by Bonnie Toews
As if the fly’s feathery feet were brushing her own skin, she batted the air, to no avail. It kept coming back. She doubled over and held her face in her hands. Dry heaves wrenched her stomach. She wanted to vomit. Bile burned her chest and throat, but something held it back. She slumped and turned away. She could no longer look at the boy, at his young face, at his innocence, at the vermin attacking him.
And then she felt a delicate tapping on her left shoulder. When she looked up, there was no one there. Instead, a mournful cry caught in eternal agony dragged her eyes back to the boy. The sound sprang from deep inside his mouth—a silent scream howling into nothingness. His death tore her apart. She had failed him, and all the war victims she wrote about. Her articles changed nothing. No one cared, no one intervened. The dam of her emotions broke. She crumpled in hopeless sobs beside his body. Together, in a moment of evil, they shared the embrace of hell.
PART ONE
Keep alert, stand firm in your faith,
be courageous, be strong.
1 CORINTHIANS 16:13
ONE
Monday, April 26th, 1937
Three men huddled around the fireplace in the host’s library. They sat with their attention glued to the wireless and listened in grim silence to the late night broadcast. The static scratching through the radio speaker broke the woman’s voice into snatches of barely intelligible words.
Some bodies … So mutilated … parts strewn over jagged craters where buildings once stood… one death stood out… small boy on a street littered with children’s bodies… no visible injury… just lay there… as if asleep, clutching his fishing pole … Tonight, Guernica… burns …
Winston Churchill watched Sir Fletcher McAlister, the director of his secret Intelligence organization, rise from his seat and pace back and forth in front of the fireplace, all the while warming his hands over the flame, as if washing away the chill of the woman’s report. Churchill understood his frustration. Adolf Hitler had achieved the unthinkable.
The big Scotsman unconsciously licked the shaggy tips of the red bush drooping over his upper lip in time with his pacing. Again the wireless crackled and the woman’s voice faded. He switched off the radio and turned to Churchill.
“Didn’t I tell you?”
Anger flared in Sir Fletcher’s eyes. “Hitler is testing his ‘total war’ strategy on the Basques.”
“It’s a bloody marvel that Talbot woman got out alive,” remarked the third man. “Surely broadcasts like hers will make Chamberlain listen to you now, Winston.”
Churchill concentrated on the curl of smoke spiraling upwards from the chewed cigar he held in his pudgy hand. “It’s not British people dying. It’s Basques, Wynne.”
Churchill leveled his attention on the only aristocrat he had invited to join his secret executive. Aside from needing the nobleman to finance the undertaking, the impeccable Lord Wynne Henry Radcliffe had a quirk some called overly fussy, but Churchill knew his attention to detail might someday save agents’ lives when it came time to preparing them for missions in occupied country. Yet, in the Chess of politics, the Earl of Chadwick, as he was also entitled, could be quite gullible. Churchill reminded him, “Until Adolf Hitler is in our laps, the prime minister won’t change his mind. And why should he? Most of the gentry in the Upper House who support him have investments in Hitler’s rejuvenated industries, and the Fuhrer is making them very rich men.”
Churchill jammed the cigar stub back into his mouth and chewed. “Now Leon, this woman we just heard… do you know her?”
Churchill often reverted to his code name for the wily Scotsman. Sir Fletcher’s droopy moustache reminded him of a cartoon character, a walrus named Leon.
“Aye, I do.”
Churchill waited for him to say more. When Sir Fletcher remained silent, he pursed his lips.
“The press is a crucial ally in our battle to win public support.”
“Aye, Winston, indeed we do need the press on our side.”
There was another long pause between them. Churchill scowled. He expected a full briefing, not this verbal tap dance from Sir Fletcher. “Do I have to ask what your game plan is?”
“No, indeed. I’m sorry. I was just thinking, Winston. Could you ever imagine a whole town razed in four hours by fires no one could put out?” His jaw clenched. “It’s bloody unbelievable!”
