“Hah. Herr Florry, in za var, much worse. Ja, pretty Englisch lady. Boats mit kinder, kiddies, go down. Men die in war. Torpedo kill.”
“Oh, Lord,” said Sylvia wanly. “Mr. Gruenwald, do you think you could spare us the history lesson.”
“Yes, please shut up. We all feel rather terrible.”
“Hah. Should feel gut. Ve ist alive, nein? Hah!”
The first boats to arrive were fishing vessels, and it occurred to Florry, in watching the fleet spread out across the water, that the fishermen were more interested in salvage than survivors. The captain hailed them, but they ignored the call. Soon, however, a large official boat reached the scene and made straight for the lifeboat. It only took seconds before they were hauled aboard and wrapped quickly in blankets.
The trip into the harbor was largely anticlimactic. By the time they arrived, the sun had begun to rise. Florry’s first glimpse of Barcelona was disappointing: he could see the city on the low hills and the port beginning to come alive in the early light. He could see palm trees but it was still cold and he shivered.
“If I don’t get some sleep,” said Sylvia, “I think I shall die. They can’t expect much of us when we get there, can they?”
“I hope not,” said Florry, unsure of what exactly awaited them.
It turned out not to be much. There were some policemen at the dock and some officials from the Maritime Commission with a brief to talk to the officers and some first-aid attendants. Florry found himself explaining in the Maritime Commission Building, to which they had been removed, who and what he was to a largely uninterested Spanish youth who gradually ceased taking notes. It occurred to Florry that they were done with him.
“Where should I go?” Florry asked him.
“Find a party,” said the boy. “Barcelona, many parties. Parties everywhere. Then you can march in our parades.”
Florry wasn’t sure what this meant—party as in political or party as in celebration, or possibly, both—but before he could seek an explanation, he was summarily dismissed and found himself escorted to the street and abandoned under a palm tree, with only a pair of ill-fitting plimsoles in place of his lost shoes to prepare him for the ordeal ahead. By this time, his clothes had largely dried on his body, even though the breeze still brought the goose pimples to his skin.
He was standing there with Sylvia, discussing their next move, when it occurred to him that he still had the silly revolver in the shoulder holster under his sweater. It had hung there through the ordeal!
“Good heavens,” he said to her, “can you believe I still have my pistol! Isn’t that amazing?”
But she was suddenly not listening. Florry looked and saw that she was watching as first-aid workers were applying bandages to Mr. Gruenwald.
“Well, it’s off to the hospital for him,” said Florry, yet something was particularly odd about it all. For one thing, Gruenwald had been unhurt, and for that reason it seemed unnecessary to bandage him, particularly about the eyes. His hands were bandaged too, but behind his back.
“I wonder if that’s necessary,” said Florry.
“You’d best stay out of it,” said Sylvia. “I don’t like the way it looks.”
The head doctor, an enormous man in a black leather coat with cold eyes and pitted skin, had just thrown the old man against the side of the ambulance, which, Florry now realized, was no ambulance at all.
It said POLICIA.
9
THE INTERROGATION
GLASANOV HAD A PREDICTION. HE WAS IN A JAUNTY mood, close to humor. His life was filled with good cheer and possibility and with something as close to amusement as Lenny had ever seen on his face. They were walking through the prison toward the old man’s cell.
“He won’t sign a thing,” predicted Glasanov. “Not a thing. He’ll be intractable. You’ll pound your fists to pulp on his skull, Bolodin, before he confesses.” He was almost giddy.
“No,” he continued in his lecture-hall manner, “we shall have to break him down. Assault his illusions, dismantle his vanities, force him to see reality as it is. Brick by brick, we must disassemble his brain. Oh, it’ll be a test. It’ll be a struggle, Bolodin, as you’ve never seen. But what fun! Imagine, the old dog himself here, in our humble jail.”
Lenny nodded dumbly, as if he were the moron Glasanov clearly believed him to be, and then issued a grunt of imprecise meaning that Glasanov took to be stupefied agreement and enthusiasm. Yet, looking at Glasanov, he recognized a man caught in some vision of higher glory, some scheme of higher ambition: you saw it in Brooklyn all the time. A dreamer, full of fancy ideas of what tomorrow would bring.
