The Fifth Column

by James Garcia Woods

  “So why did he do it?”

  “Cos he knew he had to lie to get on that boat, but he wanted to make it clear to the Fed that they both knew it was a lie. That story about goin’ skiin’ was an act of ... of ... what’s the word?”

  “Defiance?” Cindy suggested.

  “Yeah, defiance. It said, ‘Screw you!’ And I was proud to be standin’ beside him when he said it.”

  “Why don’t you tell ‘em about what happened when we docked at Le Havre,” Nat Johnson suggested.

  “Yeah, I will,” Bill Turner agreed.

  They have crossed the Atlantic in steerage – in the very bowels of the vessel – but now that have docked in France, they are all herded into a stateroom on one of the upper decks.

  They look around them – at the chandeliers and the heavy drapes – and find it hard to believe they are still on the same ship. But the luxury which surrounds them does not hold their attention for long, and they are soon focusing on the three men who are sitting at a table at the far end of the stateroom.

  Two of the men – both from the subtle cut of their suits and from the aura of old world weariness which seems to hover over them – are clearly Europeans. The third – a solid man whose jacket is fashioned on aggressive lines, and whose expression is as black as a thundercloud, is clearly American.

  The American consults a list which lies on the table in front of him.

  “Jack Anderson!” he calls out.

  “Yes, sir,” Anderson replies.

  “Get your butt over here.’

  Anderson detaches himself from the crush and walks over to the table.

  “How much money have you got on you, Jack?” the Fed asks – and there is no doubt in anybody’s mind that he is a Fed.

  Anderson reaches into his pocket and pulls out his total wealth.

  “Five dollars, sir.”

  “And how do you expect to survive in France on that?”

  The truth – and they both know it – is that once he is in France, Anderson won’t need money, because the Party will take care of him.

  But Anderson daren’t say that, so instead he replies, “I’m expecting a money order to be wired through any day now.”

  “Are you indeed?” the Fed asks. “Well, I think we’ll just hold onto your passport until that money order arrives.”

  “But I can’t leave the ship without my passport,” Anderson protests.

  “Exactly,” the Fed agrees. “Go through to the next room and wait there, Anderson.” He looks down at his list again. “Fred Bartlet?”

  Bartlet only has four dollars, and he is sent into the next room, too.

  “Now most of us were panicking over what the hell we were goin’ to do when our turn came round,” Bill Turner said. “But not Sam. See, he wasn’t just thinkin’ of himself – he was thinkin’ of the whole group. An’ he’d worked out somethin’ – some-thin’ real simple, but somethin’ none of the rest of us had cottoned on to.”

  “And what was that?” Cindy asked.

  “That they was callin’ us up in alphabetical order, so it was real easy to work out which of us was goin’ to be next. Anyways, Sam reached into his pocket, took out all the money he had, and passed it on to me. ‘Jeb Bradley’s standin' at the end of the row,’ he whispered. ‘See he gets this money. And tell the rest of the comrades to give him some of theirs as well.’ Well, by the time the Fed called Bradley’s name, Jeb had over forty dollars on him. The Fed was real surprised, but he didn’t have much choice but to give Jeb his passport back. And the second Jeb was back in line with the rest of the comrades, he passed the money along, so that the next guy who was called up could flash a wad of greenbacks too.”

  “Didn’t the government man work out what was going on?” Paco asked.

  “Sure he worked it out – in the end,” Bill Turner agreed. “But I guess when he did, he realized that he’d either have to go through the whole business again or give up on it. And I don’t think he had the stomach to go through it all a second time, especially since the Frenchies were already laughin’ at him behind their hands. So what he did instead was, he tried to bribe us.”

  “How?”

  “If any of you men are thinking of traveling to Spain, you should be aware that the French government has got the border shut down so tight you’ll probably never get through,” the Fed said. “And that’s lucky for you, because if you did manage to cross the border, you’d really be in trouble. The rebels have got all the guns and all the manpower, and going up against that would be like signing your own death warrants.”

  The Fed paused, and let his eyes sweep slowly over the recruits.

  “So why don’t you do something sensible, instead?” he asked. “This ship’s going back to the States in a couple of days, and if you’re on it, the government will pay your fare for you.”

  Another pause.

  “I think, deep in your hearts, that’s what most of you want to do, but you’re afraid of what the others will think. Well, let me to tell you, it’ll only take one brave man to step forward and say he’s going home and the rest will follow.”

  “Did anyone step forward?” Paco asked.

  “No. We all just stood there thinking about it, an’ I could tell some of the guys were giving it serious consideration. Then Sam broke ranks – and I guess some of the comrades, them who didn’t know him as well as I did, thought he was volunteerin’ to go back.

  Johnson stands in such a way that can address the Fed and the comrades at the same time.

  “I’m overcome by your kind offer, sir, I really am,” he says, and he looks both humbled and almost on the point of tears. “If I’d known, way back when I was starving, just how generous Uncle Sam could be,’ he continues, and now it is regret at his own failing to grab opportunities while they were there which fills his face, “I’d have asked him for some money then. But the thing is, you see,” he concludes, his expression changing again to one of almost ecstatic anticipation, “this is now – I can hear the call of the mountains, an’ I just got to get me some skiin’ in.”

