The Second Son

3

It was like climbing through sifted dust. The heat smelled of the sea, but it was only a tease. Worse was the sand that kicked up from the path and clung to the skin like dying ants. Mueller seemed to be enjoying it.

“I’m not impressed,” Hoffner said, as Mueller continued to hum. “You’re baking in this the same way I am.”

Mueller placed his good hand on the rock face and ducked around a jutting stone. “How’s that valise holding up?”

Mueller had been kind enough to rig a few ropes around the thing, with the satchel tied on at the back. Hoffner was wearing them like a rucksack, although the valise was far too long for his back.

“Fine,” he said.

“I’m sure it is.”

They had left the plane fifteen minutes ago. Mueller had waited for first light before bringing them low into the coast. It was clear that this was the usual drill, a strip of beach south of the city, far enough removed to be of no practical use to anyone except the truly gifted. Hoffner had kept his eyes closed for the last two minutes of the flight, certain that the water or the rocks would be making quick work of them. Instead, Mueller had brought them down, with two short bumps and a quick turn. Even with his eyes opened, Hoffner had been unable to fathom the speed, drop, and length of the landing. He had been equally amazed to discover the sand-colored tarpaulin awaiting them in a nearby cave: five minutes to drape the Arado; another five to rig the valise. Now, from a vantage point high above the beach, Hoffner had no hope of finding the plane.

“It’s up here,” said Mueller, as they came to the top of the scarp. Something resembling a road lay a few meters off, with a thick copse of trees beyond it. Mueller started through the shrub grass. It was only then that Hoffner remembered the limp.

“You make that climb look easy, Toby.”

“Rocks are uneven,” said Mueller. “We balance each other out.”

There was no such luck under the trees: roots and branches were particularly rough on Mueller, but he said nothing. Twenty meters in they came to an opening and a second tarpaulin. Mueller pulled it off to reveal an old Hispano-Suiza: a four-seat, open-back saloon with two oversized front lights and an undercarriage that poked out beyond the grille like a giant tongue. The windscreen was folded down onto the bonnet and gave the entire thing the look of a long-faced priest caught in a state of permanent terror.

“ ’Twenty-two Torpedo,” said Mueller. “Not bad for fifteen years.”

“Bit stingy of Radek.”

“Why?” Mueller said, tossing the tarpaulin into the back and propping up the windscreen. “She runs better now than she did when I got her.” He slid behind the wheel while Hoffner disentangled himself from the valise; his shirt was a thin layer of perspiration. “We pass through a few towns; then it’s open road for about an hour. After that it’s walking again, just outside the city.”

He started the engine as Hoffner settled in.

“You might want to have your pistol on your lap,” Mueller said. “Up to you. I don’t mind if you sleep.” He put the car in gear and maneuvered them out through the trees.

Talk of the gun had been a joke. The coast road to Barcelona was empty, not that there was any safety in it. The thing snaked above the water like curled twine and clung to the shrubland and rock as if any sudden movement might spill it into the sea. The glare was no less daunting and made anything more than a few hundred meters ahead fade into the rust and sand-washed rise of the hills. There might have been a rifle-or two, or twelve-fixed on them from above; then again, there might have been nothing.

Mueller kept his good hand on the wheel, his other limp in his lap. Changing gears required a sudden explosion of energy, good foot and bad foot tangoing along the pedals, while the gap-filled hand struggled to find its grip on the gearshift. Hoffner was glad for the few stretches of straight road.

The first signs of life appeared around one of the curves. A line of ageless women walked in twos along the siding, each carrying a large straw basket, eyes locked on the plodding regularity of their feet: if there was a civil war some thirty kilometers up the road, they had yet to hear of it. Mueller took the car wide, and Hoffner stared back as two of the women glanced up. Their lips were parched and red and full with unknowable smiles. There was a heat to these women that seemed to mock the sun. One of them waved, and Hoffner brought an awkward hand up.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Mueller said, his eyes fixed on the road.

Hoffner watched as the last of the faces slipped behind the curve. “What?”

“They were laughing at you. You know that, don’t you?”

Hoffner settled back in. “Were they?”

“The wave.” Mueller smiled. “That was precious, Nikolai.”

The car began to climb, and Hoffner realized how raw the scars would always be with Mueller: an unseen kindness taken for betrayal, a woman’s smile the prelude to humiliation. There was no escaping that kind of self-damning.

Hoffner peered into the haze of the sky. “It’s a different sun now.” Even the blue of the water seemed to pale under it.

“Is it?” Mueller snorted. “More of a punch here than on Droysenstrasse? Wait till you head inland.”

Mueller downshifted, and a village appeared in the distance around another turn. Hovering behind it was a wide surge of rock-Herr Wilson’s balding pate in limestone and brush-which rose some two hundred meters from the base of the hills and made the houses below look like tiny pieces of bone tumbling from a shattered skull.

“Not Berlin,” said Hoffner. “Here. Different from what it was. Different from the way a boy sees it.”

For the first time Mueller glanced over. He saw the sweat peeling down Hoffner’s cheek and neck. He turned back to the road. “Never pictured you as a boy.” Hoffner said nothing, and Mueller added, “Take a drink, Nikolai. You’re going red.”

The road began to dip, and Hoffner heard the waves over the churning of the engine. “We came in the summers,” he said. “A month at a time.” He found the canteen. “Calella. It’s about two hours north of here.”

“I know the place.”

“It was for my mother’s health, I think-or mine. I don’t remember anymore.” Hoffner took a swig. “The Kripo gave that kind of time back then. They didn’t pay, but they let my father go.”

Mueller took the canteen. “Long way to come for health.”

“Yah.” Hoffner was still staring out.

“He had a girl in Calella, your father? Waiting for him?” Mueller drank.

Hoffner nodded absently.

“You knew?”

Hoffner caught sight of a bird diving into the water. The wings and beak drew to a fine point and then were gone. An instant later the bird reappeared and flew off. “I suppose,” he said. “Not much need for discretion with an eight-year-old.” He took the canteen and drank deeply.

