by C. J. Sansom
Tolhurst eyed Harry owlishly. ‘Look, I know things haven’t been easy for you, is it the right time to be taking decisions like that? If you don’t mind me saying?’
‘Look, Tolly, it’s what I want. Can you help? With the immigration people?’
‘I don’t know. I’d have to speak to the captain.’
‘Would you? Please, Simon, I know it would be a big responsibility but it’s what I want, you see.’
Tolhurst stroked his chin. ‘Have the girl or her brother any political affiliations?’
‘No. They’re anti-regime but that’s hardly unusual.’
‘Not for that class of people, no.’ Tolhurst tapped his fingers on the desk.
‘If you could do what you can, Tolly, I’d be really in your debt.’
He looked pleased. ‘All right. I’ll try.’
HARRY AND SOFIA had agreed he would come over to Carabanchel for dinner and they would tell Enrique and Paco their plans. When at last the taxi dropped him at Sofia’s block, Harry opened the door with the key she had given him. He made his way carefully up the dark staircase; he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face and had to light a match. That had been one of Tolhurst’s tips, always carry matches in case of power cuts.
He knocked and Sofia answered, pale light spilling out on to the landing as she opened the door. She wore the dress she had the night they went to the play. Behind her the room was full of candles; their soft light hid the damp on the walls, the battered scruffiness of the furniture. Her mother’s bed still stood against the wall. He leaned forward and kissed her. She looked tired.
‘Hola,’ she said softly.
‘Where are Enrique and Paco?’
‘They have gone out to get some coffee. They should be back soon.’
‘Do they know something’s up?’
‘Paco’s guessed there’s something. Come on, take your coat off.’
There was a clean patchwork quilt on the bed that had been her mother’s, a white cloth on the table. The brasero had been on for some time and the room was warm. They sat side by side on the bed. He told her he’d spoken to a colleague about visas.
‘I think he’ll do what he can. It could be before Christmas.’
‘As soon as that?’
He nodded.
She shook her head. ‘It will be hard for Enrique.’
‘We can send him money. Then at least he could keep the flat.’ He took her hand. ‘Are you still sure about this?’
‘Yes.’ She looked at him. ‘What about this work of yours? Is it nearly finished?’
‘Yes. Listen, are you sure we shouldn’t wait until it’s certain we can do this, before we tell them?’
Sofia shook her head decisively. ‘No. We do not want to leave it until we are about to go. They should know what we plan, now.’
‘I am glad.’
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Enrique came in with Paco. He looked tired but Paco, at his side, had an unaccustomed colour in his cheeks. Enrique shook hands with Harry. ‘Buenas tardes. Madre de Dios, it is colder than ever.’ He turned to Sofia. ‘See, we have found some coffee. This stuff, anyway.’ Paco pulled a bottle of chicory essence from under his coat and held it up like a trophy, with a rare smile.
Sofia prepared the dinner, chickpeas with some small pieces of chorizo. They ate together at the table, Enrique talking about his work snow-clearing, the rich women who still wore high-heeled shoes and kept falling over. When they had eaten Sofia pushed away her plate and took Harry’s hand.
‘We have something to tell you.’
Enrique stared at them, puzzled. Paco, his head only a little above the level of the table, frowned worriedly.
‘I’ve asked Sofia to marry me,’ Harry said. ‘I’m going back to England soon and Sofia has said she’ll come back with me so long as we can take Paco with us.’
Enrique’s face fell. He looked at Sofia. ‘I will be left here alone?’ Then he shrugged and forced a smile. ‘Well, what would I do in England? I can hardly read and write. It was always you who was the clever one.’
Paco had been looking between the three of them. At Enrique’s words his face stiffened. ‘No! No! I won’t leave Enrique, no!’ He threw his arms round him, burying his face in his shoulder, making desperate squealing noises. Enrique lifted him up.
‘I will take him to the kitchen,’ he said. He lifted Paco up and went out. As the kitchen door closed, Sofia sighed. ‘Enrique is being brave. This, so soon after Mama.’
