Tapestry of Spies

by Stephen Hunter

  Gruenwald was gravely offended. “Herr Florry, you must zay nothing of zis! You keep your nose clean. Ja? You are at risk if you go about—”

  “Don’t worry, old fellow. I personally don’t care what’s done with the stuff, just so it doesn’t inconvenience me unduly. All right?”

  “Herr Florry, you be careful. Barcelona is very dangerous.”

  “Why, there’s no fighting there anymore.”

  “You listen gut, Herr Florry, I like Englisch peoples, even if they kill my brother in 1917. Hah! You be careful. The man who own zis boat, he is very powerful. He would not like young Englisch gentleman go around town talk about tobacco. Ja! Bad trouble for someone who do this. There are many ways to die in Barcelona.”

  “Well, that’s a fair warning given, and I shall take it to heart. Thank you, Herr Gruenwald.”

  “Ja, Gruenwald not zo zmart these days. I vas vunce real zmart. But in here, now, ist—how you say?”—he tapped his head and leaned close to Florry, his pepperminty breath flooding all over the Englishman—“luftmensch. Ah—”

  “Crazy, we would say.”

  “Ja! Ja! Crazy, I got blown up by the Frenchies in the great war. In here metal ist. A big plate. Like as you would haben die zup—eat your dinner off. Ja, metal in the head, ja!”

  “Good heavens,” said Florry.

  “In the war. The war was very bad.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “How would you know, Herr Florry? You are too young for zuch things.”

  “Yes, I suppose I am,” said Florry.

  The old man took another swig on his flask and then another. His eyes seemed dead.

  “Mr. Florry, where on earth have you been?” she asked, as he at last returned.

  “I am sorry,” he said.

  She lounged on a chaise in the pale sun. Count Witte, his jacket off and folded, a pair of circular sunglasses perched comically across his face, lay beside her. He was reading a book in Polish.

  Florry quickly explained. “And so we sit,” he concluded. “I suppose if you choose a vessel that asks you no questions, then you must not ask questions of it.”

  “A good principle, Mr. Florry,” called Count Witte. “It’s as true of political parties as well. And also”—he added with another wink—“of women.”

  “Count Witte, you are such an old charmer,” said Sylvia.

  “Miss Lilliford, you make me wish I were a young charmer.”

  “Well,” said Sylvia, “at least it will give me a chance to get all this read by landfall.” She meant her pile of magazines. “At least then I shall have some understanding of things.”

  “It is exactly when one thinks one understands a revolution,” said the count, “that the revolution changes into something that cannot be understood.”

  “I certainly understand the basic principles,” boasted Florry. “They are threefold. It there’s shooting you duck and if there’s yelling you listen and if there’s singing you pretend you know the words.”

  “Exactly,” said the count. “Mr. Florry, we shall make an international correspondent of you yet.”

  The girl laughed. Florry pretended not to notice, as he’d been pretending not to notice since he came aboard three days earlier and discovered her on the deck. She was as slender as a blade, with a neck like a cocktail-glass stem. She had a mass of tawny, curled hair. She was about his own age, with gray green eyes. He did not think her terribly attractive, but nevertheless found himself taking great pleasure in the sound of her laughter or the sense of her attention when he talked politics with the sardonic old Witte.

  “Oh, Mr. Florry,” she had said, boldly speaking first, “you know so much.”

  Florry knew it not to be true, but found himself smiling again.

  By five, the Akim had begun to move again, and shortly before nightfall, the passengers could see the long, thin line of the Spanish coastline.

  “Look, Mr. Florry,” Sylvia called from the rail. “There it is. At last.”

  Florry went to her.

  “Hmm, just looks like the other side of the Thames to me. One supposes one should feel some sense of a great adventure beginning. I’d rather spend a night in a bed that doesn’t rock quite as much as this one.”

  She laughed. “You’re such a cynic”—and she gave him a slightly oblique look from her oddly powerful eyes—“except that you aren’t.”

  “I tend to put my own comforts first, I suppose. Before politics and before history. And before long, I hope.”

