by Jack Ludlow
‘They’re not short on arrogance.’
‘So now that I have said all that, you have a choice. You can either let me speculate in print — in short, tell the American public what I suspect is going on — or you can tell me the story and ask me to sit on it.’
‘How do I know you would be satisfied with that?’
‘You don’t, and it won’t be friendship that decides, it will be what I consider best for the papers that pay my wages and are waiting for an explanation of what is going on in this benighted part of the globe. So it’s half a story now, cobbled together out of speculation and observation, or the full shebang later on.’
Cal stood up and rubbed his chin. ‘I need to change for dinner too.’
Alverson’s look was salacious enough to explain his reply. ‘Don’t you go getting distracted up there in that bedroom, my stomach is already rumbling.’
* * *
As he scraped his chin, in a mirror steamed up by his bathwater, listening to Florencia singing softly in the bedroom as she dressed, Cal was aware that he had to open up to Alverson. Whether, come the endgame — always supposing there was one — he would tell all, was another matter. What he needed now was secrecy — any hint that an international gunrunner was seeking weapons would be fatal.
He trusted the American would not use his actual name, but nor would he just settle for the nebulous story so far. He would be on his tail, asking questions at every stage of any deal, and if he was, he would be hard to fool. There was a moment, when he dipped his face to wash off the last of the shaving foam, when he wondered whether to pack the whole thing in, but Florencia had reached a high note in her song and he knew he was committed, and why.
With Florencia a late riser, Cal met Tyler Alverson over breakfast, taking a table as far away as possible from any other journalists, the first bit of the tale his trip to Monaco and what had transpired.
‘So old Zaharoff is on the way out?’
‘Sadly, yes.’
‘Not many would share that sentiment.’
‘Because people like you have demonised him.’
‘Hey, buddy, hold on. Zaharoff is not only a crook, he admits he’s one and takes pride in telling the world of his scams.’
‘You don’t know the gunrunning business, Tyler; it’s full of crooks, and when it comes to governments it is a case of dealing with charlatans.’
‘I’ll leave it to you to tell me which one of those you are, Cal.’ That was responded to with a jaundiced look, as Alverson added, ‘But if you don’t mind I will alert the rag. Zaharoff is news and they will want someone there when he pops his clogs.’
‘Can’t see it makes any difference.’
‘So how can he help you if he is so ill?’
The name Drouhin was kept back and Alverson did not push for it, though Cal knew he might at a later stage. He explained the arrangement, as well as the reasons, glad that the American was not taking notes. As he suspected, the reporter was not satisfied with just that.
‘For me to get this right, I need to know where you’re going, when you are there and who you are dealing with.’
‘You can’t use names, Tyler, especially not mine.’
‘I can use hints, brother. I will give you a cable address in the States. I will be like you, moving around, but Scripps Howard always know where I am and you can use that to tell me where you are, then I can keep in touch.’
‘Why don’t you just wait till it’s all done and dusted?’
‘Because, Cal, I am not a dummy. If I wait, you will have all the information and the decision to give or withhold it. This way you don’t.’
‘I will not put myself in danger to keep you posted, that you have to know.’
‘I can live with that.’
‘I wouldn’t live without it — I’d end up face down in a river, if I’m lucky.’
‘Now, how would you come to a fate like that, friend?’
Concentrating, neither had seen Hemingway approach and both were obliged to look up at him, the first thing to notice the fact that he looked pretty bleary in the eye. There was also a more gravelly quality to the voice, which indicated a heavy night.
‘You look well, Ernie.’
‘Tyler, I feel like shit,’ he croaked. ‘I woke up on a table in Chicote’s Bar. Is there any coffee in that pot?’
‘Sure.’ Alverson pushed his empty cup across the table and Hemingway filled it and drank deeply, just before sitting down. ‘Do join us.’
‘You goin’ to introduce me, Tyler?’
‘Why not? Ernie Hemingway, meet Callum Thomas.’
Cal just held out his hand, not in the least fazed by the false name, paying no attention to the way that the American squeezed it far too hard, just as he ignored the look in those reddened eyes that went with it. As he had observed before, this was a man who liked to dominate.
‘So, Mr Thomas, how does someone like you end up face down in a river?’
‘Drinking too much, maybe,’ Cal replied, holding the stare.
‘I’d take that as a warning, Ernie.’
‘Was it meant as that, Mr Thomas?’
Cal smiled, but there was no humour in his voice. ‘It has been my practice in life, Mr Hemingway, never to warn people.’
The decision that he was dealing with a possible bully was quickly arrived at and there was only one way to counter that: make it known right away that you are up for a scrap. The mutual stare, still in place, lasted only a few more seconds. Then Hemingway laughed, a booming sound that filled the room and turned heads.
‘Maybe, Mr Thomas, we’ll have a drink sometime.’
‘If you wish.’
‘Hey there,’ Alverson cried, looking towards the door to the lobby. ‘Here comes the lovely Florencia, and at a run.’
Cal could see her hair was still tousled from sleep and what clothes she was wearing had been flung on; whatever it was she was coming to say had to be important and he stood to go and meet her halfway, only to be given the news with a shout.
