by Walter Ellis
“The thing is,” said Romero, extracting his tobacco tin from his pocket and rolling a cigarette on his thigh, “I didn’t exactly emerge from the whole affair with clean hands.”
Bramall drew in a breath and tried to empty his mind. He sensed what was coming. He’d known for days that something hidden was about to emerge..
“It was you,” he said quietly.
There was a pause. Romero lit his cigarette and inhaled a lungful of smoke. “I was only 17. Wet behind the ears. I hardly knew what I was doing. One afternoon, the head of our local unit called round and said we were going to ‘do’ a Big House in the area.”
“Dreenagh,” said Bramall, still in a whisper. “Built by my great, great grandfather in 1798. Our family had worked the land ever since. It was where I grew up. The only home I knew. Until one afternoon, June 17th, 1922, a group of ‘volunteers’ turned up with revolvers and a couple of cans of petrol, claiming they were there in the name of the Irish people. Two of them made my mother and me stand out on the lawn while the others went inside with the petrol and set fire to the place. I was 12 at the time, not long home from school. I watched as the windows blew out and the flames raced up the walls. We lost everything. My mother couldn’t stop crying.”
Romero didn’t say a word.
“But it didn’t end there, did it? Go on, Eddy. Finish it. Finish your story.”
There was a long silence, and when Romero spoke again his words were barely audible. “The oul’ fella with the shotgun. I never knew his name.”
Bramall nodded, making fists of his hands. “Billy McKenna. Been our gamekeeper ever since he came back from fighting the Boers. Taught me how to fish, how to swim, the names of the different birds and animals. He’d seen the flames and come running up from the river. When he saw the house burning and my mother and me surrounded by armed men, he acted on instinct.”
Romero shut his eyes tight as the memory came flooding back. “He shouted out to us: ‘Get the hell away from herself and the boy!’ We looked at him like he was mad. Then he lifted the gun. ‘Don’t make me tell you again, you ignorant bastards!’ That’s what he said.”
“That’s right. Those were his words.”
“And Sean Maguire shot him.”
“In the belly. He was 56 years-old. A grandfather, never done anyone any harm. He died in my mother’s arms. Her dress was covered in his blood.”
Romero had gone deadly pale. “And I said …”
“And you turned to me and you said, ‘Aren’t you goin’ to call the Fire Brigade, son? Much good it’ll do you.’ And then you laughed at me. Billy McKenna was bleeding all over my mother; our home was blazing – and you laughed.”
“I remember. Jesus, Charlie, I’m sorry. But God forgive me, I was only 17.”
Bramall stood up and faced towards the farm, where he could see Isabella bending down to pick a lettuce in the vegetable garden. She looked happy. Then he turned back to Romero.
“I’m glad you came clean with me, Eddy. It must have been hard for you. Do you what I always planned to do if I met the men attacked our home? I planned to shoot each one of them in the belly, just like Billy got shot. It seemed appropriate, wouldn’t you say? Natural justice But I’m not going to do that. Not now. Maybe it’s just that a lot of time has passed. Or maybe it’s the realisation that it was all inevitable, brought on by centuries of occupation. War lets people get away with things that in the ordinary way they’d be locked up for, or worse. Look at the Irish government today. How much blood do they have on their hands? Anyway, like you say, you weren’t much more than a boy when it happened. The ones that led you into it are the ones that bear the real responsibility.”
He drew in a long breath, struggling to keep his emotions in check. The episode had scarred his mother most of all. She never truly recovered. From that day on, she kept her thoughts and feelings to herself, communicating with her family from inside an invisible shell. His father, outraged by the audacity of the IRA but surprised as well that people he’d known all their lives were capable of such hatred, had lurched to the right, giving rise, years later, to Bramall’s own flirtation with the BUF and, ultimately, to his presence here today on a remote farm in western Spain. Only Connect – that’s what Forster had said. And he was right. Nothing was an accident. Disparate events, “accidental” encounters: for good or ill they came together in ways that had implications that extended far beyond him and his small life, governed by rules that he could never hope to understand. The only wisdom lay in recognising the significance of chance and the possibilities it offered.
He lifted his head and looked across to Romero, who was clutching a hand to his chest and emitting a series of low coughs, and what he felt was not any kind of loathing but, to his surprise, something akin to sympathy and understanding – even love.
He glanced up at the farmhouse where a crow sat perched on the gable end. “I want you to promise me something, Eddy,” he said. “I want you to promise me that you’ll get Isabella to Elvas railway station safe and well at the appointed time. I want no slip-ups. Her life is in your hands. You owe me.”
In reply, Romero’s voice barely rose above a whisper. “She’ll get there, Charlie. You can depend on it.”
Bramall nodded.
But Romero wasn’t finished. “Since we’re in the Confessional, isn’t there something you need to get off your chest as well? I mean, you’re the one got Isabella into this in the first place. Shouldn’t you be sure you’re up to the task?”
Bramall felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. “What are you on about?”
“I’m talking about Manuela Valdés.”
Bramall felt his heart skip a beat. “What about her?”
“I was at the Ebro – the International Brigade’s last hurrah. It was where I met you, remember?”