“And your mother?”

Hoffner screwed the cap on until it was tight. He remembered her standing in a doorway, her arm bloodied, the sun streaked across her face as she stared out through dry, unfeeling eyes. There was nothing else to it-no moment before or after to give it meaning-save perhaps a boy’s untried compassion. Even now Hoffner couldn’t tell if he was recalling or inventing it.

“I ate a lot of rice,” he said. “And fish. And I learned how to bend hooks for the fishing boats. You can’t imagine your fingers so raw.”

Hoffner was too late in realizing what he had said, and Mueller said, “No, I suppose I can’t.”

The sea disappeared behind a rise in the earth, and within a minute the road had narrowed to a single lane. The first hovels appeared on either side, with the smell of sour milk in the air. Hoffner recalled that, too, and wondered how he had ever managed to forget it.

“Jesus!”

Mueller jammed his foot on the brake as they took the next curve. A small barricade, made up of chairs, rugs, and whatever else had been scraped together, stretched across the road. A man with a rifle over his shoulder-his face pale from the heat-emerged from one of the crumbling houses, his hand raised in an unpolished authority. He pulled up to the car as a second figure stepped out from the doorway. Both were in shirtsleeves, with suspenders to draw the trousers high on the waist and red neckerchiefs tied loosely at the throat. The man kept his rifle on his back as he held out his hand.

“Vale,” he said, as if this were a formality.

Hoffner expected a spray of broken Spanish from Mueller, the offer of a thick wad of bills. Instead, Mueller reached into his pocket and, no less casually, pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. Hoffner sat amazed.

Mueller handed the paper to the man and said in a perfect Spanish, “You’ve moved it up the hill. That’s a bit rough. I might have driven right into it.”

The man continued to glance at the page. He handed it back and nodded over at Hoffner. “Another German socialista come to fight?”

“Something like that,” said Mueller. He reached under the seat and pulled out a bottle of brandy. He handed it to the man. “I’m guessing there’s still that ban on alcohol.”

The man said, “And it matters?” He turned and tossed the bottle to his friend, who caught it and pulled back part of the barricade-room enough for a car to drive through. The man then turned to Mueller. “The stamp on your pass comes due tomorrow. A cartload of brandy won’t help you then.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

The man stepped back. “They’ve moved the checkpoint on the other side as well.” He nodded for Mueller to drive on. “Don’t run into that one.”

Mueller put the car in gear, and Hoffner waited until they were out of earshot. “Old friend of yours?” he said.

Mueller remained silent as he continued to stare ahead. He took them down into the town square, where a pious if haggard-looking church stood at one end, immune to the filth and disarray of the skiffs and fishing nets lazing at the other. The sea and the docks opened up beyond them, but there seemed to be no sound coming from the waves. It was just the smell of salt and wet fur. Lines of drying sheets blew in the breeze, but the place was strangely empty. Mueller followed the street up to where the second barricade appeared, just beyond the last of the houses. Another bottle, and they were back on the coast road.

Hoffner said, “They’re not going to win this thing if all it takes is a few bottles of booze.”

Mueller reached for the canteen. “That’s a courtesy, Nikolai.” He had the spout to his lips. “You and I don’t have that piece of paper, we’re lying on the side of the road back there, a single bullet hole through the back of the skull for each of us.” He drank.

“Good that you had it, then.”

“Yes.”

“And they’re selling these pieces of paper in Marseilles?”

Mueller held the canteen out to him. “You haven’t met these boys, Nikolai. These are the true believers. Nothing’s for sale with them.”

Hoffner took a drink. “So you just asked for one and they gave it to you?”

Mueller stared ahead, his smile at once coy and obvious. “Some of us didn’t have to ask.” The road straightened, and Mueller pressed down on the accelerator.

It was nearly an hour before they turned in from the coast, a dirt path that ran through thick grassland dotted with carob, olive, and fig trees. They were heading up toward Montjuic-Jew Mountain, according to Mueller-one of those ancient hills on which ancient cities plant themselves. Mueller had promised a fortress at the top that had seen ancient Romans or Muslims or whichever invading conqueror the Catalans had so bravely sent back into the sea, time and time again. Hoffner had always thought cities like this too comfortable in their pasts to make any present-day swagger seem more than a borrowed vanity: the fading libertine-wrinkled, bronzed, and smelling of a too-sweet cologne-drawing strength only from memory.

And yet it wasn’t all that long ago that the hill had known sheep and cows and goats and, somewhere off in the distance, those long stalks of yellow wheat that a woman could thresh and grind into whatever might keep a family alive: twelve hundred years of tradition rooted out by a city once again desperate to move beyond itself. The world had come to Barcelona in 1929, and sheep and cows and goats were not what the world was meant to see. Instead, it was a mechanical fountain that swayed under the lights; a grand palace to rival any of the most lavish in Europe; pavilions to tease with tastes of Galicia, Valencia, and Andalucia; and views of the city to make even the worst kind of frippery seem worthwhile.

The World’s Fair had transformed Montjuic, or at least that part of the hill which faced the city. It was now a glowing tribute to Barcelona’s past, present, and future. For Hoffner, though-coming up on it from the backside-it was little more than a rise of brush and thick trees, with a few tracks leading nowhere.

“Bit of a risk, leaving the car up here,” Mueller said, as he downshifted and willed the old sedan up the slope. They were well into the tree cover now, grateful for a respite from the sun. “We’ll do a little painting before we go. Find it a good spot.”

It was impossible to mount Montjuic head on. Instead, they lumbered up one of the slaloming paths until, about fifty meters from the top, they stopped. Mueller pulled up hard on the hand brake before stepping out to find a few rocks. He wedged a handful behind each of the wheels and then headed back to the boot.

Hoffner was lighting a cigarette as he gazed up the hill.

“Smells like sugared beets,” he said.

