justice being dispensed.
The evidence was indisputable, especially as marshaled in the dry tones of the well-informed prosecutor, none other than the one-eyed Comrade Steinbach whose eloquence held the panel of judges-three meatpackers, a pimply teenager, and a wild-haired German youth-spellbound. Steinbach, without so much as a h.e.l.lo to his old chum Florry, pushed ahead with his case, as if he were eager to be done with the business.
"Is it not true, Comrade Florry," Steinbach said with the trace of an amused, ironic smile on his lips, and his good eye radiating intelligence and conviction, "that on the night before the attack against Huesca on April 27 of this year, you sent a message out from the trenches via a secret post to certain parties in Barcelona announcing the time and direction of our efforts?"
Florry, cold and exhausted and suddenly terrified, knew the answer would doom him. But he supposed he was already doomed.
"Yes, yes, I did. But I was trying to reach-"
And he halted. He was trying to reach Sylvia. To mention Sylvia would be to involve her.
But Steinbach was not interested in explanations anyway.
With a flourish, he reached into his pocket and removed a sheet of paper. Florry recognized it instantly.
Steinbach read it in a dry tone and its romantic conceits sounded absurd in the huge, cool shed.
"Note," said Steinbach, "how the clever Comrade Florry camouflages the crucial military information among terms of bourgeois endearment. To read it uncynically is to encounter a lover writing to another on the eve of battle. To read it in awareness of its true purpose is to see the nature of the betrayal."
"The girl has nothing to do with this!" shrieked Florry. "Where did you get that?"
"It was in her purse," he said.
d.a.m.n, Sylvia. You should have thrown it out!
"And is it not true, comrades of the tribunal," he argued in his public voice, "that the attack was betrayed, our men pushed back, our party humiliated and weakened?"
They nodded.
"You don"t understand," said Florry weakly. "It was innocent. I love the woman. I wanted to tell her that before the fight."
"Yet the attack failed, did it not? Because the Communist Brigades of the Thaelmann Column would not move out in support of our men and the Anarchists. Because they had been ordered by Barcelona to stay put. I give it to you, comrade, from one professional to another: a brilliant stroke."
Steinbach paused, as if to catch his breath.
"Then," said Steinbach, "there is the curious business of the explosion. Florry goes on the attack and does not come back from it; in the intervening day, an unknown fifth columnist detonates our magazine at La Granja. Then, miraculously, Florry returns with a minor flesh wound. Can this be coincidence? Or can Florry have inflicted his own wound as an excuse to go into hiding because he knew a Stalinist agent, acting on information he had supplied-and perhaps had been sent to enlist in our militia to obtain-was planning the potentially dangerous destruction of our munitions?"
Florry saw his chance. Give them Julian, he thought. It was Julian. Give them Julian Raines, spy and traitor, neatly tied and bundled. You believed it yourself. Yet he said nothing.
"Now we come to Comrade Florry"s masterpiece. The masterpiece of the bridge."
"I almost died on that b.l.o.o.d.y bridge!" shouted Florry. "d.a.m.n you, a hundred good men died that day!"
"Yet the Fascists knew well in advance of the attack that it was planned, did they not?"
"Yes, they did. We were betrayed. But not by-"
"And is it not true that only you-you alone-of the attacking party survived?"
"Yes. Yes, but we blew the b.l.o.o.d.y thing. We dropped it into the gorge-"
"Yet is it not true, Comrade Florry, that the attack on Huesca had already been betrayed? By you? So that the bridge itself was irrelevant? And is it not curious, Comrade Florry, that on that same day the English poet and socialist patriot Julian Raines was murdered? Your own friend. Your own countryman?"
"He was killed by Fascist bullets. He was a b.l.o.o.d.y hero," Florry said. "He certainly would never have given up his life for you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds if he"d have known-"
"We have reports that place you over his body with a pistol in your hand. Did you shoot him?"
"No."
"Who shot him?"
"An old lady. To put him out of his misery. He"d caught one in the spine and another in the lungs. He was paralyzed and coughing blood."
"You ordered the woman to shoot."
"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d," said Florry. "You even turn this this against me." against me."
It"s not too late, Florry thought. Give them Julian. The argument is perfect. Julian is the spy.
"It may interest the tribunal to know that even the poet Raines had his doubts about Comrade Florry. I produce for you now a stanza discovered in his effects from his last poem, alas unfinished, "Pons." " He smiled at Florry before reading.