Winter of the World (34 page)

‘Is that interesting?’

‘Completely fascinating.’ She put down her fork. ‘We’re finding out what the universe is really made of. There’s nothing so exciting.’ Her eyes lit up.
Apparently physics was the one thing that could distract her from her dinner.

Ilya spoke up for the first time. ‘Ah, but how does all this theoretical stuff help the revolution?’

Zoya’s eyes blazed anger, and Volodya liked her even more. ‘Some comrades make the mistake of undervaluing pure science, preferring practical research,’ she said. ‘But
technical developments, such as improved aircraft, are ultimately based on theoretical advances.’

Volodya concealed a grin. Ilya had been demolished with one casual swipe.

But Zoya had not finished. ‘This is why I wanted to talk to you, sir,’ she said to Grigori. ‘We physicists read all the scientific journals published in the West – they
foolishly reveal their results to the whole world. And lately we have realized that they are making alarming forward leaps in their understanding of atomic physics. Soviet science is in grave
danger of falling behind. I wonder if Comrade Stalin is aware of this.’

The room went quiet. The merest hint of a criticism of Stalin was dangerous. ‘He knows most things,’ Grigori said.

‘Of course,’ Zoya said automatically. ‘But perhaps there are times when loyal comrades such as yourself need to draw important matters to his attention.’

‘Yes, that’s true.’

Ilya said: ‘Undoubtedly Comrade Stalin believes that science should be consistent with Marxist-Leninist ideology.’

Volodya saw a flash of defiance in Zoya’s eyes, but she dropped her gaze and said humbly: ‘There can be no question that he is right. We scientists must clearly redouble our
efforts.’

This was horseshit, and everyone in the room knew it, but no one would say so. The proprieties had to be observed.

‘Indeed,’ said Grigori. ‘Nevertheless, I will mention it next time I get a chance to talk to the Comrade General Secretary of the Party. He may wish to look into it
further.’

‘I hope so,’ said Zoya. ‘We want to be ahead of the West.’

‘And how about after work, Zoya?’ said Grigori cheerily. ‘Do you have a boyfriend, a fiancé perhaps?’

Anya protested: ‘Dad! That’s none of our business.’

Zoya did not seem to mind. ‘No fiancé,’ she said mildly. ‘No boyfriend.’

‘As bad as my son, Volodya! He, too, is single. He is twenty-three years old, well educated, tall and handsome – yet he has no fiancée!’

Volodya squirmed at the heavy-handedness of this hint.

‘Hard to believe,’ Zoya said, and as she glanced at Volodya he saw a gleam of humour in her eyes.

Katerina put a hand on her husband’s arm. ‘Enough,’ she said. ‘Stop embarrassing the poor girl.’

The doorbell rang.

‘Again?’ said Grigori.

‘This time I have no idea who it might be,’ said Katerina as she left the kitchen.

She returned with Volodya’s boss, Major Lemitov.

Startled, Volodya jumped to his feet. ‘Good evening, sir,’ he said. ‘This is my father, Grigori Peshkov. Dad, may I present Major Lemitov?’

Lemitov saluted smartly.

Grigori said: ‘At ease, Lemitov. Sit down and have some chicken. Has my son done something wrong?’

That was precisely the thought that was making Volodya’s hands shake.

‘No, sir – rather the contrary. But . . . I was hoping for a private word with you and him.’

Volodya relaxed a little. Perhaps he was not in trouble after all.

‘Well, we’ve just about finished dinner,’ Grigori said, standing up. ‘Let’s go into my study.’

Lemitov looked at Ilya. ‘Aren’t you with the NKVD?’ he said.

‘And proud of it. Dvorkin is the name.’

‘Oh! You tried to arrest Volodya this afternoon.’

‘I thought he was behaving like a spy. I was right, wasn’t I?’

‘You must learn to arrest enemy spies, not our own.’ Lemitov went out.

Volodya grinned. That was the second time Dvorkin had been put down.

Volodya, Grigori and Lemitov crossed the hallway. The study was a small room, sparsely furnished. Grigori took the only easy chair. Lemitov sat at a small table. Volodya closed the door and
remained standing.

Lemitov said to Volodya: ‘Does your comrade father know about this afternoon’s message from Berlin?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You’d better tell him.’

