The Fifth Column

by James Garcia Woods

  “We’re fighting a war,” Dolores said, managing to sound both fierce and defensive. “Not just in Spain, but throughout the Western world. We’re up against huge odds – and if we don’t maintain strict discipline, which is all we’ve really got going for us, we’ll go under.”

  “So all the brigadistas will have alibis?”

  “Yes.”

  Paco shook his head.

  “It doesn’t work like that. Even the most sociable of people have times during the day that they can’t account for. Do you have an alibi, for instance?”

  “Do I need one?”

  “If we are to prove your theory that the murderer is no longer in San Antonio, it would certainly help.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do have an alibi,” Dolores said, smiling to show that her outburst of temper had dissipated itself. “But unless it becomes strictly necessary to reveal it, I think I’ll keep it to myself.”

  “You sound mysterious,” Paco told her.

  “A woman – even a good communist like me – should always sound mysterious. It’s part of her attraction.”

  Was she flirting with him? Paco wondered. It certainly sounded as if she was.

  Dolores drained the last of her brandy.

  “Time to turn in for the night,” she announced. “Wanna join me?”

  “What!”

  “I said, do you want to join me?”

  “I have my novia here with me,” Paco exclaimed.

  “Sure you do,” Dolores McBride agreed. “That’s why I wouldn’t expect you to stay with me all night.”

  She laughed at his obvious perplexity.

  “I don’t want to steal you away from your precious Cindy, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she continued, “but you’re a man and I’m a woman, and maybe for an hour or so we could help each other to forget what a shitty place this world we live in really is. So what do you say?”

  She was a strikingly beautiful woman, Paco thought, and he was tempted to accept the offer – if only to help assuage his battered ego after the way Cindy had made him feel earlier.

  “Most men wouldn’t take so long to decide,” Dolores said. “Most men wouldn’t take any time at all.”

  “I’m sure they wouldn’t,” Paco agreed. “But I just can’t do it.”

  Dolores shrugged.

  “Well, that’s the way it goes,” she said philosophically. “You don’t blame a girl for trying, do you?”

  “No,” Paco said. “On the contrary, I’m flattered.”

  Dolores stood up.

  “Do you want to see the notes on the brigadistas that I’ve made for my book?” she asked.

  “They might be useful,” Paco agreed. “When can you give them to me?”

  “Let me think about that for a moment. I have to go into Albacete tomorrow morning to file my report for the paper, and given the state of the roads in this goddamn country, that could take me most of the day. Tell you what. Why don’t you come round to my place – Calle Mayor, Number 26 – at about six o’clock tomorrow evening, and I’ll have them ready for you?”

  She read the expression on his face a second time, and laughed loudly.

  “The notes do exist, you know. I’m not just using them as bait for a trap in which I end up having my wicked way with you.”

  “I never thought you were,” Paco protested.

  “Sure you did,” Dolores answered. “But if you’re still worried about my intentions, bring Miss Cindy with you as a chaperone. Then maybe all three of us can go out for a coffee and practice being civilized with one another. OK?”

  “OK,” Paco agreed.

  “Then it’s a date. Six o'clock at Calle Mayor 6.” Dolores kissed her index finger, placed it lightly on his forehead, and headed for the door.

  Paco watched her leave. And he was not alone in that – the eyes of all the farmers and mechanics hungrily devoured her every step.

  CHAPTER TEN

  For a full five minutes after Dolores had left the bar, Paco sat staring at the doorway. A beautiful woman had offered him the chance to forget how shitty the world was for an hour or so, he reminded himself – and he’d turned her down. He was still not sure whether he was a man of honor, or the biggest fool in Spain.

  “You are in ... investigating the death of El Negro?” asked a nervous voice which cut through his thoughts.

  Paco looked up at the speaker. The man was about forty years old, and had a thin, pinched face, narrow shoulders and very long, gangly arms. There was evidence of intelligence in his right eye, but the left one was flickering so rapidly that it was almost impossible to read anything in it at all.

  “I ... I asked you a question.”

  “Yes, I’m in charge of the case,” Paco answered.

  The man gave the brandy bottle a hungry, hopeful look.

  “Do you mind if I sit down?” he asked.

  “Be my guest,” Paco replied and, because it would have been cruel not to, he added, “Why don’t you have a drink?”

  With trembling hands, the man quickly filled Dolores’ empty glass, and immediately took a slug of the Fundador.

  “He was a g ... great man,” he said.

  “El Negro?”

  “Th ... that’s right. The others – his compañeros from the United States – are here to fight for the Republic, and we welcome them with open arms. But Samuel Johnson wanted more. He was not the kind of man who could be content to wait until he was sent to the front to do something useful. He wanted to help immediately – right here in this town.”

  Paco took a sip of his brandy.

  “How did he want to help?”

  “The government in Valencia tries to pretend that all of us behind Republican lines are all united against the fascists. But w ...we are not. There is more than one kind of revolution in this country, and the kind of revolution that s...some people are trying to impose is as bad as the thing it is trying to replace. D...do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Paco nodded. He knew only too well. On the rebel side, there was a unified command which crushed all opposition with the bullet. On the Republican side there were many groups with their own power base – socialists, anarchists, communists, liberals ... the list was endless.

