by Ken Follett
‘Don’t be a fool,’ said Volodya. ‘When was the last time a Russian was in trouble in this army?’ But he lowered the gun.
The man in the leather jacket raised his club as if to hit Lenny, but Volodya barked: ‘Back off, Berezovsky!’ and the man obeyed.
Other soldiers appeared, drawn by the mysterious magnetism that attracts men to a fight, and in seconds there were twenty of them.
The scrawny man pointed a finger at Lloyd. Speaking English with a heavy accent, he said: ‘You have interfered in matters that do not concern you!’
Lloyd helped Heinz to his feet. He was groaning in pain and covered in blood.
‘You people can’t just march in and start beating people up!’ Lloyd said to the scrawny man. ‘Where’s your authority?’
‘This German is a Trotsky-Fascist spy!’ the man screeched.
Volodya said: ‘Shut up, Ilya.’
Ilya took no notice. ‘He has been photographing documents!’ he said.
‘Where is your evidence?’ Lloyd said calmly.
Ilya clearly did not know or care about the evidence. But Volodya sighed and said: ‘Look in his kitbag.’
Lloyd nodded to Mario Rivera, a corporal. ‘Go and check,’ he said.
Corporal Rivera ran to the boathouse and disappeared inside.
But Lloyd had a dreadful feeling Volodya was telling the truth. He said: ‘Even if you’re right, Ilya, you could use a little courtesy.’
Ilya said: ‘Courtesy? This is a war, not an English tea party.’
‘It might save you from getting into unnecessary fights.’
Ilya said something contemptuous in Russian.
Rivera emerged from the building carrying a small, expensive-looking camera and a sheaf of official papers. He showed them to Lloyd. The top document was yesterday’s general order for deployment of troops ahead of the coming assault. The paper bore a wine stain of familiar shape, and Lloyd realized with a shock that it was his own copy, and must have been purloined from his shed.
He looked at Heinz, who straightened, gave the Fascist salute, and said: ‘Heil Hitler!’
Ilya looked triumphant.
Volodya said: ‘Well, Ilya, you have now ruined the prisoner’s value as a double agent. Another coup for the NKVD. Congratulations.’ And he walked off.
(iii)
Lloyd went into battle for the first time on Tuesday 24 August.
His side, the elected government, had 80,000 men. The antidemocratic rebels had fewer than half that. The government also had two hundred aircraft against the rebels’ fifteen.
To make the most of this superiority, the government advanced over a wide front, a north–south line sixty miles long, so that the rebels could not concentrate their limited numbers.
It was a good plan – so why, Lloyd asked himself two days later, was it not working?
It had started well enough. On the first day, the government had taken two villages north of Saragossa and two to the south. Lloyd’s group, in the south, had overcome fierce resistance to take a village called Codo. The only failure was the central push, up the river valley, which had stalled at a place called Fuentes de Ebro.
Before the battle, Lloyd had been scared, and he spent the night awake, imagining what was to come, as he sometimes did before a boxing match. But once the fighting started he was too busy to worry. The worst moment was advancing across the barren scrubland, with no cover but stunted bushes, while the defenders fired from inside stone buildings. Even then, what he had felt was not fear but a kind of desperate cunning, zigzagging as he ran, crawling and rolling when the bullets came too near, then getting up and running, bent double, a few more yards. The main problem was shortage of ammunition: they had to make every shot count. They took Codo by force of numbers, and Lloyd, Lenny and Dave ended the day unhurt.
The rebels were tough and brave – but so were the government forces. The foreign brigades were made up of idealistic volunteers who had come to Spain knowing they might have to give their lives. Because of their reputation for courage they were often chosen to spearhead attacks.
The assault began to go wrong on the second day. The northern forces had stayed put, reluctant to advance because of lack of intelligence about rebel defences – a feeble excuse, Lloyd thought. The central group still could not take Fuentes de Ebro, despite being reinforced on the third day, and Lloyd was appalled to hear that they had lost nearly all their tanks to devastating defensive fire. In the south, Lloyd’s group, instead of pushing forward, was directed to make a sideways move, to the riverside village of Quinto. Once again, they had to overcome determined defenders in house-to-house fighting. When the enemy surrendered, Lloyd’s group took a thousand prisoners.
