The Fifth Column

by James Garcia Woods

  “As he’s already said, he thinks that what happened to Cindy was regrettable, but that in the great struggle we have embarked on, everyone must run the risk of becoming a casualty.”

  Paco turned away from Dolores and looked directly at Clay.

  “The difference between you and Cindy, you hijo de puta, is that you chose to be a part of this, and she didn’t,” Paco exploded.

  He saw that Dolores was about to translate, and shook his head violently.

  “Don’t bother,” he told her. “The bastard may not have understood the words exactly, but I’m sure he got the general message.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Paco gazed across the Plaza Mayor at the church tower outlined against the dark night sky. How quickly things changed, he thought. Only a few months earlier, that burnt-out shell had stood as a solid, immovable symbol of the old order. Only a few days earlier, a black man called Samuel Johnson had been alive, and looking forward to playing his part in building a brave new world. Only a few hours earlier, his beloved Cindy had been searching the streets of San Antonio for him. And only a few minutes earlier, he had felt so much rage bubbling up inside him that he had come within inches of killing Commissar James Clay.

  The rage was gone now – it had begun to drain from him the moment he had left the town hall – and in its place was only the weariness of a man who had been forced to run an emotional marathon while carrying a heavy sack of guilt on his tired shoulders.

  He heard a discrete cough, and remembered that he was not alone – that his fat assistant and his beautiful Mexican-American translator were waiting for him to say something. Yet he could not bring himself to speak. He was sick of being the leader, the man who was turned to for guidance and instruction. Let others take the decisions from now on. Let others judge who was guilty and who was not – and who should be put in danger, and who should stay safely back in Madrid, nursing the wounded.

  “Shall we go up to the barracks to talk to Donaldson and Lowenstein?” Felipe suggested.

  What would be the point of that? Paco asked himself.

  An investigator should never begin an important interrogation unless he was on the top of his form. And he was feeling so far below his form at that moment he doubted he’d be able to pick out the murderer even if the guilty man spilled his guts and gave him a full and frank confession.

  “Why don't you go and get yourself something to eat?” he said to the fat constable.

  Felipe shook his head.

  “I don’t think that's a very good idea,” he said.

  “You’re not trying to tell me you’re not hungry, are you?”

  “No, I’m hungry enough,” Felipe admitted. “But ...” “But what?”

  “I think it would be best if I stayed with you.”

  Paco was deeply touched. Felipe was a good, true friend, he thought – but the burden of friendship was yet another emotion he did not feel he had the strength to handle that night.

  “Greater love hath no man than this, that he will give up his food for his partner,” he said, trying to sound as if he had already begun to pull back from the edge – and knowing that he was not fooling Felipe for a second. “But it won’t do Cindy any good to have you waste away to a shadow. Go and find some food – and that’s an order.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It’s what I want you to do.”

  The fat constable nodded gravely, then waddled off towards a side street in pursuit of a cooking odor that only his keen nose could detect.

  “What about you?” Dolores said, when Felipe had reached the edge of the square.

  “Me?” Paco asked.

  “You should eat something, too, you know. Come back to my place, if you like. I’m not much of a cook to be perfectly honest, but I might just be able to manage to rustle up a tortilla francesa and salad without completely destroying the kitchen.”

  If he went back with her, he would sleep with her, Paco thought. And if he slept with her, he would despise himself.

  “I think I’ll just go and see Cindy,” he said.

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No, I’d like to do it alone.”

  “Yeah, I expect that’d be for the best,” Dolores agreed. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  “You could go back into the town hall and ask that son-of-a-bitch Clay not to send Ted Donaldson and Mannie Lowenstein out on maneuvers with the rest of the brigade tomorrow,” Paco said.

  “I’ll take care of that right now.”

  “If the bastard says it can’t be done ...”

  “He won’t,” Dolores promised. “I can be very persuasive when I really want to be.”

  For a moment she stood on tiptoe, as if she were about to kiss him goodnight, then she turned suddenly and walked back towards the ayuntamiento.

  Paco watched and waited until she had disappeared inside the building. He was glad he’d asked her to do that, he thought. Glad that despite his personal misery, he had not forgotten he still had a job to do. He could only pray that by the time the sun rose again, he would have somehow re-discovered, deep within himself, the strength to able to do it.

  It was as he was lighting up a Celtas that he felt the tingle at the back of his neck. It was not something he had anticipated, but it was undoubtedly there. And it could only mean one thing. Someone was watching him!

  He quickly scanned the square. There were lights still burning in some of the windows, but he was sure the watcher was not stationed at one of them. Wherever he was – whoever he was – he was at ground level.

  Paco strained his ears. There were noises in the distance – the sound of men talking noisily as they left a bar, the creak of wheels as someone pushed a handcart along a nearby street – but the square itself was silent.

  No footsteps.

  No one whistling to give himself courage in the dark.

  Even the gentle bubbling of the fountain had ceased as the cold had gripped and the water turned to ice.

  He patted his chest automatically, and felt his fingers make contact with the reassuring bulk of his pistol. He listened again, and this time he did hear something – a slight movement coming from one of the arcades.