‘The Nationalist pigs will attack Madrid in two days.’
That got Alverson and Hemingway to their feet as well, but it was Tyler who spoke. ‘How do you know?’
‘Some comrades have found the plans in an Italian tank,’ she answered, breathlessly, grabbing a roll from the bowl on the table. ‘I must go to the front.’
‘You can’t print that, Tyler, it will tell Franco his plans are no longer secret.’
The American looked at the other occupants, all of whom were staring at Florencia, now munching away. ‘Can’t see why not, brother, it’s not much of a secret.’
That was when it became easy to tell the journalists from the rest of the hotel guests: they were the ones running off to the phones, and it had to be said that Hemingway, hung-over as he was, led the pack and showed that elbows made good weapons.
In the end, it was not a scoop, it was common knowledge; Largo Caballero came on the radio to announce to the world the impending attack, and worse, as far as Cal Jardine was concerned, he told the enemy just how and where they were going to be repulsed, naming by number and strength the newly formed brigades that had been cobbled together in an attempt to impose some order on the militias who still constituted the majority of fighters.
Trying to calm an excited Florencia, he knew he had to go back to Barcelona, first to arrange to see if any package had arrived for Mr Maxim, and suggested she come with him, an offer that she would not accept, but she was not about to say goodbye to Callum Jardine without a proper parting, albeit a very quick one; the situation did not allow for languorous carnality.
They found Tyler Alverson in the hotel lobby, camera over his shoulder and dressed in the kind of garments that suggested, despite his protestations, he was going to look for a story where the bullets flew. The look he gave Cal when he said he had to make a quick trip to Barcelona, while Florencia was staying in Madrid, was one designed to take the rise out of him.
‘Don’t you wo
rry, Cal, I will take care of your gal.’
‘That’s what worries me, Tyler.’
In truth, it was not the American who worried him but Florencia herself; she thought herself immune from harm and she would, regardless of what he said, want to be in the forefront of the fighting, doing battle alongside her comrades, many of whom, as he had seen in Barcelona, were like her, young women. He had tried to lecture her upstairs about taking care and she had responded with her customary dismissals and a confidence not in the least dented by what she had experienced up till now.
‘We will beat them into the dust, querido!’
It had been impossible not to laugh, and there was no derision in it either. She just looked so damned beautiful in her fighting overalls, with the heavy pistol at her hip; blonde hair, golden olive skin, dark-brown eyes and that smile to melt his heart. If he had ever wondered why he was proposing to do what he was about to try and achieve, standing before him was the answer.
He paid for the room for another week, then departed to the sound of air raid sirens and the citizens rushing for the shelters, which was followed by a snowstorm of leaflets which filled the sky. He only had to open a window to catch one and his schoolboy Latin aided him in reading the warning message to the people of Madrid, telling them to surrender or the Nationalist aviators would wipe them off the face of the earth.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Caballero’s stupid radio announcement of both the forthcoming assault and the intended response had made the road situation ten times worse; anyone who had hung on in the hope that things would improve was on the road, as well as a suspicious number of armed men of fighting age who seemed to be more concerned with directing traffic out of the city than helping in the forthcoming battle.
It took three days to get to Barcelona and when he arrived he found the lower parts of the Ritz had been turned into some kind of workers’ canteen, which made the juxtaposition of those who ran the hotel with the stream of armed and hungry men who used the dining room a sight to see. The reception was still functioning as it had previously, as were most of the upper floors, and he had no trouble in either retrieving his luggage or getting a room.
As soon as he picked up a newspaper, it was obvious the Nationalist attack had pressed even further from the western suburbs towards the centre of Madrid, which made him worry — something to which he was not generally prone. He had been troubled during the Great War about a Zeppelin bomb dropping on his wife, but that had been a long time ago and as a proportion of risk it was small. Likewise he always carried concerns about any men he commanded, with the caveat that they were soldiers and knew the risks of combat.
Florencia was different; she would be in the anarchist front line wherever that was, and she was part of a force that lacked both the weapons and the knowledge to take on those they were fighting. Would the Russians support the anarchists? They might if the whole Madrid position was threatened but he would not put it past the communists to sacrifice their political rivals in the same way Manfred Decker had done to Laporta’s men on the borders of Aragon.
He had to put that aside, for gnawing on his concerns for her would serve no purpose, yet he found himself praying to any God that would listen to keep her safe, and he made a call to her family home, where at least he could converse with her mother and father, both naturally worried, to reassure them she was safe, even if he was far from certain he was right.
There was no news from Monaco, hardly surprising given the limited time since his return, which meant he would have to endure an agonising wait while events unfolded to the west. Having told the reception desk prior to leaving for Madrid that anything for Mr Maxim was for him, he did consider having a word with the concierge — a fellow accustomed to meeting the requests, however strange, of the hotel guests — to forward anything so addressed to the Florida Hotel.
That had to be put aside, given he could not risk it being sent on to a Madrid under what amounted to a siege. Quite apart from the difficulties of delivery, he had no idea if any kind of postal censorship was in place, nor of the nature of what he was going to receive, but he had to find out what was going on and he was not prepared to just rely on the Republican press.
