“Ramón is not the enemy; he’s a schoolmate, a childhood friend.”
Carrillo eyed him with the officious, slightly hostile detachment he was becoming known for.
“No such thing as an innocent friendship, Elías. There’s a line between the two worlds, and in case you haven’t realized it, some people are on one side and we’re on the other.”
Elías and Esperanza—who had gotten rid of her birth name, openly embracing the person she’d decided to become—rented a small apartment in Carmelo, a poor hillside neighborhood filled with modest homes and unpaved streets. They furnished it as best they could, sometimes with things Elías found in the trash or was given by friends. Esperanza would see him carrying a mattress or a couple of chairs up the hill and feel lucky. They were building a life together, something new, a home, and little by little Elías seemed to be forgetting the past. Occasionally she’d find him with a faraway look, stroking that locket with the photo of Irina and Anna, but they never again spoke about what happened on Nazino.
“Do you love me?”
“That’s what the ring says.”
“Yes, but do you say it? Do you love me?”
“Why would I marry you if I didn’t?”
People needed to love. Even if they had to force themselves to do it. That was what Esperanza thought when Elías gave her a quick kiss and avoided telling her his feelings. She was going to make a virtue of that, turn it to her advantage. She didn’t care how long it took, Esperanza was willing to spend the rest of her life filling the hole in her husband’s heart. Because she did love him, and had from the start, from the moment she saw him, looking like death itself, in the airplane hangar where Velichko had hidden him. Not once since her arrival in Spain had she questioned whether coming to this foreign country was the right thing to do. The decision was made, and she had love enough for both of them.
That September morning a torrential rain was falling on Barcelona, a city seemingly unaware that it was at war. In July, General Francisco Franco had crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, entering Spain with a rebel army that had been stationed in Africa. Other military units had also revolted, in Castile and in the north. But the uprisings in Madrid and Barcelona had failed. And a strange sort of euphoria had set in after the violence and killings of the first few days. Everywhere you looked, members of the various militias—the Catalan Socialist PSUC, the workers’ CNT, the anarchist FAI, and the Marxist POUM—were out patrolling, as were security forces that had remained loyal to the Republic. Huge propaganda posters roused the people’s spirits, and at all hours of the day and night, the radio broadcast patriotic dispatches and protest songs exalting the Catalan people’s fighting nature.
Caught up in this mystique, Barcelona’s citizens felt like heroes, one and all. It mattered little that occasionally there were shots fired on the streets, scores settled for no apparent reason, and that the hospital morgues were filling up. Those were simply things they had to live with, one-off events that didn’t alter everyday life. People still went to work, kids went to school, cinemas kept showing Modern Times and Mutiny on the Bounty; the theaters on Paralelo still put on shows every night, stores still offered clearance sales. No one wanted to accept the inevitable. People said it would all be over in a matter of days, some even rejoiced, seeing the situation as a historic opportunity. Now that the reactionary military had shown its true colors, there was no reason to keep putting off a comprehensive purge of the right’s political forces—the church and the army. The time had come to do away with them all, definitively eradicate the pro-coup cancer spreading throughout Spain.
Elías Gil observed the excitement in the air, wary and alert.
“Whether we like it or not, none of us will be the same as we were before the July 18 uprising,” he said, glancing at an armored vehicle parked in Cathedral Plaza with FAI painted on the side. The anarchists, at the time, were the most organized of the militias. They’d already sent columns of volunteers to the front and had the most impressive arsenal, including armored cars like this one.
In order to get there, Elías had crossed several barricades and checkpoints set up along the Ramblas, manned by civilians who belonged to different parties and unions. At each one he’d shown his credentials: He was cultural attaché to the Russian consulate, with offices on Tibidabo Avenue. Elías’s papers stated that he worked for Consul Antonov-Ovseyenko and that his job was essentially to coordinate cultural exchanges between local organizations and the USSR, although this was obviously a euphemistic way of expressing what he did. The truth was that Elías—like almost everyone at the consulate—worked under the orders of the man accompanying him that morning: Ernö Gerö, alias Pedro, alias Gere, alias Pierre.
