Night Soldiers

April. Sleet storms rattled the windows. Outside, on Arbat Street, a broken water pipe had revealed its presence as the spring thaw began and a group of workers was breaking up the pavement with sledgehammers. The boiler had been turned off and in the classroom Khristo wore wool gloves and scarf and cap. He could see his breath when he spoke. "Good morning, Mr. Stoianev." "Good morning, Mr. Smiss." "Smith." "Good morning, Mr. Smiith." "How did you spend your evening?" "I read a most interesting book, by the English writer Arthur Grahame." "What was it called?" "Called _That Some Shall Know."__ "What did this book concern itself with?" "It is a novel, about conditions of the agrarian poor in Great Britain." "And what did you find the most telling scene in this book?" "The scene where the duke struck the peasant in the face with a riding crop." "Why did that interest you?" "It showed the contempt of the ruling classes for their serfs, and that servitude exists even today in Great Britain, a nation that many in the world wrongly regard as progressive." "Thank you, Mr. Stoianev." "You are welcome, Mr. Smiith." In the street, the sledgehammers rang against the cement, a slow, steady rhythm. It was Kerenyi, the Hungarian boy from Esztergom, who found the dog hiding in the cellar. A wet brown thing with sad eyes, half starved, its broad tail sweeping coal dust from the cement floor in hopeful joy. Kerenyi looked like a plowboy--even after the medical directorate had provided him with a delicate set of wire-framed eyeglasses--broad-shouldered and shambling, thick-handed, slow of speech, though his father taught mathematics in a school for the children of aristocrats. It had been the elder Kerenyi's political convictions that had sent his son east, convictions turned into actions by the fiery speeches of Bela Kun, the Hungarian communist leader. Even after the students learned of his genteel background they still called Kerenyi "Plowboy." There was a gentleness, a willing kindness, about him that reminded them of those who worked in the earth, those who never complained when the cart had to be pushed. It was to Ilya Goldman that Kerenyi went after he discovered the dog. Goldman, the son of a Bucharest lawyer, had come to Moscow just as Kerenyi had, for ideological reasons. Kerenyi idolized the Jewish Goldman, who, small, near-sighted, exceptionally clever, embodied for him the idealistic intellectual who would lead the world into the new age. In the cellar, late at night, Goldman threw his cap against the far wall and the dog galloped across the room and brought it back to him, eyes shining with achievement. Kulic was brought into the business because he had a friend in the kitchen, a skinny girl who scrubbed the soup pots and slipped him a few extra scraps when she could. They never did agree on a name. Or a breed. Kerenyi claimed it was part Viszla, the pointer dog of Hungary. Goldman, a city boy, had no opinion on the matter, but Khristo, after Kulic had dragged him downstairs to show him "the new student," thought it more retriever than pointer. With most of Unit Eight now reassembled they could not leave Volutaout of it, and it was Volutawho stole the soup bowl that they used as a water dish. To coordinate the operational necessities--food, water, waste removal, play--they required an operational code name. It was Kulic who suggested BF825--the symbolic cryptogram he'd carved on the wall of a railway car. Thus an apparently blank slip of paper Khristo found in his pocket read, when pressed against a hot pipe: "BF825requires a theft of bread from the evening meal." It was dieir Codes and Ciphers instructor who had taught them that canine urine would serve, in extremity, for secret ink. She would, they thought, be amused to learn how her instruction was being used--but of course she could not be told about it. They had the dog for ten days, and they would forever associate it with Kerenyi. As the dog loved all who befriended it, Kerenyi was always prepared to be kind, to lend a hand when he could. Everyone at Arbat Street, student and instructor alike, knew that Kerenyi had no business being there--such ready affection would only get him in trouble, sooner or later--but the instructors were loath to fail him and his fellow comrades jspent long hours making certain he could pass his examinations. One Friday the entire group was marched off to a vast theater in central Moscow to hear a four-hour speech by Ordzhonikidze, the passionate Georgian from the Caucasus, a prominent leader among the Bolsheviks, and when they returned the dog was gone. Its dish, toy, and piece of blanket were gone as well and the floor had been swept clean of coal dust and mopped with carbolic. A week later, the weather broke. The spring rains swept in from the west, warm and steady. The great snow mounds, blackened by months of soot and ash, turned crystalline, then spongy, and the cobbled streets ran like rivers. The Moskva rose in its banks, people crossing the bridges stopped to watch great chunks of dirty ice spinning past below them. Rain pattered on the roofs, ran down the windows in big droplets, dripped from gutters, downspouts, eaves, and the brims of hats. It was a great softening, night and day it continued, a water funeral for the dying winter. Late that afternoon, they came for him. Two members of the school security staff took him to the parlor, then stood politely to one side. The power station had gone wrong again, so the lamps flickered and dimmed and left the corners of the room in shadow. Saschawas leaning against the back of a sofa, a white scarf looped casually around his neck, hands thrust deep into the pockets of a brown leather coat that glistened with afternoon rain. A cigarette dangled from one corner of his mouth and the smoke, drifting through the soft dusk that lit the parlor, made his presence cloudy and obscure. He raised one hand and flicked the fingers, at which signal the two security officers left the room. "I am told you do very well here," he said. "Thank you, comrade Sascha." "I am called Sascha. Only that. Save your _comrades__ for those who need them." He moved about the room, slowly andspeculatively. The end of the cigarette glowed briefly and two long plumes of smoke flowed from his nostrils. "Tell me, Khristo. Tell me the truth--I promise that your answer will not hurt you. Do you dream? Specifically, do you dream of her? The redheaded girl? Does she reach out to you at night? Or, perhaps, is she under water? Long hair streaming out? She might call out your name. Does she do that? Possibly a private name, a sweet name, that you shared." He reached the far corner, turned slowly, moved back toward the window. "You may tell me, Khristo Nicolaievich. I am, among other things, your confessor." Khristo took a beat to organize himself. "I do not dream of her," he said. "Of what, then?" "I dream of freedom for my people." He stopped walking and stared, canting his head over slightly. "Do you," he said. Again he began to pace, took his hands from his pockets and clasped them behind his back. "Well, perhaps you do, after all, perhaps you do. We speak of such things. We speak of little else, in fact. But that it should actually happen..."He stopped. Seemed for a moment to commune with himself. "Maybe they have taught you that, your faithful instructors. Maybe they have taught you to dream in the prescribed manner. Imagine. To tame the dreams." "Not that, Sascha." "Hmm. Well, don't give up. Keep trying. You must, you know--the proletariat demands it--keep trying. Tell me, what do you think of this: "Ten thousand banners marching, 'neath the reddened sun. They sing,? hear it, a leader's glorious name." He waited. Facing Khristo, staring through the drifting smoke. "It is a poem of inspiration," Khristo said. "Yes, oh yes, student Khristo, you do learn well here, they are right to say it. For you do not say it is _inspiring__--you do not know who wrote it, or when, or why, and you could be wrong. Very wrong indeed to be inspired by an improper sentiment. Such errors often cannot be forgiven, and where would you be then? Eh? On your knees in a cellar?" He waited. Khristo had to answer. "May I ask who wrote the poem?" "I wrote it. I am a poet. Can you not look at me and see that? When I was very young, I was obsessed with foolishness, romantic nonsense. My poems were full of herons, birch trees, endless skies, and girls with pretty hands. Now, well, you have heard. Truth found me. Sought me out, perfected my heart. _The plow,__ it whispered, _your soul has lost its plow."__ He stood close to Khristo and took him by the shoulders. The smell of alcohol was overwhelming, as though it sweated through his pores. Khristo squinted as the cigarette smoke burned his eyes. The room was suddenly very still. "The plow of steel," he went on, voice persuasive and logical, "turns our black earth to silver,/thus our Leader's wisdom/Opens our hearts to knowledge." He drew back and waited a moment, returned his hands to his pockets and waited for a reaction. "Khristo Nicolaievich," he said, "how do you not weep to hear such thoughts?" When there was no response he took the cigarette from hismouth and dropped it at his feet, where it smoldered in the carpet. Then he walked to the window and looked out. "This fucking rain," he said. He drew the leather coat around his shoulders as though he were suddenly cold, turned toward Khristo and gazed into his eyes. "Well," he said, "we are to be married, you and I." Khristo did not answer. "Yes,"Saschasaid, "it is time you left this house of virgins." "I see." "But marriage, you know, is a serious business. You will have to be the very best of wives. Obedient and good-natured, ready always to protect the honor of the family. You must never flirt with strangers, or tell our secrets at the village well. And, of course, you must be eternally faithful. That most of all. Do you understand?"����������������������������������������������������������������-- "I do," Khristo said. Saschasmiled crookedly at the words, and nodded to himself. "Yes," he said, "I almost believe you. You will give all but a little corner of your heart--a private place, you think." Khristo almost answered, then stopped. Saschalaughed. "Knowledge is forgiveness, boy, and who among us has not crossed his fingers behind his back? Come along, _bra-tets"__--the word meant _little brother__--"and we'll go and see the priest." He stepped back and gestured for Khristo to precede him through the alcove that led from the parlor to the door of the house. He followed, and his hand fell affectionately on Khristo's shoulder. Saschawas slim and small-boned, an aristocrat, a man made for drawing rooms, but the force of the blow very nearly drove Khristo to his knees. It was the same black Pobedaas before, idling at the curb, shiny with rain. And the same driver, a thick roll of flesh riding atop his collar. This time, Saschajoined him in back. Crawled across the gray upholstery, sank down in the corner of the seat, and closed his eyes. They tore across the city at great speed, the driver banging on the horn with a red fist. The windshield wiper squeaked as it jerked back and forth across the glass. The back end of thecar fishtailed alarmingly as the driver bent it into the corners. They bounced through puddles, spewing up huge fountains of brownish water, and people scattered in front of them, nailing and slipping on the wet pavement. An old man, stooped almost double, was startled from a daydream as he crossed the street and dropped a large sack as he hobbled for safety. Potatoes rolled every which way--the car bumped as it passed over them. Khristo turned and looked back. The man was gathering them up from the gutter as best he could. The driver, glancing at his outside mirror, snorted to himself: "Horseshit in the soup tonight, Papa." The rain stiffened, sweeping over them in windblown sheets, and the Pobeda's amber beams seemed useless and insignificant in the dark blue light of the late afternoon. After cutting through a maze of city streets, they turned onto the ring road that surrounded the city, coming up on the occasional truck. The truck driver, knowledgeable on the subject of shiny black Pobedas, would wobble off the road to let them pass. Some twenty minutes later the car slowed, the driver peered into the gloom, grunted with satisfaction, and swerved between two armored cars parked in a vee at the entrance to a broad avenue. Khristo caught a glimpse of a horrified white face in the front of the armored car on his side as the driver punched the accelerator and went sideways through the narrow gap. The slewing turn woke Saschaup. "Mitya," he said, "you drive like a peasant." "I am a peasant," the driver answered. It was a grand, straight road that led out into the countryside, lined with towering poplars that swayed in the wind, a scene that suggested dispatch riders on horseback and carriages with footmen. Khristo stared out the window. There were police everywhere, wearing rain capes and armed with submachine guns. Hundreds and hundreds of them stamped their feet by the side of the road, snapping to attention as they flew by. A Stolypin car was parked at every intersection. Otherwise it was deserted, not a single vehicle going in either direction. "Getting an eyeful?"Saschaasked. Khristo turned away. It was not wise to look around too much--spies were said to memorize details of bridges and railways and police posts. Nobody in Moscow, despite the glare of the summer sun, wore sunglasses. It was not precisely forbidden, but it made people wonder why the eyes were concealed. "It is the road to Koba's dacha,"Saschaexplained, using Stalin's affectionate nickname. "Twenty miles of it. Three special battalions guard it day and night--even the foxes don't come here." Three battalions meant thirty-six hundred men. Day and night. What was it Antipin had said about the soldier who guarded the spot where a flower had once grown? "Don't forget the bodyguard," Mitya said. "Correct,"Saschasaid. "Wherever he is, dear Koba is accompanied by four hundred and two bodyguards. Not four hundred and three or one. The number must have special significance--so special, in fact, that none of us has ever figured it out. Nonetheless, you see how well our leader is beloved, that we protect him so." Mitya laughed. "Big country, big numbers, everything big. When the bad spirits take our hearts and the blood runs high, we hack each other down like wheat, comrade student. Do you see? Koba knows us. Better than we know ourselves. We are all peasants--even the delicate flower in the back seat with you--and every peasant pines for the scythe in his hand. Wha-aaack!" He slashed at the dashboard with the side of his hand. "And there are eight hundred and four whose single job it is to watch the four hundred and two!" "Mitya indulges himself,"Saschasaid. "Now today, alas, you do not go to meet the Great One himself. If I were you, I would not be too sad about that. Whom Koba meets, he thinks about, and you are too young to be thought about in that way. No, today is our wedding day, as I have said, and the ceremony is to be performed by Yagoda himself. You know who that is?" "Chairman Yagoda is the leader of the NKVD," Khristo said. "Very good,"Saschasaid. "He is my boss and your boss, so be on your best behavior. Watch me, and do what I do. Remember that you are one of us." Khristo had overheard the instructors talking about Yagoda. It was obvious they feared him. Genrikh Yagoda had been born,raised, and educated in the Polish textile city of Lodz, like his father before him, he was a chemist by training, and was known as Yagoda the Chemist. He had been Stalin's fist after the Revolution, no less an eminent chekist for being Polish. The great Dzer-zhinsky, who had founded the Soviet intelligence services, was a Pole, and two of his notable assistants--M. Y.Latsis and Y. K.Peters--were Latvians by birth. Yagoda, in1918,had organized and directed the new Gulag system of labor camps. He had disappeared for a time, then, in1934,had been appointed head of NKVD. It was rumored that he had plotted the death of Stalin's rival Kirov and had suggested that the assassination be used as pretext for getting rid of the Old Bolsheviks. There were rumors darker yet--his contemporary Bayonov had written that Koch's bacilli, introduced in the subject's food, would produce a galloping tuberculosis and a quick death from apparently natural causes. Thus there were some who would implicate him in Lenin's death as well as Kirov's. For Khristo, the memory of that evening was never entirely clear. Certain moments stayed with him; every detail, every inflection of voice sharply recollected. Other times were lost in the mists. There were toasts--with different vodkas: Zubrovka, Polish Os-trova, the fiery Pertsovka. Two ounces every time. To Stalin. To revolution. To breasts and pussies. To departed friends. To the great city of Lodz. To Kiev. To Baku in the Transcaucasus. To Lenin. To life. To laughter. To friendship. Slowly the edges of the grand ballroom, all parquet and crystal to please the mistress of an aging prince, dimmed and faded from his vision. He