by Alan Furst
Lubin opened his mouth to speak and the laugh poured out again. With difficulty he controlled it, shutting his eyes.
“Now,” Khristo said.
“I cannot, Lieutenant.”
They both looked down at the hand, which was frozen shut on the pistol. Khristo took hold of Lubin's chubby fingers and forced them open, one at a time. From the back of the house came the sound of splintering wood as the SIM men ripped the door apart. Lying on the floor, the old man pointed at Lubin. There was red foam on his lips. “You will walk in blackness,” he whispered. “Forever and forever. I curse you. I curse you.” Lubin giggled and Khristo smacked him on the ear, which turned bright red. The SIM man with the pitted face came downstairs, a baby in the crook of one arm. His other hand towed a woman along by the hair. “This one was upstairs,” he explained, “trying to throw her baby out the window.”
After some confusion, they got everybody sitting on the floor of what had once been the reception area of the embassy. Ilya managed a count. The SIM men had things to say in a Spanish that none of the four NKVD could understand, but the people sitting on the floor turned gray and lifeless. They sent Lubin back to the Citroën, one of his fingers swollen to double its size, apparently broken by Khristo. Finally, a moving van rolled up to the back door and the SIM took charge of their prisoners.
Driving back to Gaylord's Hotel, Ilya informed them that Operation SANCTUARY would continue, though it would be more efficient than it had been that morning. All over Madrid, Nationalist supporters and Falangists were hiding out in embassies, under diplomatic protection. So, now that they'd cleaned out the first group of refugees from an abandoned embassy, they were going to staff it with Soviet intelligence officers playing the part of Finnish diplomats. Taking the enemy into custody would be a lot cleaner and simpler that way. The SIM, he continued, had a similar operation going at the southern edge of the city: a tunnel, which supposedly traveled belowground all the way to Nationalist lines, in fact went only a few hundred yards, then surfaced in the midst of a courtyard where a gang of SIM operatives was waiting. Word was now being spread among the Falangist cells that their members had been betrayed to the enemy, they should flee to the Finnish embassy, where they'd be protected, or use the tunnel that reached the Nationalist lines.
The shift in policy made sense to Khristo. Using Andres against the Falange was a long-term operation. The new approach was clearly intended to accelerate and intensify the covert effort against the enemy inside the city. Mola's four columns were sharpening the pressure on Madrid; SANCTUARY was clearly an NKVD response. When Yaschyeritsa had lifted the deadline for the effort against the Farmacia Cortés group, Khristo's relief had been tempered by a nagging anxiety: perhaps they were, for their own reasons, maneuvering him. Now, he felt, he could relax. He hoped silently that they did not ask him to serve as a Finnish diplomat—he didn't think he had the stomach for it. He didn't look like a Finn, he told himself, he was dark, not fair.
Buenas noches, mis amigos. Buenas noches, todos los peleadores bravos que puedan oír ma voz. Y buenas noches, Madrid. Hay veinte horas, y la hora para el jazz hot …
The young woman played with the radio until music flowed into the little room below the eaves. Andres said, “It is the singer Bessie Smith. You will like it.” Khristo didn't exactly like it, it made him sad. The voice of a blues singer, stark, with only a piano, bass and drums to fill in the spaces, reached through the crackle of the nighttime static and touched his heart. He could not understand the words, but the sorrow of it was all too clear. Enough grief for one day, he thought. The nasty scene at the Finnish embassy refused to leave his mind, and he and Andres had decided to drown their war in a bottle of Spanish gin.
They'd split the cost of the bottle and taken it back to Andres's garret at 9 Calle de Victoria. For him to be there, with Andres and his American girlfriend and the German woman called Renata, was very much against the rules. But he was tired of the rules. He was tired of a lot of things. He stared at the bottle, which had a Spanish matador on the label, his expression rigid with pride of manhood, indifference in the face of death. For Khristo, the more he drank the gin, the less he liked the matador.
