Tapestry of Spies

by Stephen Hunter

  “Julian says the war is going badly.”

  “I suppose it is.”

  “Julian says that unless the POUM cracks the siege of Huesca, then the Soviet Union will take over the revolution. God, it’s so confusing. Julian says that—”

  “Do you know, Sylvia, I don’t really care what Julian says.”

  “Why, Robert, what a terrible thing to say. He admires you so. He’s your closest friend.”

  “Ummmm,” was all Florry could think to say.

  They walked on in silence.

  “What is bothering you, Robert?”

  “I’m just tired, I suppose.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t say unkind things about Julian.”

  “Which of us, may I ask, do you prefer?”

  “Why, I love you both, Robert.”

  “Do you go to him at night?”

  “Robert. What a rude question.”

  “Rude or not, do you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But then you’re not coming to my room, either.”

  “You feel terrible. You’ve told me yourself. You’re too weak. You’ve had a hellish experience.”

  “I’m getting stronger.”

  “Well, if that’s what you want, then I shall come tonight.”

  After dinner, Florry read on his balcony until dark. He was in an odd mood, and thought he might write. He had not thought of writing in some time, when once it had been all he lived for. In his kit, he found paper and pen. He filled the pen and faced the blank paper.

  “I came to Spain,” he began, “in the beginning of January 1937 because I wished at last to take a stand against Fascism and Spain seemed to be the only place avail—”

  Rot, he thought.

  I came to Spain, he thought, because a bloody British major said he’d throw my precious hide into Scrubs if I didn’t. When I got here, much to my ignorant surprise, there was a war on and I’m right in the middle.

  He wrote on the page, slowly, and with much deliberation, “I hate Holly-Browning, I hate Holly-Browning.”

  Then he crossed it out and wrote the truth.

  “I hate Julian Raines.”

  He looked at his watch. There was a knock on the door. Florry quickly tore up the piece of paper, and felt embarrassed and silly.

  He wondered why Sylvia was so early.

  “Stinky, get you out here, for God’s sake,” came Julian’s cry through the door. “You’ll never guess who’s here! You’ve bloody got to see this!”

  “God, Julian—”

  “This instant, old son!”

  Florry threw open the door and discovered himself face to face with a man of aching familiarity. There, chunky and self-effacing, stood a young man in the uniform of a Republican captain. Then Florry placed the face and the body and made the discovery that it was the officer Comrade Steinbach had executed on the flatbed truck at La Granja.

  “Salud, comrade,” said the captain, kissing him.

  21

  THE HOSPITAL

  EVEN IN TARRAGONA, IT HAD CHANGED, LEVITSKY picked it up immediately; a change, somehow, in the air. Certain fashions had altered: the mono, for example, was no longer the garment of the day. Fashionable people dressed for dinner. Motorcars had been freed from their garages: everybody who was anybody had a shiny black auto. The revolutionary slogans had somewhat faded. A different feeling gripped the city.

  The POUM and the radical Anarcho-Syndicalists no longer articulated the spirit of the times; they seemed, somehow, on the run themselves. Instead, the PSUC, the Communist Party of Catalonia, which six months earlier had some five hundred members, was the new gang at the top, swollen with membership and influence and ties to the government. The new slogan seemed to sum it all up: “First the war, then the revolution.”

  Koba knew: he didn’t want radical regimes spouting off like absurd tea kettles. The truth is, Koba isn’t revolutionary at all, that’s all illusion. He’s a realist, a cynic. Koba wants there to be only one revolution, in Russia, his own.

  Levitsky sat in a seedy, dark seaside bar just off the Ramblas and could see a group of bitter young POUMistas in their suddenly outré monos sitting in the gloom, trying to figure out over tinto what was happening. Why were they denounced on the radio, called traitors in the posters, followed ominously by NKVD and SIM goons, eavesdropped upon, wiretapped, strip-searched, hounded? Murdered?

  It was beginning. Koba’s emissaries had prepared well. Whatever Glasanov’s failures in apprehending Levitsky—that sure death sentence if it leaked out—the man was a professional when it came to organizing terror.