Harry took one of her hands, pulled it away from her face. ‘When we’re settled, we can try to get him over—’
He broke off as a loud knocking sounded at the door. Sofia got up, her face weary. ‘If that is Señora Avila again—’
She marched to the door and threw it open. Barbara stood there. Her face was pale and she had been crying.
‘What is it?’ Harry asked sharply. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Can I come in? Please? I went to your flat and then I thought you might be here. I’m sorry, I’d nowhere else to turn.’ She looked desperate, frightened.
Sofia looked at her for a moment, then took her arm. ‘Come in.’ She led her to a chair. Barbara sat down heavily.
‘Have some wine,’ Harry said. ‘You look frozen.’
‘Thanks. I’m sorry, were you eating?’
‘We’ve finished,’ Sofia said. ‘Paco was upset, Enrique has taken him into the kitchen for a moment.’
Barbara bit her lip. ‘He’d better not hear why I’ve come.’ She pulled a packet of cigarettes from her handbag, offered one to Sofia and lit up. She sighed with relief.
‘It’s good to be with friends. You’ve no idea.’
‘What is it?’ Harry asked. ‘What’s got you into this state?’
She clasped her hands tightly on the table and took a deep breath. ‘You know Sandy and I haven’t been getting on. You know I’ve talked about going home.’
‘Yes.’
She swallowed. ‘A while ago I overheard a telephone conversation he was having in his study. It was an accident, I wasn’t eavesdropping, but what he was saying was so strange. He was talking to someone about your investments, then he asked about what the person on the other end had done to some man – ’ she shivered – ‘saying he was tough. It kept going round in my mind. They mentioned a name. Gomez.’
Harry’s eyes widened as Barbara pulled the copy of Ya from her handbag. ‘Then the evening before last I saw this.’
Sofia leaned forward to read the article. Harry sat back, staring at Barbara, his mind whirling.
Sofia looked up. ‘You are saying there is a connection?’ she asked urgently.
The kitchen door opened and Enrique looked out enquiringly. Sofia rose and went into the kitchen with him. Barbara remained slumped in her chair. Harry looked at her. Sofia came back.
‘I have asked them to stay in the kitchen.’ She sat down again. ‘Señora Barbara, are you sure of this? You are – forgive me – overwrought.’
Barbara shook her head vigorously. ‘It all fits.’ Her voice rose. ‘Sandy’s been involved in torturing and murdering a man. After I read the paper I didn’t want to go home. I made myself. I told him I’d a bad headache and had to go to bed. Now I can hardly bear to talk to him.’ Her whole body shook for a moment. ‘I heard him laughing in the hall with the maid, he’s having an affair with her. I felt so scared, lying there in bed, I’ve never felt so afraid. Then today I went out early, to the veterans’ hospital. Afterwards I – I just couldn’t go home. I should, I must, but I just couldn’t face it.’
‘Barbara,’ Harry said quietly. He coughed, for a moment he couldn’t find his voice. ‘I know about this.’
‘What?’ She looked at him blankly. Sofia stared at him.
He laid his hands on the table. ‘I’m with intelligence. I’m a spy. It was my fault that man died.’
Barbara’s expression was shocked, aghast.
‘You told me what you did was not dangerous,’ Sofia said,
her voice sharp as a whip.
‘I never wanted to do this. Never.’
He told the two women everything: his recruitment in London, his meetings with Sandy, his trip to the mine, his slip that had cost Gomez his life. They listened in horrified silence. From the kitchen they heard occasional sobs from Paco, soothing noises from Enrique.
‘A gold mine?’ Barbara said when he had finished. She looked Harry in the eye. ‘You bastard, Harry.’ She didn’t shout, she spoke in low sorrowful tones. ‘These last two months you’ve been coming to dinner and meeting me for lunch and all the time you were spying on Sandy. On me as well, presumably!’
‘No! No, when I came over to Spain I’d no idea you were with him. I’ve hated deceiving you, I’ve hated the whole bloody business if you want to know. Hated it!’ he said, so loudly and bitterly Sofia looked at him in surprise.
‘And what about the danger I was in?’ Barbara continued. ‘You knew about Gomez and you didn’t warn me!’
‘I didn’t know for certain till Friday. Though I said you should go home.’