Now Lloyd sat in the evening light outside a church that had been wrecked by artillery fire, surrounded by the smoking ruins of houses and the strangely still bodies of the recently dead. A group of exhausted men gathered around him: Lenny, Dave, Joe Eli, Corporal Rivera, and a Welshman called Muggsy Morgan. There were so many Welshmen in Spain that someone had made up a limerick poking fun at the similarity in their names:
There was a young fellow named Price
And another young fellow named Price
And a fellow named Roberts
And a fellow named Roberts
And another young fellow named Price.
The men were smoking, waiting quietly to see whether there would be any dinner, too weary even to banter with Teresa, who was, remarkably, still with them, as the transport due to take her to the rear had failed to appear. They could hear occasional bursts of shooting as mopping-up continued a few streets away.
‘What have we gained?’ Lloyd said to Dave. ‘We used scarce ammunition, we lost a lot of men, and we’re no farther forward. Worse, we’ve given the Fascists time to bring up reinforcements.’
‘I can tell you the fucking reason,’ Dave said in his East End accent. His soul had hardened even more than his body, and he had become cynical and contemptuous. ‘Our officers are more afraid of their commissars than of the fucking enemy. At the least excuse they can be branded as Trotsky-Fascist spies and tortured to death, so they’re terrified of sticking their necks out. They’d rather sit still than move, they won’t do anything on their own initiative, and they never take risks. I bet they don’t shit without an order in writing.’
Lloyd wondered whether Dave’s scornful analysis was right. The Communists never ceased to talk about the need for a disciplined army with a clear chain of command. By that they meant an army following Russian orders, but, all the same, Lloyd saw their point. However, too much discipline could stifle thinking. Was that what was going wrong?
Lloyd did not want to believe it. Surely Social Democrats, Communists and anarchists could fight in a common cause without one group tyrannizing the others: they all hated Fascism, and they all believed in a future society that was fairer to everyone.
He wondered what Lenny thought, but Lenny was sitting next to Teresa, talking to her in a low voice. She giggled at something he said, and Lloyd guessed that he must be making progress. It was a good sign when you could make a girl laugh. Then she touched his arm, said a few words, and stood up. Lenny said: ‘Hurry back.’ She smiled over her shoulder.
Lucky Lenny, thought Lloyd, but he felt no envy. A passing romance held no appeal for him: he did not see the point. He was an all-or-nothing man, he supposed. The only girl he had ever really wanted had been Daisy. She was now Boy Fitzherbert’s wife, and Lloyd still had not met the girl who might take her place in his heart. He would, one day, he felt sure; but, meanwhile, he was not much attracted to temporary substitutes, even when they were as alluring as Teresa.
Someone said: ‘Here come the Russians.’ The speaker was Jasper Johnson, a black American electrician from Chicago. Lloyd looked up to see a dozen or so military advisors walking through the village like conquerors. The Russians were recognizable by their leather jackets and buttoned holsters. ‘Strange thing, I didn’t see them while w
e were fighting,’ Jasper went on sarcastically. ‘I guess they must have been in a different part of the battlefield.’
Lloyd looked around, making sure that no political commissars were nearby to hear this subversive talk.
As the Russians passed through the graveyard of the ruined church, Lloyd spotted Ilya Dvorkin, the weaselly secret policeman he had clashed with a week ago. The Russian crossed paths with Teresa and stopped to speak to her. Lloyd heard him say something in bad Spanish about dinner.
She replied, he spoke again, and she shook her head, evidently refusing. She turned to walk away, but he took hold of her arm, detaining her.
Lloyd saw Lenny sit upright, looking alertly at the tableau, the two figures framed by a stone archway that no longer led anywhere.
‘Oh, shit,’ said Lloyd.
Teresa tried again to move away, and Ilya seemed to tighten his grip.
Lenny moved to get up, but Lloyd put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him down. ‘Let me deal with this,’ he said.
