Tapestry of Spies

by Stephen Hunter

  “I rather want to survive, that’s all.”

  “You know, it’s probably not necessary. We’re out. We could stay in separate—”

  “Let’s play the fiction out to London.”

  He could not help but laugh. “You seem to know more about this business than I do.”

  They followed the drift of the passengers toward the guard post, a smallish brick building nestled near the barbed wire by a crude pedestrian gate—the whole affair had a rough, improvised look to it—and a line had already formed into which they slipped. It seemed to be a dream play set under the calm Mediterranean moon, the line of passengers filing listlessly into the little shack under the scrutiny of sleeping carabineros—no revolutionary Asaltos here—for a cursory examination. If you had the passport you were all right.

  Florry handed his and Sylvia’s over to the man, an old-time civil servant, who didn’t give them a second look, except to run mechanically their names off against his list.

  “¿Arma de fuego?”

  “Eh?”

  “Firearms, Señor Trent?”

  “Oh, of course not,” said Florry, remembering his vanished Webley and the automatic he’d tossed away.

  The man nodded.

  “Go on to French customs,” he said.

  “That’s it?” said Florry.

  “Sì, señor. That’s it.”

  They stepped out of the building and through the gate and into another little shed, which turned out to contain two little booths, each with its policeman. Florry got into one line and Sylvia the next and in time they arrived at the tables. The officer game him a quick, lazy glance.

  “¿No tiene equipaje a portar de España?”

  “Er, sorry?”

  “Do you have bags?” the man said in French.

  “Oh. My wife has it.”

  “You take no bags from Spain?”

  “We believe in traveling light.”

  The man nodded him on and he emerged to find that Sylvia had already made it through and was waiting with her grip.

  “Hullo,” she said.

  “Hullo. No problems?”

  “No. The fellow opened the bag and began to go through it, but your awful raincoat was in the way and the woman behind made a scene about missing the Paris train. He was a decent chap. Rather, a lazy one. He just waved me on.”

  It then occurrred to them that they were standing at the gate into France. They stood in line to present their passports to the frontier gendarme, who made a disinterested examination, and ultimately issued the proper stamp.

  “Bien,” he said.

  “Merci,” said Florry.

  It was that simple: they stepped outside the shed, and they were in France.

  “One should feel something,” Florry said. “Relief, or some such. What I feel like is a smoke.”

  “I feel like brushing my teeth,” Sylvia said.

  The French train up ahead hooted. Near it, a temporary French station had been built, the mirror image of the Spanish installation on the other side of the frontier.

  “We must hurry,” she said.

  “I’ll get tickets. Darling, see if there’s a tobacconist’s, about, will you, and get cigarettes. American, if they’ve got them. Pay anything. And get some chocolate. I love chocolate.”

  He raced for the ticket window.

  “Do you have a first-class compartment left open for Paris?” he asked in French.

  “Yes. Several, in fact; there’s not many first-class travelers who leave Spain, monsieur. Not since July.”

  “I only have pesetas. Can you make the exchange for me?”

  “I will only charge a small percentage.”

  “It’s only fair.”

  He pushed the money across to the man and waited while the fellow figured it out and paid him back with the tickets.

  “I only took a little extra.”

  “Fine, fine,” said Florry, grabbing them and trying to quell his exuberance.

  “You must hurry; this train leaves in a few minutes.”

  “Believe me, this is one train I won’t miss.”

  He turned and ran toward it, to find Sylvia waiting at the door to the sleeping car.

  “I’ve got it,” he said. “God, look at that!”

  “It’s only English tobacco, darling,” she said, holding up a pack of Ovals.

  “This must be heaven,” Florry said. He could not stop himself from smiling.

  “I’m sorry they didn’t have American. The tobacconist had just sold all his American cigarettes to some hulking Yank.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Sylvia. We’re safe at last.”

  The train whistled.

  “Come on, it’s time to get aboard,” he said.