“I want him sent back to Moscow split,” said Glasanov. “I want him confessed and repentant, not merely captured. Eh, Bolodin, how’s that for a challenge? It’s not old Comintern unionists we’re dealing with here, but the GRU’s best, a man of iron will, a legend.”
They had now reached the corridor that led to Levitsky’s cell.
“Get some water. It’s time to wake our charge from his baby sleep.”
Lenny fitted a bucket under a faucet set in the wall and filled it brimful with icy water.
It was dark and damp down here, as in fairy tales, all old cobwebs and ancient stone. The walls showed cruciforms where religious icons had been smashed down in the first crazed days of the July victory; a number of grotesque revolutionary admonitions had been painted on the stone and they stood out like wounds in the harsh glare of electric bulbs that hung crudely jerry-rigged from the ceiling. Glasanov produced a key, an ancient thing, and with some effort got the stiff old tumblers of the massive door open. Inside, the old man slept under a thin blanket on a straw mat under another raw cruciform denoting a smashed symbol of the untrue faith. The old man wheezed thinly. He looked vulnerable and pale and in the bad light his skin seemed like old parchment.
Glasanov studied the man for a second without emotion, then nodded to Lenny, who dashed the water on him. Levitsky sat up instantly with a howl of pain and a massive, marrow-deep shiver, all naked animal hurt and outrage. His eyes snapped instantly alert, displaying confusion and panic for just a second, but the man quickly controlled them, and as Lenny, standing just behind Glasanov, watched, they seemed to dilate down into something tightly focused.
“Stand up, old man,” Glasanov said with theatrical heartiness miles outside his character, “we’ve got work to do.”
The old man stood next to the bed, soaked, staring straight ahead. His eyes were fixed and blank.
“We’ll get you singing before long,” Glasanov said. “We’ll have you singing like a bird. We’ll have all the crimes out on the table.”
Levitsky looked up at his tormentor.
“Glasanov, isn’t it?” he asked.
“I’ll ask the questions, comrade,” said Glasanov.
“Nevertheless, it is Glasanov. Nikolai Illyich, if I’m not wrong. I remember you from the Baku Conference in ’twenty-seven. You were on Glitzky’s staff. They said you were bright.”
“Old man, I’ll run things here. This comrade here is quite brutal and I haven’t time for you to impress me with your memory. I’ll have him beat you to turnip mash if you give me cause.”
“We both know how absurd that would be. Beat me to turnip mash and you’ll have nothing to ship back to Moscow—except turnip mash.”
Lenny, watching the two Russians pick at each other, heard a sigh, perhaps even involuntary, escape from Glasanov’s lips.
“They said you’d be sly. The Devil Himself.”
“I’m not sly at all, Comrade Glasanov. I’m an old man without much in the way of strength or guile. I simply adhere to my beliefs exactly, and they give me a foundation that careerist scum can never shatter.”
“Oh, I’ll break you, Comrade Levitsky. I’ll split you for Moscow, don’t doubt it. Time, after all, is all on my side. Time, and the considerable skills of Comrade Bolodin here.”
“Your vanity, Glasanov, will kill you sooner than my ideal
ism will kill me.”
“The ribs,” said Glasanov. “But not too bad yet.”
Lenny went to the old man, hit him hard, once, in the ribs, sending a spasm through him. As he twisted, Lenny put two more swift right hands into his solar plexus. He shrieked, falling. Trying to halt himself, he clung to Lenny, who brought his knee up quickly, catching him between the legs. The old man slipped loose and went to the floor. He lay there, wet and trembling. His lips were white. He coughed and heaved wordlessly, his face drawn in the pain.
“See how quickly the mighty Levitsky is reduced to nothingness,” said Glasanov. “Bolodin exposes you for what you are, Levitsky: pathetic. With your feeble, ancient disguise, which Comrade Bolodin penetrated with comical ease. Your pretend accent. You stink of the peppermint schnapps even now, you pitiful old fool.” Glasanov shook his head, as if in great disappointment. “I had expected so much more from the Devil Himself. Instead I get an obsolete comic actor from a nineteenth-century operetta. It actually disgusts me.”
