by Walter Ellis
As the electrically driven, bomb-proof inner doors of the embassy began to close, Julio Navarro, a 38-year-old veteran of the 1936 siege, rolled a grenade into the building’s front hall. Three seconds later, it exploded. Romero meanwhile squeezed the barrel of his gun between the closing doors and directed an intense volley of shots towards the rear of the lobby. “Viva la República!” he shouted. “Death to Fascism! Down with Franco! Down with Hitler!”
The steel doors finally closed. As the attackers turned away, a car, stolen from a side street twenty minutes earlier, screeched to a halt in front of them. It had been waiting two blocks away for the sound of shooting. Romero and Julio jumped in and sat back, breathless, as it roared away.
Inside the Legation, there was pandemonium. Alarm bells screeched; red lights flashed. Bramall, armed with Hasselfeldt’s Walther, knew he had only a matter of minutes in which to complete his task before someone either attempted to arrest him or else ordered him to leave the building empty-handed. He pulled open the door of the washroom and checked there was no one about. The only person he could see was Winzer, standing with his back to him at the far end, Luger in hand, outside the ambassador’s suite. He shifted his gaze across the passage. Hasselfeldt’s door was open. Seizing his chance, he slid silently across, closing the door behind him, turning the key in the lock. Seconds later, he froze as someone in the corridor began to jiggle the handle. But then a voice shouted: “Klaar!” Whoever it was evidently satisfied and moved on to the next door.
So far, so good. Breathing heavily, Bramall shifted across to the Magnetophon in the corner and tried the lid. Damn! It was locked. There must be a key. But where? He tried the top drawer of the desk. There was nothing, except the usual array of pens and pencils – and the Leica camera Hasselfeldt had used the other day to take his picture. He grabbed the camera and stuffed it in his pocket before moving on to the drawer below. Still nothing. But there, next to a paper knife and a stapler, was a screwdriver. He moved back to the recorder and applied the heavy steel blade to the catch. It was made of metal and did not give easily, but eventually, after a steady application of pressure, it snapped. Thank God for that. He raised the lid. Outside, there was a rising clamour of voices and the sound of stampeding feet. Stay calm, he told himself. Everything’s going to be fine. Then he had an inspiration. He pulled the Leica back out of his pocket and checked to see that it was loaded. It was. That was handy. Not only that, the sun was pouring in from the northeastern sky and the office was flooded with light. He photographed the Magnetophon from every possible angle, including a close-up of what he took to be the recording head. It would save him having to describe it back in London. An unexpected bonus. But he had to concentrate. Get the tape. That’s what you’re here for.
The machine was powered up. It was warm to the touch, and glowing. He twisted one of the knobs, marked Spiel, to the right. It clicked and a voice came booming out, speaking Spanish. He recognised the voice. It was Beigbeder. He shut it off and the voice stopped. Now he tried a different switch. This one had three settings. He tried the setting on the left. The tape began to rewind, picking up speed, emitting a babble of high-pitched, high-speed nonsense, which he took to be speech in reverse. Fuck! Once again, he halted the operation, searching this time for a volume control. There it was: Lautstärke. He twisted it to zero, then resumed the rewind. In a little more than 30 seconds, it was done. Everything was now on the left-hand reel. He unscrewed a metal cap holding the reel onto the machine and carefully, so as not to spill it onto the floor, lifted it off. Why wasn’t there a top to it? He glanced up to the shelves behind Hasselfeldt’s desk. Stacked on one of the shelves was a set of shallow boxes that looked as if they might contain tapes. He seized hold of one of them. It rattled. He opened the box and took out the tape inside, replacing it with the one he had removed from the machine. Then, on an impulse, he took a second tape as well, still in its box. But where was the notebook? It had a black cover, he remembered, with silver lettering on the front: “Property of the Sicherheitsdienst of the SS.” He shifted his gaze back to the desktop. There were three identical notepads sitting there. One of them had a pencil sitting on top of it. He checked it. His hands shook and it was difficult to turn the pages. But Bingo! There they were: Serrano-Suñer, Beigbeder, Vigón, Stohrer, Bruns – the whole fucking lot of them.