  * * *

  They ate in the first-class dining car, and whatever one could say against the French, the French knew how to cook. The meal was—or perhaps this was merely an expression of their parched tastes after so many months in Red Spain—extraordinary. Afterward, they went to the parlor car and had a drink and sat smoking as the train hurled through the darkened countryside of southern France.

  “Paris by morning,” said Florry. “I know a little hotel in the Fourteenth Arrondissement. Sylvia, let’s go there. We’ve earned a holiday, don’t you think? There’s enough money, isn’t there? We haven’t to face the future quite yet, do we?”

  Sylvia looked at him: her gray green eyes beheld him curiously, and after a bit, a smile came to her face.

  “It really is over, isn’t it? Spain, I mean,” she said.

  Florry nodded.

  “Well,” she said. “Let me think about it will you, Robert?”

  “Of course.”

  She hadn’t said no—quite. And it sounded wonderful: a fortnight of luxury in a small, elegant hotel in the most civilized country in Europe after what had been the least civilized. Florry sat back against the comfortable chair, smoking an Oval. Maybe the woman would be his after all. He felt he owed it to himself to begin to feel rather good.

  But of course exactly the opposite occurred. A curious melancholy began to seep through him. He seemed to still smell Spain somehow, or still dream it, even when wakeful. He remembered Julian in the dust, begging for death. He remembered the bridge exploding. The blast, for all its fury, had meant nothing after all it had cost them. He remembered the POUM rifles leveled at them, and the comical idiocy of the trial, and the Communist Asaltos heading up the mountain with their Hotchkiss gun. He remembered Harry Uckley’s empty holster. He remembered the night attack on Huesca and firing his revolver into the boy’s face. He remembered the abrupt cold numbness when the bullet struck him. He remembered the ship digging beneath the surface and the flames on the water.

  “Robert, what on earth is wrong?”

  “Julian,” he said. “I wish I had not let Julian down at the end. I know he meant so much to you.”

  “Julian always got what he wanted,” said Sylvia with odd coldness. “And never what he deserved.”

  She touched his arm. “Forget the war. Forget politics. Forget it all. Forget Julian.”

  “Of course you’re right. Absolutely. One mustn’t let oneself get to brooding on things one is helpless to alter. And I swear I won’t.”

  But it was a lie. Even as he saw her pretty face he remembered Julian. Hold my hand. I’m so frightened. Kill me.

  “Yes,” she said. “I could not get the American cigarettes, and so I should not feel as if I’ve failed, eh?”

  “I say, shall we have another drink?” he said cheerfully.

  “Pardon me, folks.”

  They turned, and looked up into the eyes of a rather large, almost handsome man in a suit standing in the aisle.

  “I hate to interrupt,” he said, “the name’s Fenney. Ed Fenney. I saw you on the train out of Barcelona. I just heard the lady say she’s sorry she missed the American cigarettes. I bought them all. Look, here, take these.”

  It was a pack of American Camels.

  “M
r. Fenney, it’s really not necessary,” said Sylvia.

  “No, I know how you get, missing your best smokes. I just got a little greedy at the border. My apologies, miss. Please, take these. You Brits and us Americans, we ought to stick together. It’s going to be us against the world one of these days, you just wait.”

  He smiled. There was something peculiarly intense about him and remotely familiar, but he seemed so eager to please that Florry found himself accepting the cigarettes.

  “Well, thanks awfully,” he said. “Would you care to join us?”

  “No, listen, after a long day like this, I really want to turn in. I’ve calls to make in Paris tomorrow, have to be sharp. Nice seeing you.” He left.

  “Robert, I’m awfully tired, too,” said Sylvia.

  “Well, then. That seems to be that. Shall we go?”

  It was nearly midnight: they walked through the dark, rocking corridor from car to car until at last they found their compartment. They entered; the porter had opened the bed and turned it back.

  “Not much room in here, is there?” he said.

  “The French are so romantic,” Sylvia said. She held up a single red rose that had been placed in a vase by the tiny night table that had been folded out of the wall.

  Florry pulled the door shut behind him, snapping it locked. When he turned, Sylvia had undressed to her slip and washed her hands and face in the small basin. He went to her bag and opened it. Julian’s ring had fallen out of the pocket of his coat and worked its way into the corner of the case. He picked it up, looked at it.