  She laughed again, which pleased him. Then she said, “I don’t feel the adventure, either, to tell the truth. What I feel is a sense of confusion. This war is a terrible mess. Only this fellow Julian Raines, the poet, can seem to make any sense of it. Did you read his piece on Barcelona?”

  The name struck him uneasily.

  “Brilliant fellow,” he said uncomfortably, hoping to be done with the subject.

  “His explanations are the clearest,” she said with what seemed to be a kind of admiration. “What an extraordinary place it must be. On the occasion of the army rebellion, the armed workers beat them down. Then they refused to turn the guns over to the government and established a revolutionary society and are preparing for the next step. Which would be the establishment of a true classless society.”

  “God, what a nauseating prospect,” said the count. “No, my dear, you’ll see. The tension will mount between the Russian Communists and the libertarian, anti-Stalinist Anarchists and Socialists, and there’ll be an explosion.”

  “In which case,” Florry said, “we all obey Florry’s First Rule of Revolution, which is: when the bombs go bang, find a deep hole.”

  They both laughed.

  “You make it sound like a war, Mr. Florry. You have been reading your Julian Raines, too. He’s very pessimistic about the Popular Front. He feels that—”

  “Yes, I know, Sylvia. I have read all of Julian’s pieces. He’s awfully good, I admit it.”

  “It’s a surprise, actually. I loathe his poetry. I loathe ‘Achilles, Fool,’ the poem about his poor father on the wire. My father also died in the Great War, and I don’t see it as a game at all.”

  “Julian inspires passions,” said Florry, looking out across the sea at the dark jut of land, profoundly aware that he himself did not.

  “Oh, do you know him, Mr. Florry?” She squealed with delight, vivid animation coming into her eyes. Florry stared at the life on her face, hating it.

  “We were at school together,” he said. “Rather close, at one time, actually.”

  “He must be the most brilliant writer of his generation,” she said. “Oh, could you possibly introduce me. He could teach me so much.”

  “Yes, I suppose. One never knows, of course, how these things will work out, but I suppose I might be able to. He’ll be quite busy, of course. As will I.”

  “Oh, of course. As will I.” She laughed. “To imagine, learning from both Robert Florry and Julian Raines. What an unusually lucky chance. The correspondent from The Spectator and from Signature.” She laughed again. “I feel so lucky.”

  Florry looked at her. There was something about her slim neck that attracted him enormously. I’m the lucky one, he thought and watched her go back to her cabin.

  Florry stood at the railing, nursing his vague feeling of unease, and was there still several minutes later when Count Witte approached.

  “Mr. Florry, I must say I envy you. That’s a lovely young woman.”

  “Yes, she’s quite special, I agree.”

  “I envy you her feelings for you.”

  “Well, it’s not gone to that. She seems to be drawn to adventure. She’s evidently got some money for travel. She says she wants to be a writer.”

  “Whatever it is, I must say I can think of better spots to take a beautiful young woman than a volatile city like Barcelona. Perhaps she is the sort who feels most alive in danger. Still, I’d be careful if I were you.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”


  With that comment, the old count went to his cabin.

  Florry turned back to the sea. It was almost dark now; the sun had left a vivid smear where it had disappeared into the ocean; the Spanish coast looked much closer now. Florry knew he ought to go to his cabin and pack.

  But he looked at it one more time. Spain. Red Spain, in the year 1937.

  What the devil, he thought, am I doing here?

  Then he went back to his cabin to pack for the arrival.

  Florry gathered his tweed jacket about him, wishing he had a scarf. He could feel the ludicrous revolver hanging in the ludicrous holster under his arm. He lit a cigarette. The night was cool and calm, full of moon which reflected off the sea in a gleam that was incandescent, fluttering, almost mesmerizing. It was absurdly beautiful, almost as bright as day. Before him, he could see the land mass, looming larger. He could see the light of the harbor and make out in the light what appeared to be the hulk of a low mountain off on one side, Monjuich it would be called. There was another mountain, one behind the city, called Tibidabo, but he could not see it.