“Does it?” Mueller found a small jar of something and placed it on the fender. He went back to his rummaging.

Hoffner said, “At least the sun’s not making it through here.”

“At least.” Mueller reappeared with a small paintbrush and limped around to the side of the car.

“The path’s still good,” said Hoffner. “We could take it up a bit farther.”

“We could.” Mueller knelt down. “If you like cracked axles and blown tires. We’d also hit the cliff. At least that would make it easier coming down.”

Mueller unscrewed the top of the jar. Mixing the paint with the brush, he began to slather the doors in some sort of design. Hoffner tried to decipher it upside down, but the dripping made that impossible. He got out on the driver’s side and stepped around the car.

It was letters: CNT-FAI.

“Anarchist trade union,” Mueller said, admiring his work. “Leave it to the Spanish to unionize the one group bent on tearing the whole works down. ‘Don’t like anything that smacks of organization? Come, join our organization…’ ” He took some water from the canteen and washed off the brush. “Must have a hell of a time collecting dues.”

When he had everything back in the boot, Mueller closed it and started up the hill. Hoffner had no choice but to grab the rucksack and follow.

“So you just leave it there?” Hoffner said, doing what he could to adjust the ropes on his shoulders. “No one touches it?”

Mueller nodded without turning. Even with the limp he was putting distance between them.

Hoffner said, “A few letters on the side and everything’s fine?”

Again Muller nodded.

When Hoffner began to feel it in his legs, he said, “So why didn’t we paint it in the first place, avoid the hill altogether, and just drive into town?”

Mueller continued to walk. “Right foot giving you a little trouble, Nikolai? Tough going on the rocks and roots?”

“I was just asking.”

Mueller slowed, then stopped. He looked up as if he were thinking something through. Hoffner took the opportunity to stop as well. “Why didn’t we drive into town?” Mueller said. “What a good question.” He looked back at Hoffner. “You’d think a cripple would be smarter than that.”

Hoffner started walking again. “Fine. There’s a reason. Just walk.”

Mueller let Hoffner pass him before saying, “You don’t want to be driving a car into Barcelona these days, Nikolai. They’ll either take it and burn it or pull you out so they can beat you before they take it and burn it.”

“And they do this to people who have those mysterious pieces of paper?”

“A car requires a different piece of paper,” Mueller said, as he started up the hill again. “So we walk.”

A small falcon hovered high on the wind ahead of them, its head pressed down, before it banked and sped toward the ground.

They were beyond the trees now, almost to the top, where the grade of the hill grew steeper. Off to the right Montjuic was sheer cliff, two hundred meters of rock face to the sea. Hoffner wondered if the bird might somehow misjudge the sudden rise-fail to pull itself up in time-but that would have required a different kind of instinct, a daring built on fear. It was the bird’s effortlessness that saved it from anything human. The wings came within a half meter of the ground and swept up again, with something small and wriggling caught in its talons.

“They like the rocks and the fortress,” Mueller said, as he brought them to the summit. “Kestrels. Don’t know what it is in Spanish.”

“Cernicalo,” Hoffner said. He had no idea how he remembered it.

Mueller was only mildly impressed. “Smart little birds. Rats never see them coming.”

The fortress spread out along the summit like two cocked arms, with a long stone tower rising from one of the elbows. The surrounding walls were all angles and points, little diamonds poking out to make any kind of frontal assault an impossibility. Hoffner had expected to see more by way of recent damage-bullet holes, walls breached-but for the most part the fortress was perfectly intact. It was also a product of the eighteenth century, with an enormous cannon on a rotating wheel peering out from one of the turrets. Oddly enough, from the look of things, it was completely abandoned. Hoffner had expected at least one rifle-toting caballero to make an appearance, another silent nod at the crumpled paper. Even the bird was eating quietly.

“You’re an idiot, Toby.” Hoffner unloosed the rucksack. He let it fall and followed it to the grass. It was years since he had felt this kind of ache in his legs. “The only Romans who’ve seen this place have come on holiday to take photographs. The big gun might have been the giveaway.”

Mueller snapped his two pincer fingers together: he needed a cigarette. Hoffner tossed over the pack, then the matchbox. Remarkably, Mueller caught them both. “Ancient Romans didn’t have rotating cannons?” said Mueller. He lit up and tossed back the pack. “Really? I’ll have to make a note.” He pocketed the matches. “It’s no tourists these days. Rumor has it they had some Nationalists locked up inside, but then who’d want to make the trek up here to feed them?”

“You’re assuming they were getting fed.”

Mueller took another quick pull on the cigarette and said, “We need to be down the mountain before it gets too hot.”

He stepped over and picked up the rucksack. He spun it onto his back and started to walk. “We need to go.” He then limped off across the grass-sloped trees to one side, fortress to the other-and Hoffner found a moment’s relief in the absurdity of it.

Hoffner forced himself to his feet. “Not sure how much more walking I’ve got in me, Toby.”

Mueller tossed the cigarette to the grass. “Then this is your lucky day.”

* * *

They were bicycles, black, at least ten years old, but with enough leather on the saddles to make them workable. Mueller had them chained to a tree on the far side where the rutted paths, such as they were, led down into the city.

Hoffner stood a few meters behind and above as Mueller pulled open the lock.

“You’re joking,” Hoffner said.

Mueller double-looped the chain under the seat and pulled up the taller of the two bicycles. He stood waiting for Hoffner to take it before pulling up the other. Both had the letters CNT-FAI painted across the handlebars. Hoffner also noticed how the right-hand pedals on both were fitted with a block of some sort to compensate for Mueller’s limp.

“I always keep a spare,” said Mueller. “Told you it was your lucky day.”

Mueller slotted the valise-cum-satchel into the rack and began to limp with the bicycle over to what passed for a path. He was surprisingly agile as he jumped onto the seat and let the slope take him. Hoffner watched as Mueller’s head bobbled with increasing speed-down, around a turn, and gone. Hoffner shouted after him, “You’re a son of a bitch, Toby!” then stepped up, climbed on, and found some speed of his own.