Andres's girlfriend was called Faye—it was her idea to play a card game called cribbage. The four of them sat around a small table with a pegboard at the center and tried to make their cards add up to thirty-one. Such achievements were rewarded by the advance of a small stick in the pegboard. He had no idea if he was winning or losing—he did know that the smarmy matador on the gin bottle had nearly destroyed what little mathematical ability he possessed. Renata, his partner, looked at him in despair from time to time.
The four of them spoke English as they played—it turned out to be the only language they had in common other than Spanish, which they had to work at all day long. The American girl had already stifled a giggle at his peculiar diction and he'd looked up sharply, only to be signaled by Andres that no discourtesy had been intended. She certainly was different. Had caught him staring at her at one point and had stared right back. God save her, he thought, from ever visiting Bulgaria, where such looks had meanings he was sure she didn't intend. Did she? No.
“I went to University City today,” she said casually.
For a moment, the game stopped dead. There was heavy fighting in the university area, where one of Mola's Moorish columns had breached the city's defenses. The Army of Africa, Franco's original striking force, had already captured the bus and tram terminals in the suburbs.
“What?” Andres looked at her with horror.
“You heard me.”
“Perhaps you want to be killed. La Pasionaria will announce it on the streets—a courageous death, our American sister, no pasarán. ”
“Well, they asked me to go at work. So I went.”
“Why? Who asked you?”
“A woman at work was pregnant, the baby started coming early and the labor was very bad. So they sent me to bring back the husband, who was holding the College of Agriculture.”
“What a war,” Renata said.
“I met a group of British machine-gunners—I'm playing the jack of clubs—and they told me the Moors have been holding the College of Medicine for several days.”
“Really?” Renata said. “That I had not heard.”
“It's true.”
Renata put a five down on the jack, and moved their peg.
“This fellow, an Oxford man, by the way, told me the Poles in the Dabrowsky Brigade won it back for an afternoon. A shambles, they said. The Moors built fires in the hallways and roasted the laboratory animals on their bayonets and ate them. Now they'll all get rare diseases. The Poles chased them out by putting hand grenades on the elevators and sending them up to the floor they were holding.”
Khristo shook his head in disbelief. “What a war.” He echoed Renata, knowing the phrase must be correct.
Faye smiled grimly. “Fifth floor,” she said. “Travel accessories, kitchenware, hand grenades.”
“What is?” Khristo asked.
“Oh, you know. Department store elevators.”
“Ah,” he said, feigning knowledge.
It was his turn to play. He tried to concentrate, but the cards in his hand made no particular sense, a random collection of numbers and pictures. From across the table, Renata said, “Forward, comrade. And we shall gain a final victory.” He looked up from his cards, but her smile was gentle and encouraging. The telephone rang, the jingling of a tiny bell in two short bursts. All four reacted to the sound. It rang again. Andres moved toward the corner, where it was mounted on the wall.
He picked up the receiver and said, “Sí?” Listened for several seconds, then said, “Momentito, por favor.” Left the handset dangling from its cord and walked over to Khristo and said quietly, in Russian, “Someone wishes to speak with you.”
Khristo carefully laid his cards face down on the table. A tiny muscle below his eye began to run like a motor. Nobody, nobody, knew he was there.
He searched Andres's face for a sign but the man's expression had gone cold. In that moment, they silently accused each other of betrayal. Then Khristo pushed himself away from the table and walked the few steps to the telephone. He'd become acutely conscious of his surroundings: the silent people in the room, the music on the radio, the rhythmic echo of distant artillery. He held the receiver carefully in his hand, listened to the hum of the open line, and at last said “Sí?”
“No names, please,” said a voice in Russian. He knew the accent, the edgy nasal tone. It was Ilya Goldman.
“Very well,” he answered in Russian.
“I have just cast your horoscope. It says tonight is a good time to travel. It says start as soon as possible. I take this to mean right away.”
“Very well. Thank you for telling me.”
“Your friend is born in the same moon.”
“I understand.”
“The time may come when we should meet again. Is it possible?”
“Yes. Yes, it's possible. In the north, I think.”
