by Ken Follett
Startled, Volodya jumped to his feet. ‘Good evening, sir,’ he said. ‘This is my father, Grigori Peshkov. Dad, may I present Major Lemitov?’
Lemitov saluted smartly.
Grigori said: ‘At ease, Lemitov. Sit down and have some chicken. Has my son done something wrong?’
That was precisely the thought that was making Volodya’s hands shake.
‘No, sir – rather the contrary. But . . . I was hoping for a private word with you and him.’
Volodya relaxed a little. Perhaps he was not in trouble after all.
‘Well, we’ve just about finished dinner,’ Grigori said, standing up. ‘Let’s go into my study.’
Lemitov looked at Ilya. ‘Aren’t you with the NKVD?’ he said.
‘And proud of it. Dvorkin is the name.’
‘Oh! You tried to arrest Volodya this afternoon.’
‘I thought he was behaving like a spy. I was right, wasn’t I?’
‘You must learn to arrest enemy spies, not our own.’ Lemitov went out.
Volodya grinned. That was the second time Dvorkin had been put down.
Volodya, Grigori and Lemitov crossed the hallway. The study was a small room, sparsely furnished. Grigori took the only easy chair. Lemitov sat at a small table. Volodya closed the door and remained standing.
Lemitov said to Volodya: ‘Does your comrade father know about this afternoon’s message from Berlin?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You’d better tell him.’
Volodya related the story of the spies in Spain. His father was delighted. ‘Well done!’ he said. ‘Of course this might be disinformation, but I doubt it: the Nazis aren’t that imaginative. However, we are. We can arrest the spies and use their radios to send misleading messages to the right-wing rebels.’
Volodya had not thought of that. Dad might play the fool with Zoya, he thought, but he still has a sharp mind for intelligence work.
‘Exactly,’ said Lemitov.
Grigori said to Volodya: ‘Your school friend, Werner, is a brave man.’ He turned back to Lemitov. ‘How do you plan to handle this?’
‘We’ll need some good intelligence men in Spain to investigate these Germans. It shouldn’t be too difficult. If they really are spies, there will be evidence: code books, wireless sets, and so on.’ He hesitated. ‘I’ve come here to suggest we send your son.’
Volodya was astonished. He had not seen that coming.
Grigori’s face fell. ‘Ah,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I must confess, the prospect fills me with dismay. We would miss him so much.’ Then a look of resignation came over his face, as if he realized he did not really have a choice. ‘The defence of the revolution must come first, of course.’
‘An intelligence man needs field experience,’ Lemitov said. ‘You and I have seen action, sir, but the younger generation have never been on the battlefield.’
‘True, true. How soon would he go?’
‘In three days’ time.’
Volodya could see that his father was trying desperately to think of a reason to keep him at home, but finding none. Volodya himself was excited. Spain! He thought of blood-red wine, black-haired girls with strong brown legs, and hot sunshine instead of Moscow snow. It would be dangerous, of course, but he had not joined the army to be safe.
Grigori said: ‘Well, Volodya, what do you think?’
Volodya knew his father wanted him to come up with an objection. The only drawback he could think of was that he would not have time to get to know the stunning Zoya. ‘It is a wonderful opportunity,’ he said. ‘I’m honoured to have been chosen.’
‘Very well,’ said his father.
‘There is one small problem,’ Lemitov said. ‘It has been decided that Army Intelligence will investigate but not actually carry out the arrests. That will be the prerogative of the NKVD.’ His smile was humourless. ‘I’m afraid you will be working with your friend Dvorkin.’
(ii)
It was amazing, Lloyd Williams thought, how quickly you could come to love a place. He had been in Spain for only ten months, but already his passion for the country was almost as strong as his attachment to Wales. He loved to see a rare flower blooming in the scorched landscape; he enjoyed sleeping in the afternoon; he liked the way there was wine to drink even when there was nothing to eat. He had experienced flavours he had never tasted before: olives, paprika, chorizo, and the fiery spirit they called orujo.
He stood on a rise, staring across a heat-hazed landscape with a map in his hand. There were a few meadows beside a river, and some trees on distant mountainsides, but in between was a barren, featureless desert of dusty soil and rock. ‘Not much cover for our advance,’ he said anxiously.