Dave murmured a low warning. ‘Careful, mate – he’s in the NKVD. Best not to mess with those fucking bastards.’
Lloyd walked over to Teresa and Ilya.
The Russian saw him and said in Spanish: ‘Get lost.’
Lloyd said: ‘Hello, Teresa.’
She said: ‘I can handle this, don’t worry.’
Ilya looked more closely at Lloyd. ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You tried to prevent the arrest of a dangerous Trotsky-Fascist spy last week.’
Lloyd said: ‘And is this young lady also a dangerous Trotsky-Fascist spy? I thought I just heard you ask her to have dinner with you.’
Ilya’s sidekick Berezovsky appeared and stood aggressively close to Lloyd.
Out of the corner of his eye, Lloyd saw Dave draw the Luger from his belt.
This was getting out of control.
Lloyd said: ‘I came to tell you, Señorita, that Colonel Bobrov wants to see you in his headquarters immediately. Please follow me and I’ll take you to him.’ Bobrov was a senior Russian military ‘advisor’. He had not invited Teresa, but it was a plausible story, and Ilya did not know it was a lie.
For a frozen moment Lloyd could not tell which way it was going to go. Then the bang of a nearby gunshot was heard, perhaps from the next street. It seemed to return the Russians to reality. Teresa again moved away from Ilya, and this time he let her go.
Ilya pointed a finger aggressively at Lloyd’s face. ‘I’ll see you again,’ he said, and he made a dramatic exit, followed dog-like by Berezovsky.
Dave said: ‘Stupid prick.’
Ilya pretended not to hear.
They all sat down. Dave said: ‘You’ve made a bad enemy, Lloyd.’
‘I didn’t have much choice.’
‘All the same, watch your back from now on.’
‘An argument about a girl,’ Lloyd said dismissively. ‘Happens a thousand times a day.’
As darkness fell, a handbell summoned them to a field kitchen. Lloyd got a bowl of thin stew, a slab of dry bread, and a big cup of red wine so harsh-tasting that he imagined it taking the enamel off his teeth. He dipped his bread in the wine, improving both.
When the food was gone he was still hungry, as usual. He said: ‘We’ll have a nice cup of tea, shall we?’
‘Aye,’ said Lenny. ‘Two lumps of sugar, please.’
They unrolled their thin blankets and prepared to sleep. Lloyd went in search of a latrine, found none, and relieved himself in a small orchard on the edge of the village. There was a three-quarter moon, and he could see the dusty leaves on olive trees that had survived the shelling.
As he buttoned up he heard a footstep. He turned around slowly – too slowly. By the time he saw Ilya’s face, the club was coming down on his head. He felt an agonizing pain and fell to the ground. Dazed, he looked up. Berezovsky held a short-barrelled revolver pointed at his head. Beside him, Ilya said: ‘Don’t move or you’ll be dead.’
Lloyd was terrified. Desperately he shook his head to clear it. This was insane. ‘Dead?’ he said incredulously. ‘And how will you explain the murder of a lieutenant?’
‘Murder?’ said Ilya. He smiled. ‘This is the front line. A stray bullet got you.’ He switched to English. ‘Jolly bad luck.’
Lloyd realized with despair that Ilya was right. When his body was found, it would look as if he had been killed in the battle.
What a way to die.
Ilya said to Berezovsky: ‘Finish him off.’
There was a bang.
Lloyd felt nothing. Was this death? Then Berezovsky crumpled and fell to the ground. At the same moment Lloyd realized that the shot had come from behind him. He turned, incredulous, to look. In the moonlight he saw Dave holding his stolen Luger. Relief swamped him like a tidal wave. He was alive!
Ilya, too, had seen Dave, and he ran like a startled rabbit.
Dave tracked him with the pistol for several seconds, and Lloyd willed him to shoot, but Ilya dodged frantically between the olive trees, like a rat in a maze, then disappeared into the darkness.
Dave lowered the gun.
Lloyd looked down at Berezovsky. He was not breathing. Lloyd said: ‘Thanks, Dave.’
‘I told you to watch your back.’
‘You watched it for me. But it’s a pity you didn’t get Ilya too. Now you’re in trouble with the NKVD.’