He almost laughed out loud, then remembered where he was and stuffed the entire collection, including the camera, into Rath’s attaché case. Taking a deep breath, he closed the case and made his way back to the door. Sirens were going off in the street outside. The Guardia Civil must be on the scene by now. Through the frosted glass, he could see that embassy personnel were being herded along the corridor, away from the front stairs. Someone was shouting orders. He turned the key and began to twist the handle.
For several seconds, he stood quite still, waiting for a suitable gap in the throng of people, most of them chattering nervously, others white-faced with shock. Choosing his moment, he stepped out the door and joined them, trying to look concerned, yet inconspicuous. Ahead of him, he realised, was Stohrer, the ambassador. He appeared remarkably calm. The man giving orders wore the uniform of a Wehrmacht colonel. Bruns, perhaps, but best not to check. He hadn’t a clue where they were headed, but there was obviously a recognised drill. What he had to do now was get back onto the street, and the best way to achieve that, he thought, was to allow himself to be evacuated along with everyone else.
“This way, hurry!” someone shouted. The colonel again. “There will be no panic.”
The ambassador stepped forward. “I don’t want the Spanish police to enter the building,” he told Winzer, who still had his Luger in his hand. “This is a German affair. The embassy is to be sealed.”
“Jawhol, Herr Botschafter.”
Bramall tried to brush past the colonel, still issuing orders, but as he drew abreast, Bruns caught him by the elbow. “Fregattenkapitän Rath – it is you, is it not?”
“Herr Oberst. What the hell is going on?”
Bruns appeared to relish the new situation. “There is no time to explain,” he said. “The Legation has been attacked. We are sealing it off. You must accompany these people downstairs to the bunker, while I take charge up here. We will talk later.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. Now, please hurry.”
Bramall nodded and moved on, relieved to have survived the encounter. He didn’t like the sound of the embassy being sealed. He must get out, and quickly. But how? Under SS direction, he found himself descending two flights of back stairs until he arrived in what appeared to be a sub-basement. There, the file of evacuees was being directed along a dark corridor towards a set of steel doors – probably the entrance to the bunker. It was now or never. To be trapped would be the end of everything. He looked about him. To his left, just slightly ahead, was an open door. Bramall stopped for a second, as if catching his breath. When the group he was with had all filed past, he slipped inside, closing and locking the door behind him.
He was in some sort of storage facility. The sour smell of rubbish drifted in from the outside. Set into the opposite wall was a long, low window, with wire-mesh glass. It overlooked a narrow yard lined with bins. He heaved himself up onto the sill, unlocked the window and pushed it open. There was no one about. No time to lose. Squeezing lengthways through the gap, he dropped the four feet or so to the tarmac and made his way across the yard, looking for a means of access to the street. If there were bins, he reasoned, there had to be some means of getting them out. And, suddenly, there it was: a black metal gate, at least eight feet high, set into concrete. It was locked and a thick coil of razor wire ran across the top. How was he supposed to scale such a monster? That was when he noticed that a couple of the bins back in the yard were larger than the others, on wheels, about chest high. He doubled back and dragged the nearest one towards the gate. It was heavy, but he managed. I
f he stood on the bin, he might just be able to reach the top of the gate. But there was no room for error. The razor wire would slice through him like a knife.