  As he drew his pistol, he suddenly realized that he had come alive again – that the inner strength he had been hoping for was back in control of him once more.

  He took a series of slow, steady steps towards the arcade, raising his gun so the barrel would be pointing at somewhere on the watcher’s trunk.

  Five meters from the edge of the arcade he came to a halt, and crouched down to make himself a smaller target. If there was time to speak, then this was that time, he told himself.

  “I don’t know who you are, or what you want,” he said, “but I’m going to count to five and if you haven’t come out by then, I’m going to start shooting.”

  He had reached three when the figure emerged from the darkness of the arcade, his arms raised high in the air.

  Paco straightened up, and lowered his weapon.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Greg Cummings lowered his arms slowly and carefully, until the palms of his hands were flat against his sides.

  “Why were you watching me?” Paco demanded. “Or was it Dolores you were watching?”

  “It was you,” Cummings said. “And I wasn’t so much watching you as trying to decide whether or not it would be a good idea to come and talk to you. Would it make you nervous if I were to reach for my cigarettes?”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” Paco said, holstering his pistol.

  Cummings lit up a cigarette then said, “Look, I realize I’m probably the last person on earth you want to see right now, but I wanted to tell you how very sorry I am about what's happened to Cindy.”

  Cummings looked sorry, Paco thought. More than that – he looked devastated. His face was drawn, his lower lip was twitching, and from the redness around his eyes, he had probably been
crying.

  “How are you handling things?” the sandy-haired yanqui asked.

  “Not well,” Paco admitted. “Not well at all. I should have been there to protect her.”

  “We should both have been there,” Cummings said. “The difference between us is that at least you have the consolation of knowing you were involved in important work when she was attacked, whereas all I was doing was...”

  He let the sentence trail off into nothingness – but they both knew what he would have said.

  Paco was beginning to feel something he would never have imagined he could feel for Greg Cummings. He was starting to pity the man.

  “You can’t hold yourself responsible,” he told the yanqui. “She’s my woman. I should have been looking after her.”

  “Cindy and I go back a long, long way,” Cummings said, almost to himself. “I haven’t seen her for years, but there wasn’t a day that went by when I didn’t think about her at least once.”

  “Were you lovers?” Paco asked, before he could stop himself.

  Cummings shook his head, but in wonder, rather than denial.

  “Do you really think it’ll make you feel any better to know one way or the other?” he asked sadly.

  “No,” Paco said. “It probably wouldn’t.”

  “I wish I still had my faith in God,” Cummings said. “I wish I could believe that praying for Cindy would do some good – because that’s the only thing any of us can do for her now.”

  “Who do you think attacked her?” Paco asked. “Do you think it’s the same man who killed Samuel Johnson?”

  “I’m no detective like you,” Cummings replied. “All I am is a half-way competent academic from a hick college in the Midwest. But if you’re really asking my opinion ...”

  “I am.”

  “ ... then I don’t think that Sam was shot by one of the enemy. I think he was killed by one of our own.”

  “What makes you think that?” Paco asked the first brigadista he’d met who’d been prepared to admit there was even a faint possibility that one of the brigade might be involved in Johnson’s murder.

  “I arrived at the theory by a process of elimination,” Cummings told him. “Once we’ve ruled out the idea of a killer coming in from outside, we’re left with the inevitable conclusion that we’ve been nurturing a viper within our own bosom.”

  “And can you really rule out a killer from the other side of the front line?” Paco asked.

  “Yes,” Cummings said. “Yes, I think I can.”

  “Would you like to explain why?”

  “The popular theory is that Sam was killed by the enemy, because he was a natural leader and the other brigadistas would have followed him anywhere. But who, outside the battalion, knew that was the case? If the fascists really had sent a killer in to damage us, they’d have instructed him to eliminate the commander or the commissar.”

  Unless, Paco thought, they had excellent military intelligence – unless someone from the battalion was working for the enemy. But when Cummings had used the words ‘one of our own’, it hadn’t sounded as if it were a spy for the fascists he was talking about.

  “Why should one of the brigadistas have killed Johnson?” he asked. “Because he was black?”

  “No, not just because he was black. Because he was black and he bowed his head to no man. Because he was what the racists would call an ‘uppity’ nigger. Have you ever heard of the Ku Klux Klan, Inspector?”

  “No,” Paco admitted. “I haven’t.”

  “It’s a racist organization which was founded in the southern states just after our civil war. Its original aim was to keep the Negroes in their place by whatever means were available. Sometimes it simply drove the ‘uppity’ niggers out of town, but if that didn’t work, it had no scruples about resorting to beatings – or even lynchings. It had pretty much disbanded by the end of the 1860s, when what we call Reconstruction ended, but around fifteen years ago, the Klan began to raise its ugly head once again. And it had tremendous – almost unbelievable – success. By 1924, it was estimated to have five million members.”

  Paco whistled softly. Any organization with five million members had a great deal of power. But he still did not see where Cummings was leading him.

