A Dangerous Place

by Jacqueline Winspear

  Maisie nodded her understanding and looked out of the window. When she turned back, Vallejo’s eyes were closed and his chin had slumped onto his chest; he was fast asleep. They drove through more villages, many with Republican slogans, where women pushed children into the shadows as the motor car went past. Maisie watched and wondered at the changing landscape as they neared the city, once again looping round to avoid the border between Nationalist and Republican armies. Still Vallejo slept, and for some moments Maisie looked at the man, at his olive skin and dark hair, gray at the temples. She suspected he was not as old as she had at first assumed. It was hard to say, given the lines across his forehead and at the corners of his eyes. And not for the first time, she wondered about the relationship between him, Babayoff, and Rosanna Grillo. In any time of war, she thought, there are alliances between those whose paths might never have crossed if the world were at peace.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Sandbags, broken buildings like jagged teeth in the mouth of a mad dog, and smoke rising up to block their way forward came together to form Maisie’s first impression of Madrid. She felt hot, sticky, the leather seat adhering to her back, and when she leaned forward, she felt a rivulet of sweat run down the length of her spine. Her palm was clammy when she brushed her hair from her forehead, and she ran her parched tongue across her lips.

  “I have made arrangements for you to stay at an hotel, Maisie. I have lodgings nearby with a relative, but it is very small and not comfortable. Here is the address, should you need to be in touch in an emergency. I will ensure your room is ready; then you’ll be able to rest for a few hours until suppertime. We can talk then about what, precisely, you want to achieve while we’re here. Raoul will be driving back to Gibraltar in a few days—I’ll let you know the arrangements for your departure.”

  Maisie opened her mouth to counter his instruction—what if she didn’t want to leave when the time came? She decided it was not worth the discussion. Not yet, anyway. She wanted only to get to her room now, and then decide what exactly she wanted to do and see—to “achieve,” as Vallejo put it.

  The hotel on the Plaza de Callao was a bold square building, reminiscent of a large London hotel built during Queen Victoria’s reign. There was a shabby grandeur about it; windows had been blown out and the marble facade exuded the air of an old lady under siege from a dark modernity never imagined when the hotel’s first guests arrived in 1924. By the time Maisie was shown to her room, she could think of nothing she wanted more than to sink into a bathtub filled with cool water, and felt all the more selfish for her wanting.

  Having bathed and washed her hair, she felt refreshed but still weary as she studied her face in the mirror. She secured her bathrobe tighter around her body—she would not chance it falling open, for fear of seeing her scar. Since losing the baby, she had avoided catching sight of her own body at any cost—she always undressed quickly, and looked away as she toweled her skin. And though the discomfort had lessened over recent days, she wondered how much she had held on to as a reminder, as if it was tantamount to abandonment to cast aside the pain, a betrayal of James and their child as she lived on without them.

  She ran her fingers through her hair, and then, though she could not have explained at that moment why she did such a thing, she walked out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, took a small pair of scissors from her bag, and returned to stand before the mirror above the sink. Lifting up one clump of hair after another, she cut and cut and cut, not stopping until her hair lay like an elfin cap upon her head. And then she smiled, her cheekbones more pronounced and her eyes wide, as if encountering someone new in the reflection. A few strands of gray only pleased her the more, the visible signs of what had come to pass in her life. She looked at the scissors and ran a free hand through her boyish hair, beginning to laugh at her own audacity. She’d forgotten that there was another scar, from a shrapnel wound sustained in France some twenty years before. Though faint, it was still there, a line underneath her occipital bone for the sharp observer to see.

  When she had washed her blouse and underclothes and hung them in the bathroom to dry, Maisie shook out her trousers and placed them on a hanger alongside the open window to air. She dressed in her linen skirt and a fresh white blouse and sandals and walked down to the bar, where she was supposed to meet Vallejo.