Volodya related the story of the spies in Spain. His father was delighted. ‘Well done!’ he said. ‘Of course this might be disinformation, but I doubt it: the Nazis aren’t
that imaginative. However, we are. We can arrest the spies and use their radios to send misleading messages to the right-wing rebels.’

Volodya had not thought of that. Dad might play the fool with Zoya, he thought, but he still has a sharp mind for intelligence work.

‘Exactly,’ said Lemitov.

Grigori said to Volodya: ‘Your school friend, Werner, is a brave man.’ He turned back to Lemitov. ‘How do you plan to handle this?’

‘We’ll need some good intelligence men in Spain to investigate these Germans. It shouldn’t be too difficult. If they really are spies, there will be evidence: code books,
wireless sets, and so on.’ He hesitated. ‘I’ve come here to suggest we send your son.’

Volodya was astonished. He had not seen that coming.

Grigori’s face fell. ‘Ah,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I must confess, the prospect fills me with dismay. We would miss him so much.’ Then a look of resignation came
over his face, as if he realized he did not really have a choice. ‘The defence of the revolution must come first, of course.’

‘An intelligence man needs field experience,’ Lemitov said. ‘You and I have seen action, sir, but the younger generation have never been on the battlefield.’

‘True, true. How soon would he go?’

‘In three days’ time.’

Volodya could see that his father was trying desperately to think of a reason to keep him at home, but finding none. Volodya himself was excited. Spain! He thought of blood-red wine,
black-haired girls with strong brown legs, and hot sunshine instead of Moscow snow. It would be dangerous, of course, but he had not joined the army to be safe.

Grigori said: ‘Well, Volodya, what do you think?’

Volodya knew his father wanted him to come up with an objection. The only drawback he could think of was that he would not have time to get to know the stunning Zoya. ‘It is a wonderful
opportunity,’ he said. ‘I’m honoured to have been chosen.’

‘Very well,’ said his father.

‘There is one small problem,’ Lemitov said. ‘It has been decided that Army Intelligence will investigate but not actually carry out the arrests. That will be the prerogative of
the NKVD.’ His smile was humourless. ‘I’m afraid you will be working with your friend Dvorkin.’

(ii)

It was amazing, Lloyd Williams thought, how quickly you could come to love a place. He had been in Spain for only ten months, but already his passion for the country was
almost as strong as his attachment to Wales. He loved to see a rare flower blooming in the scorched landscape; he enjoyed sleeping in the afternoon; he liked the way there was wine to drink even
when there was nothing to eat. He had experienced flavours he had never tasted before: olives, paprika, chorizo, and the fiery spirit they called orujo.

He stood on a rise, staring across a heat-hazed landscape with a map in his hand. There were a few meadows beside a river, and some trees on distant mountainsides, but in between was a barren,
featureless desert of dusty soil and rock. ‘Not much cover for our advance,’ he said anxiously.

Beside him, Lenny Griffiths said: ‘It’s going to be a bloody hard battle.’

Lloyd looked at his map. Saragossa straddled the Ebro River about a hundred miles from its Mediterranean end. The town dominated communications in the Aragon region. It was a major crossroads, a
rail junction, and the meeting of three rivers. Here the Spanish army confronted the antidemocratic rebels across an arid no-man’s-land.

Some people called the government forces Republicans and the rebels Nationalists, but these were misleading names. Many people on both sides were republicans, in that they did not want to be
ruled by a king. And they were all nationalist, in that they loved their country and were willing to die for it. Lloyd thought of them as the government and the rebels.

Right now Saragossa was held by Franco’s rebels, and Lloyd was looking towards the town from a vantage point fifty miles south. ‘Still, if we can take the town, the enemy will be
bottled up in the north for another winter,’ he said.

‘If,’ said Lenny.

It was a grim prognosis, Lloyd thought gloomily, when the best he could wish for was that the rebel advance might be halted. But no victory was in sight this year for the government.

All the same, a part of Lloyd was looking forward to the fight. He had been in Spain for ten months, and this would be his first taste of action. Until now he had been an instructor in a base
camp. As soon as the Spaniards had discovered that he had been in Britain’s Officer Training Corps, they had sped him through his induction, made him a lieutenant, and put him in charge of
new arrivals. He had to drill them until obeying orders became a reflex, march them until their feet stopped bleeding and their blisters turned to calluses, and show them how to strip down and
clean what few rifles were available.