began to feel as though he were sinking--a dizzying descent in both mind and body--into some desert valley at the depths of his soul. A sad and desperate place, arid, cruel, strewn with the bones of old friends and dreams, lost love, the times of childhood. He sank and sank, his chin sought his chest again and again, and he had to haul it upright with greater effort as time and toasts went on. The room swayed and bobbed in a light sea, and faces floated past his vision like ghost ships. When the drinking slowed, the eating began. Ukrainian pork soup full of chopped red cabbage and garlic, cold peas with vinegar and salt, chicken stewed in cream. These he tasted, then filledup on hunks of black bread with sweet butter, first inhaling deeply of the bread--a time-honored curative for vodka drinking. The smells of the food made him enormously hungry, but the vodka mustn't, he knew, be tampered with. Let it sit down there and fume, don't make it angry by sending down a lot of chicken stewed in cream--it might not like that. The men in the room with him--there must have been forty--ate prodigiously. Physically, they were all sorts, though Saschastood out among them in form and finery. There were dark-skinned Georgians with mustaches and oiled curly hair who, like Stalin, spoke a barbaric, halting Russian, a language they'd had to learn in school. Some were pale and beefy, like Mitya, though some grew paler, and some redder, as the evening wore on. It was this group who stood to accept the honor of the toast to Kiev, this group who smacked their lips the loudest over the Ukrainian soup. Sascha, it turned out from the toasts, was from Leningrad--St. Petersburg. The intellectual city, compared to political Moscow. Kirov had been from Leningrad. During the dinner, people wandered about talking to each other, and Khristo recalled odd fragments of conversation. There was an almond-eyed man with a shaven head and olive skin who did something with sugar beets in Kazakhstan. But most were chekists, intelligence officers, and when they talked to each other they spoke in private code--nicknames, obliquities. They laughed and whacked each other on the shoulders. And, finally, there was Yagoda himself. He took Khristo by the elbow as they went into the sauna after dinner, accompanied by Sascha, Mitya, and several others. They were all roaring drunk by tfiis time. They undressed in the yellow cedar antechamber, a large room decorated with Russian Orthodox icons, old wooden ones from country churches. There was Saint Prokopius with his handful of burning coals. The Virgin of Vadi-mir. The Anastasis--Christ harrowing hell. Saint Simeon on his pillar. Saint Lawrence racked with fire. Saint Basil. Saint Theodo-rus. Saint Menas, and the Patriarch Photius. They had the narrow faces and sorrowful eyes of Byzantine saints and bore the marks of time: wood rubbed smooth by handling, brass-coloredhalosworn down to the grain. More recent suffering--chips and pock-marks--was also evident. Khristo hung his clothing on a peg. When all were undressed, Yagoda proposed a blasphemous toast. Raised his glass and called the saints faggots and whores, proposed a list of sexual indecencies and drank to each. Then, inspired, he ran to the wall where his clothing hung and returned with a pair of revolvers. The group shouted and clapped, howled with laughter and urged him on. Yagoda the Chemist, his glasses fogged, thick gray hair curling along the tops of his shoulders, began firing into the icons. The shots were painfully loud in the small room and it was all Khristo could do to keep his hands from covering his ears. Other revolvers were produced. Khristo was offered one and blew a hole in a triptych of the martyrdom of Saint Ephraem. His marksmanship produced a roar of approval. In the sauna, they sat on cedar benches and Mitya poured a pail of water on the coals, filling the tiny room with white steam. Yagoda peered at Khristo on the bench opposite him. "This one belongs to you, Sascha, am I right?" A voice from the steam: "My very own." "And will he do the work?" "Yes. Quietly too. The mice will never know he's around until it's too late." "You think he's a mouser?" "A good one, if he works at it." "Yes, I agree with you. He has the look. Does he have the heart for it, though? That's what I worry about with a good mouser." From the steam, a different voice: "He's the one that blew up Petenko, at Belov." "Oh? This is him? The Bulgarian?" "The very one, Stoianev." "Stoianev. Well, I like Bulgaria. A refreshing place, I think, where, it is said, the women do it while hanging from trees. Tell me, Stoianev, is it so?" "Oh yes," he said, "and while they do it, they bay at the moon." This produced a gale of laughter and wolf howls. Yagoda nodded with satisfaction."Saschais a nimble lad," he said. "He always finds the clever ones." He leaned a little closer. He had the elongated face and small mustache of the intellectual, gray, speculative eyes and delicate features. "Not too clever, of course. That makes people edgy. Now tell me this, and we'll seehow clever you really are. Who is it that has eyes like binoculars, ears like telephones, fingers like glue, and a mouth that whispers?" Khristo shook his head. "I don't know." Yagoda threw his slim hands into the air and his eyes sparkled with mischief. "I don't know either," he cried. "Let's dig him up and find out!" That he remembered perfectly. Otherwise, but for two moments that would live with him for a long time, it was all darkness. Drunken shouts, breaking glass, spilled food, rain blowing against the windows. In the first moment, there was a thickset man in the uniform of a general, who sat against a wall with his legs stretched out before him. He held his right hand tightly over his right eye while blood welled from beneath and trickled down his cheek. All the while he was singing, in a false baritone, an old Russian love song. In the second moment, the car pulled up in Arbat Street and Mitya let Khristo out. It was a cold, drizzling dawn. Saschahad passed out in the back seat, Khristo looked back at him through the fogged window. In sleep, he had the face of an old youth, fine features blurred, morning beard a blue shadow. Khristo stood unsteadily on the sidewalk. He had been drunk, then sober, then drunk again, and now his head had a spike through the temples. "You can get in all right?" Mitya asked from the driver's seat. He nodded that he could. The car pulled slowly away from the curb. There was a woman, probably going to work, coming toward him down the street. At first he thought she was an old woman because she was stooped and walked with difficulty, but when he peered through the darkness he could see that she was not old at all, perhaps in her thirties, and rather pretty in a fragile sort of way. Perhaps, he thought, she worked at Food Store6,which was just around the corner. Perhaps she was a clerk, coming on duty at dawn to check the produce in as it came off the wagons and trucks from the countryside. She had seen the black Pobeda,Mitya at the wheel,Sascha inhis leather coat sprawled in the back seat, and Khristo, swaying for a moment on the sidewalk. She stopped, then moved around him in a wide circle, walkingclose to the wall of the building. She kept her eyes on the pavement in front of her, but then, just for a bare instant, she glanced at him, then looked down again, and he realized that she knew who they were. She knew _what__ they were, what _he__ was, and she was afraid of him. From the _New York Sun,__ August23, 1936: Moscow, August20--President V.M.Molotovhas announced that the Soviet Union is sending three hundred volunteers to assist Loyalist forces in the continuing conflict in.Spain. "At issue,"Molotovstated in a speech to the Praesidium,"is the democratically elected workers and people's government in Madrid. The USSR must take every measure to ensure that oppositionist military units do not overthrow the popularly supported regime of President Manuel Aza�The unit of volunteers, who have chosen to call themselves the Brotherhood Front for the Protection of Spanish Democracy, is made up of civil engineers and public health workers and will provide technical assistance to the Aza�vernment. A Soviet spokesman informed The Sun that many of the volunteers are of various Eastern European nationalities.

Blue Lantern

In Catalonia, some way inland from the ancient spice city of Tarragona, in the valley of the Rio Ebro, lay the village of San Ximene. It was any and all of the villages of Spain, a series of white cubes stacked against the side of a brown hill, outlined sharply by a hot blue sky. To the eye of the traveler, it stood high above the road, somehow remote, and very silent and still. _Go on to the next__village, it seemed to say, _to Calaguer or Santoval, you will like it better there.__ San Ximene, and all the countryside thereabout--the olive and lemon groves, the vineyards, the fields where sheep grazed on stubble after the cutting of the wheat--these belonged to Don Teodosio, of the noble family Aguilar. It had always been so. Like the blistering sun that dried the soil to dust and the cold wind that blew it away, it was a law of nature, a commonplace of existence. A local maxim had it that on the third day of creation, when God divided the waters and revealed the land, the first Aguilar was discovered there, dripping, awaiting his maker with a basket of figs. Whatever else might be said of Don Teodosio, or Do�lora, they were, like their distant ancestor, provident with the Aguilar figs. In rush baskets woven by the maids and seamstresses of the household, the figs arrived punctually every Christmas and Easter. If you were a peasant of the San Ximene region, sometime before the coming of the great holidays you would behold the cream-colored De Boutonautomobile, its body fashioned of tulipwood, rolling to a ceremonious stop in front of your mud-brick house. Miguelito, the chauffeur, would tap twice on the horn--a sound as pure as a heavenly trumpet--and you, your good wife, your shy children, and your esteemed parents would gather, bareheaded, before the whitewashed doorway to receive the gift. Do�lora--Don Teodosiowas too much occupied with grave affairs to have time for such business--would descend from the elegant car, wearing a dove-colored woolen suit with a foxtail stole, and approach the family, seconded by the chauffeur carrying the basket. She would greet you by name, inquire after the health of all, remark briefly on the piety of the season, and offer blessings all round. Miguelito would hand the basket to Do�lora, she would in turn hand it on to the head of the household, who would thank her for the gift. Good wife, shy daughters, and esteemed mother would curtsy. It was deemed, in general, a wise disposition of the Aguilar figs. If, somehow, you had miraculously contrived to dine as richly and voluminously as they did at the great house, the figs would have been just the thing to assure felicity of digestion, for they were infamously purgative. Perhaps they believed up there that all the world fed liberally on salted ham and pink frosted cakes and thereby suffered the attendant constipation--a distemper, like gout and melancholia, reserved exclusively for the rich. No matter the motive for their distribution, the Aguilar figs grew, had grown there for a thousand years, and something had to be done with them. Nobody, certainly, would ever buy them. Thus they came--thick-skinned and pungent, like all the gifts of Spain--to you. It was always nice to have the rush basket--something or other could be done with it. This year, of course, being1936,there would be no figs. Not that they would cease to grow--the gnarled and twistedficuscaricahad no choice in the matter. The harsh copper sun flamed in the heavens for months, as it always had, the ancient roots sought out what moisture remained in the stony soil of the river valley and, even in civil war, photosynthesis would not be denied. Not, that is, until the shellfire came and blew everything to hell. But, in October of1936,the shellfire was still a comfortable distance away--more than two hundred miles away, where the Moorish armies of General Molahad besieged Madrid. And--nopasar�they shall not pass--theywould steal not one more inch of Republican earth. So there would be figs. There would be lemons as- well. Hard, green things certain to produce a gargoyle's scowl on the face of anyone foolish enough to taste them. For the truelim�a beautiful, fat, sunny fruit near sweet to the palate, you had to go to Valencia or Tarragona. In San Ximene, alas, they were not so blessed, the fertility of their little valley being most charitably described as _unkind.__ Thevino tinto, red wine, produced in the Aguilar vineyards was reputed to be curative, though exactly what it cured no one could say, lest it be life itself. There would be figs, come harvest time, but they would no longer be nestled in rush baskets. They would not be bestowed by Do�lora in her foxtail stole. The glossy De Boutonwould never again sound its velvet trumpet at the whitewashed doorways of the San Ximene peasants. Those days were gone forever. The Aguilar figs were embarked on a new destiny. Thirty-two percent of the total harvest would be retained by the workers and peasants of the San Ximene commune. Twenty-one percent would be donated to the food stores of the Asturian miners' brigades, fighting to the north. Twenty-four percent would be dispatched to relieve the hungers of Madrid, as the fascist noose was tightened around the city's throat, threatening to still its passionate song of freedom. Twenty-two percent of the harvest would travel east--eleven percent for hospitals on the coast, another eleven percent to feed the International Brigades, now flowing into the country from the breadth of Europe. An additional twenty percent would be required, it was felt, for trade with other villages, so that tools and seed, medicine and ammunition, could be obtained. Let the world take note and raise its fist: the San Ximene figs were going to war! But it would not be easy. There had been defeatist grumbling to the effect that San Ximene had pledged to distribute one hundred and nineteen percent of its fig harvest. How was that to be done? Work harder! Thus spoke the fiery idealists of the village. An old man, however, his hands frozen to knotted claws by a lifetime of torturing food from the wretched soil, rumbled with laughter at such a suggestion. "Work yourselves to death, if you like," he said, "but you'll not get a fig tree to grow more fruit." A young peasant disagreed. Was it not the case that some of the fruit spurs were pruned from the trees every spring? Everyone had to admit it was the usual practice to do so. Well then, let them be. At this, the old man stopped laughing. "If you do not cut some of the spurs, the branches will break in the autumn. You'll have your nineteen percent, it's true, but next year you'll have nothing." The young peasant nodded, sadly, his agreement. He had to point out, however, that if Franco and his fascists gobbled up their beloved Spain in1936,who was foolish or greedy enough to worry himself over the fig harvest of1937?Heads swiveled back and forth between them as they argued. Who was right? What was right? One timid soul--formerly a laundress in the Aguilar household--wondered aloud if, just perhaps, it might not be the safest course to lower the production goals. But at this _everyone__ was aghast, so she fluttered her hands and quickly backed down, her career in political debate over before it began and a* good thing too. For the percentages were as rocks or mountains--immutable. These numbers were, after all, the precious fruits of weeks spent in fervent disputation--intense, talmudic sessions held in the back room of Serre� Bar that had seen the best minds of San Ximene fully engaged in struggle--and one didn't simply cast such treasure over the nearest fence. The percentages were _symbols__--adefacto treaty between countervailing forces. And, truly, that they were able to agree on anything at all was simply astonishing. Consider the opening positions: the PSUC, Partido Socialista Unificado de Catalu�in which socialists and communists had agreed to agree, wanted to parcel out the harvest down to the very last fig. The technical approach, in which numbers danced formally with contributions to the cause. What value a soldier? Less than a hospital nurse? More than a railroad worker? How many figs to each? It could, if one applied oneself to the dialectic with good will, be determined. It had to be determined--the war went on, and the trees would leave dormancy in a few months. So it would be determined. They would sit there and determine it. Serre�make coffee! On the other hand, the Partido Obrero de Unificaci�arxista, POUM, had very different thoughts on the matter. These were the anarchists. To them, freedom was all and to hell with your pussyfooting numbers. Do nothing! That was their war cry. Action achieved by inaction. Simply leave the groves open and whoever needed figs could come and take them. Was this great battle in which they were engaged not, when all was said and done, over