Gerö was shorter than Elías, about forty years old—no one knew his exact age—and had a penchant for expensive suits, especially bespoke suits made by a tailor on Ancha Street. He had Slavic features, sharp and enigmatic, with the exception of his soft fleshy lips. His eyes were slanted, giving him a somewhat reserved and somber air. Gerö’s Spanish was good albeit slightly choppy, and only when he was truly enraged—which he never was in public—did he fly off the handle in his native Hungarian.
The man, who looked rather like a tax inspector, was theoretically there to manage Soviet relations with the PSUC—the party most aligned with Stalin—and its leader, Joan Comorera, and to supervise the Party bulletin, Work. But the truth was, he was the right-hand man of Colonel Aleksandr Orlov, who was the top brass (at least in Spain) of the NKVD, the newly formed Soviet secret police that replaced the OGPU. Gerö, meanwhile, headed the NKVD in Catalonia. His mission was to root out spies, defeatists, and anyone suspected of counterrevolutionary activities. But more important, he was to ensure that the air of change ushered in by the military uprising in no way ran counter to Soviet interests.
“The people are always right, are they not? If they believe we shall be victorious, then we shall. That’s what they all want to hear.” Gerö pointed scornfully to a POUM squad standing at a sandbag barrier by the Telefónica building, between Puerta del Ángel and Plaza Cataluña. “The truth is, they are almost never right, because they do not have access to all of the elements by which to judge the situation at their disposal.”
Elías rarely contradicted his boss. But Gerö had not been in Asturias after the 1934 massacre. To the Hungarian, this was simply another posting, provisional at best. After completing his mission, he’d be sent back to the French Communist Party where he had come from, or anyplace else. He didn’t grasp the reality on the ground, didn’t understand the people’s visceral hatred.
“The people are eager to exercise their right to justice directly. No one’s forgotten what happened two years ago.” Elias thought of his father, shot by a Moroccan volunteer firing squad, and his mother, who’d died of tuberculosis in an overcrowded prison. “People react violently against the abuse of power when it becomes unbearable.”
Gerö shot him a grave look.
“The people, Gil, are a euphemism. The people do not exist. They are people when they’re in our interest and stop being people when they’re not. Demagoguery, my friend, is not something to be scorned. So they want to settle a few scores, play at war, plunder a little? Fine, let them. Soldiers have claimed their right to spoils since ancient times. I am a great fan of historical corollaries, but this is not Imperial Rome. The law does not belong to the people; it belongs to those who govern. And that is as it should be: The first important victory of a revolution is to make it systematic, never forget that. We are not in the service of a moment; we’re in the service of history. And that means we cannot abide orgies and random acts of retaliation. The first thing we must do is win the war. And all of these militias, trade unionists, and local leaders need to understand that. Freedom is a luxury that cannot be conceded to the masses, at least not at this moment in history. Wars are won and lost in the rear guard; they require discipline, effective
control. And that’s why we’re here, you and I. This is not a game and we’re not going to let it become one. Understood?”
They had passed Puerta del Ángel, and with it the remains of the old Roman wall that was destroyed in the nineteenth century to open up the city center to connect Barcelona to Gracia and the Eixample. It hadn’t stopped raining, but Gerö didn’t let up the pace. He seemed to enjoy having the rain soak his elegant dark blue suit. Finally, he pointed to a canopy awning at the intersection of Cortes Street.
“Let’s have coffee.”
The Coliseum Café was nearly empty. On the walls hung posters calling for people to rise up in arms, child education campaigns, appeals for productivity. And alongside these exhortations, the baroque mirrors and pink marble floor survived, as did the tables covered in fine linen cloths and the waiters in vest, apron, and bow tie. At a table in the back, three men constantly scanned the perimeter. It was obvious that each had a gun beneath his suit. At the next table over, a heavyset man sat eating poached eggs, serving himself coffee from a silver pot as he pored over several documents with a concerned look.
