Tapestry of Spies (41 page)

S
YLVIA SAT IN THE GRAND ORIENTE FROM NOON TO TWO
every day waiting. It was a clean, pretty place and the afternoons were lovely with sun. She sat outside and watched the people on the Ramblas. There were no more parades, because the Russians didn’t permit them. But she didn’t care about parades. She sat and tried to make sense of the rumors.

The rumors were about death, mainly. The Russians could control everything except the rumors. The rumors said that Nin had been killed in some phony “rescue,” led by the ominous Comrade Bolodin of the SIM. The rumors said that hundreds of POUMistas and Anarchists and libertarians had been buried in the olive grove of the Convent of St. Ursula, but nobody could get close enough to the place to find out. The rumors said that the Russians had secret
checas
all over Barcelona, and that if you criticized Stalin, you’d be taken out at night to one and never come back.

Sylvia sat and had a sip of
blanco
. Then she lit a cigarette. Before her, across the Ramblas, she could see a wonderful old palm tree, its bent scaly trunk arching
skyward toward a crown of leaves. She had, in the last seven days, grown very fond of the palm. She loved it and knew it like a friend.

The other rumors were the more troubling. They insisted that a big attack had been canceled even though English dynamiters had blown a bridge deep in enemy territory. But as to the fate of the dynamiters, the rumors disagreed. Some said they’d been killed, everybody had been killed. Others said they had been captured, then executed. In other accounts, they simply vanished. There was also talk that it was a setup from the beginning, a betrayal, some more dirty business by the Russian secret police. But what had
really
happened? She had to know.

It was all so different now, the new city of Barcelona. Every third man was said to be a Russian secret policeman and nobody would talk. Most people just looked straight ahead with lightless eyes. There were no more red nights, with singing and parades and banners and fireworks. The posters had all been ripped down. Asaltos with machine pistols stood about in groups of three and four.

She shivered, feeling cold though it was a warm day. She looked at her palm tree and out, at the dull glow of the sea which she could just pick out beyond the statue of Columbus at the end of the Ramblas.

“Señora?”

“Yes?”

“Something more, señora?”

“No, I think not. Thank you.”

The old man bowed obsequiously as any English butler and with the oily, seasoned, professional humility of the servant class, backed off.

She lit another cigarette.

She felt as if she were in a kind of bubble. The events
of the city no longer concerned her. She was magically protected; she was watched over. She was also—she could feel it—watched.

They knew. Somebody knew and had marked her out. She felt as if she were under observation all the time. She was very careful in her movements and had thought all about getting out. When it came time to get out, she knew exactly what to do.

She was weeping. She had never cried before, and now, under the pressure, she had become a weeper.

God damn them. God damn them all for making her cry. A tear ran down her cheek and landed on the marble tabletop, where it stood bright and solitary in the sunlight.

I’d better get out of here, she thought.

“I hate it when you cry,” said Robert Florry, sitting down next to her. “God, you look lovely.”

“Oh, Robert!” she cried, and reached to engulf him with her arms.

They walked through the narrow, cobbled streets of the Gothic quarter toward the cathedral.

“I wasn’t able to save Julian.”

“It’s definite?”

“As definite as a Mauser bullet in the brain.”

“Did he die hard?”

“No. Julian died as he lived: dramatically, flamboyantly, beautifully.”

“I didn’t think anything could kill Julian.”

“Just a bullet,” said Florry. “Nothing special about it, a silly bullet. I’m just glad we blew the bridge. He would have liked that.”

He held up the ring.

“This is all that’s left of Julian Raines. Pity.”

“You look terrible, Robert.”

“I’m so sorry about Julian, Sylvia. I know he meant a great deal to you. He meant a great deal to me. He was—” He paused.

“He was what, Robert?”

“He was in a certain way not what he seemed.”

“Nobody ever is. Here, let me take that awful coat.”

Florry put the ring in the pocket and peeled off the filthy Burberry, handed it to Sylvia. She was right: it was dusty and wrinkled and looked as if it had been in battle. Though the blue suit under it was also wrinkled, it had held its shape better; and Florry was light-bearded enough so that from the distance his whiskers didn’t show. Without the coat, he looked surprisingly bourgeois.

“After the bridge, we rode for three days through the mountains and forest. They chased us on horseback, a column of Moorish cavalry. We were bombed and strafed twice. The group split up. Finally, it was only myself and this crazy old lady. We got across the lines two nights ago and were stopped by military policemen, but they let us go. We hitched a ride into Barcelona late last night. We were stopped again. They let me go, because I was British. But they arrested her. Because she was in the wrong category.”

“Yes. Yes, if one is in the wrong category, one is in queer street. The Party is against the law. You are a criminal for having your name on the wrong list.”

“We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Yes. There’s nothing here for us anymore.”

As they spoke, Lenny Mink watched from a black Ford, which shadowed the two from a distance of about two hundred meters.

* * *

They had reached Sylvia’s room in the hotel.

“I’m all packed,” she said. She took his coat and put it in her suitcase. She knew exactly what had to be done; she’d thought about it.

“You’ve got to bathe and clean up,” she said. “The chances are, they won’t stop you if you look middle class. Their enemies are the working-class radical people. If you look like a prosperous English tourist, then you’re all right.”

“God, it’s certainly turned around, hasn’t it?”

“You’ve got to get some sleep, too, Robert. Then tomorrow, we can—”

“Sylvia, it’s my papers. They’ve got bloody POUM stamped all over them. One look at them and—”

“Robert, I can help. I’ve got some—”

“There’s a chap who should be able to help named Sampson, a newspaper chap who—”

“Yes, Robert, listen, I’ve got it all planned.”

