The Fifth Column

by James Garcia Woods

  “Here I was going on about how the Party changes people,” Dolores continued, as if she hadn’t heard him. “Here I was saying that you were out of your mind to talk about the KKK being able to infiltrate the brigade – and it turns out that you were right all along.”

  “Donaldson still hasn’t admitted to being a member of the Klan,” Paco cautioned her. “He hasn’t even admitted that he was the one who killed Samuel Johnson.”

  “No, he hasn’t, has he? I guess he wouldn’t give the Jewish-Negro conspiracy – which he seems to see all around him – the satisfaction of getting his confession,” the journalist said.

  They heard the door of the town hall swing open behind them, and suddenly James Clay was standing next to them.

  “Since you’re both out here, I assume the interrogation is over,” the political commissar said.

  “Tell him that it’s a long way from being over,” Paco replied, when Dolores had translated Clay’s comment.

  The commissar frowned with displeasure.

  “But you must have all the evidence you need to convict Donaldson, surely?”

  Paco took another drag on his cigarette.

  “To convict him?” he repeated. “You seem to have confused my role in this investigation, Señor Clay. I’m a policeman, not a judge.”

  “In point of fact, you’re actually neither of those things,” Clay reminded him. “But you are still the most competent person in San Antonio to rule on Ted Donaldson’s guilt or innocence.”

  “And suppose I pronounce him guilty?” Paco asked. “What happens to him then?”

  “I’ve been in touch with our headquarters in Albacete,” Clay told him. “If Donaldson’s found guilty of killing Sam Johnson, I have been granted the authority to execute him.”

  Paco shook his head in amazement.

  “Yesterday, you were absolutely convinced that it was impossible for any of your brigadistas to have committed the murder. Now you’re apparently prepared to execute the first brigadista who falls under suspicion. What’s changed?”

  “Nothing has changed – including my position on the matter,” Clay said haughtily. “Yesterday, I said the killer could not be a brigadista, and events have proved me right. Donaldson never was a member of the brigade, he was only pretending to be one in order to serve the ends of the despicable organization to which he has dedicated his life. Now we know the truth, thanks – to some extent – to your efforts. And the sooner the execution is carried out, the better it will be for the morale of the battalion.”

  “And what if Donaldson were to turn out to be innocent, after all?” Paco asked.

  “Do you have any evidence that he is?”

  “Nothing concrete.”

  “Are you likely to be able to produce any evidence before we are sent up to the front line, in two or three days’ time?”

  “Not likely, no,” Paco admitted.

  “Then let me explain the situation to you once more. The brigade needs someone to blame for Sam Johnson’s death, and Donaldson is the obvious candidate. Even if he were innocent, the sacrifice of his life would still be justified in terms of the general good.”

  “You can’t build a general good on a foundation that’s rotten,” Paco protested.

  “Perhaps we must agree to disagree on that,” Clay said. “But such considerations are irrelevant anyway. And why? Because we both really know that Ted Donaldson callously murdered Samuel Johnson simply for being black, just as we know that he tried to kill Cindy Walker because she had started to become suspicious of him.” The commissar checked his watch. “I intend to have Donaldson shot by a firing squad at dawn in this very square. You have until an hour before then to come to me and say that you endorse my decision.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “With, or without, your approval, the execution will go ahead.”

  Clay turned his back on them, and strode away across the square. He walked like a man who was convinced of his own importance, Paco thought, watching him go – a man determined always to convey the impression that everything he did was significant.

  And perhaps I’d act in that way, too, if I’d been born with a silver spoon in my mouth, he told himself. Perhaps I, too, would want to prove to myself and others that I could make my own mark on the world without the help of my family connections.

  In his mind’s eye, Paco saw the scene which would be enacted the following dawn.

  The firing squad would gather together in the main room of the barracks, some time before the sun came up. Who would be in charge of them? Probably Sergeant Greg Cummings, who, despite being a liberal, seemed to command the respect of his men. Most of the squad would never have killed another human being before, and perhaps to give them the courage they would need to pull the trigger, Cummings would pass the brandy bottle around.

  As the hour approached, they would march in their own clumsy way from their barracks to the town hall, where the prisoner would have been kept under guard. If those watching over him had an ounce of compassion in them, Donaldson would have been drinking too, though they would have been careful not to let him have so much that he needed to be carried to his place of execution.

  How would Donaldson act as he was marched under escort into the square? Would he still be protesting his innocence? Or would he, by that stage, have reached a dull acceptance of the fact that he was about to die? Perhaps he would be thinking of the black girl he saw lynched, the girl whose death – he now claimed – had made him turn his back on the Klan.

  He would be positioned against a wall, and feel the brickwork pressing against his back. He would watch – still unable to entirely comprehend it – as the rifles were raised to shoulder height. Perhaps, for a brief moment, he might experience a flash of hope – suddenly find himself believing that he was never meant to die in this way. Then he would hear Greg Cummings shout the order to fire, see the flames shoot from the barrels, and maybe even hear the crack of the bullets before he felt a brief searing pain – and then felt nothing at all.

