The City in Darkness

by Michael Russell

  ‘How are you, Brigadier Ryan?’

  The silence lasted a long time.

  ‘I won’t say this isn’t a surprise, Commissar,’ said Ryan finally. ‘The last time I saw you, I think it was the last time, you were an International Brigade commissar called Klein, doing the job you had to do and shooting a priest somewhere in the Jarama Valley. That seems a long time ago.’

  ‘A lot of water has flowed along the Jarama since then, Ryan.’

  ‘Not to mention the blood, Commissar Klein.’

  ‘Colonel, and the name is Melsbach now. It was with regret, the priest. He died for a cause I imagine he believed in. The Spain Franco has created. We can’t expect to like what we do in war. You’re a soldier, you understand that. But I did have to prove myself as an International Brigade commissar, and as executing people for no good reason seemed to be spreading through the Republican forces like an epidemic, it was hard to keep up with it. And if I remember right, weren’t you going to shoot me?’

  Frank Ryan was lighting a cigarette. Stefan could not understand the conversation at all; Konrad Eckhart was little better off. But Stefan could see that Ryan had now absorbed what had been a considerable shock. He had a soft smile on his face. As Stefan looked from Ryan to Oberst Melsbach he could see that, whatever else was going on, they loathed each other. It was another reason to be sure that the Germans wanted something from Frank Ryan that mattered, even if the Irishman didn’t know it himself. Stefan had his own reasons to be wary of how dangerous Melsbach was. And he wasn’t alone. He could almost see Ryan’s tension as he drew on a cigarette and tried to look as if he had merely had an unexpected jolt.

  ‘You’ve changed sides anyway, that’s quite an achievement.’

  ‘I didn’t change. I was always on the right side. Germany’s side. You don’t get information just peering in. You have to be in the shit to find the shit. What we do for our country may not be pleasant but we do it because it is a sacred duty. I don’t hold grudges. That’s why you’re here. Finally, you’re on the right side too. Now Ireland’s side is Germany’s, yes?’

  Only now did Oberst Melsbach turn his attention to Stefan.

  ‘Welcome to Pendueles. Triebel will find you both some breakfast.’

  It was a dismissal but as the two Irishmen walked into the hall the colonel called Eckhart back, still in the quiet, amenable tone he had used to Frank Ryan. But the German words that followed were far from amenable.

  ‘What the hell is going on? What is that fucker doing here?’

  21

  El Camín de Santiago

  Stefan Gillespie and Frank Ryan sat in the kitchen of the Casa Azul and ate breakfast. They could just hear loud voices from the study, or at least one loud voice, Oberst Melsbach’s. Stefan knew at least some of it was about him. He had heard Eckhart reply when the colonel had asked who he was. ‘Kerney insisted, Herr Oberst. I didn’t have a choice.’ It was obvious Melsbach knew who he was. Stefan had no doubt that he had been identified in Lisbon. But the Abwehr man hadn’t expected him in Pendueles. The other German officers who came and went, in and out of the kitchen, were ill at ease, but Stefan had the impression Oberst Melsbach’s temper was a familiar hazard. When Leutnant Triebel came in for a cup of coffee, Frank Ryan looked up and asked him how long they would be staying there. Triebel said he thought they would be gone the next day, if everything went according to plan. Ryan nodded mechanically and said he wanted some sleep. Triebel said there was a bedroom upstairs. As Ryan passed Stefan at the kitchen table he seemed almost unaware he was still there.

  When Major Eckhart appeared, uncomfortable and angry, he suggested Stefan might want to get some rest too. He was less interested in his welfare than getting him out of Melsbach’s sight. Stefan asked him when they would be leaving too, to see if he got the same answer as Ryan. Eckhart’s reply was short, ‘Not long.’ As Stefan walked out he spoke again.

  ‘You will be going to Madrid to report to your ambassador?’

  ‘That’s the idea, once Frank’s on his way.’

  ‘Trains from Pendueles are for Santander. There you can take a train to Madrid. If you leave tomorrow afternoon you will make the connection.’

  ‘Do you leave tomorrow too?’

  ‘We leave at some point.’

  ‘When does the boat arrive in Llanes?’