Hoffner had no reason to worry about the oversized pedal. He was simply holding on as best he could, his grip firmly planted on the hand brakes as the wheels seemed to take every root and rock with miraculous finesse. There was a strange familiarity to it, a thousand years of cigarettes and brandy tossed aside by something almost impatient. Hoffner began to smell the rubber on the tires, and gently released the brakes until he found himself letting go completely. He was actually managing the thing: more than managing it, he was gaining on Mueller. Somehow the bumps were a help as well, relieving the strain from the valise in his lower back. Hoffner might even have heard himself laugh.

“Enjoying yourself?” Mueller shouted over his shoulder.

Hoffner hadn’t the courage to answer as the turns came more quickly. It was nearly fifteen minutes of catching his breath until the taste of sugared beets began to recede, the canopy of trees was thinner-then gone-and the path became smooth. The glare from the sun took several seconds to adjust to as Hoffner looked down: to his amazement he was staring at pavement. He looked up again and saw a massive building farther down the slope-domes and steeples tinted by the sun-and, beyond it, the city and its harbor.

Mueller slowed, and Hoffner gently squeezed the brakes. The two were now side by side as they rode.

“Palau Nacional,” Mueller said. “No guns inside so they left it alone. It’ll be the People’s something-or-other by next week. Could be now.”

Hoffner might have been drawn to the sight of its wide fountain, or its endless steps, or its twin pillar gates planted at the far end of the plaza-these, in their perfect symmetry, were meant to hold the eye-but instead he saw only the city stretching out beyond them. It was a sea of white stone and tiled roofs.

“Bring your knees in, Nikolai,” said Mueller. “You’re beginning to look like an old priest.”

It was another twenty minutes before they came to even ground. Hoffner was grateful for the cramped feel of the side streets. The smells coming from the open doorways might have left the taste of boiling wool in the mouth, but at least the buildings were packed tightly enough together to make direct sunlight rare: six stories on either side, with balconies draped in red and black. His head was throbbing from the heat or thirst or lack of booze-or maybe just the thought of continued exertion-but whatever it was he knew he needed to get off this horrible machine and find something without wheels to sit on.

It didn’t help that at almost every intersection it was a test to see how well he and Mueller could wend their way around the barricades that littered the streets. Most of the sandbag and brick obstructions were unmanned, although there had been one a few blocks back where they were forced to bring out Mueller’s magical piece of paper. Their interrogator had been without a gun, only a sack on a rope over his shoulder and an airman’s cap stitched with the letters FAI along one side. He stood atop a bullet-strafed sandbag in a white shirt-sleeves rolled high and neat to the upper arm-and an elegant pair of pleated dress trousers, his shoes fine if slightly worn. He would have looked the perfect part-cigarette dangling from his lips, a few days’ growth of beard-had he not been, at best, ten years old. Even so, he spoke with an authority that made the boys back on the coast road look like amateurs.

“You know why we must destroy the fascists?” the boy said, as he glanced across the paper. It was unclear whether he knew how to read.

Mueller nodded vigorously and Hoffner did the same.

The boy said, “So that Spain can be free.”

Mueller pulled a wrapped bar of chocolate from his pocket-Hoffner wondered what else might be inside should he go looking for himself-and handed it to the boy.

“Salud, friend,” Mueller said. “?Viva la Libertad!”

The boy pocketed the chocolate and nodded them along. Half a block later, Mueller pulled a second bar from his pocket and handed it to Hoffner. “You weren’t thinking that was real, were you, Nikolai?”

Hoffner peeled back the wrapping and took a bite. It was good Swiss chocolate. “I’m glad he didn’t have a rifle.”

“He’s got one somewhere. It doesn’t work, but he’s got one.”

“That’s encouraging.” Hoffner handed the bar back and Mueller pocketed it.

“They’re all so damned sure of themselves,” Mueller said, with a tinge of bitterness.

The streets began to grow more peopled. Men and women-all with the red neckerchief-walked in small groups, bags with food, newspapers. They were inside stores or leaning from balconies, conversations and laughter, caps and hats arrayed in the various emblems of their new-won power. It was a city on a Sunday, like any other, except here there had been no prayers to God or hopes of salvation. They had left those behind. And of course the guns-a rifle over a shoulder or a pistol at the waist. They carried them with the same easy certainty one wears a new pair of shoes: moments here and there to recall the novelty, but always that sense of purpose and pride. That these had been used to kill other Spaniards ten days ago hardly seemed to matter. Or perhaps that was what mattered most of all.

Mueller smiled at a girl in a doorway. She smiled back, and Mueller continued to walk. “One day to take the city, and now it’s boys playing at soldier.”

Hoffner was thinking about the chocolate; he could have used another bite. “So you’re telling me that wasn’t a checkpoint back there?”

Mueller laughed quietly. “With a boy standing guard? They may be arrogant, Nikolai, but they’re not stupid.” He spat something to the ground. “Ten days ago-maybe that was the genuine article. Now it’s for a boy to run out when his friends dare him to stop the two foreigners and see if he can get a bit of chocolate. He’s a hero today. When we find a checkpoint, you’ll know. Trust me.”

They had come to the far end of the Conde del Asalto, a narrow strip of road identical to the rest except it marked the edge of Poble Sec, a workers’ district. The Paralelo-a wide avenue that had seen its fair share of the fighting-was a stone’s throw away, and Mueller found a nice big tree to rest the bicycles against.

“You thirsty, Nikolai?” he said, as he pulled the valise out of the rack.

Hoffner leaned his bicycle up as well. “You won’t get the chain around this, you know.”

“I wasn’t planning on trying.”

“So the painted letters manage it again?”

Mueller handed the valise to Hoffner. “No one takes a bicycle, Nikolai. It’s not the way they do things here.”