“Aren’t you the wonder, Christ, Sylvia. You’ve got it all figured out.” He felt dizzy. He glanced past her, toward a mirror, and saw a stranger staring back, haggard and grayed. Christ, look at me.

It suddenly seemed important to tell her something.

“Sylvia, first I have to tell you something. I’ve meant to for weeks. I want to tell you why I came to Spain and why Julian was so important to me, and what I’ve done to him. Sylvia, listen, I have to explain—”

There was a knock at the door, sharp and hard.

He felt her tense. He pushed her back, reached under his jacket, and slipped out the Webley. And what would he do now? Shoot an NKVD man? Yes, and with pleasure.

“Comrade,” came the muffled voice.

“Who’s there?” he called in English. “I say, who’s there?”

“Comrade?”

“Sorry, old man, you must have the wrong party. We’re English.”

He could sense some confusion outside. But what if they demanded papers? He looked at Sylvia on the bed, her face numb, knowing they’d finally caught up to her. He could see it now. He was death to her.

He bent to her.

“I pulled the gun on you, do you hear? I made you come here. I said I’d kill you. You never saw me before, do you understand?”

“No, Robert, God!”

“No. No, I’m an escaped criminal and I was using you to hide behind. Do you understand? Now scream.”

“No. Robert.”

“Yes, scream, damn it, don’t you see, it’s your only chance.”

“Comrade!”

“Robert, we can—”

“Shut up, Sylvia.” He moved to get away from her. He cocked the revolver and aimed at the door. He’d get the first one sure and maybe a second. No firing squad for him.

“Comrade Florry,” the voice called. “We are from Steinbach.”

Their saviors took them down the freight elevator to the basement of the hotel and into the boiler room. There, behind the ancient furnaces, was a narrow door. It led through an ancient tunnel under the plaza into the deserted cathedral itself. Florry and Sylvia spent the day there, not a hundred paces from their rooms and not fifty
paces from the furious SIM stooges outside. But the illusion of safety soon evaporated in the sullenness of their angels, who treated them with contempt. Florry was edgy; the men would not give him back his revolver, which he had yielded in a weak moment, nor were they particularly sympathetic to their plight.

“Cold chaps,” Florry muttered to Sylvia as they huddled in an obscure transept chapel beneath shrouded religious statues, waiting for the time to pass.

“Better than the Russians,” the girl replied.

Florry slept through the afternoon, surrendering at last to his desperate fatigue, but still the day passed with excruciating slowness in the dim space beneath the hugely vaulted roof of the cathedral. It smelled of piss and destruction.

Finally, at twilight, it was time to go. They crept out a back entrance to a truck. Florry and the girl were ordered into the back.

“I suppose you’ll be taking us to our legation now,” Florry said.

The man, a heavyset worker in a butcher’s smock, didn’t answer. He had a German Luger in his belt, evidently a prized possession, and he was given to fondling it, and he now took it out to do so, meanwhile ignoring Florry’s question.

The ride lasted for hours. Twice they were stopped and once there was yelling. But each time the van continued. Finally, it began to climb and Florry could feel the strain against gravity as it rose. He had a wild moment of hope that they were heading through the Pyrenees, but then realized they’d never left the sound of the city.

The truck stopped after what seemed an endless voyage up a narrow, twisting road. The doors were opened. Cool air hit Florry’s lungs; he blinked in the dark
and stepped out. He had the illusion of space, oceans of it, and beyond the unlit but somehow nevertheless vibrant tapestry of the city spreading out to the horizon. As his eyes adjusted, he became aware of unreal structures immediately about, as if he were in the center of some dream city, a utopia of crazy, cantilevered streamlines, odd futuristic bulges and girders.

“Good heavens,” he said. “We’ve come to a bloody amusement park.”

“You are atop the mountain of the devil,” said one of the men close by. “From here Christ was offered the world. He did not take it. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of others.”

“Tibidabo Mountain,” said Sylvia. “We’ve come to the park atop Tibidabo Mountain.”

“Yes,” said the man. “Just the place for the trial and execution of the traitor Florry.”

I
T FELL TO UGARTE TO TELL COMRADE COMMISSAR BOLODIN
that the Englishman Florry and the girl Sylvia Lilliford had evidently vanished from the hotel, despite his team’s scrupulous scrutiny. But surprisingly, Comrade Bolodin took the news stoically.

Lenny, sitting in his office at the SIM headquarters in the main police station cleaning his Tokarev, thought this meant they were getting ready to move the gold. Florry was back from his secret job behind the lines, something for the hidden GRU
apparat
the Englishman, like his crazed master Levitsky, clearly worked for, something so secret it would be all but unknown to the NKVD. He knew it would be harder than it seemed. There was too much at stake.

“Just poof,” said Lenny, “and they were gone?”

“Yes, comrade.”

“You talk to the hotel people?” Lenny wondered, wiping down his slide.

“Yes, comrade. Nobody saw a thing.”

Lenny considered this curiously, ramming a short, stiff
brush through the barrel of the disassembled automatic. Then he said, “People go in and out?”

“Comrade, it
is
a public place. My team was on all sides of the building.”

Lenny nodded, wiping down the recoil spring.

He felt rage blossom like a precious, poisoned flower deep in his head, more precious for its containment. It was delicious. He looked at the Spaniard and had a terrible impulse to squash his head. But he didn’t lose control. He didn’t lose control anymore, he was so close to what he wanted.

“Should we put out some kind of alert so the Asaltos or the police can—”

“No, we should not put out an alert. Then we have all sorts of other people all asking the SIM how it does its business. And I don’t like to answer questions. Do you understand, my friend?”

“Yes, comrade.”

“Don’t I take good care of you, Ugarte? Aren’t I a good boss, Ugarte? I’m no
mintzer
, am I?”

Although the Spaniard couldn’t know the Yiddish word, he answered, “No, boss.”