by Walter Ellis
“You were 17.”
“Exactly. And how dare you sell me to the highest bidder this way? This is 1940, not 1490. Am I a houri, to be traded in the market place? Are you my pimp, offering me as a plaything to whichever man offers you the most lucrative business deal?”
Colonel Raoul Ortega looked at his daughter and bit his tongue. Late of the Army of Africa, he was not a large man, though stocky, with a bull neck. He had begun to put on weight in his fifties, which for some reason that he could not understand appeared to amuse his wife. Doña Vitoria would pat his stomach playfully and joke that he was Sancho Panza to the Don Quixote of his superior, Interior Minister Ramón Serrano Suñer.
“If your mother should hear you say such things!” he said at last. “The matter is settled. It was settled four years ago between Felipe and myself, with the full approval of his family and your mother.”
Isabella Ortega pulled at the ringlets of her distinctive blonde hair. She felt ready to shriek with fury. “I will not do it,” she hissed. “I will not go along with your filthy scheme. All you want is that the Luder fortune – earned God knows how in Argentina – should come to Spain to be added to the profits that you have already made from the war.”
Colonel Ortega’s eyes burned darkly. He could feel the vein in the middle of his forehead begin to rise. “That is enough! I forbid you to speak to me in this way.”
“You will forbid me nothing,” Isabella retorted. “Luder is not only a Fascist, he is a Nazi. He adds the last piece to the mosaic of your life that you have been so busily constructing these last five years. Do not think that I do not see what you are up to? Your closeness to Serrano Suñer gives you power. Next, you will expect a title – Barón Ortega y Martinez de las Huelgas – which Don Ramón will secure for you if you do his bidding for long enough. Then will come the Luder dowry and entrée to the highest echelons of Nazi society. We are to become one of the leading families of the New Europe. Is it not so, father? Do I not read you like a book?”
The blow when it came was not unexpected. Indeed, Isabella welcomed it. It was her father who felt the pain. He stood, aghast, looking at his daughter as she ran her hand down the stinging flesh of her cheek.
“You were a good man,” she told him quietly. “You loved mother and you loved me and you believed in the honour of your calling. What happened to you?”
Colonel Ortega did his best to respond, but he had lost his voice. What he said came out in an anguished whisper. “I have always tried to do what is best. What I have done, I have done for you and your mother and the good name of our family.”
“If you believe that, father, you will believe anything. You will believe that the soil of our country is not polluted by mass graves containing the unsung remains of thousands of its citizens – men and women who in life fought for what they believed in but who in death have been robbed even of their identities. You will believe that the murder of hundreds of people each day is justice and the enslavement and starvation of millions more is the triumph of the righteous over the forces of evil.”
Ortega struggled to reinflate himself. He drew air into his chest and felt his voice return. “We did what we had to do, in times that were hard beyond all reason. You are too young to know what Spain was like in the years before the Caudillo took control. You were privileged even then. You knew only school and servants and occasional moves between garrisons. But it was a war out there long before the Army of Africa arrived from Morocco. The country was riven by factions. There were the Basques, the Catalans and the Galicians. There were the landowners and aristocrats, still lodged mentally in the years of the Reconquista, believing themselves gods in their own estates. Then there were the Communists, who wished to sweep away all tradition and hand us over as a province of the Soviet Union. Have I mentioned the Anarchists? – who believed in no law, no form and no structure, only constant revision of every decision, the destruction of the family and the abolition of property. We had the monarchists – medievalists – who believed that the king was anointed by God and could do no wrong. There was the Church, seething with corruption, supporting every reactionary impulse, every call for Spain to be locked down tight, as if it were a military barracks.”
Ortega paused, exhausted by the sheer force of his narrative. “And then, of course, there were the people. Let us not forget the people – those who were not members of any of the other groups. What did the people want? They wanted better lives. They wanted education for their children and the promise of a future that was not based on everyone else sucking the blood from their veins. But the people did not know their own mind. They voted for every kind of party and every madman who came among them. As soon as one government was formed, those excluded would cry ‘treason’ and mobilise the People to sweep down on the new administration, obliging it to take steps that contradicted every principle on which it was elected.”
The embers of a once hot fire still burned in the Colonel’s eyes, as if he were reliving the proudest moment of his past – perhaps the one moment in all his life when he felt bound to truth and committed to a better future for his country.
“The Caudillo,” he resumed, smashing his right fist into the palm of his left hand, “broke through all of this. The past, he told us, would not be a model for the future. He would be that model – he and the Falange. There would be no more argument, no more division. From now on, there would be unity in Spain and one single movement that would express the national will, taking the decisions that would allow us to live in peace and prosperity.”