  ‘The precise times are in Oberst Melsbach’s hands. You will find the bedrooms on the first floor. You can use the one to the right of the stairs.’

  Stefan walked up from the hall. The study door was open. He heard the hissing of a radio. Looking back, he saw one of the Abwehr officers at a table with a radio transmitter. It wasn’t impossible that Frank Ryan’s departure would be by boat but with a plane waiting it was questionable. Yet there was something about it all that was still unresolved. Triebel’s words had been, ‘if everything goes according to plan’. None of it seemed to need much planning now. Where Ryan would go was, as always, not discussed, but it was unlikely Stefan would learn much more. All he could do was report to Kerney that Ryan had left Spain. He would not see it but it was clearly going to happen. Yet none of that explained why things were still so tentative in the Blue House.

  He stood at the bedroom window, looking down at the garden. Triebel and Eckhart walked up and down, smoking. Eckhart was still angry; Stefan had no doubt it was the way Melsbach had hauled him over the coals. But there was more going on. There were other things to talk about, not talk about. There was expectation. They were awaiting something.

  He lay down on the bed. He could hear Frank Ryan in the next room, pacing restlessly. Ryan had not slept on the journey from Burgos; evidently he couldn’t sleep now. After a time, Stefan drifted into a light sleep himself. When he woke the house was quiet. He heard movement next door. Ryan was still pacing. Then he heard someone on the stairs; a knock on Ryan’s door, mumbled voices on the landing. Frank Ryan was going downstairs.

  He left it a while before he went down himself. The door to the study was closed. He could hear voices. Ryan was in there with Melsbach and Eckhart. He could make out nothing of what they were saying.

  ‘Something you need Herr Gillespie?’

  Triebel was watching him from the door to the kitchen.

  ‘A cup of tea wouldn’t go amiss.’

  Stefan followed the Abwehr man into the kitchen. Two other men were sitting at the table. He knew one as Pelka, the Abwehr officer who was at the house with Melsbach when they arrived. The other was evidently the pilot of the plane no one had mentioned, at least in English.

  ‘Guten Abend! So, ich werde fliegen Sie,’ said the pilot. He looked at Triebel and grinned. ‘Richard das zweite?’

  ‘Das ist die irische Polizist, Gillespie!’

  The pilot shrugged and got up. ‘You are good, Mr Gillespie?’

  ‘I’m not so bad.’

  The pilot chuckled and left. Stefan had the impression he didn’t think much of the Intelligence game. But if there had been any doubt about how Frank Ryan would leave Spain before, there was none now. It wasn’t the first time he had heard the word ‘Richard’ either. He heard it in Salamanca. It amused the German pilot, but not Triebel; it had to be code for Ryan.

  There was no proper meal at the Blue House that evening. The Spanish caretaker and his wife had appeared briefly to put food out on the table in the kitchen. The Germans took what they wanted and disappeared. Melsbach made an attempt at polite conversation over a glass of beer with Stefan, as if the idea that he didn’t want him in Pendueles had never entered his head. He talked about Spain and its return to peace and about the peace that would come to Europe once England and France saw sense. As part of what seemed idle chatter he made it clear again that Stefan would be taking the afternoon train to Santander the next day. He said Frank Ryan would be leaving shortly afterwards, with Eckhart and Triebel, while he would head to Salamanca, where the Abwehr base at the Irish College was being dismantled. Spain’s war was over. He joked that if nothing else it had been, �
��good practice’. He made a point of mentioning the plane that had replaced the boat, though Stefan had no doubt the confusion over arrangements had been deliberate. Ryan would be flown to Italy, to Milan. Italy was another neutral country, of course, like Spain, like Ireland too, added Melsbach.

  Stefan asked what would happen after Italy, since Leopold Kerney would want to know. He didn’t expect to get a real answer and he didn’t. Otto Melsbach shrugged and smiled, and said all that would be up to Frank Ryan himself; wasn’t he a free man now?

  Frank Ryan had kept himself to himself most of the day, either in his room or walking in the garden. Stefan had watched him pacing the lawn, close to the high walls, as if he was still in a prison yard. He had been shut in the study with Melsbach and Eckhart at times too.