“A good choice. How can we manage it?”
“Our old sign. The one we used with the dog. Initials and numbers. You recall?”
“Ah, yes, very well. Where might such signals appear?”
“Matrimonial ads. In the newspaper.”
“Sorry to see you go, my friend.”
“Join us.”
“Soon, maybe. Not now.”
“Good-bye, then.”
“Good luck.” The connection broke.
He hung up the phone carefully and turned to face the others. Faye saw his face and said, “My God, what is it?”
“They come to arrest us,” he said in English. “Me and Andres. But they will take you also.” He turned to Renata. “And you.”
“The Falange?” Faye said, incredulous.
“No,” Andres said. “Not the Falange.”
They kicked down the door some twenty minutes later—about the time it took to drive from Gaylord's to the Calle de Victoria. Maltsaev and three assistants, with several more waiting in cars below. The radio was playing jazz and there were cards lying about on a small table and a half bottle of Spanish gin and ashtrays full of cigarettes. One of the men silently unplugged the radio and carried it down to the car. Another one found some women's clothing from America, and he too left. When his comrade in the automobile saw that he went up himself, but there wasn't much left—a combination lock and he didn't know the combination, but he took it anyhow, perhaps it could be traded. Maltsaev went to the telephone but the cord had been sliced in two. Señora Tovar, the janitor's wife, was brought up the marble stairs with her arm bent nearly double behind her back. She cursed them all the way. These tenants were Fifth Columnists, she was told. But she knew better. Told Maltsaev to let her go or the women of Madrid would hound him to his grave. He nodded briefly and his men released her. They went up to the roof and found Félix and beat him up a little, but he didn't seem to know much of anything. At last, when they'd removed everything they wanted, they tore the apartment to pieces, but found nothing. Maltsaev and one of his men were the last to leave. “Too bad,” he said. The man nodded in agreement. “One has to learn, of course, who warned them. General Bloch will want someone.”
“Perhaps his sublieutenant, Lubin,” the man suggested.
“A logical choice,” Maltsaev said. “Flies for Yaschyeritsa.”
“What?” the man asked.
Maltsaev dismissed him with a wave of the hand. Such idiots one had to work with in this profession. At least the other one, Kulic, the one in the mountains, would be well fixed. He'd made sure of that. The night's work wasn't entirely wasted. Now for Lubin. The family was powerful, but that could be overcome with a confession. He'd get that in a hurry, he was sure.
They could go west to Portugal. The Russians would not expect that because it meant crossing battle lines, then working their way, by bluff or stealth, through hundreds of miles of Nationalist-held countryside. They could go south, through Republican territory, and buy passage on a boat across the Mediterranean to Tangiers, a French possession. They could go northeast, to Port-Bou, the Pyrenees crossing point to southwestern France. But this mountain pass was Republican Spain's only major overland border access and would be subject to exceptionally heavy surveillance. Crossing the Pyrenees on the smugglers' routes was not appealing—too many travelers were never heard of again when they attempted that route.
The Russians would use the telephone—the system was operated on contract by American personnel from American Telephone and Telegraph and worked well, for both sides, throughout the war—to alert NKVD units throughout the country, but both Khristo and Andres doubted they would have sufficient time to activate Republican forces. They also doubted the Russians would tell their allies that intelligence officers had gone missing.
They decided to travel north. Khristo had overheard, at Gay-lord's, that the Spaniards were arming fishing boats in Bilbao and using them to bring food into Spain from French coastal ports. Bilbao was two hundred miles away, it would take all night, but the fastest way out of Spain was the best.
Dawn found them still trying to get out of Madrid.