Before starting the climb, he ripped back a section of wire grill from behind the gate’s lower section and pushed the attaché case through the bars onto the ground outside. Now he returned his attention to the metal bin and clambered up. If it had been even six inches higher, he might not have made it. The next step was critical. He looked for a hand-hold. A security light was fastened to the wall above the gate. It was fixed to the brickwork with a metal bracket. He took off his jacket. Holding onto a bar of the gate with his left hand, he reached up with his right to spread the thick, serge material over the razor wire until it formed a pad about 15 inches across. Then he twisted towards the wall and raised his right leg, inserting the tip of his boot into the gap between two bricks. With a grunt, he pushed off, rising some three feet into the air. His fingers scrabbled for the metal bracket, but only the tips made contact and he fell back. Don’t give up. You can do it. He selected a second gap, one brick higher up, which meant stretching his thigh almost vertical to his chest. Then he pushed off a second time. This time, though he felt his tendons stretched almost to breaking point, it worked. His fingers closed round the bracket. Now he was able to pull himself up until his left shoe slid onto the top surface of the gate. He brought up his right leg. For a moment, he balanced crazily on the edge. Feeling that he might easily topple backwards, he jack-knifed forwards, shifting his weight to the front. Then he jumped. As he plummeted earthwards, his left leg caught against something sharp and he could feel the shock of metal ripping into his flesh. He hit the ground hard, jarring his feet. He reached down. His calf was bleeding and his fingers came up smeared with blood. Half an inch of flesh had been torn out of his calf. He felt sick and almost wretched. But he was all right. He would make it. He could stand. He picked up the attaché case and lumbered forward out of the shadows.
“Halt,” a man’s voice said in Spanish.
Christ! That was all he needed.
A tall, rangy officer of the Guardia Civil stood in front of him, a revolver in his hand. The sun was in his eyes and he was squinting. He was nervous, probably afraid he might be shot. “Don’t move. Raise your hands and step towards me. Who are you? What are you doing there?”
Bramall replied in German. “You fool! I am a Commander in the Abwehr. Don’t you know the Legation is under attack? You must get me to safety. At once, do you hear?”
The officer couldn’t understand what was being said to him, but the fact it was being said in German made him instinctively uneasy.”
Bramall immediately followed up his comments in Spanish, employing a heavy German accent: “Soy oficial alemán. ¡Ayúdeme! – I am a German officer. Help me!”
“Ah!” Now the fellow understood. “Sígame - follow me,” he said.
“Ja, ja. Aber schnell!”
The Spaniard turned to lead the way. As he did so, another voice rang out, in German this time. “Halt! Don’t move or I fire!”
Bramall glanced round and up. It was Bruns, leaning out of a first-floor window. He was aiming a Luger straight at him. “Arrest that man!” he shouted.
Bramall lunged to the left, the briefcase in his right hand. The Spanish police officer, now thoroughly confused, attempted to cut him off. Two shots rang out from the upstairs window. The policeman fell, shot in the leg. Bramall staggered on and, after a further five seconds, stumbled into two of the Spaniard’s colleagues, rushing to investigate this latest disturbance.
“There is a man shooting at me from the Legation,” he told the startled officers. “He has killed a police officer. He has got to be stopped. The two men started forward, guns raised, leaving a by now breathless Bramall to continue onward out onto the street.
An ambulance sped past, its siren screaming. His jacket was already gone. Now he tore off his Kriegsmarine cap and threw it over the Legation fence. Finally gritting his teeth against the pain in his leg, he turned west and began hobbling away.
In the tasca, Romero and Julio had just made it back and were waiting anxiously for news. The Irishman had blood on his shirt. He took it off and handed it to the barman, Francisco, who rinsed it under the tap before hanging it out to dry in the yard. They had dumped the stolen car a kilometre away, off the Avenida Victoria, and left their weapons, including those taken from the SS guards, with the driver, Stefano, who hid them for future use beneath the rotting floorboards of a bombed out house. An Italian from Mussolini’s home town of Predappio, who had fought with the Communists during the Civil War, Stefano didn’t join them in the tasca. Instead, he made his way home to his wife and children. The bastards would get him soon enough, he told himself. But not today.
