Tapestry of Spies (30 page)

“All right, Robert. That’s actually less interesting news to me than you might suppose. Now, good God, go to bed, you fool.”

Florry stood there and started to walk away, thinking about Julian’s luck and his own lack of it. Julian had her and it meant nothing; he’d lost her and it meant everything. He hated Julian for that, most of all: his sublime
indifference. And then he noticed what it was that had him feeling odd, feeling peculiar, feeling unsettled about the whole scene.

It was something borne on the sea breeze from Julian’s room.

It was the scent, however diluted, however mixed with other odors, and however much Florry willed it not to be, of peppermint.

Florry stood rooted to the floor. He looked up and down the corridor.

Julian, you filthy bastard
, he thought.

And then Florry realized what he must become.

He must become a spy.

He went swiftly to the door next to Julian’s. The hotel was largely empty: the chances were that the room would be empty, too. He tried his own key, which didn’t work. He opened his pocket knife and slipped it into the doorjamb and pushed mightily; the door popped open with a snap. He stepped in, preparing an excuse in case he should have roused someone, but saw instantly the beds were unused and the room immaculate. He pulled the door behind him and walked through the darkness to the balcony. He eased open the french doors and stepped through. Before him, the formal gardens radiated an icy glaze in the patina of the white moon like a dream of a maze. Beyond, the sea, a sheet of dazzled glow, altered its surface microscopically under the pressure of the light. The wind was soft yet sure.

The leap to Julian’s balcony was about six feet and it never occurred to him to look down or to believe he couldn’t make it. He slipped off his shoes, climbed over the railing, hung for just a second as he gauged the distance and prepared his nerve, and then with a mighty
push flung himself across the gap, snaring Julian’s railing with his hand and the balcony ledge with his foot. He climbed quietly over, edged along the wall. The door was slightly open.

“You’ve never wavered?”

The bloody voice. Unfilled with jangled Germanisms, unaddled with madness, but the same—or different. Calm, somehow; the accent vague, the tone sympathetic, assuring, oddly filled with conviction.

“Of course
I’ve wavered,” said Julian, distraught. “I’ve hated myself. I revolt myself. Who do you think I am, a bloody saint?”

“No, of course not. You are only another weak man such as myself.”

“Not
such as yourself. You’re a bloody inspiration. I’m just sullied flesh.”

“You must be strong.”

“Ah, God.” Julian seemed to arch with agony and disbelief. Florry had never heard him so close to losing control. His voice was full of tremulous emotion.

“You cannot help yourself,” said Levitsky.

“No, I can’t,” said Julian. “I try. But you’ve got me wholly, totally.” He sounded angry now.

“You’ll come in the end to accept your other self, your true self. You’ll see how your mission is the most important part of you. How all the misrepresentations, the lies, the deceits—how they make you stronger over the longer course. You will understand things you might not otherwise. Your sensitivities are increased, they are keener, more perceptive. It means you are special. You’ll come in the end to define it as a strength.”

Florry could stand no more.

That was it, then—utterly and irrevocably. Damn them. Damn them both.

He retreated swiftly, slipping back across the gap and quickly put on his shoes. He checked his watch. It was almost one. The car would come at nine tomorrow and by nightfall they’d be off.

It was time at last to read
Tristram Shandy
.

In the morning, Florry went down to the lobby. Julian and Sylvia were already talking.

“Oh, hullo, Stink. Just saying our good-byes.”

She was watching him talk, her eyes radiant with love and submission. She hardly looked at Florry.

“Well, look, here comes the car and bloody Steinbach and his chum Portela. I suppose I should let you have a last minute alone. May I, Robert?” He kissed Sylvia lightly on the cheek, then backed off. “Good-bye, Sylvia. It was splendid.”

He turned and went out to the car.

“Sylvia, can you do me one favor?” Florry said.

“Yes, Robert.”

“Look here, it’s so silly, I borrowed a copy of
Tristram Shandy
from this chap Sampson in Barcelona. A newsman of
The Times
. I know it sounds silly, but I’d like to get it back to him. Do you think you could drop it off? You’d find him at the Café de las Ramblas.”