It was a night of madness in the streets. Buildings unaccountably on fire, fire trucks skidding on streets wet with a slow, persistent rain that had started at dusk. They tried the Gran Via but found it blocked by Russian tanks brought up into battery position, their steel sides shiny in the rain, engines muttering and backfiring. Some streets were blocked by refugee campsites—tarpaulins or rain capes rigged upright with broomsticks to keep out the rain. Khristo saw a couple making love under a blanket on a brass bed in a house made of wooden crates. On one of these streets they hit a cat. Khristo slowed instinctively, then realized they could not afford to stop and stepped on the accelerator. When it was almost dawn, they were forced to halt at an intersection as private cars being used as ambulances sped past, coming from the direction of University City. The drivers rang cowbells, mounted on the roof, by pulling on a rope. While they were stopped, an old man approached the car. He wore a formal business suit, with vest decorously buttoned, and carried a tightly furled umbrella on his forearm. His beard was clipped to a precise triangle and a pair of pince-nez sat squarely on the bridge of his nose. He looked, Khristo thought, like a professor of Greek and Latin.
He peered in the window and greeted them as brothers and sisters in freedom. “I have been to war tonight,” he said, “and I have been wounded.” He half turned and Khristo could see blood seeping from a small wound at the back of his neck. “So,” the man said cheerfully, “it's the hospital for me!” He saluted them with his free hand and disappeared around a corner. A little later they saw, they thought, one of the infamous Phantom Cars, packed with militiamen who arrested and executed suspected Fifth Columnists at night. A rifle barrel protruded from a rear window. Then, when they were almost out of the city, a Checa unit on bicycles stopped them.
Khristo chatted with their leader, holding the Tokarev below the sightline of the driver's window. He was free. It had come slowly, but when comprehension overtook him his spirit soared with excitement. It was as though a hand had let go of the back of his neck and for the first time in years he could raise his head and see the horizon. So they would not take him back.
The Checa man at the window was very slow—he had all the time in the world. But Khristo drew an invisible line for him and waited for him to cross it and die. Yaschyeritsa would get no more satisfaction from him than dancing on his grave. The man talked on and on. It was interesting about his job that he got to meet so many different kinds of people who walked about in this world, who would have ever imagined that on this rainy night in November he would engage in conversation with a citizen of Soviet Russia, now that was why he found this job so very interesting. Finally Andres leaned across from the passenger seat and whispered that they had only an hour to spend with these girls here before they had to return to the fighting. The man's face slid gradual
ly into an immense leer. He winked, stood back from the car, and waved them through. Lascivious shouts of “Viva la Rusia!” followed them down the street.
For a time they traveled on the main road to Burgos. But they began to see men in suits standing by cars parked beside the road, so they moved onto the narrow lanes that went through the villages. In some nameless place in the vast wheat heartland north of Madrid the car stopped. They opened the hood and looked inside, but none of them knew anything about cars. The engine gave off a blast of heat that shimmered the air above it. It ticked in the silence and smelled of burnt oil. A small man appeared from nowhere, riding a bicycle with an infant in the basket. They spoke to him in Spanish but he did not understand Spanish, or perhaps he was deaf. He pointed to his ears again and again. He smiled at them. Showed them his baby. Then, almost as an afterthought, he reached into the engine and did something to something and signaled Khristo to start the car. It started. The man refused to take money, waved to them as they moved off. In the car they made plans for what they would do in Paris. What they would eat. Where they would go. Madrid, it began to be clear once they were away from it, had been a prison. Soon they would be in Burgos, it wasn't so far from there to Bilbao. They would get on a fishing boat and sail away to freedom. The car stopped again, on a tiny road bounded by uncut wheat rotting in the fields.
There was nothing for miles. Khristo's hand shook as he raised the hood. He wanted to throttle the engine hoses until the Citroën bowed to his will. This had never happened to him before, the car had always run perfectly. They decided to walk, to march crosscountry taking only pistols and whatever else would fit in their pockets. They started out, Andres sang a song to get them moving along. Suddenly, a German spotter plane appeared and swooped low to have a look at them. Faye waved to it and smiled. It disappeared over the horizon and they ran back to the car—some cover was preferable to being caught in the open. The plane returned and buzzed the car, then left. Khristo, for no particular reason, turned the ignition key one last time for luck. The Citroën roared to life and he very nearly wept with relief.