  His drink arrived. The schnapps was minty, sweet, almost smoky. If I ever truly become an old man, I’ll do nothing except fuss over chess problems and drink peppermint schnapps. I will drink a lot of peppermint schnapps.

  He looked at his watch. It was close to one. All right, old man, time to move.

  Finishing the schnapps, he remembered a time when he didn’t need schnapps for courage: his beliefs had been enough. But that was when he was a young man.

  He stepped out into the salt air, blinking at the hot sunlight. It was so temperate here; June was a lovely month. Taking a breath, he headed up the street, turned left, and walked another two blocks. He came after a time to the graveyard. The markers, white, without ornamentation, looked fresh as baby’s teeth against the grass. He walked in. It was completely quiet. Levitsky walked the ranks of the dead and came to graves that looked freshest.

  “So many,” a voice said.

  Levitsky turned, to face an old man.

  “Are you the caretaker?”

  “Yes, señor. The boys who die at night in the hospital are brought here in the morning.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Levitsky.

  “You are perhaps looking for a certain person?”

  “No. I meant merely to pay my respects to the fallen.”

  “So many. I hope they die in a good cause.”

  One has, thought Levitsky.

  He walked back, stopping once to rest. Getting old. An Asalto gave him a curious look but let him pass. When he reached the hospital, he went in.

  “What business, have you, sir?” asked the nurse. Another young German Jew, she did not call him comrade anymore.

  “I seek after my son. His name is Braunstein. Joseph. He was fighting with the Thaelmann Column, but I have been told he was wounded.”

  “Just a moment, please.”

  The girl went to her list. Levitsky sat down on a chair in the lobby. Soldiers milled about.

  “Herr Braunstein?”

  “Please. We left Germany in ’thirty-three. It’s just Mr. Braunstein now. You have news of my son? He is all right? They told me at Party headquarters in Barcelona that—”

  “Mr. Braunstein, I’m sorry to inform you that your son Joseph Braunstein, wounded May twenty-sixth outside Huesca, died last night of his wounds. He never recov—”

  “Ahhhhhh. Oh God, no. Oh God, Oh God. Please. I must … Oh, God, I—”

  He faltered, dropping to one knee.

  “Orderly,” the girl shouted, “call a doctor. This man is ill. Please, please, Herr Braunstein, I’m so sorry. Please. Here, please, come with me. Come in here.”

  He stood up.

  “They said it was only a minor wound. Oh, God, he was a flutist. He was studying music in Paris. Oh, such a wonderful boy. I told him not to come—Oh, God, he was such a wonderful boy.”

  She led him back into the inner office, where there was a couch. A doctor came by.

  “I’m terribly sorry about your son,” he said. “But you must understand, the war is terrible. It kills in the thousands. But it kills for a purpose.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Here, take these. Rest here, for a time. Your son died fighting Hitler. Can’t you take some pride in that, Herr Braunstein?”

  Levitsky took the pills into his mouth, pretended to swallow. He lay back.

  “Look, just stay here for a time, Herr Bra
unstein. When you feel better, you can move. Perhaps we can find out where they put your son. Then you can—”

  Levitsky closed his eyes until they left. He waited another five minutes, then rolled off the couch. Spitting out the pills, he went swiftly to the filing cabinet against the wall, opened the drawer marked F, flipped through the files.

  There was no Florry.

  Damn the Spanish! Of course their files are out of date. Hopelessly balled up. Damn them, the fools. You’d think with these Germans to help them …!

  He sat back down.

  Failure. Another failure.

  “Are you feeling better now?”

  “Yes, miss. I think I had better go.”

  “Herr Braunstein, we could perhaps take you someplace? Where are you staying?”

  “No. Thank you, miss. I’d best be off.”

  She led him out through the outer office.

  “Here,” she said, halting at her desk. “I found this for you.”

  She opened her drawer and removed something. It was a medal.

  “It’s the Cross of the Republic. I thought perhaps you might care to have it.”

