Night Soldiers (21 page)

“I understand, comrade Colonel General. I will do it.”

“When? How many days?”

“Twenty days. A fortnight.”

“I will hold you to that.”

“It will be done, comrade Colonel General.”

“You leave here at five o'clock sharp this morning. I will assign you a sublieutenant—observe his commitment, you can learn something from it. Now, before you go, one small matter. Tell me, Stoianev, you have heard me referred to by a certain nickname?”

“No, comrade Colonel General.”

“A stupid lie, but let it pass. The name in question refers to a particular reptile. Let me just point out to you that it depends, for its survival, on a special principle, which is that its prey always believes itself to be beyond reach. Keep that in mind, will you?”

“Yes, comrade Colonel General.”

“Now get out.”

By the time Khristo reached his tiny room, in another dockside hotel, his hands were shaking. Looking in the mirror, he saw that his face was gray with fear. He sat on the edge of the bed, drew his Tokarev from its holster and stared at it for a time, not entirely sure what he meant to do with it. He noticed, finally, an unusual lightness to the weapon and ejected the magazine. Sometime in the last twenty-four hours somebody had unloaded it. He ran the bolt back and inspected the chamber. It was empty as well. In the Guadarrama, Thursday had come to be known as Día de las Esposas, Wives' Day, in the course of which the guerrilla band of Lieutenant Kulic did those chores that, in normal times, would have fallen within the province of their wives—excepting, of course, the happiest chore of all, which would have to await their return to home and the marriage bed. They shook out and aired their blankets, sand-scrubbed the cooking utensils, washed their clothing and hung it in the trees to dry, and for the grand finale washed themselves—swearing a blue streak in the icy mountain water and splashing each other with childish glee. Kulic's time in the Serbian mountains had taught him the critical importance of domesticity in the context of
partizan
operations. Being dirty and uncared for, men quickly lost respect for discipline, and operations suffered accordingly. As Kulic phrased it to himself, the more you lived in a cave, the less caveman behavior could be tolerated.

They had found the deserted village quite by accident, but it was perfect for a guerrilla base: no road led there, the approaches were well covered by dense tangles of underbrush, and it lay high enough in the mountains that radio communication with Madrid Base could be maintained on a more or less regular basis.

There was not much left of the village: a few huts—all but three open to the stars—built of dry-masoned stone native to the mountains. They often speculated about the place—perhaps it had been the home of the early Visigoths, western Goths, who had populated Spain in ancient times. It was not difficult to imagine. They would have hunted bear and wild pig in the mountain forests, with spears and dogs, and worn wolf pelts against the weather. Or perhaps another race, unrecorded and unremembered, had died out in the village, the last survivors wandering down onto the plains to become part of other tribes. In any case, with time the piled stone walls and weedy vines had achieved a harmonious truce, leaving the village a sort of garden gone wild and an excellent hideout.

On the Thursday following the destruction of the Nationalist armory, while most of the band was occupied with housekeeping, there was a small commotion at the perimeter of the camp. Kulic, walking down the hill to see what the shouting was about, found his two sentries with rifles pointed at Maltsaev, the political officer from the Madrid embassy.

He was a dark, balding young man with bad skin and a sour disposition, a man much given to sinister affectations. He wore tinted eyeglasses and a straw hat with top creased and brim turned down, and spoke always as though he were saying only a small fraction of what he actually knew. He had arrived alone, on horseback, having left his car in the last village before the mountains, some twenty kilometers distant. Thus it was immediately apparent to Kulic that this was anything but a casual visit. To protect his city clothing during the journey, Maltsaev had worn an immense gray duster coat, which, with the hat and glasses, gave him the look of a Parisian
artiste
of the 1890 s. An appearance so strange that Kulic was a little surprised his lookouts had not dispatched him on the spot.

They sat together on a fallen pine log at the edge of a small outcrop above the village. From there, they could watch the guerrilla band shaking blankets and capering in the stream, and strident voices—cursing, laughing, joking—rose to them. This was Kulic's thinking place. When the sun came out, the scent of pine resin filled the air and blue martins sang in the trees.

“You don't have it so bad,” Maltsaev said, looking about him.