“But, father,” said Isabella. “You know better than most what happened in Asturias – our own family’s home! How many ordinary Spaniards – boys I went to school with, sheep farmers, mineworkers – died to ensure that our great leader could sleep easy in his bed? And what is the difference between the Spain you described a moment ago and the Spain we have today? Where is the harmony? Where is the peace and prosperity? Where is the reconciliation? Would you ask us to forget these things – to pretend that it did not happen, so that our future as a people is built upon a lie? The people are starving. Children are dying. Hundreds of government opponents are murdered every night by uniformed mobs or garrotted each morning in our prisons.” She glared at him. “There are labour camps in every town and city, where the opponents of the regime are worked to death as slaves. Franco believes that he is the State. Criticism of him is the worst treason, punishable by death. Generals grovel before him; they queue up to do his bidding. Even Don Ramón, your own boss, only occupies his position at the discretion of the Caudillo, who just happens to be his brother-in-law. If this is an improvement, then I am glad I am too young to have known anything worse.”
Ortega turned away, not daring to look at his daughter as he spoke. “Mistakes have been made,” he said. “Mistakes will always be made. But we have authority once more in our country. If the laws are sometimes harsh, they are at least understood. They give a shape to our lives. They give each man his place – and each woman, too. Duty is no longer scorned. Anarchy has given way to obedience. This is a good thing. It allows us to progress. If the price of peace is a pact of forgetting, then us make that pact and honour it in the years that lie ahead of us. I have learned my place in the New Spain. And so will you. Today, you distributed alms to the poor. That was a duty. You should learn from it. You will not defy me over Felipe. You will honour your word and you will offer him your vows. If you do not do this, you will no longer be my daughter.”
Ortega drew himself up to his full height. “Did you hear what I said, Isabella?”
“I heard you father. I missed nothing.”
“That is good. Then we understand each other.”
Isabella breathed in deeply. “We understand each other perfectly,” she said.
Chapter 3
England, Southampton Water, June 24
Bramall had expected to be tru
ssed up in the belly of a bomber for the run to Lisbon. In fact, he was to leave from the Solent, off Southampton, in a Sunderland flying boat, made in Belfast. The flight began in a mad, flapping dash that put him in mind of an overfed swan desperate to be airborne. The Isle of Wight, off to the right, looked heartbreakingly green and intimate, with its network of neat fields and tidy villages. England remained England, he decided, even in its remotest corners. The aircraft, its four Pegasus engines generating maximum thrust, veered east a minute or so after, hugging the Hampshire and Dorset coasts, so that the resort town of Bournemouth came into view and, just beyond, the curious spit of land known as Portland Bill. The only thing left to focus on as they reached cruising altitude was the drone of the engines, and Bramall settled down and accepted a mug of tea from a polite, but efficient steward. Two RAF fighters accompanied them as far as the Scilly Isles; after that, they were on their own. Bramall and the four other passengers on board looked on somewhat wistfully as their escort peeled off, waggling their wings. By then the huge seaplane was flying high, well out to sea, and everyone on board felt alone with their thoughts.
The idea that he might end up in espionage had never occurred to Bramall. At school, just the notion of it would have been risible, while at Cambridge those who were sounded out over sherry tended to be drunks, homosexuals or failed priests. His entire previous knowledge of the subject was confined to The Thirty Nine Steps and The Riddle of the Sands, which he had read and enjoyed when he was about 16, never dreaming that he might one day star in a sequel. It was his father, as usual, who was to blame. Sir Frederick and Sir Oswald Mosley had held opposing views during the General Strike, when Mosley was a Labour MP, but in the years after, as the BUF had declared itself opposed to Communism and the “world Jewish conspiracy,” the two men became friends.
It was over lunch at the Savoy, not long after his return from Buenos Aires, that he had been introduced to the Blackshirt leader. “Thought you might knock some sense into young Charles here,” his father had said, pouring Mosley a glass of hock. “Give him a dose of reality before it’s too late.” Mosley, with his jet black moustache and flashing, demonic eyes, had smiled and said he would do what he could.
What troubled Bramall, now as he looked back on it, was the fact that he was not instantly repelled. Rather, he was intrigued. He was impressed straight away by the fact that Mosley espoused not Communism, but something he called Communalism – a form of society, apparently, in which industry, unions and consumers worked together to ensure order and prosperity for all. He also noted the fact that, in spite of all the propaganda used against him by his enemies, Mosley had appointed Jews to several key positions, as well as ex-soldiers and union men, and that the party was specifically opposed to the exploitation of native peoples.
He had never actually joined. He liked to tell himself that this was because he always knew there was something rotten at the movement’s core, but the real reason was that he had accepted a job as a reporter on the Morning Post, whose deputy news editor, an old college friend, had stressed to him the importance of journalistic independence. “Can’t have you reporting on something you’re involved with, old boy. That would never do. Still, keep your eyes open – never know when it might come in useful. All grist to the mill, if you get my drift.”
Disillusionment was not long coming. In the middle of the summer of 1936, he discovered from his father, who had had met Mosley for drinks at the Reform Club, that much of the BUF’s financing came directly from Mussolini in Rome. The party had always denied this, even as it maintained that the Duce was the greatest Italian since Garibaldi. Confirmation of how wise – or fortunate – Bramall had been not to commit to the new ideology came shortly after when he found himself in the thick of a particularly ugly demonstration in Cable Street, in London’s East End.