  The bar was buzzing with people, many from overseas—British, American, a Russian, along with local men and women. She recognized a politician from London, though could not recall his name, and overheard two British nurses—volunteers—discussing their work at a hospital. She lingered for a while, eavesdropping, and learned that they were new in the country, and had been assigned—she was not sure by whom—to assist an American medical unit. They were working with a doctor they admired for his speed, operating on one man with devastating wounds after another. She was about to approach them—she had always felt a camaraderie among nurses, and though she’d last walked a ward some eighteen years before, she knew she only had to identify herself to be welcome among their number—when an American woman brandishing a camera broke into their conversation, introducing herself as an international correspondent for Life magazine and asking if she could interview them. Maisie turned away as one of the women exclaimed, “Well, we could always use more help—there’s so much to do. And we’re here in the city, where there’s better organization—can you imagine what it’s like outside, at some of the aid stations they’ve set up?”

  Professor Vallejo was behind her. She wondered how long he might have been there, watching her.

  “I did not recognize you at first. Your hair—well, it’s like a man’s.” He paused, as if realizing his comment might have caused offense, and looked about him at the flurry of activity in the hotel. “Let’s find somewhere quieter to talk. There’s a small restaurant around the corner—I know the proprietor, and he remains open, come what may. I cannot bear this noise, or most of these people.”

  They walked along the rubble-strewn street in silence, entering the half-full restaurant.

  “It’s early yet,” said Vallejo, pointing to a table in the corner.

  The proprietor had raised his hand in a quick, economic wave as they entered—he had none of Mr. Salazar’s ready ebullience—before pulling a bottle of red wine from the shelf and making his way between the tables toward them.

  “Felipe,” said Vallejo, “this is my friend, Miss Dobbs.”

  Felipe grunted his greeting as he poured wine into two glasses.

  Maisie looked at Vallejo, unsure of how she should reply, then smiled and said, “How do you do,” at once sensing the formality in her tone.

  Felipe shrugged his shoulders, rolled his eyes at Vallejo, and moved away, having deposited the bottle of wine on the table.

  “Felipe is not as friendly as our Mr. Salazar,” said Vallejo. He drained his wine as if it were water, and began to speak as he lifted the bottle to refill his glass. “So you have two reasons for wanting to come to Madrid—perhaps three, though I think the third is the indulgence of a sudden desire to place yourself in an even more difficult situation than the one in which you found yourself in Gibraltar.”

  He sipped again, setting his glass on the table and raising his hand as Maisie opened her mouth to speak.

  “Most people, upon discovering the body of a murdered man, would make their next port of call the shipping office, where they would book passage home to wherever home might be, on the next possible sailing. But you are different, aren’t you? A murder is a question to be answered, a problem to be solved, and perhaps a tangle of wires to be unraveled. You are here now because your nose has followed a scent, but of course we know it might not be the right scent, and in your line of work there are as many fragrances as there are threads to be followed, and you are used to having a certain dogged endurance.”

  Maisie said nothing, but reached for her glass of wine.

  “The second reason is allied to the first, in that this is one of your threads. You
suspect—something is going on, so your nose is down and sniffing. You might be right, you might be wrong, but at least the stone has been turned. Still, perhaps you do not realize how broad is the stone, and how many pebbles lie underneath. In short, to be blunt, you stand little chance of finding what you are looking for.”

  “And what am I looking for?”

  “Sebastian Babayoff.”

  “But Sebastian Babayoff is dead,” she said, watching Vallejo’s face.

  “Oh, yes, he is indeed—we know that.”

  “Do we?”

  “You discovered his body.”

  Maisie turned her wineglass by the stem, while Vallejo drained his glass again and poured more.

  “And what’s my third reason for being here?” she asked.

  “War, Miss Dobbs. War is the antivenin for you, isn’t it? Your losses can be attributed to war and the preparation for war, and you think you can rid yourself of whatever ails you—finally—by facing war again.”

  She brought her hand to her neck.

  “And why did you cut your hair?” asked Vallejo.