He bent over Levitsky and spoke quickly into his ear.
“Now. I ask the questions and you give the answers. If I like the answer, we go on. If not, Comrade Bolodin here, with his American efficiency, will hit you in the ribs. He is inexhaustible and indefatigable and without a brain in his muscular head. Do you see, old man, how it is to be?”
Levitsky rolled over. His face was gray. His eyes would not focus on anything in the cell. Glasanov leaned close.
“Now, der Teuful Selbst, tell me, to begin with. Why Spain?”
Levitsky spat in his face.
In the evening, he lay against the gray cobbles of the cell floor, breathing raspily. He had been beaten expertly. The ribs were not broken yet the pain was extraordinary. Bolodin knew how to take him to the very edge, then bring him back. Bolodin knew how to inspire the thought that the future would forever and ever be pain.
He concentrated on not trembling. He tried to will the pain from the center of his body, tried to drive it out.
Come on, old Devil.
He laughed bitterly. Some devil. Old, infirm, lying beaten in a Spanish cell, attended by rats. And so this was how the great adventure ended; thus it was with all vain and foolish crusades. His plot came to an end as did his odd, perhaps senile quest, doomed from the beginning, he now saw, to play in life, in history, in flesh, what he had once played on the chessboard. The march of folly! the pyre of vanity! the absurdity of ego!
Too many enemies. You, Koba. And you, Glasanov, Koba’s minion. You, dreadful Amerikanski, with your thunderous fists and your murderous eyes. And you the English spy-catchers, somewhere lurking in the distance.
You all want me. You all want Castle.
Castle was doomed. He saw it now. In check. They were closing on him and would dog him down. Like me, he will cease to exist.
He felt the sweat running down his body, leaving icy tracks. He tried to sit up but the pain came instantly, seizing him. He tried again and managed to get himself up against the wall. A victory, a giant victory!
Why fight them? You’ll confess in the end, everybody does. Why not give Glasanov his moment of glory, his tiny triumph? He, too, is doomed, if not this year then the next. Koba will have him because he stinks of ambition. The better he does, the more arrests and executions, the more efficiency with which he routs Koba’s enemies, the more completely he dooms himself. So smart in so many things, Glasanov, can you not see this one thing?
Then he heard the approach of steps on the stones outside, the click of the old lock. The door swung open in the dark.
Beyond surprise, Levitsky at least had the capacity for stupefaction. The figure silhouetted in the harsh corridor light filled the frame.
For a big man, he moved with a rare grace. He moved swiftly, hauling the door shut behind him, and came to Levitsky. The old man watched him come, not scared but awed. What? What could—? The Amerikanski bent and with his strong hands he lifted Levitsky’s skull from the stones and turned it this way and that, a queer gentleness in his fingers.
“You stink of the shtetl after all these years,” the American said, and it occurred suddenly to Levitsky that he was speaking in Yiddish. The language flooded back upon him; it had once been his only language, years ago, ages ago, in the time before there was time.
“Jud, nu?” asked Levitsky.
“Yes. One of the chosen. Raised in a little shit-smelling village. And, like you, old fuck, I remember the day when Cossacks came.”
So long ago: Ural Cossacks, Levitsky remembered, in fur hats and upturned boots, with curved sabers, on great black steaming stallions. They came out of the trees at daybreak, after a night’s drinking. He remembered the bright blood, the smells of huts burning, the screams, the heat of the flames, his brother’s sobs. He remembered his mother, butchered, his father, hacked, the bright blood, the woodsmoke, the heat, the screams. He remembered the horses, brutes that stank of death and would smash you to nothingness …
“So we changed all that,” Levitsky said. “We made a revolution.”
“Fuck the revolution.”
Levitsky stared at the huge shape above him. Had he been sent to kill him? He could do it easily, with his thumbs. But why now, in the dark? Why not with the pistol?
“So what do you want, comrade? A confession? You should fuck goats.”
“To help you.”
“Excuse me, I’m hearing things, no?”
“To help you. I help you, you help me. A deal. Between two Jews.”
“So talk. I’m not going anywhere.”
“A certain name, old man. Give the name, and I’ll get your ass out of here.”
“What name?” said Levitsky.