“I remember.”
Manuela was some girl, right enough. Fiery, committed … passionate, I’d say. You and she were quite a number.”
Bramall’s mouth had gone dry. “What’s your point?”
“My point is, Charlie, she was a bit of an icon for the troops. They worshipped her – the younger ones especially. The word was that if she was with them they couldn’t fail. Nonsense, of course, but you know how fighting men are – superstitious as bedamned. Anyway, after she was killed I spoke to a young Army captain that saw it happen. He’d got shot in the neck and was taken to the same hospital where I landed up a couple of days later.”
“That’s right. You were shot in the leg.”
Romero took a final drag from his cigarette before nipping the end between his finger and thumb and flicking the butt into the long grass. “He told me that Manuela had been carrying on an affair with a British journalist and that she’d saved his life when the 109 launched its attack. At the cost of her own, he said.”
“That’s not how I remember it.”
“Isn’t it, though?”
“No. We were standing together at the time. The 109 came out of nowhere. I looked up. Manuela shouted a warning. Then we both dived for cover. When it was over, I was still alive, but she was … “
“Dead, Charlie. The word is dead. Only the thing is, according to the captain, that’s not how it happened. He said you were petrified with shock, like a rabbit caught in the headlights. You didn’t know what to do. I’m not blaming you, you understand. You were taken by surprise; you had no weapon; it looked like you were a goner.”
“It all happened in a split second.”
“Sure isn’t that often the way? It’s what happened next that’s the really interesting part.”
Bramall jumped up. “For Christ’s sake, Eddy!”
“Hear me out. The captain said that while you stood rooted to the spot, Manuela – who’d dived clear – got up again and ran back to where you were standing.”
Bramall said nothing. He couldn’t speak. The memory locked inside him for the past two years had come flooding back.
“She was shouting out your name, except you couldn’t hear for the roar of the engines and the crash of the guns. By the time she reached you, all she could do was shove you into the trees, leaving her stood in the open with her back to the 109.”
By now, Bramall had collapsed onto his knees. “And the bullets nearly cut her in two … while I wound up behind a tree, unharmed.”
“Not unharmed, Charlie … traumatised. There’s a word for that as well.”
“I swear to God, Eddy, I didn’t know. For the last two years, she’s been in my head, invading my sleep, making it impossible for me to believe in myself. And I’ve never known why.”
“You’ll have told yourself it was just one of those things – the fortunes of war and all that.”
“ … so that I didn’t have to face up to what I’d done.”
Tears had begun coursing down Bramall’s face and Romero’s voice dropped once more to a whisper. “We’ve all done things we shouldn’t, Charlie. You and me more than most. It’s the life we were born to, God help us. But some of us get a chance to make up for it. Absolution isn’t just somethin’ the priests talk about – it’s what we grant ourselves when we make things right. I’m going to do whatever I have to get Isabella into Portugal, then I’m going back to Madrid to sort out that bastard Luder. Your job is to make sure she makes it over to England, where she’ll be safe, and after that to stop Franco in his tracks and keep Spain out of the war. Do that and we’re all square. Wouldn’t you say?”
Bramall drew a deep breath, remembering how Braithwaite had laughed when he’d asked him how he was supposed to keep Spain from joining the Axis. “They told me you were a particular sort of chap, but they didn’t say you were a card.” Now, here, three months later, he couldn’t stop his hands trembling “I don’t know about all square, Eddy,” he said. “Nothing can bring Manuela back, or Billy McKenna. But at least we can do our best to make things right.”
Romero placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “”Or die trying.”
Guadalajara Military hospital: July 15
Sometimes his dreams would last long after waking. Hasselfeldt opened his eyes in the darkness and sat bolt upright in the bed. He was back in the SS training camp in Bad Tölz, south of Munich. At any moment, they would come for him.
They expected too much of him. They always did. The ones who were in charge were nearly all veterans. Some had joined as long ago as the summer of 1925, when the SS was despised as of no account. Others were former members of the old post-war Free Corps, obsessed with Communism. They bullied the new arrivals, whom they dubbed “March violets,” rousing them from their beds in the middle of the night, forcing them to present themselves in ranks, stripped naked, for immediate inspection. Questions would be screamed into their ears. Anyone who got an answer wrong got a punch to the kidneys that caused him to piss blood all of the following day. Hasselfeldt was teased because he did not have blond hair and did not appear to his Scharführer, or Staff Sergeant, to be obviously Nordic. The fact that he was circumcised meant that they would ask over and over if he was sure he did not have Jewish blood. Even his Catholicism was mocked. He would kiss his bishop’s ring; would he also kiss his arse? Was he a homosexual? they wanted to know. Was that his dirty little secret? And what about his half-sister, Gilda, from his father’s first marriage? Was it true her grandmother was a Jew?
Shaking his head, mumbling his denials, Hasselfeldt realised that the only way forward was to accept abnegation of self as a Jesuit embraced the rigours of his cell. He would not give in. He denied the Old Guard their easy triumph.