  It was almost dark when Stefan Gillespie came up the stairs and saw Ryan sitting alone in the big first-floor conservatory at the back of the house. He was smoking, gazing out through the windows. Stefan stood for a moment, following his eyes to the low hills and the small fields that led to the sea, which was still just about visible.

  ‘Did you get any sleep at all, Frank?’

  ‘Like a log, Stevie.’

  Stefan knew that was untrue.

  ‘I did snatch a bottle of brandy from the kitchen too.’

  Stefan sat down. Ryan handed him a glass and looked back outside.

  ‘That’s the Bay of Biscay.’

  ‘I suppose it is.’

  ‘A straight line north, north-west would get you to Waterford.’

  ‘Not Italy.’

  ‘No, but Italy will be another way to get there.’

  ‘Colonel Melsbach told me there’s a plane now,’ said Stefan.

  ‘Well, it’ll be quick enough so.’

  ‘Wouldn’t Lisbon be quicker, for America anyway?’

  ‘They have to play this game with the Spanish. I’ve escaped, you see. That’s what they’ll be putting out. I don’t know who’d recognize me in Lisbon, but it’s too close to Spain. Keeping up appearances is the thing . . .’

  ‘Are they hiding you from the Spanish or the English?’

  ‘I don’t much care. Leo has it in his head the English don’t want Franco to let me out, but it was going on before the war. Who knows?’

  Stefan sipped at the brandy.

  ‘This isn’t my game, Stevie. I don’t know the rules.’

  ‘So who is Colonel Otto Melsbach?’ asked Stefan.

  ‘Not who I thought he was.’

  ‘I gathered that. How do you know him?’

  Frank Ryan looked round and spoke more quietly.

  ‘He was an International Brigade commissar, my comrade in arms, a communist, and the reddest of the red. You must have picked that bit up.’

  ‘I picked it up but it didn’t make much sense.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t, except that he was always a German agent.’

  ‘You didn’t realize he was behind getting you out?’

  ‘I heard the name from Leo, but Melsbach didn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Does it make a difference?’

  ‘I feel as if it should. But what sort of fucking difference? Do I tell them I don’t reckon much to the calibre of Nazi they have working for them? Ask them to take me back to Burgos? It’s a shock. Still, I’ve survived worse.’

  He looked out of the window again.

  ‘If you sup with the Devil you can’t complain about the people he asks to dinner. Klein or Melsbach, Melsbach or Klein? I thought he was a murdering communist bastard and it turns out he’s a murdering fascist bastard. Maybe he’s both. Maybe he’s got more honesty about him than the rest of us. I didn’t only lose my friends in battle, I lost some of them to the communists, in the cellars of Madrid and Barcelona, as they made sure the war was being fought the Soviet way. And there were times, God help me, I told myself it wasn’t really happening, or we had to live with it because of the United Front. You see when our secret police boys blew our comrades’ brains out in cellars, they were different cellars altogether from the ones Franco’s boys used. Didn’t our fellers have their hearts in the right place?’

  Frank Ryan got up; he laughed, looking out towards the sea.

  ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Will we go to Mass tomorrow?’

  Stefan was surprised, not for the first time, by the change of tone.

  ‘You know where we are, don’t you, Stevie?’

  ‘I’m not with you, Frank.’

  ‘El Camino de Santiago, the Way of Saint James. We’re right on the pilgrims’ route to Santiago de Compostela. Jesus, you’re not going to call yourself a Catholic and tell me you don’t know what that is, Inspector!’

  ‘I don’t call myself a Catholic at all, Frank, but I do know.’

  ‘Good God, they’d let anyone join An Garda Síochaná now! What’s Dev doing to Holy Ireland? Well, you’ll come anyway. I poured my Catholic soul out to Otto to get the permission slip. He’s convinced the two of us are on our knees day and night. And sure, wouldn’t a Mass on the Camino even get a Protestant to heaven? Nothing like hedging your bets.’

  He walked off to his room abruptly.

  Stefan sat alone in the dark on the glassed-in balcony. The lights were on downstairs. The study door opened. He heard the crackle of the radio as it tuned through stations in Spanish, English, French; then a voice in German.

  ‘This is Berlin and this is the news from the German Reich.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, will someone turn that shit off?’