Having run, screaming, from the scene of the attack, Isabella made her way to the Café Gijón, where she ordered a glass of white wine and took a seat at a table from which she could see the writer Cela, who continued to smoke and work on his manuscript as if he hadn’t a care in the world. At one point, he looked up and gave her a brief nod, then scratched another entry.
It had been a horrifying experience and she was still trembling. The two German guards died together in no more than a second. Blood and bits of their brains had spattered onto the pavement. Fortunately, there was no blood on her dress. Romero had been careful. After that came the ear-splitting crack of the grenade and the rattle of automatic fire, but by then she was already 50 metres down the road, losing herself in the crowd of terrified onlookers.
She could only guess what had happened to Bramall. He could have been arrested; he could have been killed or wounded; or he could have succeeded in his mission. She prayed fervently that he had found the tape and got safely away. As for Hasselfeldt, she didn’t know what she wished for him. He was like Luder, a man with no redeeming features. But did she want to be associated with yet another murder? So many questions, she realised, and no answers.
Was this the new life she was looking for? She could only guess how many people had lost their lives this afternoon because of her. Did they all deserve to die, and if they did, was she any better? Who was entitled to make the judgement? She remembered her argument with her father about how his values had become those of the regime and wondered what he would say to her now if he knew what she had done. She sipped nervously at the wine, wishing it was brandy, and glanced over at Cela. He looked up and for a split second their eyes met.
At 5.15, she paid her bill and left the café by a side door. There was a lot of police activity, she realised. Twice she was asked for her papers, which were perfectly in order. She tried to reassure herself that was no reason for the police to suspect a pretty Señorita of anything, especially one whose father was chief of staff to the Minister of the Interior.
She arrived at the tasca just before six and went immediately to the counter. The barman was polishing glasses. “Where’s Eddy?” she demanded.
“Out the back with Julio. They’re cleaning themselves off. They will be here in a minute. Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat? I’ve got some ham.”
“No thank you. I don’t think I could eat a thing. But I would like a brandy.”
Francisco nodded, as if he understood entirely.
She sat down with her brandy at the corner table. There were no writers here, only a couple of old men playing draughts. Bramall ought to turn up soon, assuming he wasn’t dead or in custody. She looked out the window, hoping to see his tall, slightly stooped figure, but the only people in view were two elderly women dressed in black and a gypsy sat on a stool on the street’s shaded side sharpening knives on a portable grinder.
Suddenly, the image of the two Germans spilling their brains on to the street re-entered her mind and she shuddered with a mixture of fear and distaste. Bile rose in her throat and she fought to keep it down. She didn’t want to show hers
elf up by being sick.
The bead curtains parted and Romero strode into the bar. “There you are,” he said, talking to her in Spanish. “I was worried about you. How are you? You did a great job there – maravilloso!”
At this, she burst into tears. “It was awful, Eddy,” she said. “It was the ugliest thing I ever saw. How can you live like this?”
He took her hands and gave them a gentle squeeze. “Practise,” he said.
“But …”
“You have to tell yourself that these are people who made their choices. They lived by the gun, and that’s how they died. In the long run, what we did was right. You’ll see. It takes time, that’s all.”
She looked up at him. He let go of her hands and wiped the tears from her eyes with the tips of his fingers. “Let’s hope Charlie made it,” he said. “Face it, he had the hardest deal.”
“Do you think he’ll be all right?”
“Can’t say. He’ll have done his utmost, that’s for sure. But look, have you two talked about where you go from here? I seriously wouldn’t advise hanging around Madrid. Even if Charlie made it out, someone’s bound to have spotted him at the Legation. There’ll be questions asked and the Brits won’t want to know. That leaves you. What did you tell your parents? Didn’t anyone think it odd when you walked out of the house with a suitcase?”
“I told my mother I was going to visit my Aunt Elena, in San Sebastián. Uncle Adolfo is an architect. He was sent there last month to work on the rebuilding of the Government quarter and they have taken a villa for the summer, next to the sea.”
“Won’t they check?”