  This is all there is of my friend Julian Raines, he thought. There was little enough to it: a simple gold band, much tarnished, much nicked, as well it should be. The inscription inside it read, “From this day forth, Love, Cecilia.” It was dated 6-15-04.

  For luck, Florry thought, and gave it a little secret kiss.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Who on earth could that be?” he said.

  “It’s Ed Fenney, Mr. Florry,” came the voice through the door.

  “Oh. Well, what on earth—”

  “Listen, I have an extra carton of Camels here. I might not see you in the morning. I’d like to give them to you.”

  “Well, it’s not necessary but—”

  “It’d be my pleasure.”

  Florry turned, gave Sylvia a quizzical look, and turned to the door.

  “Robert, don’t. We don’t know—”

  “Oh, he’s just a big, friendly American. Just a moment,” he called, getting the door unlocked, even as he wondered how this Fenney knew his name. “You know, this is awfully damned kind—”

  The man hit him in the stomach and he felt the pain like an explosion; he hit him twice again, driving him back, filling his mind with astonishment and, by the power of the blows, his heart with fear.

  Yet even as he fell, Florry was trying to rise, for the man had just smashed Sylvia across the face with the back of his hand.

  The big man hit Sylvia a second time, killing the scream in her throat, and she dropped bleeding on the bed when Florry, having somehow accumulated a bit of strength, assaulted him with a desperate rugby tackle, but it hurt Florry worse than the other and as Florry slid off, a brute knee rose and met him cruelly flush beneath the eye with a sick ugly sound that filled his head with sparks and scattered his will. He began to crawl away to collect himself, but the man dropped onto his back, pinned him with a knee as one pins the butterfly through the thorax to the board, and had his thick hands under his throat. He pulled his head back. Florry felt the strength and the force. He knew the man could snap his neck in an instant. He could hardly breathe. He was gagging.

  “Pleased to meet you, yentzer,” the man hissed. “I’m your new pal.”

  Florry was instantly released and felt the man rise off him. Then a powerful kick slammed against his ribs, lifting him against the wall in the tiny room, flipping him. He tried to scream when a short sharp blow delivered with a boxer’s grace and cunning nailed the exact center of his body and the sound was frozen forever in his lungs. He lay back, his eyes closed, sucking desperately at the air.

  The man leaned across the bed and pulled Sylvia up by the hair. He slapped her face hard twice to bring her awake to scream, and as her throat constricted in the effort, he rapped her there lightly to trap it. He pulled her over and her head down.

  Florry knew he had to help her. He had to get air, and help Sylvia.

  “Please,” Florry begged. “Don’t hurt her. I’ll do anything. Just tell me. I’ll do it.”

  Please him, he thought.

  The man dropped Sylvia unconscious to the bed and turned to Florry. Florry seized Sylvia’s suitcase from the corner and desperately hurled it, but it was open and the clothes falling from it crippled the velocity of the thrust. The man elbowed it aside contemptuously. He walked over the litter of clothing now spread about the floor and smashed Florry in the face and Florry wasn’t fast enough to slip the blow. Instead, head a mess of confusion and lights, he went down to the floor. The man sat atop him. Florry could feel the hot, excited breath and the heaving heart and the strength and the totality of him, the overwhelming force of him.

  “I know it all,” said the man. “The old Jew Levitsky. The guy at Cambridge. He told me. You’re working for the reds.”

  “I-I-” Florry struggled with the idea.

  “Yeah. He told me, Levitsky himself, your great buddy. And I got this, too, fucker.”

  He leaned back, reached into his pocket, and pulled something out. Florry recognized it immediately. It was the confession he’d signed for Steinbach.

  “The gold,” the man said. “Where’s the gold?”

  “What? I—”

  “Don’t fuck around. The gold! God damn it, the gold.” He pulled something from his pocket, snapped it, and a knife blade popped out. He put the icy-sharp point of the blade into the soft skin under Florry’s eye. “I’ll cut you and cut you and cut you. Then I’ll cut the girl. I’ll cut everybody you ever knew. The gold. The gold!”