The protest had started out in the usual way, with speakers, led by Mosley, demanding an end to foreign domination of capital and greater rights for the British people. But the 7,000 or so Blackshirts quickly realised that they had walked into a trap. They were outnumbered by counter-demonstrators, many of them Communists directed by Moscow, who had massed in the East End to put a stop to the Fascist threat once and for all. Within an hour the first stones were thrown and the BUF heavies, goaded into action, began to press forward, screaming out their detestation of Marxism, Socialism and the Jews.
Mosley always said “we don’t start fights, we finish them.” That night, he had made good on his boast. Bramall was not there for the Post. The desk, though it tapped him from time to time for diary items on Mosley, kept him at arms’ length from the story. The reason he had tagged along was that he had received a tip-off from a friend that something out of the ordinary was in prospect – a confrontation “that will make Westminster sit up and take notice.” He had been curious to know what this meant, only to end up shocked by what he saw. Jews and other counter-demonstrators were beaten with cudgels. Shop windows were smashed and anti-Semitic slogans daubed on walls. “Come on, Bramall,” William Joyce, one of Mosley’s principle lieutenants, from Galway, called out to him, “this is no time for choking – there’s work to be done!”
Mosley scoffed at him afterwards for his naivety. “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen,” he joked, noticing how Bramall’s hands were shaking. His father, excited as ever by conflict – which he saw as the essential building block of progress – advised him to “grow up” and accept what needed to be done.
Repelled by what he had seen, he thought of getting out of London, maybe even moving to Canada, where they were crying out for teachers. But then one night in the pub, his friend on the news desk suggested to him that he might do worse than approach a contact of his in Special Branch, the department of the Metropolitan Police concerned with national security. At first, Bramall had objected. “Wouldn’t that be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire?” he asked.
“Lord, no,” came the reply. “Absolutely not. Tell you what, I’ll give him a call soon as we get back to the office, let him put your mind at rest. He’s a good bloke. Knows what’s what. All you have to do is talk to him. Can’t do any harm, can it?”
And that was how his undercover career began. The Post, overnight, put him onto hard news – giving him free rein to go wherever he wanted, with the obvious proviso that none of it should compromise the newspaper. Suddenly, editorial “independence” was out the window. The police and the Home Office, previously happy to tolerate the BUF, had come to realise their mistake and wanted inside information on what was going on, “just in case.” He’d been cautious to begin with, but soon got into the swing of it. He began to supply details of where trouble could be expected and who was fomenting the violence, first to Special Branch, later to MI5. He even managed to photograph several pages of the party’s accounts, using a special camera provided by the intelligence service.
His big moment came that autumn. On October 6, 1936, Mosley married Diana Mitford, one of Hitler’s closest confidantes, at a secret ceremony in Joseph Göbbels’s drawing room in Berlin. Diana and her sister Unity, two of the fabled Mitford Girls, had made a big impression on the Nazi hierarchy and were often photographed at rallies and party gatherings. Hitler was one of the invited guests at the wedding and, with Bramall as interpreter, spent several minutes in private talks with the BUF leader.
Bramall found the experience disturbing, but also fascinating. The Chancellor, speaking in a thick Austrian borders dialect, stressed the urgency of Germany’s drive for territorial expansion and the need for the BUF to adopt a more openly pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic stance. “The time for compromise is past,” he said, slicing through the air with his right hand as if ending a game of chess than had gone on to long. “It is time to act.” Mosley nodded vigorously. Hitler then emphasised his admiration for the British Empire and his conviction that the two Anglo-Saxon European powers, once reconciled, could dominate the world for
centuries to come. As soon as he could get a word in, Mosley made a discrete plea for financial support so that the “European project” should not be confined to Italy and Germany. Hitler tapped his arm and said he would see what could be done. He then turned to Bramall, taking in his fair hair, blue eyes and broad shoulders. “This young man is one of us,” he said to Mosley, shaking Bramall’s hand. “He knows I am right.” Then he laughed. “We speak the same language.”
The Sunderland’s engines continued to throb. They rounded the Brittany peninsula, a good hundred miles offshore, and eventually made landfall above the medieval city of La Coruña. Bramall had never been there and knew of it only from the famous poem, The Burial of Sir John Moore, by Charles Wolfe, telling of the death of an English general during the Peninsular War.
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.
Would that be his fate? he wondered – except for the “glory,” of course. He didn’t reckon there would be much of that. Spies were not recognised; they were denied, like ghosts. The realisation caused him to shift uncomfortably in his seat. After La Coruña, the aircraft’s flight path took them over the medieval city of Santiago de Compostela, then, by way of Vigo, into Portugal.
By the time they arrived at their destination, night had closed in and the lights of Lisbon trailed like a necklace across the suburbs, from Estoril in the north to Cabo Espichel in the south. The Sunderland’s passengers, used to the wartime blackout that rendered British cities so dismal after dark, appeared enchanted by the show. Bramall hardly noticed.
The landing was spectacular. The great flying boat, its engines throttling back with a throaty cough, descended in a shallow arc towards the water, steering between two lines of illuminated buoys, until, with a slap, its floats struck the waves, sending spray up against the windows so that they ran white with foam.