freedom itself? Could the past--the tyranny of priests, the despotic Aguilars, the brutal Guardia--be forgotten so quickly? Open the groves, open the town, open the world, come to that, and let each individual attain the full flowering of conscience. The ruling of the self by the self, _that__ was government! Clearly, at the beginning, the contending forces had some way to go. And if, in getting to their common solution, they agreed to distribute many more figs than could safely grow on the fig trees, well, that was considered a very small price to pay. Soon enough, there were committees for everything. Not that you could have found a soul under heaven--not a sane one, anyhow--who thought that Spaniards and committees were anything but mutually exclusive propositions, but something had to be done. Just be thankful, they told each other, that the committees were composed of PSUC and POUM and that, San Ximene being innocent of factories and workshops, the CNT--Anarcho-Syndi-calist trade unionists--didn't have to be included. They would have hacked down the fig trees, sawn the damn things into boards, and built themselves a Hall of Workers. There were committees for the distribution of food, for health and sanitation, for education, for grievances, for justice, for the moral improvement of youth. There was a committee assigned to the supervision of Don Teodosioand Do�lora--held under virtual house arrest since the Nationalist rising in July. This committee immediately gave birth to a subcommittee--known as the Committee for the Carlist Mules--made up of a communist peasant and an anarchist peasant who, responsible for the twenty-sixgray beasts belonging to the Aguilar estates, argued politics by the hour while shoveling manure out the barn windows. It was a small irony to call them Carlist mules since they, unlike their former owners, hardly cared whether or not the Bourbon monarchy was restored to the Spanish throne, but small ironies were permitted the men who had to wield water buckets and dung shovels on behalf of the greater good for they surely got little else for their labor. There was even a committee--an ad hoc unit comprising both mayors, Avenafrom the PSUC and Quintoof the POUM--that saw to the needs of the convalescent draftsman. He needed very little, it turned out: the rental of a small cottage at the edge of town, an old woman to clean once a week, some beans and vegetables from the market which he cooked for himself. He was a small, shabby man, Se�Cardona, self-effacing and painfully polite. In his forties, he suffered from a weakness of the lungs, and came to San Ximene now and again throughout the summer and fall to escape the smoke and dust of Tarragona, where he had a small business that produced engineering designs and specifications. He could often be seen through his window, bent over a table, making long, perfect lines on graph paper with infinite care. "You must call me _comrade, "__ he would admonish them with a shy smile, but nobody ever did. The ancient instincts of San Ximene recognized true gentility when they encountered it, andse�e remained. There were some--there always are--who would have had him turn his hand to minor labors for the cause, but their niggling was as chaff in the wind against his self-appointed protectorate, the older women of the village. Thus the mayors, Avenaand Quinto, merely shrugged when somebody complained. If the harsh, dry air of San Ximene aided the recovery of Se�Cardona, he would have all he could breathe. Besides, he paid for everything--the pesetas were not unwelcome--and paid, in fact insisted on paying, just a little more than the going rate. He was, above all, a nice man. Dark-skinned, with thick sensual lips and a gently curved nose, the brown eyes--soft and deep--of a favored spaniel, and a few strands of hair combed hopefully across a balding head. Hewore always a hand-knit sweater beneath his camel-colored jacket--the night air was crisp--and the canvas shoes of a comfortable man. He did, it was true, speak an odd Spanish, rather formal and stiff, but that was undoubtedly due to a childhood spent in Ceuta, down in Spanish Morocco. Was there a touch of the Moor in him somewhere? This was suggested, but it did not matter. It was simply impossible not to like him, and he quickly became a pleasant fact of life in San Ximene, appearing every week for a day or two, then going back to Tarragona in his rackety Fiat Topolino. Though humble and self-effacing, he could not have been entirely without importance, for he was occasionally sought out by two of his employees. In San Ximene, it was a curious notion that something, anything, could be so important that it would not wait a day or two, but Se�Cardonawas a city gentleman, and it went without saying that city gentlemen were occupied by matters of considerable gravity. Los Escribientes de Se�Cardona. San Ximenerather honored their part-time resident with such a title--_Se�_Cardona's clerks. It had a bit of a ring to it. Of course, the country was at war, and it seemed that nothing was the same anymore. The men who visited Se�Cardonawere proof of that. Clearly, these were not the usualescribientes. One might have expected pale, doleful fellows, their spirits turned gray by years of sitting at desks and writing in ledgers. Or minor tyrants, of the fat-assed, preening variety, little lordlings who made life miserable for poor people with their nasty rules and educated meanness. Theseescribienteswere quite another matter. But with so many men fighting at the front, a businessman, it was supposed, had to make do, had to take what he could get. The younger one, with the pale skin, black hair and blue eyes, conducted himself with reserve and courtesy. Some of the village daughters quite liked looking at him, a feminine perception of banked fires warming their curiosity. No, it was the older one who bore thinking about, the older one who caused the local gossips to trail their nets. The women in black who met at the well at sundown had aringleader--Anabella washer name, she looked like the get of a mating between a monkey and a sparrow--who led the daily pecking sessions. El Malsanoshe called him, tapping a forefinger against her temple. The unwholesome one. "He has snakes in his brain," she said, "and they bite him." One of the younger women crossed herself when she said it, though that gesture was now very unwise indeed. Others were less colorful in their descriptions but gave him something of a wide berth. What sort ofescribientewalked about in a drunken stupor? His index and middle fingers were brownish yellow with nicotine stains, his lank hair hung carelessly over his forehead, and the lines in his face were too deep for his years, like a film star, perhaps, whose career one day had faltered and died. He was a Frenchman, probably there was no more to it than that. Serre�d overheard the clerks speaking French as they hauled a bundle of blueprints from the trunk of their long-hooded black Citroen. These were not, however, the same French people so much in evidence at the Aguilar household in summers past. None of that particular grace remotely touched them. So it went, back and forth, as it does in a small place where people have known one another all their lives, the convalescent draftsman and his two French clerks, something to talk about. In the tide of village opinion there was one dissenter, and he made his views known only once and was silent thereafter. This was Diego, the POUM representative to the Committee for the Carlist Mules. One hot, slow afternoon in September, he watched the Citro�rawl slowly up the white street toward Se�Cardona'scottage. When it had passed, he spat out the barn window and nodded to himself, affirming a private theory. "Russians," he said. His co-committeeman, the communist Ansaldo, raised his eyebrows and came to a full stop, his well-laden shovel frozen in midair. "How do you know that?" he asked. Diego shrugged. He didn't know how he knew, he just knew. His friend put the shovel back down, stood upright, and sought the small of his back with his free hand. "If that is so, we are very fortunate indeed." Diego wasn't so sure. "Perhaps," he said. "Perhaps not." "They will help us against the Falange," Ansaldosaid. "They will bring tanks and aeroplanes." "If it suits them," Diego said. Ansaldo lowered his head a little. Diego knew what that meant. "You are a stubborn man, Diego. Russia is a mighty nation, a great people, and our only ally in this fight. If it is true they are here, you should feel joy to see them." He was warming up his guns, Diego could tell, for a full afternoon of political cannonade. "Yes, a mighty nation," Diego mused aloud. He was silent awhile, his mind seeking the applicable wisdom. At last he found it. _Con__patienzaysalivita, elelefantese coja l'armagita. It was an old saying in Catalonia, well tested and well provenover the years. _With patience and saliva, the elephant screws the ant.__But he chose not to say it. Those two were Russians, he was sure of that, and if there were two, there would be more. He had heard that the Soviet Union was sending _health workers__ to Spain. He was not sure what health workers would look like, but he was quite sure that they would not look anything like those two. He balanced all this in his mind for a moment, then decided that it was a good time not to have opinions. Maybe later. For the present, the best course was to clean the stables and shut up.

On October9,just after midnight, it began to rain in Madrid. Then, over the Guadarramarange to the west, white flashes lit the sky. A moment later came the long, rolling reports of marching thunder. Faye Berns wasjolted awake, came to her senses sitting upright in the narrow bed, her right hand reaching for Andres--who was not there--her left hand resting on a large revolver on the night table. _Boots,__ she told herself silently. _Right__away. Now. She swung her feet over the side of the bed, discovered she'd kicked the quilts onto the floor during the night, reached down and swept them aside, found her right boot. She dropped to her knees, tried to look under the bed, but it was pitch black. The stone floor was like ice--there was no heat in the building. As she reached toward the foot of the bed, she leaned on the quilts and found the other boot muffled within. The room's small window lit up for an instant. She counted to four-elephant before the sound of the thunder reached her. It was a storm in the mountains, nothing more. There were no sirens, no screams, no machine guns firing from the roof. She took a deep breath and let it out, felt the pounding in her heart ease off, and fell back down on the bed still holding a boot in each hand. Thunder and lightning, not the other thing. She used to love storms. At home, they meant a break in the sweltering, humid summertime, the rain washed down the Brooklyn streets and, for a while, the air actually smelled sweet, like the country. Andres said that in war you sleep with your boots on. She said they kept her from sleeping. He said that soldiers learned to sleep no matter what. And there you had Andres. Soft as a mouse, but a fountain of righteousness--he lived and breathed it, wore it like a suit of moral armor. Oh, you couldn't do it? That was fine, he understood. You must be doing your best, for nobody ever did less. He would just do more himself. Would do your job as well as his own. Anywhere but here, she would have thought him an insufferable prig and hated him wholeheartedly. But it wasn't anywhere but here, and here, where everything was upside down and inside out, somebody had to be Andres, somebody had to set the example. It took ten seconds to put on the boots, and with ten seconds to spare you could live instead of dying. According to Andres, who knew about war. But she didn't think this particular ten seconds mattered all that much. From the top floor of9Calle de Victoria, formerly the maids' attic, it took about forty seconds to run down five flights of marble stairs to a long, vaulted hallway that led to the street. There was an alcove in the wall about ten feet from the door--at one time a polished mahogany table had stood there-, but it vanished into the barricades during the street fighting of July19--and that was going to serve as Faye Berns's bomb shelter. Some of the building's tenants took cover in the basement, talking and drinking wine until dawn. This she would not do. Let the Condor Legion blow her to pieces--they would not bury her alive. Besides, it was the prevailing opinion that the Germans would not attempt night bombing--they were too much in love withtheir fancy Messerschmittmachines to smash them up on Madrid's surrounding hillsides. The Italian pilots, however, were another story. She'd seen one of them when his plane crash-landed in a beet field just outside the city. Some militiamen in their bluemonos--mechanics' overalls had become the uniform of the Republican brigades--had carried him back to the city hanging tied, hand and foot, to a pole, like a wild boar taken in a medieval hunt. Even so, he swaggered. He had a stiff handlebar mustache and he cursed his captors at length and with vigor. When he stood against the wall of an elementary school he refused the blindfold and sneered at the militiamen. But when he fell he just looked like a bundle of rags. They brought a horse to drag the body away, one of the horses that used to do the same job for the bull on Sunday afternoons. The sergeant of the firing squad had seen her standing there. He made a clenched fist and said, in sad and solemn tones, _"No__pasar� se�ta. No pasar� "She had come to know Spain, and Spaniards, and she perfectly understood his irony. _Observe this dirty work. Thus our slogans come to reality.__ And he was praising her, in his own special style, for not turning away from what had to be done. Frances Bernstein would have turned away. Faye Bernsdid not. Frances Bernstein was the daughter of Abel Bernstein, the fierce proprietor of Bernstein's Department Store--Established igai. The second largest department store, after the mighty Abraham&Strauss, in Flatbush. Faye Bernscame to life midway between Pembroke and Paris, on the S. S. Normandie, as Frances Bernstein's well-worn Brooklyn Public Library card stood high on the wind for a moment, then fluttered into the Atlantic to the cheers of a Danish painter named Lars. Frances Bernstein had spent twenty-three years waiting to become Faye Berns. Although near crushed to death by a parlorful of great-breasted aunts with diamond rings up to their wrists, an overstuffed apartment with a twittering canary, and a really very sweet Cornell man named Jacob, she had managed the transmigration of souls. She had escaped. The canary was called Rabbi Cohen. That was Abel Bernstein, the anticlerical socialist, speaking. He was rich, it was true, buthe sold goods of reasonable quality at a fair price to workers. That was his political destiny--the store, her family called it--and he accepted it. Picked up the checkbook, took out the fountain pen, let the National Peace Guild and the Brooklyn Committee for Social Justice know where Abel Bernstein stood. When she wrote from Paris that she was going to Spain, had already visited the Comintern offices on the Rue de Lafayette, his letter back to her was a classic. He agreed with her stand. Right was on herside. Now was the time. _But please God for the sake of your mother do not go to Spain!__ In the darkness of the little room under the eaves, Faye Bernsbecame conscious of the ticking of the clock. The heartbeat rhythm of insomnia. _Oh God,__ she thought, _now I can't sleep.__ She opened her eyes. The room was so dark, the air seemed to fill with dancing gray particles. The insomnia was an old enemy, vanquished by daily hard work and the exhaustion of simply surviving in a beleaguered city. But now it came back, especially on those nights when Andres took his drafting materials from the closet and went away--usually for the better part of a week. Very well. She had dealt with executions and the Condor Legion, now she would deal with insomnia. She tried to turn on the light, but the electricity was off. Went to the sink in the corner and tried to splash water on her face, but the water was off. Peered at the clock--it was12:05.She did not have to be up on the roof until3:30,but Renata wasup there now, so she might as well visit. A visitor, she knew--Andres sometimes brought her a cup of tea--helped the hours pass. She laced up the boots, first pulling hard at the two pairs of cotton socks to make sure there was no crease. Checked the safety on the Llama pistol, then stuck it inside the waistband of her thick corduroy skirt. _Damn Andres, __ she thought. What clothes she had not given away were being ruined by the gun. Why could she not have a holster like everyone else? She had stood in line for a day at the armory to get the pistol, but nowhere in the city could she find a holster for it. She asked Andres, finally. Of course he could get her a holster, it would simply mean that a soldier at the front would do without. Well, did she want it? He tormented-her with privilege, as though she would, by the hand of fate, eventually turn into the cosseted little dumpling she had been born to become. Well--her fingers found ribs--she was no dumpling now. Her waistband had more than enough room for the gun. She had long chestnut hair, a nose with a bump, and a wide, generous, impertinent mouth. Her single good feature--the way she saw it--were eyes the color of pale jade that had raised more than their share of hell. Her beauty, the aunts had always insisted, was inner, and it had taken a number of years, and a number of boys, to pay the world back for _that.