Tapestry of Spies (36 page)

“I say, don’t look so
stricken
. Why on earth do you think I cut you at school, Robert? I bloody found myself
wanting
you. Your body. I wanted to do things. It was more than I could stand, and I had to get away. Who do you think I was writing to the night of the attack? My current lover, a sailor in the merchant fleet whom I had not seen in a
devilish
long time.”

“But the women,” Florry said, still half disbelieving.

“Of which there have been exactly one, old man. A chambermaid who rather insisted when I was thirteen. It was disgusting.”

“But all the lies. All the boasts.
Why?”

“Florry, chum, being a queer, in case you don’t know, is illegal. One can end up in the Scrubs. And there’s Mother, whom it would kill, and there’s the hallowed memory of Father, the martyred hero of the Somme.
There’s all manner of relatives. And there’s the bloody will, old man. Brilliant Julian does not need to lose his little chunk of England by being branded the Oscar Wilde of 1937. Actually, I rather like girls. They’re perfect fools, but enjoyable in their silly ways. They usually have wonderful senses of color, which I admire deeply. Men have no sense of color at all.”

Florry wasn’t sure he believed him.

“All right, old man. You think I’m lying? All right, here, I’ll prove it. Put out your hand and close your eyes, and you shall get a big surprise.”

“Julian, I—”

“Don’t worry, old man. It won’t be John Thomas. Now there’s a good boy, you needn’t bother with the eyes.”

He put something in Florry’s hand.

It was the small automatic.

“It’s all cocked. It’s only been fired once, into that Dyles fellow. Now, Robert, if you still believe Brilliant Julian is a terrible Comintern nasty, then you must do your duty. England demands it. Come on, now, make up your mind, old man. This is, after all, the second chance I’ve given you.” He made a show of closing his eyes.

Florry felt the pistol grow heavy in his hand.

Finally, he handed it back. “You fool,” he said.

“We’re all fools,” said Julian.

“I cannot wait to see the look on Sampson’s face when—”

“No, I don’t quite think that would do, chum,” Julian said darkly. “I don’t really care to explain myself to the Sampsons of this world. It’s not something I’m terribly keen about. Actually, Robert, there is one other thing that needs to be straightened out. The bridge, eh? Let’s not forget the bloody bridge.”

“No, Julian. No, I haven’t forgotten the bridge.”

“You know, Stink, I don’t think it makes a pig’s whisker’s worth of difference as to who really wins out in Barcelona, the bloody POUM or the bloody Russian lads. The truth is, I’m not even sure I could tell you the difference. But do you know I’ve never really finished anything in my life? My masterpiece ‘Pons’ is the perfect example. I am a man of brilliant beginnings. And I find that what I would like to do more than anything is finish something. I would like to blow that fucking bridge into the next world. Would you care to join me, old man?”

“Yes. Yes, let’s do it. You know you always get what you want, Julian.”

“Perhaps it’s only that I want what I know I can get. But see here. There is a technical difficulty. Look at this.”

He handed over a document.

“Good Christ,” said Florry.

“Poor Dyles had it over his heart. It was not as effective in that regard as a Bible.”

It was the travel authority, sodden with blood. It was utterly worthless.

“Damn,” said Florry. “Oh, balls. Perhaps we could somehow
bluff
our way to—”

“Won’t work. Perhaps it might with the silly amateur Falangists, but the truth is we’ll be up against German professionals. I’ve seen them. I spent the summer of 1933 in Germany and watched all the Hitler stuff going on. I must say, those lads won’t be easy to fool.”

“Then we’ll—”

“Robert, listen to Brilliant Julian. Englishmen would
need
papers in order to approach the bridge, and upon that premise was this mission planned. But Germans? German officers? Why, they could get close enough to piss upon the thing.”

“But we are
not
Germans.”

“Oh, no? Stinky, I speak it like a native and I look it a bit, too, with my blond locks and these terribly blue eyes. You’d do for a Bavarian, a lower, coarser sort of brute.”