‘I wonder,’ said Dave. ‘Will Ilya want people to know that he got his sidekick killed in a squabble over a woman? Even the NKVD people are frightened of the NKVD. I think he’ll keep it quiet.’
Lloyd looked again at the body. ‘How do we explain this?’
‘You heard the man,’ Dave said. ‘This is the front line. No explanation needed.’
Lloyd nodded. Dave and Ilya were both right. No one would ask how Berezovsky had died. A stray bullet got him.
They walked away, leaving the body where it lay.
‘Jolly bad luck,’ said Dave.
(iv)
Lloyd and Lenny spoke to Colonel Bobrov and complained that the attack on Saragossa was stalemated.
Bobrov was an older Russian with a cropped fuzz of white hair, nearing retirement and rigidly orthodox. In theory he was there only to help and advise the Spanish commanders. In practice the Russians called the shots.
‘We’re wasting time and energy on these little villages,’ Lloyd said, translating into German what Lenny and all the experienced men were saying. ‘Tanks are supposed to be armoured fists, used for deep penetration, striking far into enemy territory. The infantry should follow, mopping up and securing after the enemy has been scattered.’
Volodya was standing nearby, listening, and seemed by his expression to agree, though he said nothing.
‘Small strongpoints like this wretched one-horse town should not be allowed to delay the advance, but should be bypassed and dealt with later by a second line,’ Lloyd finished.
Bobrov looked shocked. ‘This is the theory of the discredited Marshal Tuchachevsky!’ he said in hushed tones. It was as if Lloyd had told a bishop to pray to Buddha.
‘So what?’ said Lloyd.
‘He has confessed to treason and espionage, and has been executed.’
Lloyd stared incredulously. ‘Are you telling me that the Spanish government cannot use modern tank tactics because some general has been purged in Moscow?’
‘Lieutenant Williams, you are becoming disrespectful.’
Lloyd said: ‘Even if the charges against Tuchachevsky are true, that doesn’t mean his methods are wrong.’
‘That will do!’ Bobrov thundered. ‘This conversation is over.’
Any hope that Lloyd might have had remaining was crushed when his battalion was moved from Quinto back in the direction they had come, another sideways manoeuvre. On 1 September, they were part of the attack on Belchite, a well-defended but strategically worthless small town twenty-five miles wide of their objective.
It was another hard battle.
Some seven thousand defenders w
ere well dug in at the town’s largest church, San Agustin, and atop a nearby hill, with trenches and earthworks. Lloyd and his platoon reached the outskirts of town without casualties, but then came under withering fire from windows and rooftops.
Six days later they were still there.
The corpses were stinking in the heat. As well as humans, there were dead animals, for the town’s water supply had been cut off and livestock were dying of thirst. Whenever they could, the engineers stacked the bodies up, doused them with gasoline, and set fire to them; but the smell of roasting humans was worse than the stink of corruption. It seemed hard to breathe, and some of the men wore their gas masks.
The narrow streets around the church were killing fields, but Lloyd had devised a way to make progress without going outside. Lenny had found some tools in a workshop. Now two men were making a hole in the wall of the house in which they were sheltering. Joe Eli was using a pickaxe, sweat gleaming on his bald head. Corporal Rivera, who wore a striped shirt in the anarchist colours of red and black, wielded a sledgehammer. The wall was made of flat, yellow local bricks, roughly mortared. Lenny directed the operation to make sure that they did not bring the entire house down: as a miner, he had an instinct for the trustworthiness of a roof.
When the hole was big enough for a man to pass through, Lenny nodded to Jasper, also a corporal. Jasper took one of his few remaining grenades from his belt pouch, drew the pin, and threw it into the next house, just in case there was an ambush. As soon as it had exploded, Lloyd crawled quickly through the hole, rifle at the ready.
He found himself in another poor Spanish home, with whitewashed walls and a floor of beaten earth. There was no one here, dead or alive.
The thirty-five men of his platoon followed him through the hole and ran through the place to flush out any defenders. The house was small and empty.
In this way they were moving slowly but safely through a row of cottages towards the church.