__ Over her work shirt she pulled on a heavy gray sweater that her Aunt Minna had knitted as a graduation present--she liked it because it was of sufficient length and bulk to hide the pistol--then tied the red neckerchief loosely around her throat. In a city running out of everything, it was as much of a uniform as anybody had. She closed the door behind her and climbed the iron-rung ladder to the roof. "Todav�"Still? "Siempre!"Always! Sign and countersign, called quietly across the roof, were peculiar to9Calle de Victoria--each building had its own passwords. The city was awash with secret signals, codes, posters, banners,pronunciamentipainted feverishly on walls--hammers and sickles with drip lines to the sidewalk. The fiery Basque orator La Pasionariamade daily speeches to the city over a network of public address systems wired together through the streets. Her words--It is betterto die on your feet than to live on your knees--were repeated everywhere. Constantly she reminded the women of Madrid that their traditional weapon, boiling oil hurled from a basin, was not to be put aside when the enemy arrived. At the top of the hatchway to the roof, Faye Bernspaused for a moment and looked out over the city. It was black and cold, the faint outlines of cathedral spires pointed shadows in the darkness. "Faye?" Bundled in a large, shapeless army coat, Renatamoved toward her through the gloom. "It's me." "Can it be time?" "No. I came for company." Studied closely, feature by feature, Renata Braun wassomething of a covert beauty, subtle and finely made, though the impression left on the world at large was that of a woman whose surface was fashioned by the exigencies of a life lived in difficult times and places. She was fortyish, with salt and pepper hair hacked off short, a delicate nose that reddened in the cold, and severe, gold-rim spectacles that were continually removed so that she could rub the dent marks where they pinched. A Berliner, she carried with her the sophisticated aura of that city and was sharp-witted and sharp-tongued, often to the edge of cruelty. Renata was Andres's friend. Faye was Andres's lover. They had, over a few months' time, worked it out from there, becoming, finally, closer than sisters, a friendship in time of war. Renatatook her hands."Ach, ice." Faye shrugged and smiled. She had given her gloves away and Renataknew it. She squeezed back for a moment, then put her hands in the deep pockets of her skirt. "How goes the night?" Renatamade an ironic little gesture with her mouth. "Very slow," she said. "Withder Sphinxat one's side." Faye looked past her, saw the dark shape of F�x, the Belgian journalist who never spoke if he could help it, sitting slumped on an upturned crate beside the machine gun. The position was backed up against the wall of a shed--so that the roof overhang kept the rain off the gunners--and "protected" by a semicircle of meagerly filled sandbags. The machine gun lay back on its tripod, muzzle pointed at the sky. "Hallooo, F�x,"she called out quietly. Needling him, knowing he thought her an atrocious American brat, knowing he agreed with those stern Spanish commanders who, echoing Winston Churchill, called the foreigners in Madrid "armed tourists." "The poor thing,"Renatasaid, shaking her head. Faye could not see his face, but she could imagine it. A sneer compounded of disgust--specific; and ill-temper--general. F�xwas obsessed with doom. He had come to Madrid as correspondent for a Christian Socialist newspaper in Antwerp, then stopped filing stories, stopped doing much of anything. He wanted to leave thecity, somehow he could not, yet he seemed to loathe everything about it. Mostly the frenetic tension of the place, which drove people into hilarious, slighdy crazed companionship. Live today, for tomorrow we die. You could be married at any militia office in five minutes. And divorced as quickly, though many declined to bother with official sanctions in any way at all. There was an army, a real army, with tanks and planes and artillery, a few miles to the west. When the battle came, everybody in Madrid would simply pick up a gun and walk out to meet it. Such courage made them saints, of a modern kind, and they knew it. They cared enough about something to die for it, and a sweet, delicious madness blew through the city like a wind. To bea Madrile�s a privilege, an honor. Only a few, like F�x, could find no joy in it. Or were there, in fact, more than a few. The Moorish brigades and Spanish Legionnaires of General Molawere aimed at the city in four columns. Molahad been asked, by a foreign reporter covering the Nationalist side, which column would have the glory of leading the attack against Madrid. "I have a fifth column,"Molahad boasted, _"inside__ the city, and it is they who will lead the attack on Madrid." This might have been a deception, meant to sow suspicion among allies of wildly different passions: Basques and Catalans seeking their own nationhood, communists of several disciplines, anarchists, democrats, idealists, poets, mercenaries, and those moths who were forever seeking the flame of the hour in which to immolate themselves. Or it might have been said merely to torment the inhabitants a little. Civil war is not unlike a fight between lovers: each side knows precisely how to infuriate the other. During the Nationalist siege of Gij�the water supply of the defending Republicans gave out, and they suffered terribly from thirst. Quiepo de Llano, the Nationalist general, went on Radio Seville every night, drinking wine and smacking his lips into the microphone. After that, he boasted of the sexual prowess of his soldiers--the women of Gij�st be ready! It was a powerful station, and all across Europe people tuned in for the nightly show. Faye and Renatawalked for a time, talking in low voices, circumnavigating the rooftop. The rain had stopped, though lightning still flickered over the Guadarrama. They talked about life, laughing at times. At moments like these, Faye felt she was looking down at the entire world, that it was all laid out for her. Her urge for such flights had been dealt with rather summarily at Pembroke--those professors she'd thought to be sympathetic would listen stoically for an hour, then turn her head forcefully back to learning, study, the obligations of womanhood. Everything substantive, hard and demanding. She'd sensed a long line of romantic girls like herself, extending out the doors of the little cottages where the faculty offices were located, sent home to study, marry, pray, bathe in cold water--anything but _life__ in its purest, most abstract twirls and adagios, which was what she loved to think about. Renatawas willing to talk to her on any level she chose and Faye was more than grateful to be found worthy of such attention: she needed to be taken seriously and she knew it. "When you are done living for yourself, only then do you learn that living for others is the privilege,"Renatasaid at one point. They turned a corner. "I think that is what I believe," Faye said. "I think. But perhaps not. Sometimes I feel I'm like a... "She stopped. Moved to the parapet of cracked plaster that closed in the roof. Stared out across the city. Renatacaught up and stood by her side. "Isn't that strange," Faye said. "What is?" "Perhaps it is a lover's signal." "What?" "The blue glow. Over there. Across the street, then one, two, three blocks--no, two blocks, three streets." "I don't see anything." "Here, look, squint your eyes and follow my finger." "God in heaven,"Renatabreathed, then turned away quickly, calling"F�x"in a loud, urgent stage whisper. He arrived at a trot, sorrowful eyes peering from beneath a wool muffler knotted around his head. Renataspoke to him in rapid French, then pointed. He said a few words back. She gave him what sounded like an order and he turned on his heel andleft in a hurry. "I have sent him forth�reet map," she explained. The blue light moved suddenly, then came to rest in a new, more visible, position. It disappeared for an instant, as a shape moved past it, then glowed again. "There's somebody there," Faye said. "Yes, there is. Have you your pistol?" "Yes." "Give it to me." She thrust out a hand. "We'll go together." "No! The post may not be abandoned--it must be two to work the gun. Listen, please. When F�xreturns, you must remain here. I will go and see about this light. Now please, the pistol." Her eyes intense behind the gold spectacles, she wiggled her fingers impatiently. Faye got angry. _"You're__ the one on guard," she said, voice rising. She glanced at her watch, a tiny thing her grandmother had brought from Russia. "It is two-twenty," she said triumphantly. "And I'm the one who's going." "Faye, no!"Renatashouted and hurried after her. Faye opened the door to the hatch, started to climb down. Renataheld the door and watched her descend. "Amen, then,"Renatasaid. "Be careful." The door clicked shut and she was in darkness. It gave her heart a twinge. She'd expected Renatato argue further, finally to insist on going along. Holding the revolver tightly so that it wouldn't fall through her waistband, she galloped down the marble staircase. As she reached the door, she heard F�xrunning down the hall, somewhere above her. Lieutenant Drazen Kulic, Second Section, Fourth Directorate (Special Operations), NKVD, had waited three days for the thunderstorm in the Guadarrama. With the lightning as cover, he intended to make a great flash of his own. Without the storm, the great flash would bring dowii Nationalist units from everywhere, there would bea _ratissage-__--literally "rat hunt," a counterinsurgency sweep--and he had little confidence in his guerrilla band's ability to elude it. They were not mountain people. They were railroadworkers and boilermakers and machinists, UGT communists to a man and very brave, but they did not know this terrain. If they had to move too quickly through the forests there would be lost weapons, excessive noise and sprained ankles. Those who could not keep up would have to be sacrificed and, worse yet, it would have to be done by hand, since a pistol shot was unthinkable. He'd seen townspeople attempt to fight in the mountains of Yugoslavia, and he was damned if he was going to add one more ghastly scene to the tragicomedy of the Spanish war. Earlier that day, he'd sent his least valuable man down the road. Disguised as a cripple--they'd cut him a primitive crutch from a tree branch--he'd walked up to the roadblock carrying a newspaper packet of dried beans. They'd done the thing right--it was even a Nationalist newspaper, _ABC, __ the Monarchist daily--but to no avail. The sentries at the roadblock wanted a password. They were very sorry, they knew how bad things were in the village, that his poor sister needed thehabichuelas, but--no password, no going down the road. They took the beans, saying they would take them to the sister, but they hadn't even asked her name. The convent schoolhouse in the village was being used as a Nationalist armory, logistical support for the Falangist columns in their advance on Madrid. The radio message sent to Kulic's group in the Guadarramafrom the Soviet base in Madrid had been specific: _Take the armory.__ Well, he couldn't take it, with twenty machinists, but he could blow it up, and that he intended to do. He had fourteen time pencils--virtually the same explosive device that had accidentally killed T. E.Lawrence's lover and bodyguard, Dahoud, as he tried to blow up a train. After Arbat Street, Kulic had attended a special school deep in the Urals, and he'd had to read _The Seven Pillars of Wisdom__ very thoroughly. What Lawrence did to the Turkish supply columns in World War I, he was now trying to do to Franco's fascists. With time pencils manufactured in1914.No matter. He would find a way once they broke into the armory. Theoretically, you could sink a battleship with a candle. Theoretically. But first he had to get his people down a road. For that, he needed to steal the password. Thus, at4:00p.m.,as the mountainskies darkened and the wind blew hard from the west, they'd set up their own roadblock two miles east of the Nationalist sentries. Along came two Guardiain a small truck. Kulic's men, acting like normal sentries, had demanded the password. _"Rosas__blancas" 'came the answer. White roses,a Carlistsymbol of purity. At10:30p.m.,with the storm very close, a light rain pattering down on the road, they marched to the roadblock, gave the password, and walked into the village. A company of Navarrese infantry was assigned to hold the area and protect the armory, but the rain had long since driven them back into the Convent of the Sacred Heart, where they were billeted. Kulic set up his machine gun facing the doors of the convent and sent a small ambush team back down the road to wait for the sentries, in case they returned once the gunfire started. A shipfitter, an agile little spider of a man accustomed to riveting in the steelwork of half-built freighters, climbed a drainpipe to the roof and set the convent on fire by dripping gasoline down the chimney. As the soldiers ran out--the sixteenth-century abbot who designed the place knew that the greatest security lay in a single access point--they were killed. Those who remained inside died in the fire. The convent schoolhouse--a separate building--was piled to the rafters with rifle and machine-gun ammunition, but what most gladdened Kulic's heart were eighty cases of artillery shells for the Nationalists' 105mm field guns. He now had the power for the explosion, but no lightning. A few minutes after11:00p.m.,there was gunfire on the road and the ambush team returned, having chased the Nationalist sentries into the forest. At11:30,the thunder and lightning finally started. By12:05,after four failures with the time pencils, Captain Drazen Kulic had his big flash. A burning school desk spun brilliantly through the rainy air, high above the village, trailing smoke and sparks before it fell to earth and disappeared from view. Kulic and his band vanished into the mountains. A number of villagers died in the explosion. It couldn't be helped. Faye Bernsmoved through the dark streets of the city, hemmed in by buildings that rose steeply above her, like a corridor in adream. A small wind, suddenly warm, touched her face. A dog was barking some distance away. She could tell it had been barking for a long time--its voice was almost gone. But, she realized, it doesn't know what else to do, so it barks. A sense of infinite, indescribable loss rolled in from the night and filled her heart. If I were Catholic, I'd cross myself. She did it anyhow, quickly, a rapid figure-four in the style of the Spanish women. There was something malefic in Spain, that she knew for a surety, and it was out that night. From the apartments high above her came a sense of restless sleep, disturbance, unquiet, as though every man and woman dreamed they heard a door click open. Spirit wanderers are out, she thought, who cannot find their way home. Perhaps her own ancestors, burned alive in the Inquisition. The blood carried more than oxygen, more than anyone knew and, once the streets were dark and deserted, the bad memories of this place returned. Too many terrible things had happened here. Walking in the center of the narrow street, she could hear water running in the drains, and with every breath came the chill odor of anciently decayed masonry. Three streets. Two blocks. From down here, she would never find the blue light, it was like being in a deep canyon. But she _would__ find it. She listened to her footsteps, tried to walk more softly. Her fingers crept beneath the sweater and touched the butt of the revolver. She seemed alone in the world, but maybe that wasn't so bad. The Republican Checa--modeled on, and named after, the Soviet intelligence Cheka--often roamed at night through the neighborhoods. It was better not to meet them. Calle de Plata. Where the medieval silversmiths had kept their workshops. Her cousin Eric, who graduated third in his class at Erasmus High, took jewelry-making at the Art Students League. Now he was a communist. Like Renataand Andres. Was she one too? No, she didn't think so. She was a passionate idealist, in love with the idea of democracy. Certainly she dreamed, like Andres, of a world without oppression and cruelty. She had come to Spain to put one more hand on the wheel that turned toward justice. Were all Jews communists? Hitler said so. Her father grimaced at Hitler'sname. "Why don't you kill him?" he asked the sky. Jews hated injustice, that was what it was. Fania Kaplan, a Jewish girl not much older than herself, with family in Brooklyn, had shot Lenin through the neck because he betrayed the Revolution. But Lenin survived. She would like to shoot Hitler through the neck. They would, she knew, march her in glory up Flatbush Avenue if she did that. Even Mr. Glass, of Glass Stationery, and he was a Republican. Avenida Saldana. There was a big market here on Thursdays. An old lady with a mustache gave her something free every time--radishes, parsley. The fishstall man had once picked up a red snapper and bobbed it up and down as though it swam toward her, and everyone had laughed and made Spanish jokes. Now the street was deserted. On the roof of one of the buildings across the street, she had seen a blue light. She had come here to find it. Of course, she could turn around and go back and tell Renatathat she couldn't find it. Nobody would be the wiser. In all likelihood, the light didn't mean anything at all, simply one more inexplicable event in this inexplicable country. So go home. No. Well, perhaps. But at least, she told herself, examine the buildings. The numbers ran differently here, but the third one from the corner,52 Avenida Saldana,roughly corresponded to9Calle de Victoria. That meant she might be on the wrong street, because52 Avenida Saldana wasa two-story factory where they made wooden chairs. 