“It is Día de las Esposas today,” Kulic answered, taking off his peaked cap and smoothing his hair. “We rest and gather our strength. It is a little different when we fight.”

“One would suppose so. Now look here, Kulic, I won't beat about the bush with you. My mission is not a happy one.”

“It's a long ride up here.”

“Too long,” Maltsaev said ruefully. “And I'm a city boy, a Muscovite, I admit it.”

He took off his left shoe and pulled the laces apart. From the pocket of his duster coat he produced a razor blade and began cutting open the leather tongue, finally revealing a yellow slip of paper. “And I had to come through the fascist lines,” he added, in explanation.

“A nervous time for you, then,” Kulic remarked.

“Yes. And I am unappreciated,” Maltsaev said. “My poor backside has no business on a horse.”

He handed the paper to Kulic, then pressed the layers of the shoe tongue back together again as best he could. “Of course,” he said, almost to himself, “one may not carry glue.” Kulic noted that he wore fine silk socks.

“What's this?” Kulic asked, studying the paper. There were four names on it. Four of his men.

“We have discovered a plot,” Maltsaev said.

“Another plot? Shit on your plots, Maltsaev, these men are not Falangistas.” He thrust the paper back at Maltsaev, who was busy putting on his shoe and declined to take it.

“Nobody said they were, and please don't swear at me. Give me a chance, will you. You field commanders have short fuses. A little bad news—and boom!”

“Boom is what it will be,” Kulic said.

“Shoot me, comrade, by all means. There'll be ten more tomorrow, Spetsburo types, Ukrainians—just try reasoning with them.”

“Very well, Maltsaev. Say your piece and ride away.”

“If that's how you want it. These four are members of POUM—there's no question about it, we have copies of the lists, right from Durruti himself.”

“Durruti? The anarchist leader? He claims these men?”

“Well, from his office.”

“And so?”

Maltsaev made his hand into a pistol—bent thumb the hammer, extended index finger the barrel—then pulled the trigger with his middle finger.

“Are you insane? Is Madrid? Moscow? These men are fighters, soldiers. You don't execute your own soldiers. Only for cowardice. And these are not cowards. They've stood up to gunfire, which is more than I can say for some people.”

“Yes, yes. I'm a coward, please do abuse me, I don't mind. But you must take care of the problem—that's an order from Madrid.”

“Marquin, the second name on this list, climbed to the roof of a convent and poured gasoline down the chimney, which enabled us to blow up a Falangist armory. Is this the behavior of a traitor? Besides, all these men are of the UGT, not the POUM.”

“Kulic … no,
Lieutenant
Kulic, you've been given an order. Have a trial if you like—just make sure it comes out right. The sad fact is that the POUM—Trotskyites, to give them their proper name—are fouling up this war. Sometimes they refuse to fight. They won't take orders. They roam about like a herd of wild asses and cause everybody trouble. Generalissimo Stalin has determined to purify the Spanish effort, and Director Yezhov has ordered that the POUM be purged. These four men claim UGT association, but their names appear on POUM membership lists obtained by our operatives in Barcelona.”

“You're ruining me—you know that, don't you?”

“Four men amount to nothing.”

“You believe the other sixteen, having witnessed their comrades' unjust executions, will fight on?”

Maltsaev thought about that for a time, studying the ground, pushing a pebble around with the toe of his shoe. “Your point has merit,” he said. Then he brightened. “One could report, ahh, yes, well one could report that the disease has spread throughout the group, and it was determined to be of no further operational use. I could try that, Kulic, if it would help you. They would transfer you elsewhere, but your record would be clean at least. Better than clean, now that I think about it. Fervor. That's what it would show. It's just the sort of thing Yezhov likes, you know, going it one better.”

Kulic stared down the hill at his men. A word to Maltsaev and they'd all be dead. Julio Marquin, the spiderlike little shipfitter who'd climbed the convent drainpipe, was poking at a pot of rice over a bed of coals. They cooked by day—there could be no fires at night in the Guadarrama. The fool! Why had he gone and gotten his name on the wrong list? He despaired of the Spaniards, their instinct for survival had been eaten alive by their political passions. The Spanish Legion, under Yagüe, had a regimental hymn announcing to the world that their bride was death, and the Republican side was no better. Thus they slaughtered each other. What did it matter if four of them went to heaven early? His own pride was in his way, surely. How he protected his men. Took every care to protect them, to keep them from getting hurt.