Beside him, Lenny Griffiths said: ‘It’s going to be a bloody hard battle.’
Lloyd looked at his map. Saragossa straddled the Ebro River about a hundred miles from its Mediterranean end. The town dominated communications in the Aragon region. It was a major crossroads, a rail junction, and the meeting of three rivers. Here the Spanish army confronted the antidemocratic rebels across an arid no-man’s-land.
Some people called the government forces Republicans and the rebels Nationalists, but these were misleading names. Many people on both sides were republicans, in that they did not want to be ruled by a king. And they were all nationalist, in that they loved their country and were willing to die for it. Lloyd thought of them as the government and the rebels.
Right now Saragossa was held by Franco’s rebels, and Lloyd was looking towards the town from a vantage point fifty miles south. ‘Still, if we can take the town, the enemy will be bottled up in the north for another winter,’ he said.
‘If,’ said Lenny.
It was a grim prognosis, Lloyd thought gloomily, when the best he could wish for was that the rebel advance might be halted. But no victory was in sight this year for the government.
All the same, a part of Lloyd was looking forward to the fight. He had been in Spain for ten months, and this would be his first taste of action. Until now he had been an instructor in a base camp. As soon as the Spaniards had discovered that he had been in Britain’s Officer Training Corps, they had sped him through his induction, made him a lieutenant, and put him in charge of new arrivals. He had to drill them until obeying orders became a reflex, march them until their feet stopped bleeding and their blisters turned to calluses, and show them how to strip down and clean what few rifles were available.
But the flood of volunteers had now slowed to a trickle, and the instructors had been moved to fighting battalions.
Lloyd wore a beret, a zipped blouson with his badge of rank roughly hand-sewn to the sleeve, and corduroy breeches. He carried a short Spanish Mauser rifle, firing 7mm ammunition that had presumably been stolen from some Civil Guard arsenal.
Lloyd, Lenny and Dave had been split up for a while, but the three had been reunited in the British battalion of the 15th International Brigade for the coming battle. Lenny now had a black beard and looked a decade older than his seventeen years. He had been made a sergeant, though he had no uniform, just blue dungarees and a striped bandana. He looked more like a pirate than a soldier.
Now Lenny said: ‘Anyway, this attack has nothing to do with bottling up the rebels. It’s political. This region has always been dominated by the anarchists.’
Lloyd had seen anarchism in action during a brief spell in Barcelona. It was a cheerfully fundamentalist form of communism. Officers and men got the same pay. The dining rooms of the grand hotels had been turned into canteens for the workers. Waiters would hand back a tip, explaining amiably that the practice of tipping was demeaning. Posters everywhere condemned prostitution as exploitation of female comrades. There had been a wonderful atmosphere of liberation and camaraderie. The Russians hated it.
Lenny went on: ‘Now the government has brought Communist troops from the Madrid area and amalgamated us all into the new Army of the East – under overall Communist command, of course.’
&n
bsp; This kind of talk made Lloyd despair. The only way to win was for all the left-wing factions to work together, as they had – in the end, at least – at the Battle of Cable Street. But anarchists and Communists had been fighting each other in the streets of Barcelona. He said: ‘Prime Minister Negrín isn’t a Communist.’
‘He might as well be.’
‘He understands that without the support of the Soviet Union we’re finished.’
‘But does that mean we abandon democracy and let the Communists take over?’
Lloyd nodded. Every discussion about the government ended the same way: do we have to do everything the Soviets want just because they are the only people who will sell us guns?
They walked down the hill. Lenny said: ‘We’ll have a nice cup of tea, now, is it?’
‘Yes, please. Two lumps of sugar in mine.’
It was a standing joke. Neither of them had had tea for months.
They came to their camp by the river. Lenny’s platoon had taken over a little cluster of crude stone buildings that had probably been cowsheds until the war drove the farmers away. A few yards upriver a boathouse had been occupied by some Germans from the 11th International Brigade.