His lifeline became the expensive radio he bought and sneaked into the hotel, as well as a map and the telephone. With his own set, albeit he kept the sound level low, he was able to listen to both sides as well as the BBC Empire Service. Their reporting of Spain was slim but it was good on the international ramifications, which amounted, it seemed, to who could outfib whom.
With the Spanish stations it was necessary to listen to repeat bulletins to make sure he was hearing it right, and naturally the news from the capital was mixed, being tinged with the needs of propaganda, but with difficult filtering it seemed there were limited gains for the insurgents.
But it was not all one-sided; cheering news came of dogfights over the city as Russian fighters, put up for the first time, surprised the Italian and German bombers — now dropping high explosives, not leaflets — though the figures for what they were reported to have shot down were not to be taken literally, and surely such biplanes had faced opposition from the faster Italian Fiats; certainly the Nationalists claimed so.
But, of course, there was a high degree of boasting on both sides — the Nationalists insisted they would celebrate some national saint’s day in Madrid, but that looked unlikely. The militias claimed they were more than a match for the Army of Africa and that was not possible. Exaggerated casualty figures he would expect as the norm and he made no suppositions on his map until he was sure of the truth. Yet what he saw was plain: the Republic was losing ground, even if there had been no collapse.
It came as a shock to hear that Caballero and his government had abandoned Madrid and fled to Valencia, a junta being appointed to defend the city, with names he had never heard of, and that made little impression as to them being good or bad appointments. Difficult as it was, the telephone brought some clarity, as he was able to have brief and shouted conversations with Alverson, who retired after each day’s fighting to the Florida Hotel.
As far as the American knew, over a crackly line, Florencia was alive. ‘But they are being beaten back time after time, Cal. Those poor bastards out there are fighting tanks with nothing but rifles and petrol bombs.’
‘What the hell is that?’
‘Something our kids learnt from the Moroccan Regulares. You fill a bottle with petrol, jam in a rag that soaks up enough to be flammable, and when a tank comes along you light the cloth and throw it, that is if a machine gun has not cut you down in the process. Damned effective, though, if you can hit your target.’
‘Do you know where Florencia is?’
‘On the western edge of the Casa de Campo the last time I saw her. Now I’ve got to go, there’s a queue for this phone line.’
‘I’ll try to call you tomorrow. Good luck.’
Cal went back to the maps; the Casa de Campo was an old royal hunting ground as big as Richmond Park, forming a buffer for the city as well as a lung, but being open country it would be hard to defend and, he suddenly realised, a place as dangerous for Alverson as it would be for any militia defender.
He was also wondering at the tactics. The desire to hold ground was understandable, especially since the main working-class district lay to the west of the River Manzanares right in the path of the Nationalists, and therefore the place where the majority of those defending the capital lived; they would not want to give up their homes.
Yet the way to beat Franco was to bleed him — it took not great genius to work out he only had a finite number of regular colonial troops, backed by his highly effective Moroccan levies, and over open parkland like the Casa de Campo trained soldiers had to have the advantage, never mind that they also had superior weaponry; they would impose losses rather than suffer them.
Ground could be as much of a trap as a symbol, especially if you possessed limited firepower, thus it made sound tactical sense
to draw your enemy into concentrating on an objective you could defend, like a bridge, with the added bonus that it could be blown if it looked like being lost.
That might force an attempt at a boat crossing, which, if undertaken against entrenched opposition on the far bank, was bound to result in heavy casualties, and, in the first place, did the Nationalists have the necessary craft to transport fighting troops over water with enough equipment to give battle?
Endless speculation can drive you mad, but it was unavoidable given he had nothing else to do, apart from eat, have an occasional drink, and, with his black and red CNT armband once more on his arm, pound the streets of Barcelona, walking past other luxury hotels that had been turned into political headquarters, or down the wide tree-lined boulevards past knots of armed men.
Surprisingly, the message from Drouhin, when it came, was verbal; he had expected it to be in writing, yet there was sense in the method when he considered it — anything committed to paper could be read by eyes other than those you knew you could trust. When the phone rang in his room the desk told him that there was a gentleman to see him, and Cal went down to the lobby to find, waiting, being passed by streams of scruffy workers, what could only be described as a dandy.
A gentleman of advanced years and slim build, he was clad in beautifully cut clothes, set off by a yellow silk waistcoat, a four-in-hand tie, and spats over highly polished shoes, while in his gloved hand was a silver-topped malacca cane. He had a narrow, high-boned face and a set of grey, waxed and well-tended moustaches over a trimmed goatee beard. It came as no surprise to Cal Jardine when he addressed him in French.
‘Monsieur Maxim?’ As soon as Cal nodded, the man rose, his fine nose twitching as if picking up an untoward smell. ‘I cannot believe it is safe to talk in this place.’
‘Then we shall walk, monsieur.’
The elderly dandy nodded and looked Cal up and down, sniffed disapprovingly at his clothing — he was in blouson and twills — picked up the homburg hat which lay on the seat beside him and placed it with some care on his head. The cane then flicked towards the now unmanned door and he waited till Cal moved, following in his wake.