Sir Fletcher pressed his right hand to his forehead and rubbed his fleshy fingertips across it. Eventually he paused and then resumed warming his hands over the glowing fire.
“When my people got secret reports Hitler’s strategists had picked Guernica to test his incendiaries, I had no idea this would be the result. Now I’m glad I sent Quinn Bergin to share some of our Intelligence with Lee Talbot.”
“Of all the reporters covering Madrid, why her?”
Lord Radcliffe’s dark eyebrows crimped together as he directed his question to Sir Fletcher.
“That’s what interests me.” Churchill cleared his throat and swallowed what felt like gravel clogging his windpipe. In a raspy voice, he continued. “Why not Hemingway? He’s the best covering the Spanish Civil War today.”
“My first choice, Winston, but Quinn has convinced me that hearing a woman describe a full scale attack on unarmed civilians would intensify the public’s reaction. Not just any woman, mind you. It has to be Lee Talbot. She’s an astute young journalist, and her On-the-Spot column about this civil war is drawing a growing readership, in London as well as in the United States.”
Lord Radcliffe eyed the Scotsman with respect. “Very clever, Fletch! Her simple honesty brings the full horror of Hitler’s intentions into our very living rooms. No doubt she’ll turn American sentiment to our way of thinking too. We need U.S. support. With it, by year end I’ll wager we can make Winston prime minister.”
Churchill shook his head emphatically. “No, Wynne,” he said. “It will take a major reversal to unseat Neville Chamberlain.”
“Everything depends on what Hitler does next,” added Sir Fletcher.
“At present, the devil’s rewriting the rules of war,” Lord Radcliffe argued. “I find that imminently threatening, and I don’t see the Basques holding out against Franco for longer than three days, do you?”
Sir Fletcher blew out a heavy sigh that fanned the fringe of his overhanging moustache outward. “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”
Hunching down into the wingback chair beside the fireplace, Churchill tried to absorb more warmth from the fire against the chill of his own news. “We have another pressing matter.”
Both men raised their eyebrows in obvious surprise and gave him their full attention.
Churchill reached for a box of matches on the side table to relight his dead cigar. His cheeks ballooned with each drag, but the cigar remained unlit. In disgust, he ground the useless stub into the ashtray.
“Einstein says the Third Reich is capable of developing an atomic bomb. All that is holding them back is learning how to moderate the chain reaction once they split the atom. Gentlemen, if Hitler produces an atomic bomb before England and the United States do, I fear all free nations are doomed. What Guernica just experienced is only the flick of a Nazi match. An atomic bomb could wipe out whole cities and kill millions. We must organize more quickly.”
Suddenly, from another part of the house, beautiful piano music rippled through the halls. Distracted, Churchill cocked his head, listening. After a moment, he could identify it.
“Tschaikovsky’s Concerto in B-Flat Minor.”
He frowned. “Do I hear two pianos?”
Lord Radcliffe blinked at Churchill’s abrupt switch in topic and shifted self-consciously in his chair. “Ah yes, Winston, you do.”
Churchill narrowed his eyes. “Why?” he prompted.
“Grace is practicing for the Belvedere Festival in Vienna,” Lord Radcliffe told him, “and my wife is playing her orchestral accompaniment.”
“Best secret you’ve kept from us, Wynne. They’re a talented pai
r.”
Lord Radcliffe broke into a proud smile. “Princess Alexandra was a concert pianist before she married me.”
“I see,” said Churchill. “Then Lady Grace has inherited her mother’s gift. How old is she?”
“Seventeen.”
“Hmmm … old enough … old enough.”
Churchill paused thoughtfully.
Each man leaned closer to listen.
“Just think of the reception Hitler would give the young cousin of the King of England if she were to perform in Berlin.”
“Have my Grace play for that madman?”
Lord Radcliffe drew back in shock. “Are you daft, Winston? How can you even think such a thing?”