Lloyd and Lenny were met by Lloyd’s cousin Dave Williams. Like Lenny, Dave had aged ten years in one. He looked thin and hard, his skin tanned and dusty, his eyes wrinkled with squinting into the sun. He wore the khaki tunic and trousers, leather belt pouches and ankle-buckled boots that formed the standard-issue uniform – though few soldiers had a complete set. He had a red cotton scarf around his neck. He carried a Russian Mosin-Nagant rifle with the old-fashioned spike bayonet reversed, making the weapon less clumsy. At his belt he had a German 9mm Luger that he must have taken from the corpse of a rebel officer. Apparently he was very accurate with rifle or pistol.
‘We’ve got a visitor,’ he said excitedly.
‘Who is he?’
‘She!’ said Dave, and pointed.
In the shade of a misshapen black poplar tree, a dozen British and German soldiers were talking to a startlingly beautiful woman.
‘Oh, Duw,’ said Lenny, using the Welsh word for God. ‘She’s a sight for sore eyes.’
She looked about twenty-five, Lloyd thought, and she was petite, with big eyes and a mass of black hair pinned up and topped by a fore-and-aft army cap. Somehow her baggy uniform seemed to cling to her like an evening gown.
A volunteer called Heinz, who knew that Lloyd understood German, spoke to him in that language. ‘This is Teresa, sir. She has come to teach us to read.’
Lloyd nodded understanding. The International Brigades consisted of foreign volunteers mixed with Spanish soldiers, and literacy was a problem with the Spanish. They had spent their childhood chanting the catechism in village schools run by the Catholic Church. Many priests did not teach the children to read, for fear that in later life they would get hold of socialist books. As a result, only about half the population had been literate under the monarchy. The republican government elected in 1931 had improved education, but there remained millions of Spaniards who could not read or write, and classes for soldiers continued even in the front line.
‘I’m illiterate,’ said Dave, who was not.
‘Me, too,’ said Joe Eli, who taught Spanish literature at Columbia University in New York.
Teresa spoke in Spanish. Her voice was low and calm and very sexy. ‘How many times do you think I have heard this joke?’ she said, but she did not seem very cross.
Lenny moved closer. ‘I’m Sergeant Griffiths,’ he said. ‘I’ll do anything I can to help you, of course.’ His words were practical, but his tone of voice made them sound like an amorous invitation.
She gave him a dazzling smile. ‘That would be most helpful,’ she said.
Lloyd spoke formally to her in his best Spanish. ‘I’m so very glad you’re here, Señorita.’ He had spent much of the last ten months studying the language. ‘I am Lieutenant Williams. I can tell you exactly which members of the group require lessons . . . and which do not.’
Lenny said dismissively: ‘But the lieutenant has to go to Bujaraloz to get our orders.’ Bujaraloz was the small town where government forces had set up headquarters. ‘Perhaps you and I should look around here for a suitable place to hold classes.’ He might have been suggesting a walk in the moonlight.
Lloyd smiled and nodded agreement. He was happy to let Lenny romance Teresa. He himself was in no mood for flirting, whereas Lenny seemed in love already. In Lloyd’s opinion Lenny’s chances were close to zero. Teresa was an educated twenty-five-year-old who probably got a dozen propositions a day, and Lenny was a seventeen-year-old coal miner who had not taken a bath for a month. But he said nothing: Teresa seemed capable of looking after herself.
A new figure appeared, a man of Lloyd’s age who looked vaguely familiar. He was dressed better than the soldiers, in wool breeches and a cotton shirt, and had a handgun in a buttoned holster. His hair was cut so short that it looked like stubble, a style favoured by Russians. He was only a lieutenant, but had an air of authority, even power. He said in fluent German: ‘I am looking for Lieutenant Garcia.’
‘He’s not here,’ said Lloyd in the same language. ‘Where have you and I met before?’
The Russian seemed shocked and irritated at the same time, like one who finds a snake in his bedroll. ‘We have never met,’ he said firmly. ‘You are mistaken.’
Lloyd snapped his fingers. ‘Berlin,’ he said. ‘Nineteen thirty-three. We were attacked by Brownshirts.’
A look of relief came briefly over the man’s face, as if he had been expecting something worse. ‘Yes, I was there,’ he said. ‘My name is Vladimir Peshkov.’
‘But we called you Volodya.’
‘Yes.’