  He leaned forward on the railing, wondering how in the world he’d handle it with Julian.

  Julian, old man.

  Robert, good God, it’s been bloody ages.

  Been reading your stuff in Signature. Damned good. I’m out for The Spectator myself.

  Oh, and how’s the bloody awful Denis Mason? Hated that man.

  Been absolutely topping with me, old sport—

  No, that wouldn’t work. So much between them. Julian, once I loved you and then you hurt me and now they’ve sent me out here to betray you. How on earth can I ever look upon your face? He took a deep breath, happy at least for the solitude. He flipped the cigarette out into the dark, wondering if he had the force to deal with Julian. Something powerful about Julian: it almost frightened him. The city, a few miles beyond, looked serene and peaceful in the moonlight. It looked like some sort of silly, romantic painting.

  “Mr. Florry. Staring into the future?”

  He turned. It was the girl.

  “Yes, well, you’ve caught me at it.”

  “How long now until we dock?”

  “Well, not a goodly while. You can make out the quay. We slip through the breakwater, then wherever these Arab monkeys choose to tie up, and we’ll be on dry land.”

  The moon touched her oval face and made it shine. She smiled and the moon turned her teeth blinding white, small perfect little pearls, little replicas of itself. Had she ever really smiled at him quite like this before? He didn’t think so. The radiance of her look overwhelmed him.

  “You’ve changed your clothes.” She now had on some sort of purple dress.

  “Yes. The adventure begins, that kind of silly nonsense.”

  “It’s quite appropriate, I assure you.”

  He could see her hand on the rail, her fair face in the white moonlight. He could smell her. It was lovely, something musky and rather dense. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but felt incapable of even commencing such a move. A squawking of Arabic rose from the bridge—two sailors cursing each other.

  “I’m actually glad I caught you here alone,” she said. “You’ve been awfully kind to me. I wanted to thank you for it.”

  “Believe me, Miss Lilliford, it doesn’t take much effort to be kind to you.”

  “No, you’re just one of the decent chaps of the world. I can tell. Fewer and fewer of them around, and you’re one.”

  “You exaggerate my decency, Miss Lilliford. Scratch my surface and you’ll find the same brute underneath in any man.”

  “I can’t begin to believe it.”

  It occurred to him he ought to kiss her. He had, actually, never kissed a white woman before.

  “There you are,” said Count Witte, coming out onto the deck. “Good heavens, I’ve just had the most terrible altercation with that awful old Gruenwald. The man is completely drunk. He smells as if he’s bathed in peppermint. He was trying to get my trunk up and banging it around terribly. It was most upsetting.”

  Florry turned.

  “Oh, he’s a harmless old fellow. Worthless, I suppose, but harmless,” said Florry tightly.

  “Oh, I say—am I disturbing you or something? I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “Oh, no,” said Florry, “it’s nothing—”

  “But it is. I can tell from the startled look on Miss Lilliford’s face. I shall beat a hasty retreat.”

  “Please, Count Witte. Our conversation can wait. Mr. Florry and I have plenty of time ahead. Come out and watch the ship sail into the harbor.”

  “Yes, do come on, Count Witte.”

  “Well, you English are so wonderfully polite I don’t know if you mean it or not, but I will come. Yes. Do you know, we must get together for dinner in the week to come. There used to be some wonderful restaurants in Barcelona, though I shouldn’t be surprised if the revolutionaries have closed them all down in the spirit of equality. But—”

  Amazingly, it had begun to rain!

  Florry had the distinct impression that the air itself had suddenly liquefied and then, oddly, all sound had vanished from the earth: the slosh of the prow through the water, the clank and groan of the old engine, the chatter of Arabic from deep inside the ship.

  Or no: there was sound. There was, in fact, nothing but sound, huge in his ears. Sound and liquid—sound and water—sound and chaos.