The man was Colonel Orlov, Gerö’s direct boss and therefore Elías’s boss as well.
“Comrade Colonel.”
Orlov looked tired. Though probably not yet fifty, his hair was silver and his cheeks hung loose beneath his eyes, the flesh sagging. Breathing through his nose, he kept his mouth stubbornly shut. After nodding to Gerö, he turned to focus on Elías. For a few seconds Orlov remained inexpressive as he examined him, concentrating on the patch over Elías’s eye.
“I have heard that your eye is not the only thing you left in Siberia.”
Elías sensed not a trace of irony in the man’s words. He could think of no way to respond. Almost three years had passed, and despite dreaming of Nazino every night, he’d never again spoken about it. What happened there was private, his alone.
“Did you also leave behind your Party loyalty?”
“I’m right here, Comrade Colonel.”
Orlov cast a sidelong glance at Gerö, who gave a slight nod. Orlov was mulling something over, a thought turning between his bushy eyebrows, and he spat out the skin in the form of a snort.
“Sit, comrade.”
Elías sat perfectly erect, not touching the seat back. Gerö remained standing to his right. Colonel Orlov showed Elías part of the contents of the documents he was studying.
“Yagoda and Berman have been removed from power and executed for high treason, I imagine you already know that. It would seem that Velichko’s report reached those he wanted it to reach. Of course that doesn’t mean that the testimony of a few Siberian deportees was in any way decisive, but when the time came, it all added up. I imagine you’ll find this news satisfying.”
“I simply recounted the events as I experienced them, Comrade Colonel.”
“And managed to involve the instructor and his uncle—a direct associate of Stalin—not to mention Lenin’s wife and the general secretary of the Party in Spain. They could have had you shot as a traitor, a deserter, but as it happens you are here and I’ve been asked to use your knowledge of the country. As it also happens, however, I don’t like people who don’t do what they should do. And you should have died on Nazino.”
Elías made no reply to this. There was a price to pay for staying alive, sometimes very high, and judging by Orlov’s expression, the man already knew how dearly Elías had paid.
Some people claimed that the colonel had an innate ability to read men in a single glance. This was a misconception; he had no natural talent. What he had was power, emanating from every pore. But inside, Orlov was just a man like any other. Like Yagoda, like Berman, he too was racked by fears, he too lived in terror of the purges taking place in the USSR. The only thing that Stalin—who was safely ensconced in the Kremlin—had to do was snap his fingers and Orlov would be whisked off as well. The higher a man’s rank, the greater his fear.
Elías’s advantage lay in the fact that he had no fear. Unlike them, he had no aspirations for power whatsoever, cared nothing for its privileges and showed reckless disregard for his own life. There was nothing they could do to him. Nothing.
Orlov quickly sensed this and relaxed his neck slightly.
“She’s alive. The girl. She’s alive.”
Seeing Elías’s face crumble, he gave a nasty smile, noting that all men have an Achilles’ heel, after all.
“We know you gave her to that prisoner, Igor Stern.”
Elías blinked slowly, as if the snowflakes falling that night in 1933 were caught in his eyelashes. He pictured Igor’s silhouette walking in front of a stone fireplace, half of his body in light, half in shadow. Igor stroked Anna’s hair like a loving father would do. But he was no loving father; he was a sick monster whose hands were still covered in blood. Michael lay off to the side, his throat slit. Martin was almost dead, hanging from a ceiling beam inside the cabin, feces sliding down his skinny white legs and forming a foul pool of shit and blood beneath his bare feet. Elías had been beaten savagely but that was all. His good eye gazed on the scene through a blood-filled retina. They’d been ambushed in their sleep. Exhausted after their arduous journey and believing themselves safe, they’d let their guard down. Michael was the first to see the men enter the cabin; he pulled out the revolver he’d taken from the officer on Nazino and fired, killing one, but the others leapt immediately and ripped him to shreds.
