The Second Son: A Novel (33 page)

Again Sanz hesitated before he began to nod. “Yes—yes, of course. I have it all here.”

Sanz retrieved various sheets from the bottom drawer of his desk and handed them to Hoffner.

“I believe that’s everything.”

Hoffner quickly peeled through the stack until he came to the fourth page. It was there he read the announcement of incorporation for the Spanish Moroccan Transport Company, a company intending to ship medical supplies and engine parts and farming equipment—the list went on and on. It was a general partnership, with a Johann Bernhardt as its chief officer. The funding, though vague, had come from Berlin. How or when this had happened was, of course, not made clear on the pages in front of Hoffner. Perhaps that was where Langenheim had played his role.

That said, it was Bernhardt who had created a legitimate private company as a front for supplying weapons. Along with the shipments from Germany to the primary base in Morocco, Bernhardt and his cohorts were planning on sending rifles and ammunition directly to recently formed Hisma outposts throughout Spain. Teruel had been the testing ground. So far, three shipments had passed through unimpeded. The weapons were coming encased in old turbine and piping crates, some even in medical supply boxes. Thus far it was only enough for two or three squads, but expand it to the other cities on Doval’s list—that straight line across Spain—and Hoffner could only imagine what a few thousand stockpiled rifles could do for a conquering army. Franco would simply need to get to the city gates, and the guns would be waiting for him—or, better yet, turned on the men still inside.

“Thinner crates,” Hoffner said. “Of course. I’ll put it in my next report.”

A LONG, LONG SWIM

There is a kind of madness that lives on the plains of La Mancha. It settles on the mind in the last of the afternoon, when the sun perches between the passing sails of the windmills and seems to wink with every turn of the blade. It isn’t the billowing itself that sparks the delusion—that, they say, requires a nobler kind of madness—but the sudden and unrelenting sense that this might be the last time the sun will make such an effort. La Mancha begs for indifference, or at least a disregard from anything still clinging to life. Even the trees know it. Hobbled by their own weight and bent toward senility, they peer out across the burned earth and laugh through parched bark at anyone foolish enough to remain out under this sky. It is, if He would admit it, the only place where God gazes down and wonders if even He has something still to learn. Maybe, then, the madness is His, for what else could God possibly have to learn, especially from a strip of land ready to shred itself on the truth.

Driving through the heat, Hoffner gazed into the bleached red of the sky, the color of blood mixed with water, although here it was clouds sifting through a dying sun. He had lost track of time, more so of which Spain he was in. This far east, La Mancha gave no aid in defining lines of defense or offense. It was simply men in the distance, a signal to pull over, rifles and pistols raised, and a determined effort to produce the right papers. Neckerchiefed soldiers became uniformed ones became neckerchiefed ones again, even if the stares and faces all looked the same. A wrong turn and it might have been another platoon of young
requetés
—a few more hours lost to the fitful infancy of war—but at some point Mila convinced him that they had seen the last of the Nationalists. They changed their clothes. Hoffner scratched a large CNT-FAI across the car door. And Mila found a well and filled the canteens. They were back in Republican Spain, although Hoffner had a sense that there was little hope of finding Barcelona’s arrogance anywhere in here.

In those timeless stretches of road, Hoffner began to see where Georg had been leading him. Han Shen had given him Vollman. Vollman had sent him to Teruel. Teruel had given him Major Sanz and the names and the cities where Hisma would be setting up shop. Hoffner ran through those names in his head, over and over, until a single image began to form: Cuenca, Tarancón, Toledo, Coria—a straight line of some six hundred kilometers to the Portuguese border. Add Badajoz to the list and the shape took on the form of an inverted skillet, with Badajoz at the base of its handle, and Madrid perched just above at the center of the pan. Madrid. The key to Spain. Arm these hidden pockets of rebellion with rifles and ammunition and they would crackle like tinder to light the flames and swallow Madrid whole.