  “But it is yours.”

  “My brother’s. He won it last year. But he died in the defense of Madrid. Here, I want you to have it. Your son earned it, after all.”

  Levitsky seemed suddenly to falter again.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Could I perhaps have a glass of water. My throat feels very dry.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll get it.”

  She rushed off. Levitsky could see the file on her desk. It said FLORRY, ROB’T. (BRIT.); 29TH DIV.

  He opened it, his eyes scanned the Spanish until at last he came to an entry that read, “Liberación, 5.22.37 Permiso, Cab de Salou.”

  When the girl arrived with the water, he drank it swiftly and started to leave.

  “The medal. Sir, you forgot the medal.”

  “Thank you, miss,” he said and took it.

  He left for Cab de Salou later that afternoon. But he stopped at the graveyard and found the old man.

  “Yes?”

  “This medal.”

  “Yes, señor?”

  “It belongs to that boy over there, Braunstein. Would you plant it under his marker.”

  “Yes,” said the old man, and Levitsky hurried off.

  It had not occurred to him to wonder why Florry’s file had been out on the desk rather than in its drawer. The reason was that it had been flagged by express order of SIM. Comrade Major Bolodin himself was on his way to pick it up.

  22

  THE MISSION

  IT’S ABOUT TANKS, COMRADE FLORRY. AND IT’S ABOUT bridges. And it’s about our future.”

  The speaker was a portly yet studious figure of a man in a turtleneck sweater of bulky knit, whose girth was in no way disguised by the garment, or by the raffish Sam Brown belt complete with heavy Star automatic he sported. He rose to greet Florry with an insincere smile as Florry entered Julian’s room.

  “Glad you could join us,” said Comrade Steinbach, his dead eye blank and glitterless, his other fiendishly alive. “How’s the wound?”

  “It’s fine,” said Florry, sure Steinbach cared little for the answer. “Stiff. A messy scar, that’s all.”

  “You’ve met my friend Portela. Under slightly different circumstances, if I recall.”

  “In considerably better shape now than when last seen,” said Florry. “I had thought the Church had a monopoly on resurrection.”

  “Nothing so miraculous,” said Steinbach. “It was simple theater, the little charade with the pistol. We had to shoot him, in case there were spies about. No one could know he was my agent, just returned from a long, dangerous passage behind the lines.”

  “Welcome back to the living, Comrade Portela,” said Florry.

  The dapper young Spaniard clicked his heels together with the precision of a comic general in an operetta, and bowed stiffly at the waist.

  “Buenas noches, Comrade Florry,” he said. “It is a pleasure to accept your compliments.” For a brave spy, he was a bit on the pudgy side.

  “Why don’t you sit down, Comrade Florry? I believe it will be an interesting evening,” said Steinbach.

  Florry sat.

  “We’ve figured out how to win the war in Aragon with a bloody big bang,” said Julian. Florry had seen Julian like this before: weirdly animated, beside himself with giddy joy. Julian could hardly control himself. He was still in his dinner jacket, but he paced the room like a panther, clasping and reclasping his arms about himself. Somehow he disgusted Florry.

  “As you know from most intimate experience,” said Steinbach, “our militia has taken the leading role in the siege of Huesca, supported most enthusiastically by those organizations such as the Anarchists, who share our political philosophies and our passion for the revolution and our belief in freedom. But because we cannot crack Huesca, we are called traitors, secret Fascists, counterrevolutionaries. The lies are repeated often and loudly; people are beginning to believe them. I need not specify who is telling these lies, but they are the same people who arrest or assassinate our leaders. There was fighting in Barcelona early last month. The pressures against us are mounting terribly. A saboteur destroyed our magazine. My ears are still ringing from the blast! And so we must crack Huesca. Not merely for our honor but for our survival.”

  “Huesca,” said Portela, “is the key.”

  “We must break the city before the Fascists can lift the siege. To do so would be to considerably lessen the pressures upon ourselves. To do so would be to save the revolution from the men in the Kremlin. And to keep it for the people. Perhaps worth dying for, eh?”