54 Avenida Saldana.That was a possibility. She counted up six stories. Number56was not a possibility. An old hotel for commercial travelers, it had a steep roof sheathed with green copper. Number58was a rather smart private house, with little balconies and French windows, three stories high. It had to be54. That's good, Faye, you figured it out. Now go home. Report the incident to the Checa, let them worry about it. She crossed the street. Avenida Saldana wasa bit fancier than Calle de Victoria, narrow sidewalks ran along its edges. She stood at the base of the building and stared straight up. No blue light. But on the top floor, just below the roof, a window was open a few inches and, very faintly, she could hear a woman singing. She had heard the song before, mothers sang it to babies to put them to sleep. Good, darling, very good. Her upbringing came through loud andclear. _And brave? In the middle of the night. In Madrid. All alone. With only Nona's watch and a big Spanish gun. Such a gun. Myself, I'd be afraid to touch it.__ Which was probably why, more or less, she simply went into the building and up to the roof. Because the blood did carry more than oxygen. Because there was something there that--when it was crystal clear that retreat with caution was the only sensible path--took the first step and the second step and all the rest of the steps. She had some help, on the order of _I'm an__American and I can go anywhere I want, but she had something alittle older than that as well. It didn't precisely have a name; or maybe it had too many names, but it got her up to the roof. And, surprise of surprises, at a time when so much bravery bled itself out into nothingness, it turned out to matter a great deal that she went there. It saved lives. First she removed her boots. Leaning against a cold wall in the dark hallway, she worked them off and tied the laces together and hung them around her neck. Drew the pistol from her waistband, cocked it, held it before her with a finger hooked securely around the front of the trigger guard. Put her left hand on the wall and walked slowly in her socks up the stairs to the roof, the sound of the lullaby getting closer as she climbed. The door to the roof was chained and the chain was padlocked. Breathing hard from the climb, she stood there frozen, so deeply enraged that her cheeks were hot. After all that! She'd seen her friend at Pembroke, Penelope Hastings of Hyde Park, New York, fiddle a lock with a hairpin. Two problems. She didn't have a hairpin. And it wasn't that kind of lock. It was like a bicycle lock, with a combination. Olive green. Scratched and worn as though it had been well used: first to lock up a bicycle, perhaps at a place like a college where unlocked bicycles were frequently "borrowed," then to secure a big trunk, which had to travel aboard a transatlantic liner to Europe. _That__ sort of lock. The sort of lock that, if you turned four right, sixteen left, and twenty-seven right, snapped open, though it took one last little jiggle, requiring a practiced twist of the hand, to make it spring cleanly. It was, she was sure, her very own lock, which she'd put in the back of a drawer some months earlier, thinking it was something that she didn't need then but would desperately want the minute after she threw it away. She was shocked to find it, but there was something much too eerie to contemplate in such a coincidence and she had no time to think about it anyhow. Explanations would have to wait. In the silence at the top of the stairs, she could hear the singing woman one floor down. A child coughed. The woman murmured in Spanish. Then began humming softly, a song without words made up as she went along. Faye put the lock and the gun between her feet. Slipped one hand beneath the chain, drew it slowly, link by link, across her palm until it was free of the door handle, then laid it silently on the floor, kneeling slowly. Retrieved the gun and held it in her right hand, then put the lock inside one of the shoes hanging around her neck. Took a breath, and pushed gently against the door with her left hand. The door made one small squeak as it opened. The humming stopped. Faye took a step onto the roof. She was wound tight as a spring, but not frightened. She didn't think it through, but some part of her mind was trying to let her know that when a door is chained and padlocked on one side, there is rarely anybody on the other side. At least not anybody who wants to be there. The roof was deserted. On one wall stood a blue lantern. A device used, perhaps, on a ship or in a railroad yard. She could see the shape of the flame burning behind the blue glass. She went up to it. Opened the little door. And blew it out. Squinting against the darkness, she peered out over the intervening rooftops but could not make out her own building. Then, close to where she thought it might be, a match flared. The flame lingered for an instant, then disappeared. Renata! No signal had been arranged, but she knew absolutely that Renatahad been watching the blue light, had seen it go out, and had contrived to make a visible acknowledgment. Now she flew. Lantern swinging from her left hand, gun clutched in her right, shoes banging against her breasts, she ran down the stairs and out into the street. Her socks got wet and her feet hurt but she wasn't going to stop for anything. Pumping her arms, hair flying, she tore down the side street, past Calle de Plata, into Calle de Victoria, almost slipping as she went around the corner, into the building past her bomb shelter alcove, up the stairs, up the ladder, onto the roof, rushing into Renata's arms and yelling at the top of her lungs, yelling with triumph.

In Seville, it was the custom of Hauptmann Bernhard Luders, of the Luftwaffe's Condor Legion, always to have a woman the night before he flew a mission. Such sport maintained the traditions of that city, where Don Juan had been born and raised and where, as a young man, he had observed with horror that the corpse in a funeral procession was his own, and resolved to fight death with lust from that day forth. It cooled him, Luderssaid. Left him calm and level-headed for work the following day. It gave him, also, a reputation, and that he enjoyed immensely. He was twenty-one years old, with a small angry face and a small transparent mustache. At his direction, Feldwebel Kunkel, his batman, would sit in a gilded, red plush chair outside the room at the Hotel Alfonso XIII, an apparent guardian of lovers' privacy but in fact an advertisement for the heated _Wurstuerstecken__ (hide-the-wiener) games being played on the other side of the door. After midnight, when the officers came upstairs from drinking in the hotel bar, they would nod to Kunkel. He would rise and salute. "He is in tonight?" someone would always ask. "Yes sir,"Kunkelwould answer, "but he flies tomorrow." Ahh, they would nod approvingly, aware of his custom, then add the obligatory joke: "We shoot by night that bomb by day." In response to the joke, Kunkel, a man who understood loyalty at its root, would offer the obligatory response: a slow raising of the hands and eyes to heaven. _What lovers these pilots!__ Luders's latest was sixteen. Evangelina. _Evangelina.__ To Luders, even her name reeked of Spain, of Catholicism, of darkness, ignorance, superstition as black and wild as the unruly bush between her marble legs. She drove him insane. He had frolicked a bit at university in Heidelberg, among the properly raised dough-maidens of the city's aristocracy, but nothing had prepared him for what he took to be the true Spanish passion. The Mediterranean S�the South, tickled his Northern European fantasies to begin with--it was so hot and filthy and poor, one could do anything. _Anything.__ The little witch would crawl about the hotel carpet wearing nothing at all, catch hold of his boot and plead with him. It was Spanish, the pleading, but somehow the meaning worked its way through. She was defiled, worthless. He had led her into the Temple of Sin and now she was lost in its vast recesses, a maddened novitiate. She could think of nothing else. Nothing. All day long, devils whispered in her ear, of practices so demonic she dared not speak them aloud. For such thoughts he must punish her. Now. For if he did not staunch this frightful thirst she would tear her hair in frenzy. She sobbed and moaned and wriggled like an eel and begged him to put out the fire that burned her alive. Poor Kunkel. He had to sit there and listen to it night after night--and privately wondered how the man ever got any rest. Also, it fell to him to ferry a constant stream of gifts to Evangelina's family, who lived in a neighborhood that frightened him, in a house that made him ill. He had not joined the air force with such adventures in mind, but what was one to do. Hauptmann Luderswasn't a bad sort, a smart Rhenish lad with a rigid back and a taste for a fight who liked his stinky little cigars. Yet he had plunged into the Spanish mysteries up to his very neck. Ah well, these Condor Legion pilots believed themselves to be of a higher order. Perhaps they were. At1:30a.m.,Kunkelknocked discreetly at the door. It was time.Ludersdisentangled himself from the girl, washed quickly, and arrived at the airfield, a little north and west of the city, a half hour later. There was excellent coffee in the briefing hut, and Von Emel went through the usual drill: weather, situation on the ground--little enough happening, although someone had blown up an armory in the Guadarrama--and mission. But some things were not as usual. There were two SD types in attendance, from the Nazi party's foreign intelligence service. Small men in expensive suits, sharp-eyed and silent.Ludersdid not mind the Abwehr--they were military and had kinship with the airmen--but these two made him nervous. They stared at him. The other variation concerned the mission itself. Von Emel handed him a circled street map of Madrid and explained at length. He rather hurried the takeoff, because he had to reach Madrid while it was still dark. That would require some fast flying, but Luders wasan excellent pilot and his Messerschmitthad airspeed tucked here and there that only he knew about. Willy Messerschmitthimself had come to Spain in August, to tour behind Nationalist lines and visit the places where his planes would be tested, and proven. In fact, the log was well suited to what Luderswould ask of it. The five-hundred-pound bomb slung beneath the belly of the plane didn't slow him down, though it did drink a little extra gas. Just before sunrise, the dawn no more than a faint blur behind him, he came skimming in over the city from the east. He could not hear the rattle above the engine noise, but a few yellow pinpricks of anti-aircraft fire were evident as he flew over the Paseodel Prado; however, he was really too low, and going too fast, for the Spanish gunners to have any patience with him. He steadied his foot on the bomb-release pedal and kept a light thumb atop the joystick where the machine-gun button was located. You never knew what was waiting on the rooftops--it was wiser to sweep up as you went. He moved closer to the window, body tensed for action. He had been born with the eyesight of a hawk, and now scanned the dark blocks below until he found what he was looking for. Apinpoint of blue light. From there it was all instinct. He banked hard, came sideways through the turn, the aeroplane slicing neatly through the bumpy air above the city, wound up in a shallow dive with the nose of the plane in perfect line with the beacon. Then several things happened very quickly. A red flickering that seemed almost to come from the beacon itself. He drove his thumb down hard, but the joypoint, the angle where his tracer bullets came together, was high. He corrected. The red flickers got much larger. There were three figures on the roof--one of them perhaps a woman? Shoved his foot to the floor, felt the plane kick free of its dead weight, then banked hard to the south, laying all the juice he had into the engine. It took quite some time before he realized that he had a problem. Nothing like a six-second bombing run to ice over the nervous system. But, as he flew over a small forest of pine and cork oak, he discovered that his right foot was throbbing like a giant clock. He looked down, moved the foot, saw a pfennig-size half moon of rushing treetops flanked by two bright red droplets. As sweat stood suddenly on his brow, he clutched frantically, testicles first, at his body. Even as the throbbing became hammering, he breathed a sigh of relief. Thank God, an honorable wound and no more. He climbed to make sure the 109's innards were not damaged, waggled the wings, and headed for Seville. Something else had gone wrong, but that he did not notice for some time, and by then the Nationalist airfield at Almodovarwas out of the question. He tapped the gasoline gauge, but it refused to change its mind. Actually, he'd been extremely lucky. A bullet had ruptured his gasoline tank, and by rights he should have been blown all over Madrid. As it was, he'd simply showered the rooftops with aviation gas. He spent only a moment hating himself for not checking the gauge, then concentrated on surviving the error. He needed a field. Not a potato field. Too bumpy--the109would hammer itself to pieces before he could get it stopped. Prevailing pilot-mess opinion was that the smoothest emergency landings were made on wheat fields. The ocher patches were detectable from the air and, by late September, the wheat was cut and the ground tended to be smooth, without surprising contours to wreck you just when you should be rolling to a safe stop. And, looking down,he was in luck. Everything was going to work out, after all. The early sun lit up a few yellow squares beneath him and he chose one and hoped it was lucky. He had to keep his attention focused, the foot was beginning to gnaw and bite, and he didn't want to stall on the way down. It would be an excellent emergency landing. He'd fly again as soon as the foot healed, and the aeroplane could be trucked back to Seville. Since there was hardly any gas, the danger of fire on impact was minimal. In a way, his luck held. It held all the way down the chute to the field. It held as he bounced. It held as he braked with the flaps. Held as the109rolled to a stop. Everything seemed to flood out of him at that moment, and he fell back against the seat and let his hands dangle and closed his eyes. The engine had stalled. He turned the key to off. Listened as the birds began to sing again. It had been a woman at the machine gun, he was sure of it now. The long hair stayed printed on his memory. _These Spanish women,__ he thought. You had to admire them. Still, it would be wiser to leave that fact out of his report. That was the sort of story that got around and stuck to your career like glue. He came to suddenly. Had he blacked out for a moment? Somehow he had to find a telephone. Recollecting his error, he wondered idly if he had not been ever so slightly unprepared for the mission. Too much Evangelina, perhaps. A fighting man could not leave his wits in bed. He moved the foot and grunted with pain. He needed a doctor. That thought got him moving, and he shoved the canopy back, grabbed the sides of the cockpit and hoisted himself to a sitting position directly above the wing. And, luck held, here came some people to help him. Peasants, no doubt, in their dark blue cotton shirts and trousers. _These must be__the peasants who cut the wheat, he reasoned, _for they are carrying__scythes. But, he looked around to make sure, the wheat was already cut. He briefly fingered the flap of the holster holding his sidearm, but there were at least twenty of them, so he threw his hands into the air and called out,"Rendici�rendici�meaning that he surrendered. But at this they only laughed.