But the flood of volunteers had now slowed to a trickle, and the instructors had been moved to fighting battalions.

Lloyd wore a beret, a zipped blouson with his badge of rank roughly hand-sewn to the sleeve, and corduroy breeches. He carried a short Spanish Mauser rifle, firing 7mm ammunition that had
presumably been stolen from some Civil Guard arsenal.

Lloyd, Lenny and Dave had been split up for a while, but the three had been reunited in the British battalion of the 15th International Brigade for the coming battle. Lenny now had a black beard
and looked a decade older than his seventeen years. He had been made a sergeant, though he had no uniform, just blue dungarees and a striped bandana. He looked more like a pirate than a
soldier.

Now Lenny said: ‘Anyway, this attack has nothing to do with bottling up the rebels. It’s political. This region has always been dominated by the anarchists.’

Lloyd had seen anarchism in action during a brief spell in Barcelona. It was a cheerfully fundamentalist form of communism. Officers and men got the same pay. The dining rooms of the grand
hotels had been turned into canteens for the workers. Waiters would hand back a tip, explaining amiably that the practice of tipping was demeaning. Posters everywhere condemned prostitution as
exploitation of female comrades. There had been a wonderful atmosphere of liberation and camaraderie. The Russians hated it.

Lenny went on: ‘Now the government has brought Communist troops from the Madrid area and amalgamated us all into the new Army of the East – under overall Communist command, of
course.’

This kind of talk made Lloyd despair. The only way to win was for all the left-wing factions to work together, as they had – in the end, at least – at the Battle of Cable Street. But
anarchists and Communists had been fighting each other in the streets of Barcelona. He said: ‘Prime Minister Negrín isn’t a Communist.’

‘He might as well be.’

‘He understands that without the support of the Soviet Union we’re finished.’

‘But does that mean we abandon democracy and let the Communists take over?’

Lloyd nodded. Every discussion about the government ended the same way: do we have to do everything the Soviets want just because they are the only people who will sell us guns?

They walked down the hill. Lenny said: ‘We’ll have a nice cup of tea, now, is it?’

‘Yes, please. Two lumps of sugar in mine.’

It was a standing joke. Neither of them had had tea for months.

They came to their camp by the river. Lenny’s platoon had taken over a little cluster of crude stone buildings that had probably been cowsheds until the war drove the farmers away. A few
yards upriver a boathouse had been occupied by some Germans from the 11th International Brigade.

Lloyd and Lenny were met by Lloyd’s cousin Dave Williams. Like Lenny, Dave had aged ten years in one. He looked thin and hard, his skin tanned and dusty, his eyes wrinkled with squinting
into the sun. He wore the khaki tunic and trousers, leather belt pouches and ankle-buckled boots that formed the standard-issue uniform – though few soldiers had a complete set. He had a red
cotton scarf around his neck. He carried a Russian Mosin-Nagant rifle with the old-fashioned spike bayonet reversed, making the weapon less clumsy. At his belt he had a German 9mm Luger that he
must have taken from the corpse of a rebel officer. Apparently he was very accurate with rifle or pistol.

‘We’ve got a visitor,’ he said excitedly.

‘Who is he?’

‘She!’ said Dave, and pointed.

In the shade of a misshapen black poplar tree, a dozen British and German soldiers were talking to a startlingly beautiful woman.

‘Oh,
Duw
,’ said Lenny, using the Welsh word for God. ‘She’s a sight for sore eyes.’

She looked about twenty-five, Lloyd thought, and she was petite, with big eyes and a mass of black hair pinned up and topped by a fore-and-aft army cap. Somehow her baggy uniform seemed to cling
to her like an evening gown.

A volunteer called Heinz, who knew that Lloyd understood German, spoke to him in that language. ‘This is Teresa, sir. She has come to teach us to read.’

Lloyd nodded understanding. The International Brigades consisted of foreign volunteers mixed with Spanish soldiers, and literacy was a problem with the Spanish. They had spent their childhood
chanting the catechism in village schools run by the Catholic Church. Many priests did not teach the children to read, for fear that in later life they would get hold of socialist books. As a
result, only about half the population had been literate under the monarchy. The republican government elected in 1931 had improved education, but there remained millions of Spaniards who could not
read or write, and classes for soldiers continued even in the front line.