“Yes, Robert, of course.”

“Thank you. And I shall see you—ah, the week of the twentieth, shall we say? At the Grand Oriente. At eleven in the morning? Tuesday, shall we say?”

“Yes. I’ll be there.”

He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her.

“This would be so much bloody easier if I didn’t love you so much.”

“I wish I loved you the way you require, Robert. I wish
you didn’t feel you had to own me. Watch after yourself. Watch after Julian.”

Florry turned and left for the car. He would not look back. He could feel his Webley against his side in the shoulder holster. He’d oiled and cleaned it. And loaded it.

L
EVITSKY SAT IN THE SQUARE AT THE CAFÉ. HE WAS VERY
tired. He ordered a cup of
café con leche
. He looked about. It could have been any village in Spain. It was called Cabrillo de Mar, about ten miles out of Salou on the road to Lerida. Soon a Twenty-ninth Division staff car that would be taking Florry and Julian Raines on their mission would pass through the village on the way toward the front.

He was so tired of traveling. Yet there was one last thing to do.

The coffee arrived. He poured the milk into it, mixed it until it was thick, and then took a sip: delicious. As you get old, certain comforts matter more.

You should get going, he told himself. Back to Barcelona. Finish it. Why wait?

I wait because I am tired. And because I must see.

Go on, old man. Leave.

No. He had to
see
the car and
know
they were off. It was the old empiricist in him, that unwillingness to trust what he hadn’t observed. He wondered when he would
feel the triumph. Or would he feel it at all? He had done it, after all; but at such cost.

Sacrifices. Old man, you are the master of sacrifice. Let no man ever say the Devil Himself doesn’t understand two things: the theory of history and the theory of sacrifice. However, perhaps in this century they are the same.

He felt eyes on him and looked up. A member of the Guardia Civil was headed toward him. It was a pockmarked boy with a Labora machine pistol slung over his shoulder. He wore a khaki mono and a gorilla cap with a red star on it. He looked stupid.

“Salud, comrade,” called Levitsky.

The boy regarded him, and Levitsky, bleary eyed, could feel the hate. What was it, the battered way he looked? The smell of peppermint? His clear foreignness?

“Your papers, comrade,” said the boy.

Levitsky got out a passport.

“A foreigner?”

“Yes, I’m an international,” Levitsky said, and knew instantly he’d blundered.

“Are you English? Russian?” asked the boy.

“No, comrade. Polish.”

“I think you’re Russian.”

“No. No, comrade. Long live the revolution. I’m Polish.”

“No, I think you’re a Russian.” He swung the machine pistol over onto him.

“Hands up,” he said. “You’re a Russian, here to take over. Get going.” The gun muzzle looked big as a church bell.

Levitsky rose. The boy walked him across the square.

The boy seemed to hate Russians for some reason. Or perhaps it was something else: he had just wanted to
parade somebody through the square at gunpoint with his shiny new weapon to show off for the girls of the town.

As he walked he could sense something odd about this place: the slogans smeared on the stucco walls in the hot sun had a kind of stridency to them he hadn’t noticed in other such villages. He translated.

He soon found himself in the Guardia Civil station—or what had once been a Guardia Civil station and was now littered and looted and clearly in the possession of some sort of People’s Committee for Order. The boy put him in the one cell of the dirty little building overlooking the square.

They were waiting, the boy had explained, for the
sargento
, who would take care of everything. Levitsky told himself he really ought to get some sleep. You’re an old man, comrade, he thought. Almost sixty; you’ve still got something to do. You need your rest.

And thus he was situated when a car did in fact appear in the square. It was not, however, the car he expected; it was another vehicle altogether, and when it drew to a halt and its door popped open, two thuggish Spaniards in overcoats got out, checked around, and nodded into its dark interior. Comrade Bolodin emerged.

Levitsky drew back. Trapped.

As the two thugs came inside, Levitsky quickly dropped to the straw bunk and turned toward the wall, wrapping himself in the blanket. He heard the two newcomers arguing with the boy. The men kept saying SIM, SIM,
over and over. No, the boy kept saying, FIJL, which was the Federación Iberia de Juventudes Liberatatión, the radical anarchist youth organization.

