Tapestry of Spies

by Stephen Hunter

  Julian at last seemed to hear him, and turned and ran, just as the first Panzer swung into view atop the far crest.

  The bullets struck around him and for whatever reason his luck held yet again, and except for a bit of a scrape above his eye, he arrived with a mighty vault and leaped into the gully just as the first PzKpfw II began to advance.

  “Blow the bloody thing,” Julian shouted merrily. His hand looked like some hideous lobster paw, puffy red and pussy and twisted, still melted to the ventilated barrel of the weapon. He winked at Florry, as if it were some monstrous joke.

  The fellow wiring up the box at last seemed finished and gave way to the massive old lady who, her black teeth gleaming, gave the plunger a shove, as they all melted into the earth for protection against the blast.

  But there was no blast.

  “Damn!” said Julian.

  “Again,” Florry shrieked. “AGAIN!”

  Obligingly, the old woman lifted the plunger and again fell forward against it.

  Florry could just see the connection he’d so desperately jerry-rigged together having come unwrapped or having been improperly done to begin with. A black, gloomy sense of shame came over him.

  “I’ve got to fix the bloody thing,” he yelled, and began to claw his way out of the gully.

  Julian smashed him to the ground.

  “Don’t be a fool.”

  “Don’t you see, I’ve botched it!”

  “You’ll botch it good if you go down there and get killed over nothing, chum.”

  “If only I’d—”

  “Shut up, old man. It’s time to get the bloody hell out of here, bridge or no bridge.”

  And indeed it was. Across the bridge, the tanks had arrived. They scuttled down the road with their odd, insectlike approach, somehow tentative. Their machine guns began to rake the guerrillas’ side of the gorge. Bullets peppered the earth about the trench. The guerrillas began to edge back until the ditch petered out against the slope; it was almost one hundred meters up the bare ground to the crest behind which, presumably, there were horses.

  A shell—one of the terrifying 88s—whistled in and exploded against the ridge. The air was filled with noise and dust and whining metal and heat. Another went off farther down.

  A Moorish suicide squad had reached the far end of the bridge. An officer urged them across, and they began to move forward. The old lady pulled one of the rifles to her shoulder, fired, and one of the men slid to the earth. The others crouched behind the railing, though one hearty fellow made a mad dash to the cover of the far side of the blockhouse. Farther down the gorge’s edge, figures appeared and broke for the cover of the rocks on the hillside a few hundred meters away. The guerrillas opened fire, dropping a few, but the majority found safety and began to fire on the trench.

  “Váyanse, hombres,” the old lady screamed. “¡Corran! ¡Hace demasiado calor aquí!”

  “Go on, Stinky,” said Julian, fiddling awkwardly to get his last belt into the open latch of his gun.

  “Hurry,” said Florry, scrambling out of the trench, beginning to backpedal with the others up the slope.

  It was a feeling of extraordinary vulnerability. His shoes kept sliding in the dust and the bullets whipped and popped all around. Only the terrible Moorish marksmanship and Julian’s counterfire from beneath kept any of them alive that mad, backward scramble up. Insanely, Florry fired the six charges in his Webley at the chaos of running Moors, screaming Germans, and backed-up vehicles on the other side of the gorge, to absolutely no discernible effect.

  He finally reached the top, one of the last. With a sigh of relief and disbelief, he sank to the earth, found a rifle, and began to pot away. He could hear the snorts and shuffles of the horses below him in a little draw, anxious to be gone from the commotion, but it didn’t matter; what mattered now was Julian coming up the slope, raking the opposite side of the gorge with a long burst of fire. He didn’t seem to be enjoying it much though; he looked chalky white with terror as the bullets struck around him, but Brilliant Julian continued to climb through the lazy puffs of sprayed dirt. He had almost made it when the bullet took him down.

  “God, Julian, JULIAN!” Florry screamed. Florry rose to run, and hands grabbed to hold him back, but he lashed out with his Webley and felt it strike bone and broke free. He raced down the slope.

  “Go on, you fool,” Julian said. He was coughing blood. The machine gun had fallen away uselessly.