Faye shut her eyes when Se� Tovar,the janitor's wife, soaped her breasts--despite herself, she was very embarrassed to be touched in this way--and the woman noticed and said "Scha!" in amazement at American notions of privacy. Did this girl not know that it was a woman's destiny to have her hands in everything unsacred, from placenta to horse manure and all that flowed from babies and wounds and old men? That by the time a woman was twenty there was nothing in the world she had not touched? She shrugged, smiled, and moved the girl's delicate little washing cloth to spread lather across her shoulders. Just down the street, at14Calle de Victoria, three women were hard at work on her clothing, rubbing it furiously on washboards as the fume of gasoline rose in their faces. As the glorious hot water poured down on her, Faye bubbled inside. It had been the most exciting day of her life. It had to be shared! But with who? Her parents would be frightened, badly frightened. Penelope Hastings? Penny would be most deliciously envious, but she would, Faye knew, show the letter to her mother, an endearingly foggy society lady who always asked Faye, "Is there, dear, um, anything you don't, um, eat?" Poor Mrs. Hastings, entirely flustered by the fear of feeding something wrong to Penelope's Jewish friend from college. And poor Mrs. Hastings was just the type, she was certain, who would _simply have to telephone__the child's mother. The Pembroke alumnae magazine? Fran Bernstein('33)pens a note from sunny Spain to say she's enjoying her visit with Bolshevist elements of Republican forces defending Madrid. Recently our Franny shot it out with a Nazi fighter plane and got herself doused with aviation gasoline in the process! A victory celebration followed as ladies of the neighborhood forced the janitor to turn on the water, at which time shy Fran was unceremoniously stripped down and washed. Obediently, she let Se� Tovarturn her around and scrub her back. Her eyes still burned; she knew they'd be bright red for days. Andres, of course, would suggest visits to doctors. Would insist. This was a less than happy thought. She would have to tell him about her bicycle lock, and she knew this would create greatstir and turmoil. Clearly, somebody in the building was a traitor, a Fifth Columnist. And a sneak thief. She had told the excited men of the neighborhood Checathat she'd found the lock open. One of them, she knew from his cold stare, had not believed her. But he had said nothing. She was the hero of the hour. Not only had she retrieved the lantern, she had helped to shoot up a plane--though the damn thing had flown away to safety--and certainly, everybody said, spoiled the Nazi's aim. The bomb had fallen in the street, breaking every window for a hundred yards but sparing the gas and water mains, which allowed, when the Checamen had been shooed away, the triumphal procession first to Tovar the janitor, then to the aqua tile bathroom on the third floor. Number54 Avenida Saldana,it turned out, was a Republican armory, a secret one. If the blue lantern had been left in place, half the neighborhood would have gone skyward, and the people in the building--including the humming mother and her child--would have gone with it. When Faye had returned, ecstatic, to the rooftop,Renatahad lit the lantern and placed it on the parapet. "Let us discover who seeks such a light," she'd said grimly, running the bolt on the Hotchkiss gun and centering it on the trapdoor to the roof. When the plane came, though, it was Faye who grabbed the handles and Renatawho fed the belt. Curiously, she had heard nothing. Had seen the twinkling on the 109's wings but had never, she admitted to herself, realized what this meant. Had, in fact, moments later, burned her fingers on a silvery lump half buried in the roof tar, and only then had her mind made the connection that sent a single wracking shiver from shoulders to knees.Renatatoo had been soaked by gasoline but, being ever and truly Renata,had insisted on her own bathing arrangements. "Eres limpio, yo creo,"Se� Tovarsaid, stepping back to admire her handiwork. "Gracias, milgracias, se�,"Faye Said, turning the water offand taking a rough, clean towel that had appeared from a hand in the doorway. The woman waved away the thanks, singing,"De nada, de nada,"as she left the room to an uproar of Spanish from friends waiting without. Faye's bare feet slapped down the marble-floored hallway toward the staircase that led to the room under the eaves. Life was better than a short story, she rather thought, with an O. Henry twist at every turning that caught the heroine unaware and stunned her with the peculiarity of fortune. Could anyone have predicted that in the fall of1936a machine gun would buck and vibrate beneath her hands as a German plane swooped toward her from the sky? Not with any Ouija board she'd ever heard of. That her best friend would be a German communist named Renata?No, no, no. That her lover would be a forty-two-year-old Spanish draftsman from Ceutanamed Andres Cardona?No a thousand times! Oh if they could only see her now.

It was a narrow lane, barely one car wide, that wound its way up to San Ximene, and Khristo drove slowly, conscious of the roadside vegetation--lush and bursting weeds in every shade of purple and gold--as it whispered against the doors of the Citroen. At this speed he could hear the whirring of insects, could study gates made of twisted boughs that appeared from time to time, guarding dirt paths that wandered off into the fields. Once a week they drove to San Ximene, and he was beginning to recognize individual gates. Each one was built of twisted boughs, crossed and braced in every conceivable style. Once a week was probably too often to visit a safe house, but Yaschyeritsa had ordained the schedule and his word was law. Sascha, after a dreadful week, had at last discovered that vodka could be replaced by Spanish brandy and was his old self again. "Flies for Yaschyeritsa!" he would call out as they started off. _Not so loud,__ Khristo thought, but said nothing. Sascha wasa spring river in full flood, which went where it liked. Khristo loved this car. A1936Citroen1l CVNormale.Its long hood suggested luxury, its short, boxy body suggested frugality, and the curved trunk in the rear suggested yet another French preoccupation. The sober black body was accentuated by fat white-wall tires in open wells and shiny headlamps. The spacious windshield seemed to draw every yellow bug in Spain, but he kept the glass immaculate with wet, crumpled copies of _La Causa.__ Soakednewspaper was the thing for cleaning car windows--he'd learned that from a former Riga taxi driver who forged travel documents for the Comintern office in Tarragona. Even the car, he thought ruefully, had a file. The Citroen had been donated to the Comintern by a furniture manufacturer in Rouen. Amazing, really, how the rich in this part of the world worshiped the revolution of the working classes. He loved driving--he was the first Stoianev ever to operate a motor vehicle. He'd learned quickly, mastered the gearshift after a few head-snapping stutter stops brought on by a popped clutch. It was fortunate that he loved it because he spent a great deal of time behind the wheel. Intelligence operations, he had discovered, consisted principally of driving a car for hundreds of kilometers, sifting through an infinity of reports and memoranda, endlessly locking and unlocking the metal security boxes assigned to each officer, and writing up volumes of agent-contact sheets. In the latter regard, thank heaven for Sascha. The drunker he got, the better he wrote. And he had such mastery of Soviet bureaucratic language--a poetry of understatement and euphemism--that Yaschyeritsa mostly left them alone. That was fine with Khristo. Colonel General Yadomir Ivanovich Bloch, the illegal NKVD _rezident__ in Catalonia--as opposed to the "legal" militaryattach�nd diplomats under Berzin and the GRU--was secretly called Yaschyeritsa, the Lizard, because he looked like a lizard. He had a slightly triangular head, the suggestion of flatness on top emphasized by stiff hair combed directly back from the forehead. His thin eyebrows angled steeply down toward the inner corners of his eyes, which, long and narrow, were set above sharp cheekbones that slanted upward. Those eyes stared back at you emptily, without expression, watching only to determine if you were easy or difficult prey. Sometimes he licked nervously at his upper lip--the gesture, Saschaclaimed, an unconscious throwback to the age when reptiles ruled the earth. "Flies for Yaschyeritsa!" Saschawas awake. Where the white boxes of San Ximene towered above them, Khristo rolled to a stop. Saschabrushed the hair out of his eyes and blinked for a moment, then drew the bottle of Fundadorfrom the glove compartment and took a few swallows. Slowly, he twisted the cork back into place, then slapped it dramatically with his palm. "Now the colonel is ready for agents and debriefings," he announced. "The following six measures can be recommended in support of the secure continuance of said operation. One: it is geese who fly the summer night to Sonya's heart. Right, Stoianev? We trap good flies? The best flies?" "Only the finest. Served by the finest kitchens." "Forward, then." The Citroen climbed through the tight maze of alleys to the northern edge of the village. The doorways were covered by cloth-strip curtains. Each one, Khristo suspected, with its own pair of watchful eyes. He knew such tiny villages in Bulgaria. They made your heart go fast. Perhaps the next lost little place was the one where they still drank strangers' blood in a toast to forgotten gods. Still, one had to have safe houses, and it was best to have them in the middle of cities, concealed by crowds, or in desolate, out-of-the-way places like San Ximene. The agent they called Andres was doing a dangerous job: infiltrating the Falange. The _rezidentura__ in Tarragona had a long shopping list: names, addresses, planned operations, logistical systems and, ultimately, the discovery of the identities of German intelligence officers in charge of liaison with Franco's Fifth Column in Madrid. To prove himself worthy of trust, Andres had to commit an act of sabotage against the Republican forces, his own side. Thus he was vulnerable to friend and foe alike, could, at any time, be executed as spy or traitor, depending on who caught him. And this, Khristo thought, was only what _he__ knew about. There could be more. The Russians had a genius for these games, a love of darkness, a reverence for duplicities that hid deeper strategies. They came to a small whitewashed house with a tile roof at the end of a dirt street. A cat was sleeping on the windowsill. In a field across the road a few kids in short pants were foolingwith a battered soccer ball. The air smelted like onions fried in oil and sun-heated piaster, and a radio was playing music somewhere nearby. The man known as Andres Cardonawas down onhis knees in the midst of a wild garden of daisies and fuchsia geraniums surrounding an old, twisted lemon tree. As they droveup, he was yanking weeds from the dry soil and throwing them over the garden fence. He stood up, wiped his hands on his pants and called, _"Buenos__d�, buenos d�,"in the voice of a man pleasedto see his employees. _Ah yes, there you are, fellows, so good to see you, in your absence I've thought of a thousand things we need to do.__All of that in the tonality of a simple greeting, the way he stood, the expectation in his eyes. He was, Khristo realized once again, so very, very good at what he did. "And the name?" "Farmacia Cort�" "Cort� Refers to what?" "The name of the square, I suppose. Though it is near the Cort�" "The...?" "The Cort� The Spanish parliament." "Ah. So it is not owned by a man named Cort�" "No." "Hmm,"Saschasaid, tapping the end of the fountain pen against his teeth. "Locate it further for me, will you?" "The Plazade Cort�s elegant, fashionable. There is a hotel, the Palace--" "As in English? Not Palacio?" "No. Palace as in English. A fine hotel, quite luxurious." "Who stays there?" "Diplomats. Journalists. Those who seek to approach the Cort�" "Vot eto zoloto!"Gold. "Perhaps." "Nothing perhaps. It is certain. Comb this one out, thoroughly, you understand, and there would be treasure. Who has a prescription for heart medicine. Who has the clap. Who must have the laudanum syrup every week. More secrets in a pharmacy than in a woman's heart! Better than a bank, my friend. So _specific."__ "Yes. But one could not comb him out." Saschaclicked his tongue and wagged a "naughty" finger. "Well yes, if you tied him to a chair and all that, of course. But no other way." "Not money?" "Never." "Be sure now." "I am." "He likes women? Girls? Boys? Cats?" "No. He is purity itself." "The pig." Cardonashrugged and smiled, a soft gesture that forgave the world everything. "Would you care to hear about procedure?" "Oh yes. We like procedure. Khristo, you're getting all this?" "Yes. Most of it. " He wiped sweat from his face. Because they spoke Russian, the windows were shut tight. The sun beat down on the tile roof and the still air was wet and hot and blue with drifts of smoke. The roll of blueprints he'd taken from the trunk of the car was spread across the table, covered with coffee cups used as ashtrays, half-empty glasses of red wine, and sheets of paper covered with Cyrillic scratchings. One heard rumors of a. machine that recorded the human voice on a spool of wire, but it was not to be had outside Moscow. Cardonalita Ducadoand blew smoke at the ceiling. "The procedure is to enter the Farmacia Cort�n the Plazade Cort�etween four and four-thirty in the afternoon. Go to the rear of the store, inquire of the clerk--always a young woman in a gray smock--ifel patr� available." "El patr�The owner?" "Literally, yes. But it's a grander term in Spanish. The boss." "Ah." "She goes into the office, then he appears." "What does she think you want?" "Some personal thing, not to be mentioned to a young woman. Prophylactics, perhaps." "And do you buy something?" "No." "Isn't that asking to be noticed?" Cardonapondered this for a moment. "Such things go on at Spanish pharmacies, it's not so unusual. Men, you know, and their intimate problems." Saschashot an eyebrow and snorted. "Intimate crabs." "Certainly, and everything else. Anyhow, he gives me the time and place of the meeting." "His name?" "According to the tax clerk's office, the Farmacia Cort�s owned by Emilio Quesada." "El patron." "That's an assumption." Saschasighed. The more they knew the craft, the more they wriggled off the hook. Cardonawas exactly right, but it was just such ephemera that drove intelligence people crazy in the long term. "Very well. Make a note, Khristo." He turned back to Car-dona. "I don't suppose you'd want to ask the clerk, just once, if Se�Quesada is available?" Cardonasimply smiled. "Umm," Saschasaid, "I rather thought not. He comes to the meetings, thispatr� "Of course he does. But I can't say that. We are all hooded." "Describe the hoods." "Silk pillowcases, a sort of light brown color, with slits cut for eyeholes." "Tan, would you call them?" "No, not really. It's what a Renaissance painter would've known as ecru, I believe." "Good God."Saschaheld his head and shook it. "Khristo, make them 'light brown.' Ecru indeed. Moscow would love that." "Each meeting is held at a different apartment, never the same one twice." "I suppose you don't go hooded in the street." "No. That's done just inside the front door, but the arrival times are staggered, and we leave one at a time." "Cautious." "Yes." "And the meetings?" "Fascist mumbo-jumbo. A red candle burning in the middle of the table. A prayer to start out, a litde speech--quite ferocious, really. You know how they are, Christ and blood, Christ and blood, back and forth. Then there's news of the Falange, military victories, piles of dead miners--nothing you wouldn't find in their newspapers." "What is their morale, would you say." Cardonapaused a moment. "Well, it's hard to tell with the hoodson, but I would say they're pretty scared. Most of them, their political views were well known before the Aza�vernment took over. They fear their neighbors, co-workers, tradesmen." "Does only the leader speak?" "No. After he has said his piece, an unsheathed bayonet is passed from hand to hand. Each of us holds it and makes a statement." "For example." "A Republican gang marched into a monastery near Albacete. The monk in charge was tied to the altar and a crucifix was forced down his throat." "Others?" "Nuns raped and murdered, priests strung up in trees." "Falangist propaganda, of course." A muscle ticked briefly under Sascha's eye and he blinked to make it stop. "Naturally." "But they are _conscious__ of the gangs." "Oh yes. They fear them--with the fear of children--and recite their names. Lynxes of the Republic, Red Lions, Spartacus, the Furies, Strength and Liberty. It is almost as though a constant naming of the terrors will keep them away in the night." "'The purpose of terrorism...' "Saschaquoted half the Lenin axiom, a shrug in his voice. Khristo finished the phrase silently:". .. is to cause terror."These two, he realized, had something between them quite outside the agent--case officer relationship. They were not the Mitya type--blunt-headed peasants with a red catechism in their mouth and a rifle in their hands. They