“I speak it terribly.”

“But you do understand it?”

“Yes. I read it best of all. And
papers
. We’d need papers and uniforms. How on earth could we change the whole thing in mid-course—”

“Robert, listen. It’s almost one. In half an hour I’m due to meet a chap in a Turkish bath nearby for a bit of sport. It’s that nice young Oberleutnant that I chatted up in the park. We can tell each other, you know. I rather think we could persuade him to lend us something to wear.”

Florry looked at Julian.

“What choice have we?” he asked.

“That’s the best part. None at all.”

Was he a Nazi—or just a big stupid young army officer? Florry tried to convince himself of the former. He’d beaten Jews and tortured the innocent, burned books, worn jackboots, carried torches, the whole ugly theater of the thing. It was difficult, however, to maintain this pretense in the face of his actual flesh, which was on the ample side, the freckles in his great white behind, his almost feminine body, soft and shapeless. Quite a difference once the uniform came off: something about a naked man so defenseless that it almost defies action.

He could hear them talking softly; it was infernally hot in here, the steam and everything, even though he wasn’t quite in the steam room proper, but just outside, having come in after the officer. He glanced at his watch. He was dreadfully tired and yet tomorrow rushed upon them swiftly.

“Yes,” Julian was saying, in German, “I have been to Dresden often. The china is so magnificent, the old town with its gingerbread architecture so ordered. Of course this was before the Party era. Perhaps it’s all changed now, all modern and full of factories.”

The two men, swaddled in towels, sat in the steam room.

“No, Karl,” said the officer. “No, it remains essentially a storybook city. One can have the most fabulous dreams in a place like that. It’s a lovely place. My mother and I were very happy there.”

“Yes. It’s good to know some things haven’t changed.”

“It’s so lovely to have found one in whom I can confide,” said the young officer. “You have such lovely eyes. They are so pale and lovely.”

“Thank you,” said Julian. “It’s odd how one yearns for human contact and touch. For gentleness and sympathy.”

“Yes, yes,” said the officer. “Something
deeper
than comradeship.”

Florry swallowed hard, pulled out Julian’s automatic, and prepared to play out the final lunatic act.

He burst into the steam and began waving the gun about wildly, shouting, “Attention! Attention! You are under arrest. Gestapo. Do not move.”

He pointed the pistol at the young man’s head.

“It’s Dachau for you,
liebchen
, you homosexual disgrace!” shouted Julian, leaping up, gathering the towel about his slippery body. “That’ll teach you what the German Reich expects of its young men.”

The officer began to cry. He offered no resistance, as if he knew the inevitable had at last arrived. He had gone ashen with shame and terror. He began to tremble absurdly. They brought him out of the steam room and into the locker room. Julian, pulling on his suit, began to assail him for moral turpitude.

“You swine. The army sends you out here to train these people in the arts of war, to gain valuable experience for yourself, and to show the world the finest of German manhood. Yet you spend your time trying to bugger everything that moves. The KZs are too good for you.”

“Please,” the boy begged. “Sir. You must give me an alternative. I am so weak, but I will not fail. Your pistol and I will end it all if only you tell my parents that I died honorably in battle.”

“There is no honor for you, swine.”

The boy crawled to the toilet and became sick. Florry thought that Julian was rather overdoing it. The naked boy wiped the vomit from his face with a towel. The rancid odor of sweat and farts hung everywhere in the steam. The fat boy was such a nauseating sight that Florry began to feel ill at his plight. Julian continued to harangue him with terrifying force, as if it were his own hated flaws against which he was lashing.

“You are not
fit,”
Julian was screaming, “to wear this uniform.” He had gathered it up.

“Bitte
, Herr Offizier,” sobbed the boy. “Please. Please don’t do this to me.”

“You will be taken
naked
, as you deserve, to the civil guardhouse, and there detained among thieves and pimps and Communists until suitable arrangements can be made. Is this understood?”

“Y-yes, Herr Offizier.”

Julian turned to Florry.