“The name that no one speaks. The English boy, whose soul you own, old devil.”
“What boy?”
“You call him Castle, after a chess thing. Surprised? You didn’t think anybody knew. But I knew!”
Levitsky felt the closeness of the huge man. He let the moment linger. He felt an awful stillness settling through him. A new player on the board.
“What bo—”
“Don’t play with me. I can kill you in a second. Or in a second you can walk out of here to America. You can be a writer for the Daily Forward, huh? And sit in the park with all the other East Side dreamers and talk revolution. Give the name!”
Levitsky tried to concentrate, to calculate the chain of possibilities. How could he know? What had he learned? Who told him? Who sent him?
“I have no names.”
“You have a bellyful of names. In England in ’thirty-one, with Tchiterine and Lemontov. Lemontov’s gone and Tchiterine’s in the ground a few hundred feet from here. Give me the name of this English boy, or so help me I’ll put you in the ground alive and you can die by slow degrees you never dreamed of in this world.”
And so Levitsky saw his chance. The big American Bolodin had made his mistake. He had revealed exactly how important the information was to him.
“Kill me, and you’ll never know anything. But give me a night to think and maybe there’s this deal you keep telling me about.”
“After tomorrow, there may not be enough to give an answer.”
“I may surprise you, Bolodin. I may surprise you.”
The American snorted.
“I’ll go easy. But I’ll come back at night for the answer, and if it isn’t the right answer, then I’ll go so hard you’ll pray for death. And God doesn’t work this neighborhood.”
At dawn, Levitsky lay on his pallet. He knew he had two simple choices: suicide or escape.
Consider: a locked cell in some sort of Spanish monastery. In a few hours, Glasanov would arrive and the beatings would begin anew. Another day’s torture would leave him just that much weaker and less able to escape or resist, and the Amerikanski would be back at night for his answer. But there really was no answer: if he told, the Amerikanski would kill him quickly. If he didn’t, the Amerikanski would kill him slowly. Either way, Levitsky perished
, and with Levitsky gone Castle was open to assault.
It occurred to Levitsky that he had reached the climax of his life. The chess master, designer of elegant combinations and strategems, now faced his greatest test, and it was a simple puzzle. He looked about, as if to study. This puzzle might not have a solution. The cell was vaulted; it had one barred window; it was, at least, at ground level. Levitsky ran his fingers painfully over the mortar of the old stones. No, it was solid, undisturbed except by tears for centuries. He turned his attention to the window. The iron of the bars felt ancient and cold, tempered in medieval fires and set in the stone to last until the arrival of God the Father on earth. His hands locked about and tested each. They had no give at all. Next, the door. It, too, seemed ancient, a collection of polished oak slats, massively thick and heavy, held together with iron bands. The hinges were on the outside, beyond reach. The lock only remained. He bent to it. Hmmmmm. It was not at least a dead bolt, but a tumbler mechanism, old iron, black and hard. Well-oiled. It could be picked, perhaps, with a pick. But he had no pick.
His examination of the physical possibilities of the cell had exhausted him. His bruised ribs hurt furiously. He closed his eyes: sleep came toward him. He fought it off—or did he? For an instant he was back in the water after the ship had gone down, knowing he would die, until the Englishman’s strong hands had pulled him back to life.
For this?
I should have died, nu?
He blinked awake: the same cell. How much time had passed, how much time had he lost?
He went to the window: the sun was coming up. He could see they were on a hill on the outskirts of the city: he could see across the way a chapel, now abandoned, desecrated, the doors blasted off, the interior blackened by flame, all the windows shattered. It was a dead building. The Church, enemy of the people, enemy of the masses, at last feeling the full brunt of their wrath. The nuns raped and beaten, perhaps shot; the processes of history were never pleasant and only made sense in the longer view.
Another cracked smile passed over Levitsky’s face. Old nuns, old mother superior, facing the workers’ bayonets and the hour of your death, how just you’d see it that a man like Levitsky should perish on the same blasphemed ground. You’d cackle at the perfection of it—an old revolutionary professional, me, der Teuful Selbst, devoured by the very forces he’d thought to understand and master and that he’d liberated.
Tapestry of Spies Page 9