  “I was hot, the journey was dusty and long. I wanted to be free of the bother of it.”

  “You didn’t cut it to punish yourself for the very act of living?”

  Maisie smiled and shook her head, looking away as she did so. “How impertinent you are, Professor Vallejo. In some ways you remind me of someone I knew very well, though his honest appraisals were never so blunt.”

  “Ah, yes, Dr. Maurice Blanche.”

  Maisie reacted before she could disguise her shock. “You knew him?”

  “I did indeed, Miss Dobbs. You were not the first of his students or those he took under his wing, though it is clear you were the most beloved. Put two and two together, Miss Dobbs; use that famous endurance. I am a professor of politics and philosophy, and I studied the latter under Maurice in France. Not for a long time, I’ll admit, but enough to learn from his approach.”

  Maisie nodded. “Then we are like family.”

  “Yes. Family. And families have no secrets, do they?” There was a pause before Vallejo spoke again. “What do you want to know, Miss Dobbs? Now is the time to ask, though I cannot guarantee an answer. Then we will make our plans for the next two days—though all plans have to be malleable in Madrid.”

  At that moment Felipe came to take their order for supper. Again he did not speak, but stood beside the table and flicked over a page in his small notebook, licking the tip of his short pencil. Having taken their order for lamb with fried potatoes—patatas—he left the table, picking up the empty bottle and returning with another before the conversation resumed. The silence between Maisie and Vallejo gave her time to think, and the professor an opportunity to light a cigarette. He held up the packet to her, but she shook her head.

  “Here’s what I want to know—whether you can answer or not,” said Maisie. “I want to know exactly what happened on the night I found the body of the man buried as Sebastian Babayoff on the path close to the Ridge Hotel. I’m not entirely sure it was the photographer, though I believe he had been foolish with his life for some time, taking actions well above his ability to deal with the outcome.” She paused to observe Vallejo’s response, but he only looked at her, one eye closed against the smoke from the cigarette as he exhaled, so she continued. “I’m curious to know how Arturo Kenyon, Miriam Babayoff, and Jacob Solomon fit together in this little tale of intrigue—”

  “Oh, sarcasm, Miss Dobbs,” Vallejo interrupted. “Do not give in to the whims of your wit.”

  Maisie paused and took a sip of her wine—her glass was still more than half full. “In addition, I believe those three, plus Rosanna Grillo and as many helpers as they have under their collective wings, have been arranging for arms to be brought to Spain for the Republican Army, perhaps to arm the International Brigades. Heaven knows how they managed to weave their way through the patrol vessels in the Straits.”

  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Vallejo stubbed the remains of the cigarette into the ashtray. “Go on.”

  “I want to know how you fit into all this—I know I have danced around the question before, but now I want to know the answer to all of these things.”

  “Is that it?” asked Vallejo.

  “No. Not quite,” answered Maisie. “I want to know what part I’m playing. I am a guest here, at your mercy. Frankly, I might have had my reasons for wanting to come, yet you must have had a reason for allowing me to accompany you. Perhaps you want truth to have a voice as much as I, and perhaps you’re tired of the artifice.” She took a deep breath and held it before exhaling slowly. She knew her frustration was visible in her heightened color; she could feel her cheeks redden. “And I want to know about that man with the fair hair who was at the party in the hotel—and in church on the day we found out about Guernica. Who is he, and what does he have to do with all this?”

  Felipe returned bearing two plates, the aroma of roast lamb and patatas wafting across the table in a wave that rendered Maisie almost faint. Vallejo raised his hand just enough to signal his thanks.

  “Gracias, señor,” said Maisie. Felipe left with barely a nod of the head.

  Vallejo looked at Maisie. “Eat, and then we’ll talk some more.”

  When they had sated their immediate hunger, Vallejo leaned back in his chair.

  “I feel more human already.” He sighed. “Now then, let me see. Here’s what I can tell you.”