“Have you called headquarters for a car?”

“Yes, Herr Sturmbannführer,” said Florry. “It’s on the way. But Herr Oberleutnant Von Manheim wishes to talk with you.”

“That bloody fool,” cursed Julian. “I trust, Herr
Oberleutnant, that without your clothes you can be trusted to remain here.”

The boy only wept into his towel.

“Ah!” snorted Julian in disgust. He stepped out and Florry followed as they raced out through the foyer of the bathhouse, stopping only to gather the boy’s uniform and boots, and then headed down the cold street in the moonlight.

T
HE CAR WAS WHERE PORTELA HAD SAID IT WOULD BE, IN
a garage, on Ohte, near the Plaza de Toros. Helpfully, it was a Mercedes-Benz, black and spotless, all topped up with petrol.

“Ah, bravo,” crooned Julian, seeing it there, gleaming in the dark. “Splendid. By the way, old man, do you drive?”

“Good God, don’t you?”

“Poorly. Dangerously. I shall smash us up, I’m sure. You
must
drive. You were in the coppers. Surely they taught you such things.”

“I suppose I drove once. I haven’t driven in years. You’re rich, you’re supposed to have a car.”

“I do have a car. I just never had to drive it. There was a man who drove it. I wish he were here now.”

“I wish he were, too,” said Florry, slipping in behind the wheel. He fiddled with the choke, turned the key, and nursed it into life.

Julian opened the garage doors behind them and Florry edged out into the wet gray street. Dawn was beginning to break. Florry looked at his watch. It was nearly five by
now, and he was going on his second day without sleep and the bridge was nearly one hundred kilometers away, and where now was Julian?

Florry looked back. What the devil was he doing? The seconds ticked by as if they weren’t desperately precious until—

“Achtung!”

The officer who emerged from the garage was imperially thin and blindingly correct in the khaki tunic and trousers of the Condor Legion Tank Corps. He wore a black beret, black boots, and black belt. The Panzer skull-and-crossbones gleamed over the swastika on the front of the beret. He had a riding crop and two utterly pale blue eyes, killer’s eyes. Odd that such a terrifying apparition was a queer poet in love with sailor boys.

“Oh, I wish Morty Greenburg could see me now. What a hoot he’d have!” he said.

“Where did you get the crop?”

“Oh, in there. It’s one of the braces to an uncomfortable chair. Don’t suppose the owners will miss it, do you?”

Julian climbed in back.

“Pip, pip, fellow,” he commanded with his crop on the seat top.

Florry drove through early-morning Pamplona, crossed the river, and headed toward the flat Argonese plain that led to the Pyrenees. The road climbed, but the trim little Mercedes chugged along. Ahead, the mountains were stony and gray, still capped in winter snow.

“Now here’s the plan. I am Herr Leutnant Von Paupel, newly appointed to the front, a special engineering officer. Expert on bridges. You are Herr—oh, pick a name, old boy.”

“Brown.”

“A
German
name, Stink.
Braun
. Herr Braun, of the embassy staff. You’ve escorted me out from Pamplona at the general’s instructions.”

“What general?”

“Just say, ‘the general.’ It will drive Jerry crackers. He’s scared to death of generals. If anybody looks at you hard, merely say
‘Sieg heil
,’ and flip up your paw. And believe it. That’s the trick. You must
believe
it.”

Florry nodded, fascinated. Of course that was the core of Julian: the belief In himself, primarily, and in the primacy of his needs. Julian, the homosexual. Florry pondered it in silence.

If that is what he is, what am I, he wondered.

For I love him, too.

In the mountains, the German military traffic picked up and it became abundantly clear they were entering a war zone. Moorish sentries—tall, brown, grave men with sour looks and long Mausers slung over their capes—stood watch at crossroads; trucks full of Moors made a slower way along the road, and Florry, pushing ahead smartly, passed them. When the men saw Julian sitting in sober Nazi regalia alone in the back of the Mercedes, they saluted; he responded blankly, touching the riding crop to his hat.