Somewhere in those six hundred kilometers was Georg. It was now a race to Badajoz.

Oddly enough, Hoffner and Mila seemed to be the only ones moving with any urgency. Where the coast road to Barcelona had seen fish and fruit baskets carried in twos, here it was mule trains, three or four in a line, with carts in tow painted all manner of bright colors. They overflowed with charcoal and firewood, wineskins and gossip, and, while the wheels were as tall as a man, they never seemed to move more than a few kilometers an hour. They had known Spain well before Hannibal, well before God, and looked none the worse for it: men with flat Siberian faces, heavy coats even in this heat, and never so much as a glance for the Mercedes as it raced by. Why show wonder at something as momentary as an elephant warrior or a suit of steel? “This too shall pass” seemed to echo in the plodding groan of the wheels.

Two hours in, Cuenca came and went. To Hoffner, it was a city unlike any he had seen before, a modern Babel perched high on a slab of rock between two narrow ravines. Where reason would have told it to build bridges so as to step beyond the rock, Cuenca had chosen to climb ever higher, its buildings spiraling up to hang like wireless birdhouses over the water below. Unsteady as they looked, they gave a perfect view of the bodies now lying across the bottom of the ravine—Guardia, landowners, priests. There was always a priest.

Hoffner and Mila had sat in one such place, a tavern of sorts, and listened to the story of a man called Guzman, a good honest tradesman, who had treated his workers with justice and had thus survived the first days of the fighting. Somehow, though, poor Guzman had been found hiding holy objects taken from the cathedral. Clutching at these little crucifixes and chalices, he had said it was a simple misunderstanding. He was planning on melting them down. He was a businessman, after all, not a fascist. So, taking him out into the square, the militiamen had insisted he do so—now, at this very moment. Guzman had nodded several times, looked at his wife, and broken down and prayed. He cursed the rabble, told them they would burn for their heresy, and refused to give up even one of his treasures until he was beaten senseless. He was then shot and tossed over the wall.

This was only one of a handful of stories making the rounds, but luckily it was the first Hoffner and Mila heard. Guzman was the contact name on Captain Doval’s list, the name confirmed by Major Sanz back in Teruel. Guzman was the Hisma liaison. Had Hoffner gone asking for this man, he and Mila might now be resting alongside him on the rocks.

There had been no point in looking for Georg. Guzman had been dead days before Georg could have gotten there. With no Hisma liaison to question, Georg would have moved on.

Surprisingly, Georg’s absence was not the reason they were now back on the road. Mila had refused to stay in the city for the night. Hoffner thought it an odd reaction, especially given her outburst about Alfassi, but he kept it to himself. He knew she would be finding fewer and fewer places to sleep if stories like these continued to trouble her.

The first stars came quickly through the dusk. It was only minutes before they filled a sky the color of charred cork, with a moon so low on the horizon it looked as if it might loose itself and roll across the plains and hillocks. The air was cooler, and the smell sweet like pressed grass.

It was pointless to think they would find beds tonight. Tarancón was still another sixty kilometers on. Arriving in the middle of the night in a Mercedes driven by a German, no matter how pure his Spanish, would only complicate things. And the villages along the way wanted nothing to do with anything or anyone unknown. It left the backseat of the car as the only choice until Mila said, “There,” and pointed out into the middle of the darkness.

Some fifty meters off, a small fire was burning at the center of some rocks. In the shadows stood three mule carts, the mules tethered to the side.

“You won’t get a word in,” she said, “but they’ll let us sleep. You’ll also drink the strangest wine you’ve ever tasted. Flick the lights and stop the car.”

Hoffner did what she asked and then followed her across the brush grass toward the flame. The coolness in the air had turned to chill. He draped his jacket across her shoulders.