  Maisie set down her knife and fork.

  “After the Frenchman Léon Blum persuaded leaders of other countries to be part of the nonintervention pact in Spain’s war, all arms shipments from those countries to the Republic—to the democratically elected leadership of this country—ceased. It ceased, though, with the exception of the Germans and Italians, who favor the Fascist Franco, and of course, as we have seen, they are not following any pacts with Britain, France, or the United States of America. So other ways of gathering necessary materiel had to be found, and as the British saying goes, ‘Every little bit helps.’ Now the Russians are offering arms, so there is less of a panic about it all, though with Russia, in particular, beware the hand that gives, for it will rip something away in return.”

  “And who supplied the arms kept in the cave in Gibraltar?”

  Vallejo looked at her. “My, you have been stomping the path of investigation, haven’t you? Let us just say that it was another route by which arms might be brought into Spain.”

  “And the people I’ve mentioned—Kenyon, the Babayoffs, Solomon, and Carlos Grillo and his niece—they were all part of this? Are they all Communists?”

  Vallejo shook his head. “This is not black and white, Maisie—any more than those photographs you’ve studied. All people want here is a democracy, not a land steeped in the power of aristocracy, the robber industrialists, and the church—I’m not sure which has been the more complicit in keeping the common man in poverty. There are Communists fighting with the Republican armies, but certainly not all our soldiers are of that persuasion. Did you know, Maisie, that our citizenry here in Madrid are being trained to fight by Germans sympathetic to our cause? They fought one war and then saw the hand of Fascism come down on their own country; those seeking a democratic voice in Germany have been put in camps, beaten and starved. The Garibaldi Battalion is the same—Italians wanting the chance to fight Mussolini. And then we come again to your British.” He paused and took another deep breath. “They are on the horns of a dilemma. They have an aristocracy to protect from the proletariat, and they want to appease Herr Hitler and keep his eye away from Britain. But there again, what he is doing here, in Spain, serves them well—the British are buying valuable ore from mines in areas now under Nationalist control. Oh, yes, the Nationalists want to exploit mineral wealth, and Britain is among the countries vying to buy—so your government’s keeping its nest very well feathered and protected by not supporting the war for democracy here in Spain.”

  Maisie took up her wat
er glass. She was feeling hot again, and wanted to be out in the fresh air.

  “And just for the record, Miss Dobbs, had it not been for your secret service, Franco would not even be back in Spain. He had a little help along the way.”

  “Are you a Communist, Professor?”

  Vallejo shook his head. “I am on the side of people having an opportunity to better themselves. The Republic gave our schools books and pencils they had never had before—an educated citizenry is a serious threat to a dictator.” He paused. “Sadly, rabid communism poses an equal menace.”

  Maisie looked down at her plate and pushed it to the side.

  “Felipe will be very upset. There are people who would love to get their teeth into what you’ve left on your plate.” Vallejo pointed at Maisie’s uneaten food.

  She pulled the plate back and cut into the meat. “You’re right.”

  “Now I will turn the tables, Miss Dobbs. You tell me the story as you see it, and I will tell you what I think of your summation. Let me be Maurice, for a moment or two.”

  Maisie laughed, and cut again into her meat, scooping some onto her fork with patatas. “There was only one Maurice, Professor Vallejo—don’t flatter yourself.” She took a few more bites, then pulled a handkerchief from her satchel and drew it across her lips. “Here’s what I think so far. First, I believe Babayoff and Grillo saw something they either should not have seen or should not have been looking for one morning, early, while out on the boat. I believe they witnessed a submarine, and I believe the vessel had come to the surface either to allow someone to disembark, or to take someone on board. I think it was the former, but I could be wrong. And they were seen. I think Babayoff at least was identified, and the fact that he was a photographer sealed his fate. Carlos Grillo probably did have a heart attack, but he was a worried man, and he was fearful, without the youthful devil-may-care that marked Sebastian Babayoff. How am I doing so far?”