He could recall each of the high points of his training as if they had been yesterday: November 9, the anniversary of the Munich Beer Cellar Putsch, when he was allowed to wear uniform for the first time; January 30, the anniversary of the Party’s seizure of power, when he was admitted as a cadet and given a provisional SS pass; April 20, Hitler’s birthday, when he received his collar patches and swore his oath of allegiance to the Führer.
I vow to thee, Adolf Hitler,
As Führer and Chancellor of the German Reich,
Loyalty and Courage.
I vow to thee
and to the superiors whom thou shalt appoint
Obedience unto death
So help me, God.
The Old Guard scoffed. But he had had the last laugh. His tormentors now snapped to attention when he entered a room. The Scharführer had been stripped of his rank for sexual misconduct and exiled to guard duty in the forests of East Prussia. When the war came with Russia, he would be among the first to die. It was the new intake, like Schellenberg, with brains and academic standing, who had risen to the top of the movement, alongside aristocrats like Graf von der Schulenburg and Prinz von Hohenzollern-Emden, brought in by Himmler to give the movement a veneer of class.
Waking up, disoriented, in the middle of the night, all that he had gained was lost. He was back in Bad Tölz in 1934, listening for footsteps on the stairs. He lay still and prayed under his breath that the klaxon would not sound and there would be no “impromptu” inspection. Then, as the night nurse did her rounds between the beds, he drifted back into sleep, muttering to himself, not wishing to be paraded naked in the corridor.
The second time he awoke, everything was different. The sun was shining. A young woman, wearing a starched linen headdress folded like a kite, stood over him saying something in what sounded like Spanish, which he couldn’t follow. Who was she? A nun? That would mean he was in a convent. But why? And why did his head feel like it had been run over by a tank? It took him several seconds to adjust. He shut his eyes and a newsreel began to play on the screen inside his skull.
There had been someone in the washroom masquerading as a naval officer. The fellow had run at him and knocked him to the floor, kicking him savagely in the head. So long as the newsreel was running, he could see and hear everything. He had tried to draw his gun, but the stranger was too quick, too strong. There was nothing he could do.
He gasped as the memory exploded in his head, raising his hands to protect his face. The action switched off the projector. His eyes opened. The image flickered and died. He looked about him. The walls and ceiling were white and there was a faint smell of disinfectant. He could hear the echo of feet on a marble corridor and the squeak of wheels and the crump of a trolley hitting against a door, making plates jump. He twisted round, feeling a sudden twitch of pain. His hand went automatically to his temple. There was a bandage wound tightly about his head. So he was in a hospital and the woman with the winged headdress beaming down at him must be a nurse.
What was she saying? His head was swimming, but he concentrated and her voice came slowly into focus.
“… gentleman from your embassy here to see you. But only if you feel well enough. The doctor will be along immediately afterwards. Can you hear me? Do you understand?”
He looked up at her and nodded. “Which hospital am I in?” he demanded. His voice came out as a low croak.
“I don’t speak German,” the nurse said, in Spanish.
What? Oh, yes, he was in Madrid. He lived there now. He repeated the question, this time in Spanish, surprised by his facility.
“Don’t you remember?” she said kindly. “It’s the military hospital in Guadalajara.”
Ah! Yes, yes. They told him that earlier, when they had brought him in. When had that been? Mother of God! He raised his head from the pillow, and instantly regretted doing so as the pain in his skull rose to a crescendo of orchestral proportions. Bramall! It was Bramall! Bramall in the uniform of an officer in the Kriegsmarine. It was the Engländer who had attacked him.
He fell back on the pillow. His head was starting to clear. It was as if th
e sun was burning away the mist that clouded his brain. What was Bramall doing hiding in the Legation? What did he want? Sending him those ridiculous notes, full of obvious statements and tittle-tattle; parading the Duke as an ally of the Reich, but doing nothing to prevent his departure from Spain. He was after something. But what?
Then it hit him. The Magnetophon! The tape! His transcription of everything that was said. Bramall must have them. He raised his fingers to his mouth. That was his plan all along – to learn the details of Germany’s plans for Gibraltar. Of course! Now the entire project to bring Spain into the war would be compromised. And he would get the blame. Nothing was surer. His career would be finished. He would be finished. The SD would launch an investigation and present the findings to Reichsführer Himmler, who would declare him a dangerous liability to both SS and Party. After that, there could be only one possible outcome.
Something was happening. Someone was coming. He heard the curtains round his bed swish back and Paul Winzer entered and sat down on the chair next to him. The Gestapo chief was wearing a plain, dark suit. He had brought some oranges with him and what looked like a copy of the Völkischer Beobachter, which he left, without comment, on the bedside table.
“How are you?” he asked.
Hasselfeldt shrank down in the bed, his eyes swivelling in their sockets. “I’m
not sure.”
“Hmm. Well, according to the doctor, you will live.”
“Oh yes?”
“For now. Do you know what happened to you?”
“Someone … someone attacked me. He must have hit me from behind. Yes. From behind. I didn’t get to see who it was.”
“And why would he do that?
“What do you mean?” Already, he felt like a suspect.
“There was an armed raid. Two, maybe three men. They shot the guards at the front entrance and threw in a grenade. They sprayed the lobby with automatic fire. Five of our people were killed.”