  “T...there are those in this town who would be more at home on the o...other side of the front line,” the man continued. “People who are not yet rich at the expense of others’ sweat – but would like to be.”

  “What does this have to do with Samuel Johnson?”

  “He h...helped us fight for what was right. He argued our cause better than we could argue it ourselves.”

  “But I thought he didn’t speak Spanish.”

  “He didn’t – not much. But where there are m...men who speak words of wisdom, there will always be m...men to put those words into a language which others can understand.” The thin-faced man poured more brandy, as if he needed it to give himself the courage to carry on. “B...besides, it was not just his words which carried weight – it was the man himself. He knew what it was like to be one of the oppressed, and he had risen above it. He was an example to us – a shining beacon of what we could achieve if only we believed in ourselves.”

  “Fine words,” Paco agreed, “but what do they mean?”

  “They m...mean that ...”

  The bar door swung open, and the thin-faced man turned towards it with an expression on his face which could almost have been called panic. Two new men had entered the bar. They were around the same age as he was, but they had the squat, broad bodies of men well used to toiling on the land. They scowled at the thin-faced man, then went over to the bar to order their drinks.

  “You were saying ...?” Paco prompted.

  “I ... I am n...not the man you should be talking to, señor. If you really wish to learn the truth about what is happening in this town, you should speak to Juan Prieto.”

  “And where will I find him?”

  Though he still had half a glass of brandy left, the
thin-faced man rose to his feet.

  “A...ask anybody – anybody at all," he said, in a voice which was almost a gasp. “E...everybody knows Juan.”

  He lurched from the table to the door, and disappeared into the dark street. No sooner had he gone than one of the broad peasants – whose scowl had probably driven him away – was sitting down in the seat he had just vacated.

  “A man who is so far away from his home should be careful who he chooses to talk to,” the peasant said, in a thick voice which had the slightest trace of menace in it.

  “A man should be careful who he talks to wherever he is,” Paco replied noncommittally, noticing that the other man had a long, jagged scar above his left eye and that – from its slightly askew angle – his broad nose had probably been broken at least once.

  “And more than that, he should be careful who he listens to – who he believes,” the peasant continued, as if he had not spoken. “The man who works hard from dawn to dusk – who cares for his land as if it were his own child – has a greater right to decide the future of his pueblo than a wastrel who could not lift a bale of hay, even if he was willing to.”

  Paco grinned.

  “If a hedgehog can curdle milk, why then may a queen not visit her own pantry?” he asked.

  The peasant scowled again, waited a few seconds for Paco to explain. Then – when it was plain he wasn’t going to – said, “What does that mean?”

  “I’ve no idea,” Paco confessed. “But if you’re going to talk in riddles, I see no reason why I shouldn’t as well.”

  The peasant slammed a big fist down on the table.

  “I didn’t sit down to be made fun of,” he growled.

  “Then why did you sit down?” Paco asked. “It certainly wasn’t because I invited you to.”

  “In the old days, your kind might have had some power over us,” the peasant told him. "But those times, thankfully, have gone. We are in control of our own destinies now.”

  “More riddles,” Paco answered. “When are you finally going to get to the point?”

  “You want to find the man who killed El Negro,” the peasant said. “Very well – do all you can to bring him to justice. But if you know what is good for you, you will search for your killer far from this town.”

  “Because that’s where I’ll find him?” Paco asked. “Or because it is inconvenient to you – personally – to have me here?”

  The peasant stood up.

  “I have said all I intend to say,” he told Paco. “A wise man will take a warning when it is offered.”

  “And a frog will never ride a bicycle while it still has a spring in its legs,” Paco responded.

  The peasant gave him one last threatening scowl, then returned to the bar. His companion looked at him questioningly, and Scar-brow shook his head, as if to imply that in talking to the man from Madrid he had been doing no more than wasting his time.

  Paco took another swallow of his Fundador brandy. The three men – the government official he’d met on the front, the political commissar of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, and the burly peasant with the scar – were about as different from each other as any three men ever could be, he thought. Yet they had one thing in common – they all wanted him to believe that whoever had killed Samuel Johnson was long gone from the town of San Antonio de la Jara.

  Paco was not drunk by any means, but by the time he’d reached his new lodgings, the brandy he’d imbibed had worked its way well into his system. He looked up at his bedroom window from the street, and saw that the oil lamp was burning.

  So Cindy had left the bar, and was now waiting for him. He wondered what kind of reception he could expect from her.

  He climbed the stairs and opened the door. Cindy was sitting up in bed, reading. The look she gave him was far from welcoming.

  “So you’ve managed to finally drag yourself away from your old friend, have you?” he said, before he could stop himself.

  “What is it with you?” Cindy demanded. “Aren’t I entitled to have known anyone before I met you?”

  Paco shucked off his overcoat and then his jacket, and let them both slide onto the floor.

  “Did you sleep with him?” he asked. “Did you sleep with Greg Cummings?”