  “No,” Florry said. He tried to pull him up. The old lady was suddenly at his side.

  “Inglés, su amigo está terminado. Muerto. Nadie puede ayudarle ahora.”

  “NO! NO!” Florry screamed.

  He had Julian’s limp body under his arms and tugged it upward. The old woman helped and in seconds other men were helping, too, and they had Julian beyond the crest and out of the line of fire.

  “You’ll be fine, I swear it,” Florry was saying, but his hands were wet with blood. The blood seemed everywhere on Julian. He could not yet believe it.

  “Well, Stink,” said Julian, “Brilliant Julian’s brilliant luck finally went belly up.”

  “No. NO. You’ll be fine, you’ve only just been nicked.”

  “Your imagination again, old boy.”

  “No. Horses. Damn you, old lady, get the filthy HORSES!”

  “Easy on her, old man.”

  Up on the ridge line, the firing increased suddenly, and two shells detonated. Florry was trying to wipe the sweat off Julian’s grimy forehead when the old lady leaned in with a water bottle.

  “Thank you, dear,” said Julian.

  “Inglés, los fascistas cruzan la puente, tonto. Ven, ovídalo. Tenemos que salir. Están por todas partes.”

  “A horse,” Florry said. “Bring this man a horse.”

  “Stinky, I hate the brutes. Smelly, filthy beasts, moody and sullen and—”

  “Shut up, I’ll lash you to me. I’ll get you out of here, you’ll see. You’ve taken care of me, now I’ll take care of you. Get me a HORSE!”

  “Stinky, listen. Tell all my friends to be happy. Tell them Julian’s dying from—”

  “You’re not dying!”

  “Stinky, the bastards got me in the spine and the lungs. I’m half dead already, don’t you see?”

  “¡Inglés! ¡Ven! ¡No hay tiempo, llegarán en segundos!”

  “She’s telling you they’re almost here. Go on. Get out of here, old sport.”

  “I—”

  “One thing, please, Stink. The ring. Take it, eh? Take it to my bloody old mother, eh?” He smiled brightly.

  Florry grabbed the ring, popped the chain, and stuffed it into the pocket of the Burberry.

  “Now the pistol. Take it. I can’t quite—my bloody arms don’t seem to work. Take that bloody pistol.”

  Florry, with shaking hands, removed the tiny automatic from Julian’s holster. It was such a stupid thing; it seemed more like a toy than a weapon, small, almost womanish, difficult to hold in a man’s hand.

  “Cock it. I put in a fresh clip.”

  Florry snapped the slide back, chambering a cartridge.

  “There now. Shoot me!”

  He leveled the pistol to Julian’s temple.

  “Thanks, Stink,” Julian said. “The bastards won’t use me for bayonet drill. Stinky, God, hold my hand, I’m so bloody scared.”

  “¡Inglés!”

  “Julian! I love you!”

  “Kill me then, Stink. KILL ME!”

  “I—I can’t, oh, Christ, Jul—”

  The explosion was huge in his ears; it knocked him to his side. The old lady put down her Mauser rifle. Florry looked to Julian and then away; the bullet had pierced his forehead above his right eye and blown a mess out of the rear of his skull.

  “Jul—”

  At that moment, and for whatever reason, the bridge exploded in a flash that was an exclamation point of sheer light, absolute, blinding, incredibly violent; the concussion seemed to push the air from the surface of th
e earth and blow Florry back to the ground. The noise was the voice of God, sharp and total. The bridge literally disappeared in the explosion. Stones and timbers and chunks of girder kicked up dust and splashes in a circle for six hundred meters around. A cloud unfurled from the blast, black and rolling and climbing.

  “¡Bravo inglés!” came the cry from the men around him in the stunned second as the echo faded. The Germans had ceased firing. “¡Inglés bravo lo hizo! Derribó la puente. ¡Viva el demoledor inglés!” The old lady was kissing him; others pounded him on the back.

  Well, Julian, he thought, looking at the rising cloud of smoke, you finally finished your masterpiece.

  He dropped the pistol into his coat and climbed aboard a horse. But he could not stop crying.