“But a fifteen-year-old car-”

“A banker or a judge or some old marques used to drive one of those. Have you ever seen a banker on a bicycle? The letters, they’re just-” Mueller smiled and shrugged.

“They make sure the girls know who you’re fighting for?”

Mueller kept his smile as he led them across the street. “You’ll like this place. Quiet, serene. Tranquilidad.”

On the far corner was a cafe, tables outside, with just enough tree cover to make sitting out worth the heat. A few were occupied, though it was too early for food. Glasses and bottles with something a deep yellow stood on most of them. Two men-one with a nice full mustache, the other trying desperately to grow one-were at one of the back tables, and Mueller headed toward them.

Hoffner said under his breath, “You know them?”

“Everyone knows everyone in Barcelona these days.” Mueller raised a hand and said, “Gabriel,” loudly enough to draw the mustached man’s attention. The man smiled at once and raised his hand as he stood.

“Toby!” he said, as he stepped around the table toward Mueller.

Gabriel was barrel-chested, though not tall, with the thick arms of a man who had spent his life doing someone else’s heavy work. The cheeks were round, the nose pug, and the thick, thick mustache-on closer inspection-had a ruff of tobacco-dyed hair at its center. His lips curled around a cigarette even as he spoke.

“Finally some German reinforcements. You’ve brought-what? — thirty planes, twenty tanks, ten thousand rifles?” He didn’t wait for Mueller to answer before pulling him in for a full embrace. “You smell of sweat and beets.” Gabriel let go. Somehow the cigarette remained fixed on his lip. “You came down from Montjuic, didn’t you? Idiot.” Before Mueller could answer, Gabriel turned back to the table. He motioned for the younger man to come over. “You know him, I’m sure,” he said under his breath. “The mustache is a mistake, but you can’t say anything.”

The younger man was strangely small and with unusually pale features for a Spaniard-light eyes, ginger hair. The hands were also soft and slender. If not for the long narrow nose it would have been hard to place him in this part of the world. There was age in the face that made the patchy stubble above the lip even more of a curiosity. He was called Aurelio, and he shook hands with the kind of firmness of a man one was meant to trust.

“They came down Montjuic,” Gabriel said to him. “On bicycles. In this heat.”

“Good tough Germans,” said the little man, “but not terribly bright.” He smiled and led them back to the table. “We’ll need a drink.”

Hoffner had tried Coca-Cola-once. It had been enough. Gabriel drank nothing else. Cafe Tranquilidad had somehow kept a healthy stash of it. Anarchists, it turned out, liked their American fizzy drinks. Luckily, Aurelio preferred wine.

The little man refilled the empties and set the wine bottle back on the table. “You don’t sound like a socialist, Nikolai, let alone an anarchist.”

They had been through the antifascist arguments-intricate explanations of the cause and its meaning and its essentialness-an animated tour de force that had brought Gabriel’s cigarette out of his mouth for a single moment as he had stabbed at the air with it. Queipo de Llano. Son of a bitch.

Hoffner said, “It’s hard not to be one these days, isn’t it?”

Aurelio’s smile became a quiet laugh, and he brought his glass to his mouth. “Sitting with two anarchists in the middle of Barcelona,” he said. “Each with a pistol on his belt. Yes, I’d say you’re right.” He took a sip. “Did he tell you it was Jew Mountain?”

Hoffner was holding his glass on the table, staring at it. It took him a moment to answer. “Pardon?”

“Montjuic,” said Aurelio. “Did Toby tell you it was called Jew Mountain?” Hoffner had no reason not to nod, and Aurelio said, “Are you a Jew?”

The question caught Hoffner off guard. He waited, then picked up his glass. “Odd question from a godless Spaniard. Or are you trying to make me feel more at home?” He took a drink.

“Don’t worry. It’s not Berlin. No, I was just wondering if he told you because he thought it would make you feel more-I don’t know-connected. Toby has that sort of sentimentality.”

Mueller was finishing off his second glass of wine. He shook his head and swallowed. “The Spaniard accusing the German of sentimentality. That’s rich.”

Hoffner said, “Half-Jew-my mother-so, yes-in Berlin. I didn’t think it mattered here.”

“It doesn’t,” Aurelio said. “But if it did-matter to you, that is-I’d hate to be the one to disappoint. It’s Jupiter Mountain, not Jew. Common mistake. Toby knows it, I think.”

Hoffner looked across at Mueller, who shrugged, and Hoffner said, “Then he’d know it wouldn’t make any difference to me, one way or the other.”

Aurelio glanced at Gabriel and tossed back the rest of his drink. He stared into the empty and said, “Then why are you here?” It was another few moments before he looked directly at Hoffner. The gaze was hard, and Hoffner suddenly felt very much aware of the pistol that was hanging somewhere off the little man’s belt.

Hoffner finished his drink. He placed the glass by the bottle and nodded as if in agreement. “I see. No anarchist, no socialist, no angry Jew. So what am I doing in Barcelona?”

Gabriel said, “It’s a curious place to be these days otherwise.” He looked over at Mueller. “Not that we don’t trust you, Toby, but-” The Spanish shrug had so much more to do with the chin and the tilt of the head than the German.

There was a heaviness in the silence that followed. It lent a truth to what Hoffner said. “I’m looking for someone.”

Aurelio lapped at the last of his glass. “Better that than being looked for, I suppose.”

Gabriel opened a third bottle of the Coca-Cola, and said, “You’re a policeman?”

Again Hoffner looked across at Mueller. There was nothing there. Hoffner picked up the bottle of wine. “Was. Yes.”

“The shoes,” said Gabriel. “I imagine that’s universal.”

“I imagine it is.” Hoffner poured himself another.

“The Germans who’ve come have all been wild eyes and young or dripping with nostalgia. I’m sure you’d recognize them.” He drank. “The first are useless. They think we’ll take on Hitler once we’re through here, the great International rising again. They don’t know Spain at all, do they?” He began to play with the bottle cap. “The second-also useless, but with years and years of dreamed-up arrogance to stand on. They’ve been through it before, they understand how to organize. That was quite a success all those years ago, your little Rosa Luxemburg and her band. They took Berlin for-what? — ten minutes? But then these Germans see it differently.