‘Oh, thanks, Harry, thanks so bloody much!’ Barbara took off her glasses and ran her hands across her face. ‘Your name was mentioned when I overheard Sandy on the phone. I couldn’t believe you could be involved in murder. And yet you were a spy all the bloody time.’
Harry looked at Sofia. She had turned her face away.
‘It’s over, please believe me. Listen, they’re kicking me out because of Gomez. I’m glad.’ He took a deep breath. ‘They’re trying to recruit Sandy now.’ Looking at the two women’s shocked faces he thought, oh God, what have I done to them?
Sofia turned back to him. ‘That man Gomez was at Toledo. Where the streets ran red with Republican blood and the Moors took heads as trophies. You need not mourn a man like that.’
Barbara turned to her. She looked shocked. Sofia met her eye. ‘You should go back to England, Señora, away from here. You could stay in a hotel till you can get a boat or an aeroplane.’ She gave Harry a firm look. ‘We will help you, won’t we, Harry?’
‘Yes, yes.’ He nodded eagerly, grateful for the ‘we’. ‘Sofia’s right, Barbara, you should go home as soon as you can.’
‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ To his surprise she laughed, a hard bitter laugh. ‘I can’t go home yet. My God. You don’t know the half of it.’
Something in her voice chilled Harry. ‘What do you mean?’
She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders. ‘You don’t know about Bernie. Bernie’s alive. He’s being held in a labour camp near Cuenca and I’m involved in a plan with an ex-guard in Madrid to get him out. To rescue him. On Saturday, in six days’ time.’ She stopped, looked at him. ‘There, it’s your turn to be shocked, isn’t it?’
Harry’s mouth had fallen open. Barbara laughed again; shrilly, with that hysterical edge he’d heard before. Harry had a mental picture of Bernie, laughing as they walked down a Madrid street, green eyes full of excitement and mischief.
Sofia looked puzzled. ‘Who is Bernie? You mean your friend who came to fight here?’
‘Yes.’ Harry looked into Barbara’s eyes. ‘God, this is true, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, yes.’
Sofia was looking at him, her large dark eyes shining with emotion. Hell, Harry thought, I’ve ruined everything. She won’t forgive me for the way I’ve treated Barbara.
‘So that’s it,’ Barbara concluded. ‘I have to stay here till this Saturday.’
‘You could still leave that man,’ Sofia said.
‘No. He’d come after me, he wouldn’t just let me go. There’d be a terrible hue and cry. He mustn’t know.’ Her mouth set hard. ‘If he found out he might get his friends to do something to Bernie out of spite.’
‘You could get someone else to go to Cuenca.’ Sofia gave Harry a searching look. ‘Us, perhaps?’
Barbara looked at her in surprise. ‘Why should you put yourself in danger?’
‘Because it would be helping someone who fought for us. And something against these bastards who rule us now.’ She looked at Harry. ‘I keep my loyalties. They are important.’
‘It wouldn’t work,’ Barbara said. ‘If a stranger turned up to meet Luis, the ex-guard, he’d run off, he’s nervous enough already.’ She told them of her plan, from the first meeting with the journalist in October. They listened in silence. At the end she said quietly, ‘No, I’ll have to go back to Sandy. I’ll pretend I’m ill, say I’ve got the flu and ask for a separate room. He won’t mind, he’ll probably take that girl into our bed.’
‘It’ll be a bloody hard week,’ Harry said. ‘Pretending to Sandy all the time.’
‘Well, you’d know!’ she replied angrily. ‘I can almost feel sorry for him knowing how you’ve treated him.’ She sighed and put her head in her hands. ‘No, that’s wrong,’ she said more quietly. ‘He let himself in for all this.’ She looked up. ‘I think I can do it, if it means getting Bernie out.’ She looked at the newspaper again. ‘It was just the shock of finding out about that man, it’s been going round in my head.’
Sofia was looking at the photographs on the wall, her mother and father and her uncle the priest. ‘You should not go to Cuenca by yourself,’ she said. ‘As a foreign woman on your own you will stand out. It is a remote town.’
‘You know it?’
‘I visited it often as a child. We come from Tarancón, which is the other side of the province, but I had an uncle there. You should not go alone,’ she repeated.