  Part III

  SYLVIA

  33

  ARRESTED

  SYLVIA SAT IN THE GRAND ORIENTE FROM NOON TO TWO every day waiting. It was a clean, pretty place and the afternoons were lovely with sun. She sat outside and watched the people on the Ramblas. There were no more parades, because the Russians didn’t permit them. But she didn’t care about parades. She sat and tried to make sense of the rumors.

  The rumors were about death, mainly. The Russians could control everything except the rumors. The rumors said that Nin had been killed in some phony “rescue,” led by the ominous Comrade Bolodin of the SIM. The rumors said that hundreds of POUMistas and Anarchists and libertarians had been buried in the olive grove of the Convent of St. Ursula, but nobody could get close enough to the place to find out. The rumors said that the Russians had secret checas all over Barcelona, and that if you criticized Stalin, you’d be taken out at night to one and never come back.

  Sylvia sat and had a sip of blanco. Then she lit a cigarette. Before her, across the Ramblas, she could see a wonderful old palm tree, its bent scaly trunk arching skyward toward a crown of leaves. She had, in the last seven days, grown very fond of the palm. She loved it and knew it like a friend.

  The other rumors were the more troubling. They insisted that a big attack had been canceled even though English dynamiters had blown a bridge deep in enemy territory. But as to the fate of the dynamiters, the rumors disagreed. Some said they’d been killed, everybody had been killed. Others said they had been captured, then executed. In other accounts, they simply vanished. There was also talk that it was a setup from the beginning, a betrayal, some more dirty business by the Russian secret police. But what had really happened? She had to know.

  It was all so different now, the new city of Barcelona. Every third man was said to be a Russian secret policeman and nobody would talk. Most people just looked straight ahead with lightless eyes. There were no more red nights, with singing and parades and banners and fireworks. The posters had all been ripped down. Asaltos with machine pistols stood about in groups of three and four.

  She shivered, feeling cold though it was a warm day. She looked at her palm tree and out, at the dull glow of the sea which she could just pick out beyond the statue of Columbus at the end of the Ramblas.

  “Señora?”

  “Yes?”

  “Something more, señora?”

  “No, I think not. Thank you.”

  The old man bowed obsequiously as any English butler and with the oily, seasoned, professional humility of the servant class, backed off.

  She lit another cigarette.

  She felt as if she were in a kind of bubble. The events of the city no longer concerned her. She was magically protected; she was watched over. She was also—she could feel it—watched.

  They knew. Somebody knew and had marked her out. She felt as if she were under observation all the time. She was very careful in her movements and had thought all about getting out. When it came time to get out, she knew exactly what to do.

  She was weeping. She had never cried before, and now, under the pressure, she had become a weeper.

  God damn them. God damn them all for making her cry. A tear ran down her cheek and landed on the marble tabletop, where it stood bright and solitary in the sunlight.

  I’d better get out of here, she thought.

  “I hate it when you cry,” said Robert Florry, sitting down next to her. “God, you look lovely.”

  “Oh, Robert!” she cried, and reached to engulf him with her arms.

  They walked through the narrow, cobbled streets of the Gothic quarter toward the cathedral.

  “I wasn’t able to save Julian.”

  “It’s definite?”

  “As definite as a Mauser bullet in the brain.”

  “Did he die hard?”

  “No. Julian died as he lived: dramatically, flamboyantly, beautifully.”

  “I didn’t think anything could kill Julian.”

  “Just a bullet,” said Florry. “Nothing special about it, a silly bullet. I’m just glad we blew the bridge. He would have liked that.”

  He held up the ring.

  “This is all that’s left of Julian Raines. Pity.”

  “You look terrible, Robert.”

  “I’m so sorry about Julian, Sylvia. I know he meant a great deal to you. He meant a great deal to me. He was—” He paused.

  “He was what, Robert?”

  “He was in a certain way not what he seemed.”

  “Nobody ever is. Here, let me take that awful coat.”