  Florry nodded lamely. It seemed all gibberish to him.

  Where do I stand on this? he wondered. Whose side am I on? What do I care about? What matters to me?

  “Do you know why we attacked Huesca the night you were wounded, comrade?”

  “No, comrade.”

  “Because Portela reached me with information that a German engineering brigade had almost completed reinforcing a bridge in the mountains on the only direct road between Pamplona and Huesca. When they are done, the bridge will be able to support the weight of the PzKpfw II German tank. We attacked because we had to get into the city before the bridge was finished. We failed. It’s clear now why: the attack was betrayed.”

  “And there are tanks?”

  “Thick as flies, old man,” Julian said. “Jerry has a bunch of the filthy beasts in the mountains, and he wants to spring them on us. And now he’s fixing the rickety old bridge with a nice bundle of fine Krupp steel. Old Jerry’s using Spain as a bloody lab and he wants to see how his gadgets work.”

  “When will this bridge be finished?” he asked because he knew he was supposed to.

  “It will be finished three days from today. Today is the thirteenth. And on the sixteenth of June, those tanks will come out of the mountains and they will deploy into an assault formation on the flat plains around Huesca and they will be supported by mechanized eighty-eight-millimeter high-velocity guns and they will chew our militia to pieces. Then they’ll crash through the gates of the city and free it. It will be a great victory for the Fascists. And it will be great victory for the Communists. And we shall pass into history, Comrade Florry.”

  “Unless somebody unfinishes that bloody bridge,” said Julian. “Sounds like fun, eh, Stink?”

  “Surely this bridge is guarded,” said Florry warily.

  “My goodness, yes,” said Steinbach, his good eye wide with astonishment. “The Germans are very thorough, as many of us learned in 1914. They’ve got a special unit of crack troops at the bridge itself as well as a reinforced battalion of very tough Moorish legionnaires bivouacked nearby. But most importantly, they’ve built a concrete bunker at the bridge and fitted it out with a brace of Maxim guns. Any guerrilla attack would fail. And we could never get the Russian bombers to help us by bombing the target.”

&
nbsp; “I have a very good idea you’re about to ask me a great favor.”

  “Oh, it’s lovely,” said Julian. “Oh, Stinky, you’ll just love it.”

  Julian, you idiot, Florry thought. You’ve bought it all, haven’t you? Their propaganda, their insane conviction, their love of themselves and their cause.

  “There happen to be in Pamplona two Englishmen in possession of an extraordinary credential. They are representatives of Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Fascist Union, on a fact-finding tour in Nationalist territory, and Generalissimo Franco has issued them a carte blanche right-of-travel pass. These two gentlemen may travel unimpeded anywhere they wish in the White zone. Franco himself says it.”

  “Imagine,” said Julian, suddenly producing his small .25 automatic, “imagine, Stink, if a sad accident occurred to those two lads and those documents fell into our hands, and we used them to examine this miracle of modern German engineering at the bridge and we just happened to be there when a band of guerrillas led by Lieutenant Portela attacked. And suppose, Stinky, we were able to knock out that gun bunker, so that the guerrillas could come down and plant their lovely little dynamite charges. Poof! As if in a dream, the bridge has vanished and Jerry’s toys are stuck up in the mountains and cannot come to the rescue of Huesca. And the bloody Russian secret policemen in Barcelona have got to explain to their bosses what went wrong.”

  “In three bloody days? How? Do we fly?”

  “You could make it, Comrade Florry. Just. You leave for the front tomorrow morning. You’ll be there by late afternoon. You cross tomorrow night at nightfall, near Zaragossa. Portela has arranged for a truck to get you into Pamplona by the morning. Sometime that afternoon or in the evening you’ll intercept the two British Fascists. Early the next morning, the morning of the sixteenth, you set out for the bridge by an auto we’ve secured for you. You should make it in three hours. It’s tight, I grant you. But it’s always tight. It was tight in July, when we started this thing. It will be tight till the end.”

  “Who are these Englishmen?” asked Florry.