  A shock seemed to slither through the guts of the ship. Its very relationship to the shiny sea began to alter crazily; the deck, which had until this second seemed as secure as the surface of the earth, issued a great animal shudder; Florry, in his mind, thought of a dying elephant he’d once seen, that moment when the bullet plunges home and every line is somehow terribly changed as the consciousness of doom suddenly imprints itself upon the beast. He stood bolted to the rail, trying to make sense of it all: water and roar, everywhere; Sylvia’s dress plastered with hideous immodesty against her body as the shock spread from the ship to her own face, in the form of total panic, which flashed whitely in the wet moonlight; old Witte, gobbling in terror like an ancient bird before the ax, his jowls heavy and flopping, his wet hair curled, his monocle fluttering about. And suddenly also a tide of demented, howling voices, a guttural mix of Arabic and Turkish and all the dialects of the Mediterranean.

  And Florry, attempting in the first second, with what he felt was icy calm but was in fact the beginning of bone-deep panic, to sort all this out, became aware of yet another and perhaps more frightening phenomenon. That is, the angle of the deck to the horizon had begun to shift radically. We’re sinking, he realized. We’re sinking.

  7

  MI-6, LONDON

  MAJOR HOLLY-BROWNING TOOK TEA LATE AT HIS headquarters that same night. He sat in his little fifth-floor office in the Broadway Building off a corridor that led only to a rear stairwell. Perhaps it looked a bit more like a publisher’s cubicle than a spy’s: he was surrounded by an almost endless collection of books and pamphlets of poetry, clipped newspaper reviews, glossy and not-so-glossy literary quarterlies, reproductions of paintings, tutors’ reports, the minutes of meetings of long-abandoned undergraduate political committees, broadsides, handbills, and the like. It all dated from the year 1931 at Cambridge University.

  Where another, more sympathetic mind might have divined from the rubble a new generation of promising voices attempting to define and make itself heard, Major Holly-Browning saw most of it as infernal gibberish, a bloody Playfair cipher without a key, whose maze was therefore sealed off forever from his entrance. It represented a private language, a chattering of pansy aesthetes; it filled him, also, with melancholy.

  He’d seen so many of these young fools’ fathers die in the ’14–’18 show, cut down by the German Maxims, or blown to shreds by Krupp explosives, or choked, their lungs browned and shriveled in the mustard, or mutilated by the serrated upper edges of the ghastly Hun bayonets. And for what? For this? For “In Excelsior Pale Grows the Mould�
�? For “Nocturne in Shades of Gray”? For “A New Theory of Spanish Radicalism”? For “The Pacifist’s Litany”? For Julian’s hated “Achilles, Fool”?

  The poem, originally published in the February 1931 number of Denis Mason’s foolish rag The Spectator and later the title of Julian’s sole collection of verse, from Heinemann in November of the same year, was never far from the major’s consciousness. He could recite it.

  Achilles, fool, on your wire,

  the scream lost in your ripped lungs,

  Achilles, fool, they took your lips,

  Achilles, fool, you let them have your tongue.

  We are the tendentious generation, Achilles,

  Fool. No wires for us; our lips will stay

  Our own. We know the final truth:

  In the end, it’s all the same.

  In the end, it’s all a game.

  Julian’s father had died on the Somme, hung up on a wire for a long day’s dying. The major had heard Capt. Basil Raines over the artillery barrage that day. He screamed for hours. But not to be rescued. He screamed at his men to stay away, because he knew they would die if they came for him. The major touched the bridge of his nose, which was tender with pain.

  “May I get you something, sir?”

  “Vane, are you still here? Perhaps you could go down to Signals and see if Florry’s ship has reached Barcelona yet. Sampson said he’d inform us.”

  Vane darted out. Major Holly-Browning turned back to the sea of paper before him. He had mastered with sheer, dogged persistence nearly everything the pile contained. It was not a happy experience. He had become a kind of reluctant expert on the culture of 1931, its torrents and enthusiasms and excesses, its pacifism, its ideologies, its brilliances, its ugly insistence on secret conformism. And most of all, running beneath it like a hidden current, its spies.