‘At that scrap in Berlin you were with a boy called Werner Franck.’
Volodya looked panicked for a moment, then hid his feelings with an effort. ‘I know no one of that name.’
Lloyd decided not to press the point. He could guess why Volodya was jumpy. The Russians were as terrified as everyone else of their secret police, the NKVD, who were operating in Spain and had a reputation for brutality. To them, any Russian who was friendly with foreigners might be a traitor. ‘I’m Lloyd Williams.’
‘I do remember.’ Volodya looked at him with a penetrating blue-eyed stare. ‘How strange that we should meet again here.’
‘Not so strange, really,’ Lloyd said. ‘We fight the Fascists wherever we can.’
‘Can I have a quiet word?’
‘Of course.’
They walked a few yards away from the others. Peshkov said: ‘There is a spy in Garcia’s platoon.’
Lloyd was astonished. ‘A spy? Who?’
‘A German called Heinz Bauer.’
‘Why, that’s him in the red shirt. A spy? Are you sure?’
Peshkov did not bother to answer that question. ‘I’d like you to summon him to your dugout, if you have one, or some other private place.’ Peshkov looked at his wristwatch. ‘In one hour, an arrest unit will be here to pick him up.’
‘I’m using that little shed as my office,’ said Lloyd, pointing. ‘But I need to speak to my commanding officer about this.’ The C.O. was a Communist, and unlikely to interfere, but Lloyd wanted time to think.
‘If you wish.’ Volodya clearly did not care what Lloyd’s commanding officer thought. ‘I want the spy taken quietly, without any fuss. I have explained to the arrest unit the importance of discretion.’ He sounded as if he was not sure his wishes would be obeyed. ‘The fewer people who know, the better.’
‘Why?’ said Lloyd, but before Volodya could reply he figured out the answer for himself. ‘You’re hoping to turn him into a double agent, sending misleading reports to the enemy. But, if too many people know he has been caught, then other spies may warn the rebels, and they will not believe the disinformation.’
‘It is better not to speculate about such matters,’ Peshkov said severely. ‘Now let us go to
your shed.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Lloyd. ‘How do you know he is a spy?’
‘I can’t tell you without compromising security.’
‘That’s a bit unsatisfactory.’
Peshkov looked exasperated. Clearly he was not used to being told that his explanations were unsatisfactory. Discussion of orders was a feature of the Spanish Civil War that the Russians particularly detested.
Before Peshkov could say anything further, two more men appeared and approached the group under the tree. One of the newcomers wore a leather jacket despite the heat. The other, who seemed to be in charge, was a scrawny man with a long nose and a receding chin.
Peshkov let out an exclamation of anger. ‘Too early!’ he said, then he called out something indignant in Russian.
The scrawny man made a dismissive gesture. In rough Spanish he said: ‘Which one is Heinz Bauer?’
No one answered. The scrawny man wiped the end of his nose with his sleeve.
Then Heinz moved. He did not immediately flee, but cannoned into the man in the leather jacket, knocking him down. Then he dashed away – but the scrawny man stuck out a leg and tripped him up.
Heinz fell hard, his body skidding on the dry soil. He lay stunned – only for a moment, but it was a moment too long. As he got to his knees the two men pounced on him and knocked him down again.
He lay still, but all the same they started to beat him up. They drew wooden clubs. Standing either side of him they took turns to hit his head and body, raising their arms above their heads and striking down in a vicious ballet. In a few seconds there was blood all over Heinz’s face. He tried desperately to escape, but when he got to his knees they pushed him down again. Then he curled up in a ball, whimpering. He was clearly finished, but they were not. They clubbed the helpless man again and again.
Lloyd found himself shouting a protest and pulling the scrawny man off. Lenny did the same to the other one. Lloyd grabbed his man in a bear hug and lifted him; Lenny knocked his man to the ground. Then Lloyd heard Volodya say in English: ‘Stand still, or I’ll shoot!’
Lloyd let go of his man and turned, incredulous. Volodya had drawn his sidearm, a standard-issue Russian Nagant M1895 revolver, and cocked it. ‘Threatening an officer with a weapon is a court-martial offence in every army in the world,’ Lloyd said. ‘You’re in deep trouble, Volodya.’