Barbara sighed. ‘I haven’t even got a car to go in unless I can take Sandy’s. That’s the other problem.’
‘I could help there,’ Harry said. ‘I could take out an embassy car and let you have it.’
‘Wouldn’t that be against the rules?’
Harry shrugged. He didn’t care. If Bernie was alive—
Sofia leaned forward. ‘We could take you, me and Harry. Yes, it would work. Harry could be a diplomat taking two friends on a day out. A car with diplomatic plates.’
Sofia looked at him. Harry’s heart pounded. He thought, this was mad, if they were caught it would be the end of Sofia’s chances of getting out of Spain. He and Barbara might be expelled but Sofia— He looked at her. He sensed she wanted him to say yes, to redeem himself. And if Bernie was alive, if they could get him out— He turned to Barbara. ‘Are you sure this Luis knows what he’s doing?’
‘Of course I am,’ she answered impatiently. ‘Do you think I haven’t questioned everything, these last weeks? Luis is no fool, he and his brother have thought this out carefully.’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll come with you. But not you, Sofia, you’ve got too much to lose.’
Barbara looked surprised. ‘What if the embassy found out? You could get into trouble, couldn’t you, especially with – what you’ve been doing?’
He took a deep breath. ‘To hell with them. You’re right, Sofia, about loyalty. You’ve helped me lose a lot of my old loyalties, did you know that?’
Anger flashed in her eyes. ‘You should lose them.’
‘I suppose my loyalty to Bernie’s the oldest of all.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve heard rumours about these secret camps.’
Barbara was frowning with concentration. ‘We could bring Bernie back in the car and leave him at a phone box near the embassy. They’d send someone to fetch him, wouldn’t they?’
Harry thought a moment. ‘Yes. Yes, they would.’
‘He could say he’d hitched a lift from Cuenca, no one need ever know you were involved in the rescue.’
‘Yes. Yes, that could work.’ He sighed. He faced losing everything over this, but he had to do it. For Sofia. And for Bernie. Bernie, alive—
‘I will come too,’ Sofia said determinedly. ‘I will guide you.’
‘No,’ Harry said. He laid a hand on her arm. ‘No, you mustn’t come.’
‘Listen, Harry. It will be far less risky for all of us together. I tell you, I know the town. We can go directly where w
e need to, without looking at maps and attracting attention.’
‘Sofia, think—’
She sat up. Her voice was quiet but there was a light in her eyes now. ‘I have felt so guilty, at the thought of running away from my country. I did not tell you but I have. But now I have a chance to do something. Something against them.’
Chapter Forty
FROM TIME TO TIME the men were dragooned into spending an evening in the church watching propaganda films. Last year they had watched Franco’s victory parade, a hundred thousand men marching past the Caudillo as the German Condor Legion flew overhead. There had been films about the rebirth of Spain, battalions of Falange Youth helping in the fields, a bishop blessing the reopening of factories in Barcelona. More recently, they had seen film from the Hendaye meeting, Franco walking past a guard of honour with Hitler, his face aglow.
The freezing weather had continued unabated. The deer, desperate for food, continued to be drawn to the camp by the smell of cooking. The guards had more venison than they needed; they shot the deer now just to relieve their boredom.
The prisoners shuffled into the church hall, glad at least of the warmth from the stove. They sat on the hard wooden chairs, shuffling and coughing as a pair of guards manhandled the ancient projector into position. A screen had been set up against the wall and Aranda stood before it, his uniform immaculately pressed, twirling a swagger stick in his hands as he looked impatiently at the projectionist.
Bernie sat huddled in his coat, massaging his shoulder. It was the ninth of December now; five days until the escape. He was careful not to look at Agustín, who was on duty by the door.
At a nod from the projectionist, Aranda stepped forward, smiling. ‘Many of you foreign prisoners will be keen for a glimpse of the outside world. Our own Noticiario Español is therefore proud to present a film about events in Europe.’ He waved his stick at the screen. ‘I give you – Germany Victorious.’ He’s an actor, Bernie thought, all the things he does, from this to torturing people, it’s all about him being centre stage. He was careful not to catch Aranda’s eye, as he had been ever since his refusal to become an informer.