  “Is everything all right?” Dolores McBride asked worriedly.

  “Nothing’s all right,” Paco replied. “It hasn’t been since the day General Franco landed his army in Morocco.”

  Dolores was silent for a few seconds, then she said, “Donaldson might have come round again by now. Want to go be back inside and see if he’s willing to talk some more?”

  “No,” Paco said. “Before I see him again, I need a drink.”

  “I’ve got a bottle of top-class hooch back at my place,” Dolores told him. “We could slip back there, if you like.”

  Paco shook his head.

  “I wouldn’t appreciate company,” he said. “I need to be alone to do some serious thinking.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Fundador would have been his drink of choice, but Paco knew that once he started on the brandy he would not stop until the bottle was at least half empty. So instead, he ordered a glass of red wine from the barman in the individualista bar and when it arrived, he drank it slowly, thinking, as he sipped, of cold win-ter mornings and of men standing with their backs to walls and facing a row of rifles.

  He was just about to order a second wine when he felt a soft tap on his shoulder, and turning round saw the stocky figure of Mannie Lowenstein standing there.

  “What do you want with me?” Paco demanded irritably. Then he added, “I’m sorry, you don’t understand, do you? I forgot for a moment that you don’t speak Spanish.”

  “But I do speak it – at least, enough of it to get by,” the yanqui replied.

  “But how could you, when you’ve only been here for a few...?”

  “I have several comrades from Latin American countries back in New York. I learned it from them.”

  “So why, when I was questioning you, did you pretend that you didn’t understand a word of what I was saying?” Paco asked suspiciously.

  “Because I was afraid that if you learned I could speak Spanish, others would
soon find out, too.”

  “Why should that bother you?”

  “If my superiors in the brigade discovered I could speak the language, they would probably decide I could be best used in some administrative job, coordinating with the Republican authorities.”

  “And you didn’t want that to happen?”

  “It is a Party member’s first duty to serve unquestioningly wherever it is decided that he can be most useful,” Lowenstein said earnestly. “If I am ordered to work as an administrator, I won’t complain about it. But that is not the same as saying that I would deliberately put myself into a situation in which that outcome became inevitable. I came to Spain to fight for what I believe in – not to push paper around.”

  “Aren’t you putting yourself in that situation now?”

  “Perhaps I am, but there was no choice in the matter. I had to let you know I speak Spanish, because we need to talk.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “The rumor which is going around the barracks is that Ted Donaldson has been arrested for Samuel Johnson’s murder,” Lowenstein said, avoiding a direct answer. “Is that true?”

  “I have been asking Donaldson some questions about the murder, yes,” Paco admitted.

  “It’s also rumored that the case against him rests in part on a letter he is supposed to have written, and in part on a bloodstained sock which was found in his kit.”

  Only three people knew that. Paco thought – himself, Felipe and Dolores. No, there was a fourth! To detain Donaldson, he had needed to get James Clay’s permission, and in order for that to be granted, Dolores had had to tell him what they had discovered in the barracks. And the political commissar, instead of keeping the information to himself – as a leader of men should – had quickly turned it into barrack room gossip.

  “Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the rumors you’ve heard are true,” Paco said. “What has it got to do with you?”

  “If Ted Donaldson is proven to be guilty of the murder, then there is no doubt that he should be executed for his crime,” Mannie Lowenstein said. “But I don’t think he is guilty.”

  “He’s certainly guilty enough of hating the Jews,” Paco said. “If you’d heard what he had to say about them just half an hour ago, you’d have absolutely no doubt about that.”

  Mannie Lowenstein gave him a melancholy smile.

  “If we decided to shoot all the men who had something against the Jews, the world would be a much emptier place,” he said. “Our role is not to eliminate them – though that is something we have seen others try against us – but to educate them to understand that we all share the same basic humanity.”

  “It’s a fine thing to have a noble aim in life,” Paco said dryly. “But I think even you would see some difficulty educating a man who believes that the... what was the phrase? … the Protocols of something or other...”

  “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?” Lowenstein asked.

  “That’s right,” Paco agreed. “Even you would see some difficulty in trying to educate a man who believes that those protocols are genuine.”

  Lowenstein looked shocked.

  “Donaldson actually said that? He said he believed the Protocols were genuine?”

  “Yes.”

  “He said it to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But how could he do that? You don’t speak English, and he doesn’t speak Spanish.”

  Paco sighed at the other man's pedantry.

  “All right,” he agreed. “He said it to me through Dolores McBride.”

  For perhaps fifteen seconds, Lowenstein seemed to worry over the idea, then he said, “Even if Ted Donaldson does hold those extreme views, it doesn’t necessarily mean he was the one who killed Sam Johnson. If we could just consider the evidence together ...”

  “That can’t happen,” Paco said firmly.

  “Why not?”

  “Because, whatever the rumors going around the barracks might say, you’re still a suspect yourself, at least as far as I’m concerned.”