Two men sat around the fire. They were interchangeable save for the misshapen hands, fingers broken at odd angles, badges of honor from the hoof of a mule or a wheel rolling backward in the mud. How they managed to keep a grip on anything remained a mystery. They were drinking from a
porrón
, a glass bottle with a pointed spout. Tipped up, it remained just beyond the lips—much to Hoffner’s relief—and sent a thin jet of wine spurting into the mouth. They passed it back and forth while a tin pannikin sat over the fire and cooked something smelling of meat.

“
Salud
, friends,” Mila said, as she and Hoffner drew closer.

Neither man looked over. One drank while the other stirred. The one stirring said, “Tonight it’s ‘
Salud
.’ Last night we had ‘Most gracious señors.’ I think I liked last night better.”

Mila said, “You ate with soldiers last night?”

“We drank with soldiers last night. And you?”

“A bed in a tavern.”

“Very nice. Nicer than this.”

The other stopped drinking and handed the
porrón
up to Mila. She took it, drank, and handed it to Hoffner. He drank and handed it back. The taste was like oranges left too long in the sun, with a burning at the base of the throat. Hoffner knew this was more than wine.

Mila said, “May we sit, friends?”

The one stirring said, “What do you bring?”

She drew her arms closer across her chest and said, “Warm bodies and conversation.”

The one stirring smiled and said, “Not so warm.” He nodded over to the other. “Get them blankets.”

The other stood and walked slowly back to the carts. Mila and Hoffner stood close by the fire. When the man returned, the blankets were a soft wool—softer than Hoffner expected—and smelled of camphor oil. Mila and Hoffner both sat on the same one and pulled the other over their legs.

The one stirring said, “A man who lets a woman do all the talking.” The smile remained. “I’m not sure I like this kind of man.”

Hoffner said, “It saves time.”

Only now did either of the men show a reaction. They both turned and looked at Hoffner. The stirring stopped, then slowly started again. The one stirring said, “You speak a Spanish not of Spain.”

“Not of Spain, no,” said Hoffner.

“Hers has a Catalan,” said the man, “but she’s sat like this before. Not you. She knew to drink first, then sit. You’re lucky to be with a woman who knows these things.”

The hands might have been battered, but the ears were remarkably fine-tuned. Hoffner nodded. “Yes.”

“Have you come to fight these soldiers? They’re very eager to fight.”

“No,” said Hoffner.

“They tell me they have only a few more weeks of this, and then the fighting will stop. They’ll have taken what they want.”

“They’re soldiers,” said Hoffner. “They have to believe that.”

“Yes,” said the man. He stopped stirring and gingerly pulled the tin from the flame. “The others say Franco is dead, so it’s hard to know who to believe.”

The name of Franco was the last thing Hoffner had expected to hear. Evidently the war was not so young if it had reached this place.

Mila said, “Franco is dead?”

The man tipped the meat onto another dish and passed it to the other. “Drowned trying to come across from Africa. It’s a long, long swim.” He set the pannikin over the flame and pulled something from a leather bag. “Goat. Tough but fresh.”

“Good,” said Mila.

The other passed Hoffner the
porrón
and began to gnaw at his meat. Hoffner drank. It was already finding his head. He handed it to Mila and she passed it to the one stirring.

He said, “Next go-round you’ll drink again.”

“Yes,” said Mila.

The one who stirred talked and talked—about the age of his mules, the men in Jábaga who had refused to let him enter the town—“But you
know
me…” “We know no one”—and the rifles he had seen stacked along the walls and ready to be fired, if only they could find a way to scrub thirty years of rust from a barrel. The other chewed and swallowed, swallowed and chewed, and glanced at Mila each time his friend mentioned guns or dying. They had seen their share of it, men left for dead in cars, propped up behind a wheel at the side of the road and still gasping for breath. Rich men, with wide neckties and fat cheeks and mouths dried with blood where the butt of a rifle had taken out the teeth. And when Mila finally shivered from the cold, he stopped and told her to drink and sent his friend to the cart for a wrap to sleep in.

“Franco is dead,” the man said again. A car passed in the distance. “That’s what I tell them. It makes the men think twice about what they do.”