  It was Leutnant Pelka who shouted. Laughter; the radio stopped.

  Stefan finished his brandy. He walked to the open window and stared down at the garden. He could hear two men talking. There was an outside light on. He saw Oberst Melsbach and Major Eckhart walking, Melsbach smoking a cigar. They were not speaking loudly but as they halted below the conservatory, Stefan could hear. He was invisible.

  ‘The ship will dock in Santander around eleven,’ said Melsbach.

  ‘You’ll be there to collect him, sir?’

  ‘Make sure you’re ready. No reason to stay another night. Once we have Richard I, you can leave. So Italy tomorrow night – and then home.’

  ‘When will we see you, sir?’

  ‘Next week in Berlin. And get our friend Gillespie on the train.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Herr Oberst, I did what I thought was best.’

  ‘You should have known the Irish ambassador didn’t matter. You certainly shouldn’t have let him intimidate you. He was a go-between. He ceased to be important when Richard II walked out of Burgos. What mattered was ensuring the conclusion to this wasn’t compromised by the English poking their noses in, in Lisbon, or by Irish sentimentality here.’

  ‘You haven’t told Ryan what’s happening, though?’

  ‘He’ll know about Richard I soon enough.’

  ‘And how will he react?’

  ‘All you need to know about the Irish, Major, is that they hate the English. They make Pavlov’s dogs look positively sophisticated.’

  Eckhart clicked his heels and walked back to the house. Melsbach’s cigar had gone out. He took a match to relight it. It blew out and he twisted round to strike another, away from the north-westerly breeze that was blowing in from the sea now. A cloud of smoke wafted up and for a moment Melsbach glanced up too. If the light had been on he would have been looking at Stefan, but he could see nothing. He sauntered across the garden.

  Stefan turned back into the house and walked to the landing, heading for his room. His instincts had been right. It wasn’t over. There was someone else. The Germans were waiting for another man to arrive at the Casa de los Sacerdotes Irlandeses. He was coming by boat from outside Spain. Frank Ryan was Richard II; now they were waiting for Richard I.

  The next morning Stefan and Frank Ryan walked to the other end of Pendueles to the church of San Acisclo, chaperoned by Oberleutnant Triebel, the only Catholic in Melsbach’s entourage. He seemed pleased to be going or at least pleased to get away
from Oberst Melsbach; Eckhart looked like he wouldn’t have minded going too. The colonel was in an irritable mood. Stefan knew he would be driving to Santander; the conclusion of what he assumed was the colonel’s own project was imminent.

  The small church was crowded when they arrived, only minutes before Mass. They attracted attention as strangers but it was not the first time Triebel had been there; Abwehr officers had used the Casa Azul before. He told the Irishmen to say nothing the Mass’s Latin didn’t demand.

  This was a community not so different from the one Stefan knew at home. A familiar space; the smell of old stone and old wood. The statues were simply the holy family; Christ on the cross, Mary and Joseph on either side. And as Mass began, with words as natural to Stefan as any Catholic, it could have been any country church anywhere. The strength of a language no one spoke; always the same. ‘Ostende nobis, Domine, misericordiam tuam.’ Show us thy mercy, Lord. ‘Domine, exaudi orationem meam.’ Lord hear my prayer. ‘Et clamor meus ad te veniat.’ Let my cry be heard by thee.

  Stefan sat between Frank Ryan and Triebel, but he was aware of an intensity in Ryan that was almost palpable. It wasn’t hard to understand. What he had been released from was a death sentence, even after his death sentence was commuted. Yet it wasn’t only about giving thanks. Whatever he said, whatever about the smiles and jokes, his prayers were troubled.

  When the Mass ended and the congregation dispersed, Triebel waited until the church was empty. Even without words the Asturians had seen the two men were not German; they thought the Irish priests were back. Ryan seemed amused by the smiles and nods; he had smiled and nodded back.

  ‘You’re very popular in Pendueles, Sebastian,’ said Ryan.

  ‘They think you’re priests, the two of you, from the Irish College.’

  ‘So I don’t pass for German just by keeping my mouth shut?’

  ‘Apparently not.’ Triebel laughed and got up. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Well, Stevie, it’s not every day you’d be taken for a priest.’