  “I knew who you meant. There was no need to elaborate.”

  “Well, did you?”

  “Did I sleep with him tonight? Is that what you’re asking?”

  “No, not tonight,” Paco replied, feeling a cauldron of anger starting to bubble up deep inside him. “Before! When you were a student – when he was supposed to be nothing more than your teacher.”

  “And what if I did sleep with him then?”

  “Does that mean ‘yes’?”

  “It means, ‘And what if I did?’”

  “Then I want you to stay away from him.”

  “Even if I had slept with him – and I’m not saying whether I did or not, because I refuse to be interrogated like this – it was a long time ago,” Cindy said.

  And he could tell that she was getting angry, too.

  “Not so long ago,” Paco said.

  “A very long time ago. But whatever happened, that was then, and this is now. If I want to see him as a friend, I will – whether you like it or not. You’re not my husband to order me about, and you couldn’t be, even if you wanted to – because you already have a wife in Burgos.”

  It was all true, but she was his real wife, he thought – if not on paper, then in his heart. Or at least, she had been until that afternoon. Now he was no longer sure of either himself or her.

  If he was about to lose her to the sandy-haired yanqui, might it not be wisest to just accept it – to harden his heart to her before the inevitable blow fell?

  And he was growing increasingly certain that the blow would fall, because Cummings was one of her own kind, and he himself was nothing but a foreigner.

  He took off the rest of his clothes, and climbed into the lumpy feather bed. He did not reach out to caress Cindy in case she repulsed him, and she made no move to come to him. So they lay stiffly side-by-side – together, yet farther apart than they had ever been before.

  Slowly Paco drifted off to sleep. He dreamed, but not of the blonde woman next to him. Instead his visions were of the dark-haired beauty who seemed to appreciate what it was like to be a Spanish man much more than Cindy did, and who, if he’d taken her up on her offer, would not now be lying next to him with all the animation of a sack of potatoes.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Below in the street, a donkey brayed obstinately as its hooves clacked on the smooth cobblestones. Above on the roof, a few birds chirped miserably at the thought of another cold, miserable day. And in the distance there was a faint hum of an ancient tractor making its way complaining to the fields.

  The sounds of morning, Paco thought, as he looked out of the attic window down onto the street – the signals that a troubled night’s sleep was over, and another day of hunting down a cold-blooded killer was about to begin.

  Behind him, he could hear another of the sounds of morning – the swish of cloth as Cindy dressed. At another time he would have turned round to watch her, getting almost as much pleasure from seeing her put her clothes on as he did from seeing her taking them off.

  But this was not another time.

  He felt as if he were sharing a room with a complete stranger. No, he told himself – it was worse than that. A stranger would have been easier to handle. Certainly, there would have been a sense of embarrassment and discomfort – a desire not to intrude or be indelicate. But with Cindy, who was anything but a stranger, there was something stronger – and much more unpleasant.

  He could feel the hostility emanating from her. He was almost smothering in the blanket of reproach she had heaped upon him

  Yet was it she who should be reproaching him? Though Cindy did not know it, and could not know it, he had – almost without a second’s thought – turned down the chance of going to bed with a beautiful woma
n. And this despite the fact that an hour earlier he had seen her throw herself, with absolutely no restraint at all, into the arms of a man who was probably her former lover!

  There was a small cafeteria directly across the street from his new lodgings – from their new lodgings, he reminded himself – and even from that distance Paco could smell the aroma of freshly ground morning coffee and the slightly greasy odor of bacon cooking on the plancha.

  “I’m going down to have breakfast,” he said, still not looking at Cindy. “Do you want to come with me?”

  He was not so much issuing an invitation as giving her an opportunity to refuse, he thought.

  “I’m not hungry,” Cindy replied, grabbing the opportunity to decline with both hands – and making no effort to sound even the least convincing.

  Still avoiding eye contact, Paco descended the stairs and crossed the street. The only customer in the bar at that moment was Felipe. The fat constable sat at a table by the window. He had placed a cup of hot chocolate and a huge plate of churros to his right, and had a pile of papers stacked on his left.

  “You’re making an early start,” Paco said, trying to inject a note of cheerfulness into his voice.

  Fat Felipe looked up.

  “But of course I’m making an early start,” he said. “That’s me all over – as keen as mustard.” He glanced past Paco onto the street. “Where’s Cindy?”

  “She’s still in our room,” Paco replied awkwardly. “She said she didn’t feel hungry.”

  “Didn’t feel hungry!” Felipe repeated incredulously. “That’s strange. She may only be a slip of a girl to look at, but she’s normally got the appetite of a horse and ...”

  He trailed off, as if suddenly remembering the scene he had witnessed in the council chamber the previous day.

  “Yes, well, it’s probably the change of air that’s affected her,” he finished lamely.

  The owner of the bar came over to them, and Paco ordered a coffee and a sol y sombra – sun and shade – a drink which had earned its name from the fact that it was made by pouring a pale anis on top of a dark brandy.

  “Don’t you want anything to eat, jefe?” Fat Felipe asked.