were intellectuals: they would say the catechism and use the rifle, but they would not delude themselves. Their status demanded knowledge--and admission, no matter how inferential--of the truth. "Now,"Saschasaid, shifting in his chair, "we come to the blue lantern." Cardonadrew a deep breath and expelled it slowly. "I'm still piecing it together." "General Bloch was quite pointed in his remarks on the subject." "I can imagine. Well, you may tell him that I do not think it mattered that the action went awry. _They__ accept the hand of fate, even if General Bloch does not. What matters to them, the Falange, is that I executed the plan. Its failure, I think, will not damage their trust in me." "But you've not met with them since it happened." "Nor was I scheduled to do so. Tomorrow I go to the pharmacy." "Have you any idea what went wrong?" "Not really. I went to the roof, lit the lantern. Somehow, the lantern was removed, taken to another building, and the attack failed." "Another building?" "Yes." "We are told there was an American involved. A woman." "Neighborhood gossip. I have heard it." "Find out for me who she is--her name, anything you can learn. There are many Americans who come to Spain now, Moscow perceives this as a critically important opportunity. Thus, if you wish your star to shine..." "I'll do what I can." "Tell me, was there no guard at the Avenida Saldana? Did they simply fill up a building with guns and ammunition and leave it there?" "This is the _Spanish__ war." They were both silent for a moment, then Cardonawent on, leaning across the table. "A story, if you like. One of the cinemas on thepaseois showing _Duck Soup,__ the Marx Brothers film. I attended last week, the theater was packed full. In the row in front of me were three artillery officers on leave. For most of the time they were silent. But then, there is a scene where Groucho Marx is playing a colonel, and he stands before a map and says, 'A child of three could solve this problem.' He pauses, then adds, 'Bring me a child of three.' At that, the officers laughed--laughed bitterly, one could say--and nudged each other." Khristo and Saschaboth smiled. "Humorous,"Cardonacontinued, "it is that. But maybe not so funny when you reflect on what it implies. To answer your question directly I will tell you that the Avenida Saldanaarmory was protected by the POUM, the anarchists, and in all probability the guard had something more important to do and off he went and did it. I carried the lantern up there with a knife in my hand, but there wasn't a soul." Dutifully, Khristo tried to keep up with him, writing as fast as he could. Saschasighed and sat back in his seat. "Bloch and the others," he said, "are getting quite fed up with the anarchists. Quite thoroughly fed up. And given The Great Stalin's attitude toward Trotsky, who sits in Mexico and pulls the strings of his puppets, this lack of discipline is going to receive close attention. I advise you to stay away from them, Andres, if you wish to keep your knees unsoiled." "Naturally Moscow is upset. Obedience is everything to them, but this is the way of it and you will not change the Spaniards. They have itched all their lives to stop dreaming, to act, after twenty years of talk. And it is their freedom they love most of all, because it is chained to their manhood. Stick your nose in at your peril." Saschaheld his hand up like a traffic policeman. "No treason, comrade, it's too hot today." "I intend none. But find a way to tell them the truth." The implied ending of the sentence, _for a change,__ hung in the smoky air. Saschabrought forth a crooked smile, in which all the ironies in his life danced and played. "Very well," he said, "I shall certainly start tomorrow. But, for today, let me first put you on the proper path. We have an alternate plan--not so good as the armory, but it will have to serve." "Of course, comrade."Cardonasmiled. "Do'you have a camera?" "I know where to get one." "Good. Make certain the film is especially light sensitive. Thursday morning, the first Soviet tank column will reach Madrid--an historical moment. It is moving up from the docks in Alicante and will take a route from the east, entering the city on the Paseode la Infanta Isabella. We are timing the arrival for dawn and taking other measures to ensure that the entry is as secret as possible. What we want you to do is to take a roll of photographs of these tanks. Not the entire roll, of course, shoot the first few frames on something mundane, as though the film were already in the camera. Invent a' good story for being out there, in case theyask. Take the roll, undeveloped, to your contact at Farmacia Cort� The photos must be clandestine in nature, of course, tilted horizons, out of focus--let them see what a brave fellow you are. You'll want to be discreet anyhow, for those tank commanders are country fellows, and they'd as soon make daylight shine through you as anyone else. Make sure you photograph the relevant items--tank numbers, commanders' insignia, the usual drill. It is our intention that the photos soften the blow if your new friends are distressed over the failure at Avenida Saldana, but, most important, we want you to become the keenest sword in the Fifth Column. We want you to glitter in their eyes so that they will show you off to their superiors. Eventually, we think, you will see a German. Now, need I go back over the ground?" "No. I understand. And it will be a pleasure,"Cardonasaid, "a great pleasure to see a German." "Poor Andres. Is he tired of being a Spaniard?" "In truth, yes." "Do not despair, Andrushka, just a little while longer." It was dusk--fields shadowed in purplish light, sunset faded to a few red streaks in the western sky--when they wound their way down the hill from San Ximene. Saschaseemed exhausted; he lay slumped against the passenger door and worked hard at the Fundadoruntil he conquered it--a bottle new that morning. It was, Khristo thought, the performance that sucked the life out of him. The role of case officer demanded an actor of extraordinary range: mother's warmth, father's discipline, the acuity of a favorite teacher, the strength of a playing-field hero. Cardonawas betting his life that Sascha wasgood at his job--it was that simple. For months, Khristo had watched him rise to the performance, time and time again. "Should you not turn on the lights?"Saschaasked. "I will, in a while. The windshield bugs are terrible here." "How can you see to drive?" "It's a white road." "Oh." "I'll stop if you want to get in back." "No, I'm better up here." They drove in silence. When it was finally dark, Khristo turned on the headlamps and watched moths dancing in the beams. When Saschaspoke again, his voice was thick with exhaustion. "Save him," he said. "I want you to promise me that." "Who? Andres?" "Yes. You promise?" "Of course. You will be at my side to make certain of it." "I think not." No point, Khristo thought, in pursuing this. Saschatrailed these hooks until you bit. He was, like other intelligence officers, stricken with an urge to confide. It was too strong, like a devil that beat you over the head with your own secrets until you had to let one out. To relieve the pressure you would tell half a secret, or an old, used-up secret, or boast of the secrets you knew. The cursed things had a life of their own, like weeds they threatened to grow right out of your head into plain sight. "You've read his file?" The voice picked up a little. "Not allowed." "Shit." "The junior officer is confined to knowledge of tactical intelligence. Strategic intelligence is the sole responsibility of senior staff. Section three. Paragraph eight." "More shit." "I quote you gospel." "You are like a market peddler, Khristo, like a Jew you count kopecks. _Tactical__ intelligence. _Strategic__ intelligence. The difference between waiters' gossip and ambassadors' gossip. What notions, really. The thoughts of men whose backsides have grown into their chairs." Khristo laughed. "I'm funny. That Sascha, he will make you laugh." "Thank God." "I'll miss you." For a time, Khristo thought he had gone to sleep, but then his voice returned from the darkness. "Roubenis. That is Andres's true name, Roubenis. Avram Rou-benis." "Greek?" "Armenian--at least his father was Armenian--with a Greek name. As for his mother, she was the unhappy result of an _amour__between a German commercial traveler and a Turkish hotel maid." "In a word, a little of everything." "Just so. Thus he speaks Turkish, Armenian and demotic Greek. Also Russian, as you have seen. Spanish and English, and he can swear handsomely in Arabic. He was first a spy at the age of fourteen, in1908.He would sneak up on Turkish encampments, listen to the chatter of the guards, and inform the villagers. To hide or not to hide--that was how they fought back." "A survivor, then." "The word does no justice. A monument, perhaps, to stepping through the fire quickly and going on with life. He was born under the Ottoman Empire, in a little village near Yerevan, Armenia, at the edge of the Caucasus range. Just north of the border point where eastern Turkey meets northern Iran. In the year1909,the Turks murdered two hundred thousand Armenians--including the father. They cut off his head with a sword. Avram and his mother saw it happen from where they were hiding, in a rooftop cistern. "The mother was a great beauty--blond hair likea Fr�ein, black eyes like an Anatolian Turk. The soldiers would have made short work of her. There was cruelty beyond imagination--in reprisal for an attack against an officer, hundreds were blinded, left to walk around as living reminders. But Avram and his mother escaped. She sold herself to a merchant and he took them west, all the way across Turkey, in a horse and wagon. I believe there was a baby sister who died of cholera along the way. Eventually they reached Smyrna. You know it? A disputed city, first Greek, then Turkish, on the Aegean coast of Turkey. There, the merchant determined that he would enjoy both mother and son in his bed. The mother was cunning. As the merchant undressed, she pulled his shirt over his head and Avram killed him with a brick he had hidden in the wagon. They dragged his body into a marsh and took his gold. "Soon they were in business. They found a family that made strong gloves from uncured hides to sell to the Greek dockworkers, and bought the business from them. They prospered. Avram went to school, then to university in Istanbul, later in Athens. He became a draftsman and an engineer. Then, in1922,it happened again. The Greek-Turkish war, and Smyrna was burned to the ground. Almost the entire Greek population was massacred. Avram rushed home from Athens, where he had a job as a clerk in the office of the civil engineer. But he could not find his mother. She was gone. The house was gone. There was nothing. In despair, he returned to Athens. "He was a lonely young man. He did his work and lived in a room. One day, he went to a Communist party meeting--it was a way to meet people. In time, he discovered he had a new family, a family that loved and sheltered him but, most important, a family that did not suffer injustice meekly. At party direction, he took a new job, working for a British company contracted to improve the water system in Baku. At this time, Baku was a British enclave protected by Czech mercenaries and White Guards--an imperialist island in a sea of revolution. The British could not resist Avram--his softness, apparent softness, appealed to the bullying side of their nature. He rose within the firm, and reported to the Cheka. There was, on his part, never a moment of hesitation. Spying came to him as making love comes to other men. It is his belief, in fact, that his father may have had relations with the Okhrana, the czar's intelligence service, though his murder by the Turks was haphazard--simply one act in a village slaughter. But Avram knew them, whether they were Turkish Aghas or British officers, he always understood how they worked, where their vulnerabilities lay. Thus he was able to penetrate the Falange--simply by saying the right things to the right people, being patient, waiting for them to come to him. And thus he will find his way among the Germans. That is, if we do not kill him first." At first, Khristo did not entirely trust his voice. All through the history of Roubenis there were edges that cut sharply against his own life. He felt ambushed, as though the story had come out of the night and attacked him. There were people in Vidin who had lived under Ottoman rule--and it was something they simply did not speak of. And he had seen his brother die under the boots of the fascists. Poor Nikko. Poor sad, stupid Nikko and his big lip that called the world's bluff. And when the dirty work was done, and the blood long since washed into the earth, both he and Roubenis found themselves in the service of Russia, andthat was a locked room--once you were inside. Back in Moscow they had quite a taste for suffering. How well they understood it, used it, made great profit of it. Unconsciously his left hand moved from the steering wheel and traced the outline of the white pawn in his pocket. Poor Ozunov, he thought, this piece of painted wood perhaps his only estate, all that remained of his existence. Finally, Khristo rose to the baits Saschahad strung for him all day long: "Why on earth would _we__ kill Andres?" Saschalaughed, a shrill, violent laugh. "God in heaven cover your ears and hear no more of this!" he cried out. "This Bulgarian dolt has been with us two years and more, yet he has seen nothing, heard nothing, learned nothing. He still thinks--this trusting child--there must be _reasons.__" Then the hell xvith you, Khristo thought and bit his lip to keep the thought from being spoken aloud. He was tired of Sascha, of webs and coils and plots, of lies that sounded like truths and truths used to prop up the lies. He was tired of being afraid. His heart ached terribly and he wanted to go home. They came to the main road, two lanes wide, that ran along the floor of the valley between the railroad tracks and the river, and turned east toward Tarragona. Khristo drove fast; the hard-sprung Citroen bounced over potholes and cracks, sometimes edging right when a car or truck came toward them. Little towns on their way were dark, though sometimesa cantinawas open, light spilling from its windows onto the cobbled streets. The road veered and cornered in the towns, and Khristo downshifted aggressively, making the engine race and sing, making car music in the night. Outside Ribarroja de Ebro, there were dancing lights spread out before them and the red glow of a fire, and Khristo slowed. Then, in the middle of a long curve, a man appeared on the road, and Khristo rolled to a stop when he was clearly in the beams of the headlights. From Sascha's side of the car came the little popping sound made by disengaging the button and grommet that held a holster flap in place. "Just let him come,"Saschasaid, fully awake and not at all drunk. But the man stayed where he was, swaying back and forth, hispalms held toward them in the universal stop command. The more Khristo stared at him, the less sense he made. He wore a khaki uniform, in the style of Republican officers yet not the same, and he had no insignia at all. His feet and lower legs were wrapped in dirty white bandages that threatened to unravel and his face was webbed with dried trails of blood that seemed to have come from a wound just above the hairline. "Sorry, gents," he called out, "there's no way through." Khristo put his head outside the window to see better. "English?" he asked. "American," the man said, squinting in the light. "What is the matter?" Khristo asked. Phrases from the tattered book came back to him. "There's bodies and railroad cars all to hell up there. Just before dusk, the Nazis bombed a train. Hit the engine and we went off the tracks." He pointed at his bandaged feet and said, "Hospital train." "What is it?"Saschasaid in Russian. "He said a bomb?" "A hospital train was blown up." "Ah. That explains the bandages. He is American?" "Yes. He must be with the International Brigade. Are we supposed to talk to them?" "No, but we are here." The man hobbled over to Khristo's window. "You're Russians?" "Yes," Khristo answered. "And you speak English?" "A little, yes." He smiled. By the light of the headlamps Khristo could see that his eyes were gray and his face was young and pleasant. "My name is Robert King," he said and stuck out a hand. Khristo shook it, reaching over the edge of the rolled-down window. "How do you, " Khristo said. "I am Captain Markov." He had, like all NKVD officers in Spain, a nominal cover supported by one or two documents, a nom deguerre meant only for superficial deception. "Russians. I've met Italians and Germans and Danes and a Hungarian, but you're my first Russians." "Do you need aid?" Khristo pointed at King's forehead. The man touched the place, winced, looked at his fingers. "No. Seems to have clotted up. But if you want to help, move on ahead. Go slow, it's pretty bad up there." "What does he want?"Saschaasked. "They need help." "Drive slowly." As they moved forward, King stepped aside and saluted with a clenched fist and a smile. Khristo returned both. Saschatook a small notebook and a stub of pencil from the glove compartment. "He said his name was King?" "Yes. K-i-n-g I think, like the ruler of