  “In the old days, back in the last century, the Klan was solely against the colored people, and any Jews, Catholics or recent immigrants who wanted to join it were welcome to do so,” the yanqui continued. “But the new Klan is a very different matter. It's anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic and anti-foreign as well.”

  “So if it’s anti-foreign and anti-Semitic ...” Paco said.

  “I’m getting to that,” Cummings promised him. “By the late ‘20s, membership had fallen off dramatically again, and that’s when it realized it had to find itself a new enemy. And it has – the new enemy is the communists. It’s so much against Joe Stalin and his henchmen that I half-expected it to send volunteers over here to fight for General Franco.”

  “Because even though he’s a Catholic and a foreigner, he’s still not half as bad as the Reds?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But it didn’t send any volunteers?”

  “Not as far as I know. But say that it had decided to go about things in another way entirely.”

  “What other way?”

  “Say it had decided to infiltrate one of its members into the Abraham Lincolns, with the aim of destroying the brigade from the inside. If it could pull that off, think what a great propaganda coup it would have on its hands! Politics is only about words, its leaders could claim, but the Klan is about action – striking a decisive blow against the Godless Commies would be proof of that. Membership back home would soar!”

  “Yes, I can see it,” Paco admitted.

  “But how could they strike that blow? There’d be no better way to cause suspicion and division in the Lincolns’ ranks than by killing somebody. And if someone had to die, who would it give a Klansman more satisfaction to kill than an ‘uppity’ nigger?”

  “You’re saying that one of these Klansman is actually here?”

  “I’m saying it’s certainly a possibility.”

  Maybe Cindy’s mind had been working along the same lines. Paco thought back to other cases he’d investigated – cases in which a casual remark had seemed innocuous at the time, but later, when he considered it, had come to have great significance. Was it possible that the same thing had happened to Cindy – that while she was working with Felipe on the brigadistas’ statements, she’d suddenly realized that some word or phrase she’d heard in the council chamber could only have been uttered by a member of the Klan? And might not the Klansman himself have realized the same thing, and, knowing that he’d given him-self away, decided to silence Cindy before she could relay her suspicions to Paco?

  “If this man really exists, do you have any idea who he might be?” Paco asked.

  Greg Cummings shook his head.

  “You often fail to see things unless you’re actively looking for them.”

  “I wasn’t looking for a Klansman, because the idea that they might be involved in all this didn’t even come to me until this morning.”

  “But now you have had the idea, would you be prepared to investigate further?”

  “If I see a water pipe leaking, I call the plumber rather than trying to fix it myself,” Greg Cummings said. “In this case, you’re the expert, so wouldn’t I be better leaving it up to you?”

  “If your plumber was half-blind, he might still be able to fix the pipe, but he’d need leading to it,” Paco countered. “I’m half-blind on this case. I don’t speak your language – and even if I did, I have no idea what’s a normal thing for a yanqui to say, and what isn’t. Besides, the brigadistas don’t trust me as they trust you. You can go where I can’t. You can hear things that wouldn’t be said when I was there. That’s why I need your guidance.”

  Cummings turned the request over in his mind.

  “I’ll do what I can,” he said fin
ally.

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  The American reached up with his hand and scratched his freckled nose.

  “You don’t like me much, do you, Inspector Ruiz?” he asked.

  “I only met you yesterday,” Paco said noncommittally. “I haven’t really had time to form an opinion.”

  Cummings grinned disbelievingly.

  “I might take a day or two to make my mind up about someone,” he said. “That’s the way I’ve been trained to think. But not you. You’re a man of action. You form your opinions on the hoof. I admire you for that. In fact, there are any number of things I admire you for, and I’m not surprised that Cindy fell for you – though, I have to say, it seems as if it’s still something of a surprise to you.”

  It was, Paco thought. He’d never quite got over how lucky he’d been – which was perhaps why it had been so easy for him to believe that she’d leave him for another man.

  “Maybe now that I’m finally in Spain, I can become a man of action, too,” Greg Cummings said reflectively. “Maybe the bookworm in me can finally throw off his yoke and know what it’s like to be you.”

  “It’s greatly over-rated,” Paco told him.

  Cummings grinned again.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” he agreed. “Perhaps the grass always is greener on the other side of the fence.” A somber expression came to his face. “I think I’ll turn in for the night,” he said. “And maybe before I go to sleep, I’ll say a little prayer for Cindy – sort of give God one last chance to prove that He exists.” He turned towards the barracks. “Goodnight, Señor Ruiz.”

  “Goodnight,” Paco replied.

  He watched the yanqui cross the square and wished he could bring himself to be fairer to the man. But he knew that he couldn’t, because Cindy had been fond of Cummings long before she had been fond of him – and he would never be able to forgive the sandy-haired yanqui for that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Asuncion Muñoz and her niece, Concha Prieto, admitted Paco into the house and ushered him over to the bed. In the old days, this kind of work would have been left to the nuns, he thought. But now nuns were as scarce behind Republican lines as trade unionists were behind Nationalist lines – which was to say that if there were any there at all, they were in hiding.