“Luckily,” he said, tossing the cap into a bucket on the floor, “they’re all happy to kill fascists, so we drink with them, and listen to their empty tales of struggle-workers of the world with their pretty houses and gardens and weekends by the sea-and know they haven’t the slightest idea of what it is to live every day with a boot clamped down on a throat.” Gabriel looked directly at him, and Hoffner wondered where the amiable man of only minutes ago had gone. “You seem to be neither, so you can understand our interest.”

Hoffner thought about drinking the wine. For some reason, though, he was wanting water. He looked around for a waiter.

“My son’s the Jew,” he said. The waiter was nowhere to be found. “We’ve worked it in reverse-half to full. He came to film the games, and he went missing.” Hoffner looked back at the table and found a canteen in front of him.

“The waiter,” Aurelio said. “He’ll expect you to have brought your own. It’s a miracle they had the wine.”

Hoffner nodded his thanks and drank.

“My son could be one of your young Germans,” he said, “but I doubt it.” Hoffner screwed the top on and handed it to Aurelio. “Not that I care as long as I get him out of here.”

Gabriel said, “So an old German with no politics, and a young Jew with no sense. It’s a compelling story.”

“You seem overly concerned in a city draped in red.”

“Euphoria’s a nice thing for a day or two, but I’m not so convinced this is as finished as everyone seems to say.”

“So, a Spaniard with sense.”

The round cheeks squeezed up and around the eyes, forming a smile. “I can guarantee you Toby’s thinking the same thing.”

Mueller had been running one of his pincer fingers along the table’s edge, staring at it as it went back and forth.

Gabriel said, “He knows better than to trust any of this good fortune, don’t you, Toby?”

Mueller looked up. He bobbed an indifferent nod.

Gabriel said, “It’s because you’re a criminal, isn’t it, and criminals always know better.”

Mueller said, “Is he around today?”

“Tell me, Toby,” said Gabriel, “do you think the fascist generals are done for? Are we anarchists as unstoppable as we think we are?”

It was clear Mueller was uncomfortable with this, and not because he was any less savvy than the rest. He just didn’t like the distraction. “Is he in the back?” he asked.

Gabriel said, “Toby can tell you who’s the best man to get a voucher from, where you can still find a bit of ammunition, and how to get a truckload of whiskey down the coast. He’s always been good with those sorts of things.” His cigarette had lost its flame; even so, it stayed on his lip as he continued. “You remember that banker we pulled from his car-paying off scabs to work during one of the general strikes? What was that-’thirty, ’thirty-one? We needed to know which gas station he used on Fridays. Toby figured it out. That’s why he got to keep the car.” Gabriel laughed-it was tobacco-laced, and he pulled the dead cigarette from his mouth. A fresh one was in its place and lit within seconds. “What Toby won’t do is look into the future. I haven’t decided which I admire most. Yes, he’s in the back. I wouldn’t take too long with it.”

Mueller stood and reached into his pocket. Hoffner stood as well, and Mueller placed two pairs of women’s nylons on the table.

“We ask for guns and you bring us this,” Gabriel said. “You’re a good man, Toby. Maybe you can look into the future.”

Mueller said, “It’ll take more than a pair of these for the two of you to catch a girl. They’re all wearing trousers these days, anyway.”

Aurelio reached over for his and stuffed it in his pocket. “Every little bit helps.”

Mueller squeezed a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “Live to enjoy this.” He nodded at Hoffner to follow him.

Hoffner stepped out. “Good luck with your boy,” Gabriel said.

Hoffner picked up the valise and satchel. “Good luck with your war.” He turned and began to weave his way through the chairs toward the cafe door.

Josep Gardenyes-no one ever remembered his real name-sat at a table in the back against a wall and ate hungrily from a bowl. It looked like soup, but who would have been crazy enough to eat soup in this weather, except maybe Josep Gardenyes, whose real name no one could ever remember.

Hoffner stopped and set his bags by the bar while Mueller made his way between the empty tables. This time he had been told to stay back. Mueller pulled up, and Hoffner watched as the two men spoke.

Gardenyes was a weathered forty and not one for embraces or warm smiles. His thin glance at the bar, though brief, was enough to make clear how beautifully Gabriel and Aurelio had played it: despite himself, Gardenyes needed protecting. He might have resented the caution but he accepted the loyalty.

Mueller nodded to Hoffner, and Gardenyes pushed the bowl to the edge of the table. This was as much of an invitation as he was likely to give. Hoffner went over and pulled back a chair.

Gardenyes said, “For a policeman you have interesting friends.”

Whether it had been Mueller or the shoes, Hoffner decided on a lazy smile. “Former policeman,” he said.

“I don’t think there is such a thing.” Gardenyes was now speaking Catalan.

“You do find them from time to time,” Hoffner answered in kind. He sat.

A faint light of respect played in Gardenyes’s eyes. “A German bull-ex bull-with Catalan. I’m even more concerned.” The eyes began to show a smile.

“I spent time here as a boy,” said Hoffner. “Not that difficult to pick it up.” He looked into the bowl and found a few empty mussel shells, the remains of an overcooked potato, and the skin from a fish resting high on the rim. “Were the prawns fresh?” he said, as he picked up the potato and squeezed it in his fingers.

The smile reached Gardenyes’s lips. “I can have them make you a plate.”

Hoffner nodded and dropped the potato back in. He picked up a knife and continued to sort through the food. He said, “You like suquet, Toby?”

Mueller had found two more glasses and was pouring the wine. “Fish stew? Fine by me as long as they don’t put beef in it.” He set the bottle down. “No beef this time. That was disgusting.”

Hoffner was still with the knife, propping up and examining the underside of the skin, when Gardenyes said, “You spent time north of here?”