Churchill picked up his cigar stub from the ashtray, looked at the flattened end and screwed it into the bottom with meticulous twists until it shred apart. “To break the beast’s back, we have to strike from within his lair. We have to find turncoats we can network together in underground resistance. How are we going to do that, Wynne?”
Unexpected steeliness hardened the nobleman’s softly aged features. He returned Churchill’s challenge with a measured gaze.
“I don’t know, but you are not using my daughter in a masquerade to protect your covert activities.”
“If you escort your daughter on a concert tour, who would suspect you are also recruiting double agents for me?”
“Winston, the Belvedere Festival is Grace’s first public performance. No one even knows her or recognizes her as a concert pianist.”
Churchill’s head tilted toward the music drifting through the French doors. “You underrate your daughter, Wynne.”
He slid his eyes back to confront the nobleman’s set expression. “Listen to your wife and daughter practise, Wynne. Lady Grace has a remarkable gift, and when she wins the Belvedere Medal…”
He paused to let reality sink in while leaning forward in a gesture intended to draw the other man’s will into his own. A whisper caressed his words. “She will. I promise you.”
And then, gripping the arms of his chair, Churchill pushed himself further into his chair and settled into the back cushions.
“When Lady Grace wins,” he repeated in a tone of dismissal, “you will have no choice but to answer Europe’s clamor to hear her play in every major city, including Berlin.”
TWO
Monday, April 26th, 1937
Worried and exhausted, Quinn Bergin dodged Basque freedom fighters and village refugees milling around the campfires. When he reached the radio hut, he lifted the flap draped across the doorway. To his relief, he saw Lee Talbot inside, alone.
“Lee! Thank goodness, you’re here!”
At the sound of his voice, Lee Talbot raised her head from the paper she was reading. Black soot streaked her cheeks, and gray dust caked her matted mane of brown hair. The photogenic planes of her face heightened the gaunt shadows of its contours, making her an appealing subject for his camera. But the sadness haunting her eyes transformed her from a photographer’s study of beauty into an artist’s prized portrait. The exquisite agony of her soul bled through.
As he strode toward her, he grew more concerned. Up close, the blueness of her large wide-set eyes darkened like seawater flowing from shallow to oceanic depths, and her nostrils flared, reminding him of a long-legged filly ready to race. He sensed he was in for a wire-to-wire battle, but he had no idea why.
“I thought you were dead.”
The flatness of her tone struck him.
She crossed her arms. “Until the Basque commander told me you had been with him all afternoon.”
For all his planning, it hadn’t occurred to him she might think he had been killed in Guernica. The details in creating strategy were nothing more than thinking through every move in a chess game. Feelings were not a factor he even considered.
“That’s correct,” he admitted, surprised at his own softening to her fear he was dead. Only his mother had ever cared about what happened to him.
Lee’s voice rose, her words more pronounced. “And then you disappeared just before the Luftwaffe bombed Guernica.”
Her emphasis on before told him she knew he had set her up. He understood her outrage.
She picked up her shoulder bag from the table and, with methodical deliberation, unbuckled the straps.
With growing curiosity, he watched her pull out her sketches of Guernica—this afternoon he had left her on the south mountain ridge drawing the panoramic view of the valley, Mount San Miguel, and the ancient Basque town at a safe distance from the expected bombing. He glanced at the line drawings she set aside and once again was amazed at their graphic accuracy. If Lee weren’t such a talented reporter and absolutely necessary to his mission, he believed she was good enough to make a living from her sketches. She drew out a folder, opened it, removed the file within and laid it flat on the table. Raising her eyes to his, she challenged him.
“Where have you been, Quinn?”
He returned her accusing gaze with silence. He wanted to know what was in her file before he answered.
She stood rigid, waiting. When he didn’t answer, her jaw clenched, and she pulled out another brown envelope lying inside the folder. From it, she drew out four photographs, one after the other, and laid them face up, side by side, on the table.