He recalled, suddenly, that he'd killed his first man when he was fifteen, in a tavern brawl in Zvornik. Such strength and determination it had taken to do that. Where was it now?

“Well,” Maltsaev said, “how shall it be?”

“The best time,” he took a deep breath, “is during battle. All sorts of things happen. It could not be arranged for all four at once, of course, but over time, in a few weeks say, they would be honorably slain in action against the enemy.”

“I'm sorry. I appreciate your thinking, but it just won't do.”

“Who gave this order, Maltsaev?”

“I can't tell you that and you know it.”

“Then you do it.”

“Me? I'm a political officer. I don't shoot anybody.” He took off his straw hat and examined the inside of the crown; the leather band was sweatstained and he blew on it to dry it out.

Kulic knew he was trapped. He wanted to cut Maltsaev's throat. But then they would all die. The Ukrainians would come and, once they arrived, all the talking was over. So it was four now, or twenty-one tomorrow.

He stood up. “Sergeant Delgado,” he called. Delgado stood up naked in the stream. He was a boilermaker by profession, a man in his forties. His arms and neck were burned by the sun, the rest of his body was white.

“Yes, comrade?” the sergeant called up the hill.

“I need a patrol of four men,” he answered in his rough Spanish. He called out their names. “To gather wood,” he added.

“We have plenty of wood,” the sergeant responded.

“Sergeant!” Kulic yelled.

Nodding to himself that officers were crazy, Delgado picked his way delicately among the rocks in the streambed and went off to gather the patrol.

Maltsaev was finished blowing on his hat. “You'll see,” he said, “everything will work out for the best.” He put the hat back on, carefully adjusting the angle of the brim so that his eyes were shaded from the sun. They went up the mountain to gather firewood. Kulic was armed with his pistol and, slung over his shoulder, a Spanish bolt-action Mauser rifle, the basic weapon of the Spanish war. The four men were not armed, the better to carry the wood. They chattered among themselves, enjoying their holiday, drawing pleasure from the work detail. Now and then they looked over their shoulders at Kulic, but he waved them on. At last he found what he was looking for. A small glade, an utterly peaceful place where no people had been for a long time.

They began to gather wood, snapping dead limbs off fallen trees, bundling up twigs and sticks for kindling. They worked for an hour, tying the wood with hempen cords in such a way that it could be harnessed to their shoulders, leaving their hands free. It was the way he had taught them to do it. He knew, also, that once they were laden in this way, it would be nearly impossible for them to rush him successfully.

When they were ready to go, he held up a hand and unslung the rifle, holding it loosely at port arms. They stood there for what seemed like a long time, watching him, their faces slowly growing puzzled. One of them finally said,
“Capitán?”
—a term of honor they had granted him.

“I am sorry,” Kulic said, “but I must ask you to sit down for a moment.”

Carefully they knelt, balancing their loads, then sat, lying back against the wood bundles.

“I am told, by the Russian who came to the camp this afternoon, that you are members of the organization known as POUM, an anarchist group. Is this true?”

“Our politics are complicated,” Marquin answered, making himself spokesman for the group. “We are members of the UGT, the Communist party, but we have all attended meetings of the POUM in order to hear the thoughts of comrade Durruti, who is a greatly gifted man and a fine orator. ‘If you are victorious,' he has said to us, ‘you will be sitting on a pile of ruins. But we have always lived in slums and holes in the wall … and it is we who built the palaces and the cities, and we are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. The bourgeoisie may blast and ruin their world before they leave the stage of history. But we carry a new world in our hearts.' ”

Kulic was impressed with the speech. “You can remember all that?”

“All that and more. So many of us do not read or write, you see, that memory must serve us.”

“But you are not members.”

“No, but we do not disavow them. They too are our brothers in this struggle. We attended their meetings, before we came out here to fight the fascists, gave them a
gordo
for the coffee, signed petitions in favor of freedom for the working classes. Can this have been wrong?”