“Yes,” said Hoffner. Even the bones had been eaten.

“And now you’ve lost your son.”

The smile remained on Gardenyes’s face even as Hoffner looked over. Hoffner said, “Not yet, I hope.”

“That’s a bit cold.”

“Why? It’s what you wanted to hear me say.” Hoffner set the knife down. “I can guarantee you my son isn’t dead, if that’s what you’re thinking. As for lost, that would mean he was mine to lose. He wasn’t.”

Gardenyes studied Hoffner’s face before looking past him to a man standing by the door to the kitchen. Gardenyes motioned for two more and Hoffner brought out his cigarettes. Gardenyes took one and Hoffner lit it.

Gardenyes said, “Not every day you get to light the cigarette of a dead man.”

“You’d be surprised,” said Hoffner.

Mueller set the bottle down, took hold of his glass, and said, “They’re not going to kill you, Josep.” He drank.

“Oh, yes, they will. And when they do, Gabriel and Aurelio will tell them I was a criminal, too dangerous, and they’ll save themselves.”

Hoffner said, “And here I thought it was your anarchists who were running things now.”

“You’re in Spain,” said Gardenyes. “There are anarchists and there are anarchists.”

Hoffner lit his own. “I imagine you’ll be up on a cross at the time, begging for water?”

Gardenyes gave into a quiet laugh. “Up on a cross. That’s good. I’ve heard He was a bit wild, too. And dangerous. Although you wouldn’t know it to see Him these days.”

“If anyone’s actually looking for Him.”

Smoke trailed from Gardenyes’s nose. “Oh, they’re looking for Him. Trust me. There’s probably half a dozen nuns and priests hiding in plain sight just the other side of the road.”

“I must have missed them.”

“You can tell them by the little gold chains underneath the neckerchiefs. Ragged trousers, white shirts, little berets, and always with the loudest ?Viva la Republica! as they pass you by. But it’s that chain they can’t quite bring themselves to tear off. They’ll lie through their teeth as long as little Jesus is still dangling close to their hearts. Such a short walk from anarchist to savior, not that they’d know it.”

“And yet you’re convinced your men will betray you.”

“Betray me?” A wry if uncertain smile crossed Gardenyes’s eyes. “I’m the one who’s told them to do it. No reason all three of us should be dead.”

“Very noble.”

Again Gardenyes studied Hoffner. “You don’t sound convinced.”

“No, I probably don’t.” Hoffner took a pull and caught sight of Mueller out of the corner of his eye. It was nice to see Toby this uncomfortable.

Luckily Gardenyes seemed to be enjoying it. “I was thinking your balls must be sore-riding all the way down from Montjuic-but here they are, on display.”

The plates arrived. The man from the kitchen pulled two spoons from his apron and was gone as quickly as he had come. Mueller sniffed warily at his food; Hoffner set his cigarette in the ashtray.

“It used to be they called me a criminal-a common criminal-because it was easier for them,” Gardenyes said. “Toss me in prison, exact their revenge in the name of order. It gave their law, meaningless as it was, a sense of moral purpose. There’s your God again, even if He was being used to strip away anything human from the people He was sent to protect.”

Hoffner was wiping the spoon with his thumb. “Am I in for the full soapbox, or can we water it down a bit?”

Gardenyes’s smile, if not completely lacking in cruelty, was at least genuine. “And I didn’t even mention the word ‘bourgeois.’ ”

“Don’t worry,” said Hoffner, “you’ve got time.” He was leaning over the bowl, smelling the freshness off the steam. “Monkfish,” he said. “And hake. We never get them this nice.” He filled his spoon and blew on the broth, then winced as he swallowed.

Gardenyes said, “Pimm liked this stew. Same as you. Odd for a cop and a criminal to have such similar tastes.”

Hoffner winced through another sip. “And why is that?”

Gardenyes shook his head easily. “I don’t know. You just don’t think they should. Easier if it’s all”-he thought for a moment-“what’s the German, Ordnung? Neat and clean.”

“And you like neat and clean?”

“Not at all.”

“So you knew Pimm?”

“Of course I knew Pimm. Now Radek. And one day it’ll be Little Franz taking over. The Berlin syndicates have always been so well organized, perfectly filed. Ordnung.”

“Not the Spanish way.”

“Not the anarchist way,” Gardenyes corrected. “For Pimm, crime was crime. Profit. Power. He made good money here in Spain. For us, it’s always been a tool of politics. A way to create something new. The crime-if in fact it’s crime at all-is just the means.”

“Like pulling a banker from his car.” Hoffner was sifting his spoon through the liquid.

“Exactly.” Gardenyes nodded at Hoffner’s bowl. “The clam,” he said. “Always start with the clam. Underneath.” Hoffner flipped everything on its end, and Gardenyes said, “Pimm thought I was a common criminal. I let him believe it. Radek probably thinks the same, although maybe he sees things differently, now that it’s an actual war.” Gardenyes looked over at Mueller. “What do you say, Toby? Is this different from the old days-stealing from a payroll, knifing a factory boss? Is it permitted now because we have rifles and wear uniforms? Or is crime still just crime with you Germans, whatever its purpose?”

Hoffner had the clam resting on the back of his tongue. It was smoky and soaked in garlic, its texture perfectly soft. It seemed unfair to swallow. He took a drink and set his spoon after a prawn. “You’re going to tell me there’s no such thing as good and bad people. Only people who are good and bad at different times.” He found the prawn. “If it’s going to be the entire manifesto, I’ll take some bread with it.”

Gardenyes waited and motioned to the man by the kitchen. He then tapped his ash to the floor. “Pimm said you saw crime differently, criminals differently. It’s why he liked you. I think he said it made you incorruptible.” Gardenyes took a pull. “Is that right? Are you incorruptible?”

Hoffner separated the prawn from the rest of the stew. It was fat and pink, and he ran the edge of his spoon through the meatiest part of it. The metal clanked on the bowl. “The clam was good,” he said. “Nice and soft.” He brought the wedge of the prawn to his mouth, smelled the brandy and salt on it, and slipped it in.