  Florry knew now he was hopelessly insane, his ideas crazed and pitiful, his willingness to hurt absolute and unending.

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” Florry said. “It’s—”

  The man’s eyes widened at this defiance and he hit Florry savagely in the face.

  “No,” said Florry, gasping and curling, seeking desperately for something to put between himself and the pain, “no. It’s Julian. Take Julian, don’t take me. He’s the one. Leave us alone, please, I beg you.”

  But the man stood above him, looming like some titanic statue. Florry watched as the man’s foot came forward until it covered his face with its black shadow and descended onto his face. He could feel the shoe on his nose and lips, flattening and spreading them, and he could taste the grit and filth on the sole, little flecks and curds of it, falling into his mouth.

  Florry’s fingers scrabbled desperately at the floor and the clothes littering it as a single thought filled his head: who will help me now?

  Nobody, the answer came. You are alone.

  “Lick it,” the man commanded in a hoarse, mad whisper. “Lick it, you little fucker.”

  Florry’s tongue caressed the sole of the filthy shoe exactly as his fingers, crawling through the clothes on the floor, touched something hard and recognized it before his mind did.

  “The gold,” the man said. “Tell me where the gold is, God damn you or—”

  Florry raised Julian’s little automatic, thumbing back the nubby hammer, and fired into the crotch above him and felt the boot come off his face and saw the blood spurt. Florry fired again into the lower belly and into the chest, the gun cracking in his hand. The blood spurted and sprayed everywhere and the man seemed to sink back stunned and disappointed, holding his red fingers before him, and Florry shot him in the throat, opening a hideous wound, the larynx blown to shreds even by a small-caliber bullet at this range. He made grotesque mewling noises. He was spitting blood a
nd it was coming out his nose and spilling down his chest. Florry rose, cupping the pistol with both hands, and fired carefully into the face; a black crater erupted in the crack and flash of the pistol under the eye while brain tissue and red fog rose from somewhere and he fired into the eye, shattering it. The slide on the pistol locked back. It was empty.

  In the corridor, somebody was shouting. Florry looked down at the little pistol. It had lain in the pocket of the Burberry all those days since the bridge, packed away in Sylvia’s absurd case, a shell in its chamber, because when he needed to, he could not use it to help Julian.

  But Julian had helped him.

  42

  THE GREEN

  HOLLY-BROWNING STUDIED THE PROBLEM. IT WAS A QUESTION of angle of approach and at the same time of impending obstacles—a classic, in other words. It called for a peculiar combination of delicacy and power, the perfect equipoise. It called also for firmness of decision. It was not a time for equivocation, for appeasement, for lack of will. The situation demanded his utmost.

  “Five iron, I think, Davis.”

  “Yessir. Excellent selection, sir. I’d watch the elms on the left. There’s not much air among their leaves.”

  “Thank you, Davis,” said Holly-Browning, taking the club. He laced his fingers together about the grip and let the natural weight of the club head pull the shaft down; it fell, with unerring accuracy, to its absolute perfect placement behind the ball.

  Holly-Browning paused, concentrating. He let a wave of power build and build in his blood until it almost sang in his veins and he felt the muscles ache and tremble and hunger for release. Yet still he held it, feeling himself—this was quite odd—sink utterly into the ball until at last there was nothing, nothing at all in the universe but the white dimpled sphere and the green concave of grass embracing it and his own will, and in a sudden, fluid, Godlike whip of power and—odd again—terror, almost, he coiled and unleashed a blow that mashed it to smithereens. The contact was solid and shivered up his arms as the stroke followed its own inclinations through and came to rest all the way around his body.

  At last he lifted his head to follow the straight, clean white flight of the ball as it rushed to the green with just the right kiss of loft and just the right pitch of power; it bounced on the fairway, bounced again, and struck the green, rolling slower and slower, its energy decreasing until at last it came to a halt about six feet from the flag.