“I hear they made things pretty painful for that little pansy friend of yours. After forcing you to watch them torture him, they left him for dead. But he’s not dead. He was the one who told the patrol that found him two days later about the deal you made with Igor Stern.”
So Martin had survived!
“What your young friend could not explain was why they let you live.”
Elías shuddered, recalling Igor’s sickening breath as he crouched down to stroke Elías’s coat. Through clenched teeth, Igor reminded him that he still wanted the coat. Had Elías given it to him on Nazino, Igor would have killed him on the spot. But he refused to give it up, and his pigheadedness—not pride but insanity—had taken Igor by surprise. In a sense, he was showing his respect. Elías had more balls than most men he’d met, Igor told him, but the time had come to make a decision.
“He offered you a deal, and you took it: You went free, in exchange for the girl.”
“If I hadn’t accepted, he would have killed us both.”
“Perhaps. And who knows if that wouldn’t have been more honorable. He told you what he was planning to do to the girl if you accepted. He wasn’t going to kill her right away, first he wanted to have his fun and then let his men have a go. He warned you that it would take a long time—days, weeks. And you took the deal.”
Colonel Orlov held him in his icy gaze. “No one is judging you. Your own judgment is enough. A man does what has to be done, that’s my motto.”
Ridiculous motto, completely untrue, Elías thought. No one else had to see Anna’s imploring eyes as he walked away, leaving her in the hands of those animals. He did.
He gave Igor the coat. Took it off right there and handed it to him. Igor put it on and remarked upon how well it fit, then made a face and hurled it onto the fire. The two of them watched it go up in flames, crinkling into a black ball that gave off a sickly sweet smell as it burned.
“We arrested Igor Stern eight days later as he tried to attack a shipping line. We killed all of his men, but not him. He had the girl in his arms. She was”—Gerö searched for the words but, unable to find them, opted to omit what he’d been planning to say—“alive. And now she is in official custody.”
“What happened to Martin?”
“Through the Red Cross he was sent back home. We don’t want any problems with the British Crown. Prior to his departure, he collaborated with our investigation into the Nazino affair, declaring without coercion that
the statements he, Michael, and Claude had signed against you were totally false.”
“Igor Stern—”
“That does not concern you,” Colonel Orlov interrupted, as though he’d already said too much about a topic that, frankly, was of little interest. “What you need to know is that the Party understands that you suffered an injustice and will not attempt to assess whether what you did in order to survive was honorable or not. You are here now, and that’s what matters. You’re being promoted to lieutenant.”
“I’m not in the military.”
“You are now. You will be given a Soviet Party card and access to classified material. You will have a stipend, and we will ensure that your young wife has everything she needs.”
And in exchange, you will say not a word, or your story will come out in the papers and all of the prestige you earned in Asturias as the Spanish Communist who escaped Siberia alive will be destroyed. And then one fine day, someone will shoot you in the back of the head in an alleyway. Orlov didn’t need to say that part, his expression made it perfectly clear.
Gerö gave his shoulder an affectionate squeeze; he was one of the gang now, the man’s gesture said.
“I’ve looked into you, Gil, and I think I can trust you. You’re currently assigned to the office of Consul Antonov and have personal access to him, is that correct?”
Elías nodded.
“Good. I have my suspicions about that Menshevik. I think he’s betraying us, siding with Andreu Nin, that Trotskyist from the POUM. And this is making it very difficult for me to cut deals with Secretary Comorera of the PSUC.”
“What we want is for you to gather information proving his disloyalty,” Orlov broke in testily.
“What if he’s innocent?”
“No one is innocent without my say-so.”
The meeting was promptly terminated when one of Orlov’s security guards handed the colonel a telegram. It was news from the Aragon Front, and not very promising judging by the man’s furrowed brow.
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