Britain." "Ah, of course. I remember. And his patronymic?" "Richard." Saschapaused in his writing. "You're sure that's it?" "Yes, I'm sure," Khristo said. They worked until dawn. It was hard, dirty work, illuminated by torches and flashlights, amid the drifting smoke of small field fires started by the bombing and a ground mist that rose like steam from the river and its banks and blew gently across the road where they labored. To avoid the consequences of the periodic flooding of the Ebro, the builders of the railroad had designed an earthen ridge for the tracks. The embankment wasn't very high, perhaps eight feet, but it had added to the velocity of the plunging train and sent the engine and half the cars down onto the road in a tangle of splintered wood and bent iron. At the start of the bombing run, the train's engineer had two choices: stop the train and have everybody run for the fields or, on the theory that a target in motion is harder to hit, give it full throttle. The engineer had taken the second option--from pure instinct for flight, no doubt--and had been wrong. He'd had no way of knowing that motion in a train is completely predictable, and even less could he have been aware of how moving trains excite bomber pilots, who usually can see little but a column of smoke for their efforts. But it was most of all, Khristo thought as he heaved on the end of a railroad tie pressed into service as a lever, an intelligencefailure. Someone, not knowing the range of the German bombers, had decreed that trains could run during daylight. And here was the result of such ignorance. As they took the wreck apart, pulling away boards, manhandling cast-iron wheel carriages and axles, they came upon the bodies. Most of them, like the American on the road, already wounded and bandaged. Now and then they found one still alive and carried him down to the road, to be taken back to Tarragona by a fleet of private cars and taxicabs called in from surrounding towns. But mostly these wounded, who had expected to live, who had had the luck to survive gunfire or artillery bursts, were dead, twisted into impossible positions by the force of the wreck. From the survivors, who worked along with local policemen and firemen, Khristo learned they had been fighting against the Asensio column to the west of Madrid, and it had been a nightmare. They had retreated from Navalcarero, across the Guadarrama River, all the way back to Alorc�They had been, like Republican forces throughout Spain, very brave but poorly armed. The Nationalist field guns had chewed them up from a distance, and forays against the gun emplacements brought them into enfilading machine-gun fire, which mowed them down in long lines. A company of miners from Asturiashad arrived to fight by their side, but they had no guns whatsoever and fought with dynamite. When civilians took the field against organized forces, Khristo realized, they learned the simplest tactical truths at brutal cost. And they lost. Lives, armaments, strategic support, positions, and ground--everything. Like the Crusaders of old, they believed the justness of their cause would somehow protect them, and they were equally wrong. The rescue effort was led--brilliantly, Khristo thought--by the chief of police of Ribarroja de Ebro, who had made his way to the scene in pants, boots and pajama top. He was a tall man with a pitted face, and he seemed to be everywhere at once. Directing, encouraging, ordering, in total calm and with total authority. When Saschahad tried to explain, using his garbled Spanish, that their mission precluded any possibility of helping in the effort, the man nodded in sympathy and, saying"S�_s�s�s�s�__had taken him by the arm and led him around the Citroen to thetrunk. How like those in Moscow, Khristo thought, to teach you French and English and then send you to Spain. When Saschahad refused to open the trunk, the policeman had patted him on the shoulder and, his face full of apology, called for"una barra"--a crowbar. At that point Khristo stepped in and opened the trunk. The policeman, knowing what he wanted, dug down through the Fundadorbottles, Degtyaryova machine pistols, and debriefing notebooks and came up with the car jack and its handleand held them up to Sascha. "Esta la hora a salvar los vidas,"hesaid. "Los procedimientos deben esperar. "It is time to save lives--procedures will have to wait. Then, summoning the words carefully from a very limited supply of English, he had added, "You watch or you help--_a m� lo mismo. "__Saschastared at him. The policeman, to drive home the point, picked up a notebook between his thumb and forefinger and dropped it back on the pile of bottles and guns. Saschawent pale. Khristo, in response, took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, and was rewarded with a policeman's smile. Three boxcars of live steers had traveled with the train, en route to the markets of Tarragona, and a number of animals had been injured in the wreck. Some of them had managed to make their way into the fields, where they lowed ceaselessly with pain and terror, drawn-out pleading calls from the darkness. The policeman tried to ignore it but he could not and finally, to everyone's silent relief, a detail of surviving wounded had been given pistols and sent off, limping and shuffling, wandering through the mist and smoke, to find the animals and put them out of their misery. Thus there were shouts and pistol reports throughout the long night. Toward dawn, a train from the east had passed slowly on the remaining track, reinforcements headed for the Madrid front. All wore red scarves. They stuck their heads out the windows and gave clenched-fist salutes to the workers on the road, called out _"No__pasar�and other slogans. In one car they were singing the "Hymn of Riego."Khristo had observed this before--a train of wounded passing a train of new volunteers--and he did his best, with shouts and salutes and smiles, to help them not see what was on the road. At daybreak they were relieved by a company of infantry quartered nearby and the two collapsed against the side of the car, sitting in the weeds by the side of the road. Khristo stared sorrowfully at his hands, black with axle grease, soot, and dried blood, two nails split all the way to the base, a slice across the palm that had bled itself dry. It had been a long time since he'd really worked, every muscle in his back told him that. He sat quietly, in a kind of stupor, hypnotized by light as the first sun found the river. He watched the mist burning off, the pale green water moving lazily in its autumn flow. It looked so clean to him, the way it changed itself instant to instant, brushing along its banks, running to the sea. He wanted to go up next to it, put his aching hands in for as long as he could stand the cold, but he was too exhausted to move. By his side, Saschapicked with great difficulty at the sealing tape on the neck of a brandy bottle. "Surely," Khristo said, "there will be trouble over this." "Oh yes,"Saschaanswered. "Our orders are clear. Do not meddle, do not become involved, NKVD business precedes all else. For me, of course, it no longer matters, so I shall take the brunt of Yaschyeritsa." "Sascha, please, for once be real. Truly you are leaving?" "Recalled,"Saschasaid. The word seemed to hang for a long time."'Recalled to Moscow.' That is the phrase." He put the bottle down, reached over and tore up a handful of weeds. "Let me see, we have here hemlock and wild mustard, chicory, allium, and here is the legendary asphodel, a wildflower of great antiquity. I took a year of horticulture in university. With the famous Academician Boretz. See over there? Those are crown daisies, there is fennel I think, and field marigolds. Good old Boretz, never hurt a fly, couldn't walk without bumping into the ground. But a Trotskyite, or worse, one of Litvinov's supporters. So, that was Boretz. They are going to kill me, Khristo." He went back to work on the bottle, at last getting it open and taking a few delicate sips, then offering it to Khristo. The brandy tasted like fire, but the bitter strength of it kicked some life back into him. "Why do you not run away?" Khristo asked quietly. "Yes, it occurs to one. But it would be futility itself to try. They hunt you down, my friend, they always hunt you down. And before they dispense with you, they make you sorry you ran. They broughtone fellow back to Moscow and let us see him in the morgue, just his face, mind you. One would not think it physically possible to open a mouth that wide." Khristo watched him carefully, but his face, coated with oily dirt, was empty. "What has happened," he said, "is that Yagoda is finished. Now it is Yezhov, the dwarf, who runs the service. Yagoda has been accused of murdering the writer Maxim Gorky by spraying poison on his walls. Also, he is accused of complicity in the affair of Kirov. Rumor has it that the scythe is out in Moscow for real--this one will make the events of'34seem like the nursery. So, fine fellow, what you've seen of Sascha's useless life is what there will be." Khristo tried to take this in. The utter lack of drama in Sascha's demeanor somehow acted to balk understanding. "A dwarf," Khristo said. "Yes. The Great Leader exceeds himself in whimsy." "My God." "The curious part is that I don't care. Oh, later on, in the Lubi-anka, I shall kick and scream and plead for mercy--hug their boots and all of it. It is expected of one to do that--they demand their theater. But now, right now, I feel nothing at all." "Sascha, this cannot be." "Don't worry, I'll await you in hell. There we will keep track of the devils--who works, who doesn't, who makes secret plots with angels. You shall see, it won't be as bad as you think." At last the old Sascha. He was relieved. "Those devils must be watched--they stab the Revolution in the back! Perhaps I should accompany you?" Saschasmiled gently at his efforts to play along with the mood. "Application refused," he said, "reapply in thirty days." He thought for a moment. "Thirty days in truth, Khristo Nicolaievich. I am only the first to go--there will be others. Many others." "You are serious?" "Yes. In their eyes we have been ruined, you must understand. We have seen the world, and we must not be allowed to tell others what we have seen. Or perhaps we have consorted with the enemy. Who among us has remained pure? Impossible to know, so safety lies in throwing out the whole batch and starting anew." Khristo felt his pulse quicken. This was not Saschathe mad poet spinning dreams. This was the Saschawho told the truth. He turned to look back at the river for a moment but heard an odd noise and saw that Sascha wascrying, hiding his face in his hands. Beyond him, out on the road, the policeman was watching them. His eyes met Khristo's and he shook his head, slowly, back and forth. He did not understand them, or the world, or the carnage on the road. Nothing. "You have achieved virtually nothing, Lieutenant Stoianev." Colonel General Yadomir Bloch--Yaschyeritsa--touched the tip of his index finger to the end of his tongue and turned the page. It was brittle, transparent paper that crackled as he smoothed it down on the left side of the file folder. "Not here," he said, eyes running over the print. Moistened the finger again, "Nor here." The _rezidentura__ was in an old hotel near the docks, and though the drape was closed Khristo could hear bells and whistles as the night stevedore crew unloaded cargo. The boat had been there for two days, a rusty old Black Sea freighter, its name swabbed out with gray paint. "As you have no doubt heard, Colonel Alexander Vonets has returned to Moscow at the request of the Directorate, so you will have to carry on, but... "Finger to tongue, a new page. "Mmm... yes-" It was dark in the office, lit only by a tiny bulb in a desk lamp. Shadow hardened the planes of the face, sharpened the angles, cloaked the slanted eyes set deeply in the head. "Such praise. 'Attentive.' 'Meticulous.' 'Intelligent.'" A new page, turned back for a moment, then turned again. "I don't believe it," he said. He closed the file, rested his chin on folded hands and stared into Khristo's eyes. For a long time there was only silence, intensified by the low rumble of noise from the docks. "We have problems, Lieutenant," he finally said. "You agree?" "I am not aware of the problem, comrade Colonel General." "Problems, Lieutenant, the plural. Don't fence with me." "I am not aware of any of the problems, comrade Colonel General." "You consider yourself an able officer?" "I am doing my best, comrade Colonel General." Colonel General Bloch seemed to be sitting still, then Khristo noticed that his body rocked slightly, back and forth, as the last answer hung in the air. The longer he rocked, the less true the answer seemed, as though the credibility of the statement melted away with the motion. "Very well. I choose to believe you, and we have seen your best. The air is cleared, the mystery resolved, this attentive, meticulous, intelligent, able officer has given us his best effort. One cannot ask for more." He glanced at his watch. "It is now fourteen minutes after two. The _Neva__ will be ready to sail at six-thirty this morning. You will gather your effects and be on it. I will have my aide assign you a berth. Good evening, Lieutenant. I appreciate your frankness." With long, thin hands he squared the file, opened the bottom drawer of the desk, and set it carefully among others. Looking up, finding Khristo still staring at him in apparent disbelief, he seemed surprised. "Dismissed, Lieutenant," he said and kicked the drawer shut with his boot. "Comrade Colonel General," Khristo cleared his throat, "I believe your criticism would enable me to improve my performance." "What performance? You fucking parasite, get out of my office before I have you thrown out!" Crawl, Khristo's mind told him. _Crawl for your life.__ He stood up, came to attention. "Colonel General Bloch, I entreat you to assist me in the better performance of my duties, that I may better serve the objectives of my service. I entreat you, comrade Colonel General." Bloch stood and leaned across the desk. "How you whine," he said, "like your friend Sascha Vonets,of the _prominent__ Vonets family. You are all boot-kissers at the last, aren't you. Self-satisfied little kings who drive about the countryside in fine clothes and fuck the Spanish whores, while in Moscow people eat potato peels and give thanks for one more day of existence. Oh you should have heard him. The _intellectual.__ What promises he made. The moon and the stars. But it was too late. Too late. Your Armenianspy, Roubenis, sits in Madrid with his American girlfriend and reports on morale. Morale? What morale? These odious little Spaniards have lost their war. They're finished, done with. Because all they've ever done is hold their pricks in their hands and dream of their _freedom__ and _liberty.__ Generalissimo Franco will give them freedom, all right, he'll free them of their mortal souls and they'll go dreaming to their Spanish heaven. Morale, indeed. Is that what you think we are here for? Is that why Russia feeds you and clothes you with roubles it does not have? You foolish boy, to think we don't know such tricks. At the age of seventeen, I led a mutiny aboard the battleship _Sevastopol.__ We chained the officers to their steamer trunks full of uniforms and threw them into the sea. They too pleaded. A great deal of pleading in1917,one grew bored with it." Abruptly, he sat down. Swiveled his chair away from Khristo and pulled the curtain back from the window. The _Neva,__ working lights fixed to her booms and superstructure, stood hawsered fore and aft to the dock. A wooden platform on cables slowly lowered a JSII tank to the quay. "Sit, Lieutenant," he said. "You wish not to sail on the _Neva?__ It is not uncomfortable. You might spend a day or two in Odessa before transit to Moscow. No? Not appealing?" "Comrade Colonel General, my brother was murdered by the fascists." "So it says in your file. But then, both my parents were knouted to death by the White Guard. Your parents, on the other hand, have found it expedient to connect themselves to the fascists, by way of your sister's marriage. This too it says in your file. Come to think of it, expediency rather defines you, doesn't it. It was expedient for you to leave Bulgaria in her agony. Expedient to do well at Arbat Street. Expedient to serve Sascha Vonetsin his drunken self-pity. Very well. Look out the window. See where expediency leads." "What must I do, comrade Colonel General, to improve my performance?" "Go to Madrid. The time for safe houses is over. Find this Roubenis and put your boot up his ass. He attends these Cagoulard meetings--the Falangein their hoods. Well, enough of that. Put some men in the street. Find out who these people are, wherethey live, get their _names.__ Wire those names to me--there must be ten, at least. Use the wireless at our consulate, in Gaylord's Hotel near the Retiro Park. We'll take care of it from there, believe me. The American girl. I want to know who she is, what of her relationship with Roubenis. Take her to bed if you have to--if Roubenis objects, tell him to get out of your way. She must have American friends, or English. Get me something I can use. I wish to hear no more meowing about _morale.__ Is this understood?" "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.