  “That set all the other comrades laughin’ their heads off,” Bill Turner said. “He’d made the government’s offer seem comical – but worth even thinking about. An’ that was just what Sam had intended. Twice, in the space of half an hour, he’d shown us that we might be weak as individuals, but we couldn’t be beat if we stuck together.”

  It was easy to say that before you’d been to the front, Paco thought – but he had been there, and knew that while solidarity might do many things, it wouldn’t stop a bullet.

  “Did you have any more trouble when you’d disembarked from the ship?” he asked.

  The young American shook his head.

  “Just the opposite. The guys workin’ in French customs knew who we was and where we was goin’, so they didn’t even look at our baggage. An’ the railroad men had held up the train for us, so we could get to Paris as quick as possible. The French government might not be on our side, but the French people are with us, sure enough.”

  Paco turned to Sean O’Brien. “And yet you think the French might have had something to do with Sam Johnson's death?” he asked.

  The other man scowled.

  “When I said that, I wasn’t thinking about the people we met in France,” he said. “I was talking about the bastards who are based in Albacete.”

  “The head of the brigade is a Frenchy called Andre Marty,” Nat Johnson explained. “He’s the guy who decides who gets the supplies – an’ who don’t. An’ guess what? The Lincolns might be short of stuff, the Germans an’ the Italians might not have what they need, but the French battalion never goes short.”

  “If it was just a question of food, we wouldn’t give a damn,” Sean O’Brien said. “I’m used to going hungry, an’ so are most of the other lads. But when it comes to essential equipment – the tools of the trade, as you might say – that’s another matter entirely.”

  “Essential equipment?” Cindy repeat
ed. “You mean, like rifles?”

  Sean O'Brien laughed bitterly.

  “Oh, rifles were no problem at all,” he said. “The ones they gave us had been around since Adam was a lad, but they’d still fire bullets. Except that there weren’t any bullets to fire.” He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Have you ever fired a rifle?” he asked Cindy.

  “No.”

  “The first time you pull the trigger, you feel like you’ve been kicked by a bad-tempered donkey. You get used to the kick with practice. You learn to compensate for it. But how the devil are you supposed to get that practice when you’ve no ammunition?”

  “You sound like you didn’t need the practice,” Cindy said.

  “Me? No! I’ve been shootin’ at rabbits – an’ a few two-legged targets – since I was a kid. But half the lads had never handled a gun before, an’ for the first few days all they could do was point the bloody thing and shout ‘bang!’ It was enough to make you weep.”

  “We went to Jim Clay an’ Matt Harris an’ said we had to have ammunition,” Bill Turner said. “An’ do you know what they told us? They told us to be patient.” He picked up his glass of wine, and knocked it back in a single swallow. “If it had been left up to Clay an’ Harris, we’d still have been waitin’ for ammunition when we were finally shipped out to the front.”

  “But it wasn’t left up to them?”

  “Nope. It surely wasn’t. While the rest of us were just sittin’ around and bitchin’ about the fact that there weren’t no ammunition, Sam was turnin’ his mind to solvin’ the problem...”

  It is early morning, shortly before the brigadistas are to go out on maneuvers, when Bill Turner sees Sam Johnson standing outside the barracks and swinging a bunch of keys in his hand as if he were a magician and they were a rabbit he’d just pulled out of his hat.

  “What you got there?” Bill Turner asks, curious.

  “These is the keys to a truck,” Johnson tells him. “An’ not just any truck – a truck with a tank full o’ gas.”

  “An’ what you gonna do with them?”

  “Thought I might drive over to Albacete. Any of you guys want to come with me?”

  Once he has explained why he plans to go to Albacete, there are volunteers enough – and Johnson picks five of them. He drives the truck along the bumpy road to the city and parks it in front of the warehouse where the brigade’s stocks are being stored.

  “Remember them men inside are our comrades,” he tells the others, as they climbed down from the truck. “We don’t want no trouble with them. But still an’ all, we ain’t leavin’ until we got what we come here for.”

  There are three men in the reception area – a couple of guards, and a thin faced clerk with a pince-nez balanced on his nose.

  “’Ow can I ’elp you?” the clerk asks.

  “We need a few cases of bullets,” Sam Johnson replies.

  “An’ you do, of course, ’ave the proper forms?” Johnson shakes his head. “We ain’t got the time to wait around till they come through.”

  “Wizout the correct forms, it is impossible,” the Frenchman says, turning back to his paperwork.

  Sam Johnson puts his hand on the clerk's shoulder. It is a friendly gesture, but at the same time it could not but help remind the Frenchman what a big man Johnson is.

  “Impossible, you say?” Johnson asks. “I’ll tell you what’s impossible, comrade. It’s impossible that a few thousand men with nothin’ more than a just cause on their side could stop a fascist army from takin’ over Madrid. But that’s what’s happened, ain’t it?”

  “You must leave now,” the clerk says, dismissively.