  “If I’d killed Sam myself, why would I want to try and persuade you that Donaldson hadn’t?” Lowenstein countered. “Surely it would suit me perfectly to have another man blamed for a crime I’d committed.”

  “I don’t pretend to even begin to understand the way in which you yanquis think about so many things,” Paco said, “but I do know that since you refused to explain to me why you didn’t go to the fiestas along with everyone else, you must remain one of my suspects.”

  Mannie Lowenstein hesitated for a second, then said, “And if I were to explain it now?”

  “Then I would ask myself why, if it was a true explanation, you had held it back before.”

  “I held it back because I was ashamed.”

  “Ashamed? Ashamed of what?”

  “Of my failure to put the past behind me, and to embrace the Party as fully as I should have.”

  “Go on,” Paco said encouragingly.

  “I abandoned my belief in the God of the Jews a long time ago. But it’s not always so easy to abandon the external trappings of the religion I was brought up in. The truth is that I did not go to the fiestas simply because they were held on a Friday.”

  “Is that supposed to make any sense to me?”

  “It will, if you think about it. Friday night is the start of the Jewish Sabbath, and however much I told myself I was being irrational, I could not defile the Sabbath simply for my own selfish pleasure. Do you believe me?”

  A policeman learns to recognize statements which have an undoubted ring of truth about them – as this one did.

  Paco nodded.

  “Yes, I do believe you.”

  “So I am now no longer a suspect?”

  “You are no longer a suspect.”

  “And does that mean that you are now prepared to discuss the evidence against Donaldson with me?”

  “It means that I’m willing to listen to what you have to say,” Paco replied cautiously.

  “Then that will have to do,” Lowenstein said. “Let us take the letter first. If I needed to send someone a letter, which I knew would incriminate me if it were discovered, I wouldn't leave it half-completed in a book. I’d write it at a single sitting, and as soon as I’d finished it, I would post it.”

  “There are censors who might examine the letter here in Spain, and probably in the United States, too,” Paco said. “Knowing that, I would not have written anything so incriminating at all.”

  Lowenstein gave him a long, assessing look.

  “So you have doubts about it, too, do you?”

  It would have been pointless to lie to a man as intelligent as Lowenstein.

  “Yes, I have my doubts, too,” Paco admitted.

  “And then there's the question of the sock to consider,” the brigadista continued. “If I’d attacked your young woman myself, I would have inspected all the clothing I’d been wearing for bloodstains, the moment it was safe to do so. And if I’d found some blood on one of my socks, I would either have tried to wash it out or have thrown the sock away. What I would not have done, under any circumstances, is leave it around for a policeman to find.”

  “Neither would I,” Paco agreed. “There can be only two reasons why the sock could have been there in his suitcase. The first is that Donaldson is an incredibly stupid man ...”

  “He isn’t that,” Lowenstein interrupted. “Whatever else his failings, he is easily capable of recognizing incriminating evidence.”

  “... and the second is that Donaldson’s explanation for how the bloodstain came to be there is the true one. In which case, the fact that the sock was still there tells us more about someone else than it does about Donaldson himself.”

  “I don’t understand,” Lowenstein confessed.

  “If I had been trying to frame Donaldson for Samuel Johnson’s murder, I would have planted the letter exactly where it was,” Paco explained. “But I would have removed the bloodstained sock.”

 
“Why?”

  “Because its presence raises just the sort of questions you and I have been asking each other. Why didn’t he check his clothing after his attack on Cindy? Can he really be that stupid? But because the sock really has nothing to do with the case at all, the man who planted the letter didn’t even know of its existence.”

  “You’re saying that, as far as you’re concerned, Donaldson was definitely framed?”

  “Nothing is ever certain in this world,” Paco said, “but I’m convinced enough of his innocence to do whatever I can to prevent his execution.”

  “So you’ll talk to Clay. You’ll express the same doubts to him that you’ve been expressing to me?”

  Paco shook his head.

  “That would just be a waste of time. Clay has decided that Donaldson must die, and it will take more than a few nagging, unanswered questions to persuade him otherwise.”

  “What will make him change his mind?”

  “Fresh evidence which clearly points the finger at someone else.”

  “And where do you hope to find that?”

  Paco shrugged his shoulders.

  “I have absolutely no idea of even where to begin to look,” he confessed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Dusk was falling by the time Paco returned to the town hall. A small crowd of people had gathered outside the building, but instead of bombarding him with questions, as their counterparts from the city would have done, they contented themselves with staring at him.

  He found Dolores McBride just inside the ayuntamiento lobby. An American cigarette was drooping lethargically from the corner of her sensuous mouth, and the evidence of the numerous butts which had collected around her feet suggested that she had been chain-smoking.

  “You’ve been away a hell of a long time!” she said.

  “I told you, I had some serious thinking do,” Paco replied. “Has Donaldson regained consciousness?”

  “Yeah. Nearly an hour ago now. I’ve been in to see him two or three times already.”

  “And has he said anything interesting?”

  “He hasn’t said anything at all! Didn’t even react to the fact that I was in the room. Looked right through me – like I wasn’t really there.”