  Florry put the ring in the pocket and peeled off the filthy Burberry, handed it to Sylvia. She was right: it was dusty and wrinkled and looked as if it had been in battle. Though the blue suit under it was also wrinkled, it had held its shape better; and Florry was light-bearded enough so that from the distance his whiskers didn’t show. Without the coat, he looked surprisingly bourgeois.

  “After the bridge, we rode for three days through the mountains and forest. They chased us on horseback, a column of Moorish cavalry. We were bombed and strafed twice. The group split up. Finally, it was only myself and this crazy old lady. We got across the lines two nights ago and were stopped by military policemen, but they let us go. We hitched a ride into Barcelona late last night. We were stopped again. They let me go, because I was British. But they arrested her. Because she was in the wrong category.”

  “Yes. Yes, if one is in the wrong category, one is in queer street. The Party is against the law. You are a criminal for having your name on the wrong list.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Yes. There’s nothing here for us anymore.”

  As they spoke, Lenny Mink watched from a black Ford, which shadowed the two from a distance of about two hundred meters.

  * * *

  They had reached Sylvia’s room in the hotel.

  “I’m all packed,” she said. She took his coat and put it in her suitcase. She knew exactly what had to be done; she’d thought about it.

  “You’ve got to bathe and clean up,” she said. “The chances are, they won’t stop you if you look middle class. Their enemies are the working-class radical people. If you look like a prosperous English tourist, then you’re all right.”

  “God, it’s certainly turned around, hasn’t it?”

  “You’ve got to get some sleep, too, Robert. Then tomorrow, we can—”

  “Sylvia, it’s my papers. They’ve got bloody POUM stamped all over them. One look at them and—”

  “Robert, I can help. I’ve got some—”

  “There’s a chap who should be able to help named Sampson, a newspaper chap who—”

  “Yes, Robert, listen, I’ve got it all planned.”

  “Aren’t you the wonder, Christ, Sylvia. You’ve got it all figured out.” He felt dizzy. He glanced past her, toward a mirror, and saw a stranger staring back, haggard and grayed. Christ, look at me.

  It suddenly seemed important to tell her something.

  “Sylvia, first I have to tell you something. I’ve meant to for weeks. I want to tell you why I came to Spain and why Julian was so important to me, and what I’ve done to him. Sylvia, listen, I have to explain—”
/>
  There was a knock at the door, sharp and hard.

  He felt her tense. He pushed her back, reached under his jacket, and slipped out the Webley. And what would he do now? Shoot an NKVD man? Yes, and with pleasure.

  “Comrade,” came the muffled voice.

  “Who’s there?” he called in English. “I say, who’s there?”

  “Comrade?”

  “Sorry, old man, you must have the wrong party. We’re English.”

  He could sense some confusion outside. But what if they demanded papers? He looked at Sylvia on the bed, her face numb, knowing they’d finally caught up to her. He could see it now. He was death to her.

  He bent to her.

  “I pulled the gun on you, do you hear? I made you come here. I said I’d kill you. You never saw me before, do you understand?”

  “No, Robert, God!”

  “No. No, I’m an escaped criminal and I was using you to hide behind. Do you understand? Now scream.”

  “No. Robert.”

  “Yes, scream, damn it, don’t you see, it’s your only chance.”

  “Comrade!”

  “Robert, we can—”

  “Shut up, Sylvia.” He moved to get away from her. He cocked the revolver and aimed at the door. He’d get the first one sure and maybe a second. No firing squad for him.

  “Comrade Florry,” the voice called. “We are from Steinbach.”

  Their saviors took them down the freight elevator to the basement of the hotel and into the boiler room. There, behind the ancient furnaces, was a narrow door. It led through an ancient tunnel under the plaza into the deserted cathedral itself. Florry and Sylvia spent the day there, not a hundred paces from their rooms and not fifty paces from the furious SIM stooges outside. But the illusion of safety soon evaporated in the sullenness of their angels, who treated them with contempt. Florry was edgy; the men would not give him back his revolver, which he had yielded in a weak moment, nor were they particularly sympathetic to their plight.

  “Cold chaps,” Florry muttered to Sylvia as they huddled in an obscure transept chapel beneath shrouded religious statues, waiting for the time to pass.