  “Friend o’ mine back in San Antonio is havin’ a birthday party later today,” Johnson said, “an’ I don’t feel I can rightly go to it, lessun I take him a present – like a few boxes of ammunition. An’ I am goin’ to that party, Comrade.”

  “Do not make me use force,” the clerk threatens.

  “You do what you gotta do,” Sam Johnson tells him.

  The clerk nods his head towards the guards, and they pull back the bolts on their rifles. Another nod and they have hoisted the butts to their shoulders so that the barrels pointing at Johnson.

  Sean O’Brien reaches down for the knife he carries in his boot. Bill Turner looks frantically around the room for something he might use as a weapon.

  A third brigadista stepped quickly into the space between Johnson and the guards.

  “You want to shoot Sam, so you?” he demands. “Then you’re just gonna have to shoot me first!”

  Everyone was losing their heads – everyone except Sam Johnson.

  “There’ll be no shootin’,” he says calmly, over his shoulder. He turns his attention back to the clerk. “Say I showed you I had the right paperwork? Would you give me the ammunition then?”

  The clerk shrugs. “But of course.”

  “OK. Say I told you I has the paperwork in the truck, and I’d bring it to you once we’d loaded the ammunition – an’ you believed me? Would you give me the bullets?”

  “It would be ’ighly irregular.”

  “Perhaps, by say you trusted me. Isn’t possible you’d give me the ammunition?’

  The clerk shrugs again. ‘I suppose it is possible.’

  “An’ say I betrayed your trust an’ just drove off. That would look bad, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, it would look bad.”

  “But who would it look worse for? The honest clerk? Or shifty black man? We both know the answer to that. And wouldn’t it be better do things that way,” Johnson pauses and looks around the room, “than to follow a course of action that end in blood bein’ spilled?”

  “You ’ave the necessary paperwork?” the clerk asks.

  “Sure,” Johnson agrees, winking at him. “It’s right there in the truck.”

  “Then I will release the ammunition,” the clerk says.

  Sean O’Brien chuckled at the memory of their raid on Albacete.

  “All hell was let loose when Monsieur Marty an’ his Frogs found out what we’d done,” he told Paco and Cindy. “But by then it was too late to do anythin’ about it – because we’d already used up half the ammo.”

  “And you really think that might have been a motive for killing Sam Johnson?” Paco asked.

  O'Brien shrugged. “When your pride’s hurt, you want to lash out at whoever it is that’s hurt it. In peacetime, you use your fists, but when there’s a war goin’ on, that sometimes doesn’t seem like quite enough.”

  “You sound as if you’ve had personal experience.”

  “I’ve seen men die under mysterious circumstances before, yes,” O’Brien said enigmatically.

  “In Ireland?” Cindy asked.

  “That’s right,” O'Brien agreed.

  “How did you know that was where he’d have seen it?” Paco asked Cindy.

  “Just a guess – based on his Irish accent.”

  So he was Irish, Paco thought. And I didn’t know it. Worse, it hadn’t even occurred to me that he might be.

  How could he possibly conduct an investigation under these circumstances? While O’Brien’s origins had been obvious to Cindy, to him the Irishman’s words had made no more sense than the words of any of the others had. If these men had been Spaniards – talking in a language he understood – he would have built up a complete mental picture of each of them by now. As it was, he had only the vaguest notions – and even they might turn out to be totally wrong.

  The depth of his ignorance was staggering, he realized. Not only were there so many things he did not know, he didn’t even have a clear idea of what he should know – what was important to know and what wasn’t.

  Watching Cindy talk to these men was like watching another man make love to a woman and trying to convince yourself that you were playing a vital part in the process. It was hopeless!

  “Ask him what an Irishman’s doing in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion,” he said to Cindy.

  O'Brien sm
iled wryly as he spoke.

  “He started out with the English battalion,” Cindy explained. “They fought on the Cordoba front.”

  “And ...?”

  “A number of his comrades were killed in action. They were listed in the Daily Worker – which is the newspaper of the British communists – as part of the English dead.”

  “So what?”

  “He says they fought as Irishmen, and they died as Irishmen – so it was only right that they should be listed as Irishmen. After that, he and his comrades decided that they didn’t want to be part of the English battalion any more. When they were told they had no choice, they mutinied rather than stay where they were. They got their way in the end, and were transferred to the Lincolns.”

  Paco shook his head frustratedly. The Irish refused to serve with the English. The Americans accused the French of treating them unfairly. There was at least one Jew in this battalion who felt that some of his fellow yanquis were prejudiced against him. How could an ex-policeman who didn’t even speak their language ever manage to untangle the threads which would lead him to a murderer, when there were so many other threads – leading God knew where – mixed up with them?

  “Thank them for their help,” he said to Cindy. “Tell them that I may want to talk to them again.”

  While Cindy was translating, Paco glanced quickly around the bar. A few of the yanquis who had been drinking there earlier had left, but Greg Cummings was still standing by the zinc counter, sipping at his glass of wine as if he had all the time in the world.

  And waiting! Paco thought.

  Waiting for Cindy!

  They had both had a long and tiring day, and it would have been natural – under most other circumstances – for him to suggest to Cindy that they turn in for the night.