He stared, astounded. “Where did you get these—?”
Lee cut him off. “How did you get this photo of Franco’s letter to Hitler?” The manicured nail of her right forefinger tapped the first one on the right.
“And these?” she demanded. “Pictures of forged passports the German military are using to smuggle in troops and the Luftwaffe into Spain as tourists?”
She scooped up the remaining three and waved them in front of his face in a fanlike motion. He drew his head back, still withholding any response. He hoped his continued silence would fuel her anger. He needed to know what she thought she knew.
Lee dropped the photographs back on the table and thumped it with the flats of her hands. Her eyes bore into his. “You told me Hitler’s strategists believed the toughest people to beat in Spain were the Basques. Defeating them, you said, could shatter Republican morale in Madrid. Go to the heart of the war, you said. Go to Guernica.”
“That’s right. And you’ve got one helluva story.”
Her jaw twitched as she considered him. “I’m a woman, and I dare to break into the brotherhood of war correspondents with my column. But… I am not twice as smart because I am a woman, nor am I twice as lucky.”
Her shoulders straightened, and she drew in a breath. “Tell me how you knew Guernica was going to be attacked.”
“First, I want those photos back.”
Her eyes glinted. He felt as if she were measuring his intent. Her hands flattened over the small pile of photographs. She leaned forward letting her weight rest on her palms, pinning the pictures underneath.
“No explanation. No pictures,” she said with a defiant tilt of her head towards him.
Quinn shifted from one foot to the other wavering between wrestling the photos away from her and biding his time. He needed her trust. It was wiser to wait.
“Let’s go outside.”
Lee refused to budge.
“Please!”
Reluctantly, she gathered up the pictures, slid them into the envelope, and dropped it and the file into the folder, which she stuffed back into her satchel. She flipped the shoulder bag over her head before following him outside.
The stench of death and sulfur drifting up from the still burning town at the foot of the mountain assaulted Quinn and Lee as they stepped into the open. For over three hours, one wave after another of Dornier bombers systematically pounded Guernica into rubble, while Messerschmitts, Heinkel He51s and Fiats strafed the streets and those trying to escape on roads leading out of town.
A smoke-filled haze blocked their view of the stars.
Quinn ignored the gut-wrenching smells as he steered Lee through hollow-eyed refugees and gr
im militia waiting in motley lines for weapons. He was amazed at their quiet determination, yet he knew he should have expected it.
For thousands of years, the Pyrenees Mountains in Northern Spain shielded the Basques from the same invaders, plagues and famine that destroyed other ancient European civilizations. But now the bombing of Guernica had introduced an aerial invasion that breached their natural defenses. Basque freedom fighters were mobilizing all the country folk, able-bodied and walking wounded, to arms, even women if they wanted to join and were willing to fight. Those they recruited were brought back to this camp set in a large cave overlooking the eastern slopes.
As they neared the edge of the encampment, one of the Basque leaders spotted Quinn and hobbled toward him. The Basque’s knotty fist gripped his makhila as he pressed down on it to shift his weight from his injured left leg. Once Quinn had seen a Basque grab the iron walking stick by its leather tong and swing it around like a gaucho’s bolo to keep his attackers at bay. It was as good a weapon as it was a cane.
“My friend, are you leaving us?” spoke the Basque in the local Spanish dialect.
“Soon, Senor Ortuz.”
Quinn replied in the same dialect, and it delighted the old man. He grasped Quinn’s hands with fierce strength. Weathered lines chiseled into his leathery skin etched a proud face, and he wore his small black boina like a beret angled over his straw white hair.
“Then you must write about this terrible thing Fascists do to us.”
“Indeed we will.”
The Basque cleared his throat. “When Republican government in Madrid grant us home rule, we know they do it because they want us to fight Fascists. So … we do nothing. But Franco’s pigs … they attack us … on our land. Now we fight. We fight any who try to take our land and our independence away from us.”