The boy, in short, wouldn’t listen to them because they were the enemy, here to take over the revolution from the people in this small seacoast village.

“Sargento,”
he kept saying.
“Sargento.”

The two men after a time returned to the car, and Levitsky heard one of them speak in heavily accented English to Bolodin.

“Señor Boss, this snot-nose kid, he say is nothing he can do until his sergeant come.”

“Christ,” said Bolodin. “You show him the picture?”

“Boss, this kid, he is having a machine gun. Is no toy.”

“You moron. I ought to turn him loose on you.”

“Sorry, Comrade Boss.”

“Don’t ‘Sorry, Comrade Boss’ me. I didn’t drive here half the night from Tarragona for the old goat to hear you say you were sorry. Just get over there and wait.”

Levitsky was impressed. Bolodin had penetrated his own motives and taken his inquiries to the hospital, on the belief that Levitsky would be hanging around wounded Englishmen. Now he was up here on the road to Cab de Salou showing the picture of Levitsky from
Deutsche Schachzeitung
. If he showed it to the boy …

They walked over to the café and commandeered a table near the sidewalk. Levitsky watched as Bolodin put his feet up on the railing and pulled out a brightly colored pack of cigarettes, plucked one out, and quickly lit it. He did not offer smokes to his companions, who sat on either side with the nervous alertness of bodyguards.

Levitsky looked at his watch. It was about nine thirty. The boy said the sergeant came in at ten. He looked around the cell for a way out and could see none. The
boy sat in the front room with his machine pistol. He looked straight ahead.

Another locked room. As if the first weren’t terror enough, he had to play the same—

“Boy. Hey, boy. Come here,” Levitsky called.

The boy grabbed his weapon and came back. He had sullen, stupid eyes and seemed bull-headedly frightened of making a mistake. His khaki uniform was too big; still, he was lucky to be here, and not out in the trenches somewhere, or caught by opposing factionalists and stood against the wall.

“Durutti?” Levitsky suddenly asked, naming the Anarchist hero killed leading a column of Anarchist troops in the Battle of Madrid late last year.

The boy looked at him suspiciously.

“
Sí
, Durutti,” he said.

“¡Viva
Durutti!” said Levitsky with enthusiasm. He gave the Anarchist’s double-fisted salute. He’d actually known this Durutti in Moscow in 1935 at the Lux. The man was a hopeless dreamer and lunatic, exactly the sort of uncontrollable rogue who’d become a great hero in the civil war, but utterly worthless at any other time. The Anarchists were all like that: wedded to absurd notions of a stateless society.

“You’re an Anarchist, no?” he asked.

“Sí
, I’m an Anarchist. Long live Anarchism. Death to the state!” proclaimed the boy.

Levitsky saw just the slightest chance.

“I’m an Anarchist also,” he said carefully, hoping his Spanish was right.

“No,” said the boy. “Russians can’t be Anarchists. Russians are all gangsters. Stalin is the head gangster.”

“I’m Polish,” said Levitsky. “A Polish Anarchist.”

The boy looked at him darkly.

“Revolución sí, la guerra no,”
Levitsky added, hoping again to approximate the idea of the Durutti slogan.

“Sí
,” said the boy.

“Comrade,” said Levitsky.
“Por favor
. Look at this.” He smiled slyly.

He rolled up his sleeve, past the elbow. There on his right biceps a black fist clenched in ardent fury, ready to smite the governments and policemen of the world. The tattoo dated from 1911. He and several others of the Party had been trying to organize the Trieste millworkers but at every step of the way they were opposed by an Anarchist organization that loathed Bolsheviks. Levitsky had been directed to stop them, for their irresponsibility could so enflame the policemen of the Continent that revolutionary activity would be impossible for months. He’d penetrated their secret society under an alias and been tattooed with the black fist as part of his rite of passage. When after months of careful maneuver he had finally met the ringleaders in a Trieste café, he’d betrayed them to the police. They were taken off and most of them had died in prison.