Gardenyes said, “Am I a criminal?”

“Not for me to say.”

“Was Pimm?”

Hoffner took another sip of the broth. “Of course.”

“And yet-”

“And yet nothing. He was a pimp and a thief. He supplied narcotics, he killed men-”

“And he was the only friend you had.”

Hoffner hated Pimm for this moment. Not that anything Gardenyes was saying was less than the truth, but such truths weren’t meant for a man like Gardenyes. Hoffner set the spoon in the bowl and took his cigarette.

Gardenyes said, “I don’t think he meant you were incorruptible in the noble sort of way.”

“No, he wouldn’t have.”

“But there was something-what did he say? — something you saw that was bigger than the crime, bigger than the idea of order itself. Something that was worth protecting.”

Hoffner took a pull and then crushed the cigarette in the ashtray. “Imagine Pimm saying that.”

“Well, maybe not exactly that.”

“Maybe not.”

“Still, one wonders what it was that had a cop seeing beyond crime and order. What it was that could be worth so much to him. That he’d willingly sacrifice so much for.”

Hoffner picked up the spoon. It was all he could do to keep his focus on the bowl.

“I’ve never been to Berlin,” said Gardenyes, his cruelty now effortless. “Never seen its streets, heard its crowds, smelled its air. Is it really as remarkable as people say?”

Hoffner clutched at the spoon as he stared into the bowl. “It was. Once.”

“How terribly sad that must make you.”

This was why the anarchists had taken the city so quickly, thought Hoffner. Men like this. Men who could conceive of nothing beyond Barcelona’s streets and her hills and the taste of her too bitter water. Hoffner wondered if Gardenyes would meet his own despair with the same resilience should his city ever cease to be what he needed her to be. Hoffner wondered this of himself.

The man arrived and Gardenyes said, “We’ll have some bread. Butter, if there is any.”

The man moved off and Hoffner set down the spoon. He needed a drink. He poured himself a glass and drank.

He said, “They won’t have the butter, will they?”

“No. They won’t.”

Hoffner was done playing. “I imagine you were something of a hero in those old days. Pulling bankers from cars. The noble bandit. Defender of the defenseless. It has such a familiar ring. Funny, but I don’t remember Pimm ever mentioning you, so I’m guessing you’re right. He probably thought of you as-what? — a good knife, a petty thief, someone smart to have on the payroll. He did have you on the payroll, didn’t he?”

It was the first moment of hesitation in Gardenyes’s eyes, long enough to feel the venom behind them. Gardenyes said, “You have a strange way of asking for help.”

“Help from a dead man. Now that would be something, wouldn’t it?”

It might have been a sudden pushing back of a chair or the waving of a pistol in the face, but Gardenyes remained perfectly still: whatever violence he felt lived in the silence. He took a last pull, tossed his cigarette to the ground, and leaned forward.

“You have no idea.” For the first time his voice had no interest in masking its bitterness. The stare was almost hypnotic.

“And yet you’ll help me find my son,” said Hoffner. There was nothing in his tone. “For old time’s sake.”

Gardenyes’s stare became a half grin, then something far more unnerving. The smile was completely empty of thought.

“Incontrolats,” Gardenyes said. It was as if the word carried no weight. “You know what these are? No-I don’t think you do.” He rocked his chair on its hind legs, and his head rested against the wall. There was an unwelcome easiness in the way he leaned back and looked over at Hoffner. “Uncontrollables,” he said, his voice too calm, its menace too refined. “Men beyond hope. Men beyond the revolution. Anarchists calling their own such a thing. Can you imagine it?”

It was everything Hoffner could do to keep his gaze fixed on Gardenyes’s.

“You see, I thought the whole point was to tear down the control, keep tearing it down. But now, of course, they have it. They won’t admit it, these anarchist friends of mine. They say, ‘Look at us. Look at the revolutionaries who told the socialists, No, we don’t want a part of your government, even if you hand it to us-even if you beg us to take it. We’ve given you the state, freed you from the fascists, but no, we want nothing that tastes of leadership or popular fronts or control.’ ” Gardenyes’s head turned slightly and his eyes drifted: it left the small table feeling unbearably exposed. “I’ll give them that,” he said quietly. “They did say no.”

He looked back at Hoffner, the eyes now too focused.

“The trouble is, you let yourself be seduced by your own order, your control, and everything goes on its head. Now they say, ‘Don’t go too far, don’t embarrass us, don’t commit acts that are’ ”-he stared into Hoffner’s eyes as if the words were somewhere behind them-“what was it?… ‘contrary to the anarchist spirit,’ counter to the ‘revolutionary order.’ ” The eyes flashed momentarily and he came forward, the chair landing on the stone with an unexpected force. “Revolutionary order?” He leaned into Hoffner, and Hoffner let him lean. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

Hoffner had been holding the spoon against his thigh, and a small oval of liquid had seeped into the cloth. He felt the tackiness underneath, on his skin. Gardenyes slowly pulled himself back and Hoffner smelled the Spaniard’s breath still between them.

“I have some names,” Hoffner said. “You can see if they mean anything to you. And you can tell me where they’re keeping the injured Germans.”

Gardenyes picked up his glass. It took him a moment to realize it was empty before he set it back down. He continued to stare at the table. “The fascists don’t have such problems,” he said. “One mind, one body with them. Makes it so much easier.” He looked over at Hoffner. “Maybe soon enough I won’t be the only dead anarchist in Barcelona.”

The bread arrived with a wedge of butter on a plate.

Gardenyes put out his hand. “I’ll see those names now. For old time’s sake.”

Mueller opted out. He had done his bit, getting Hoffner to Gardenyes. If Gardenyes hadn’t killed him by now, Hoffner would probably be fine on his own.

“I said probably.” Mueller was resting his gimp foot on the car’s running board as he took the last few pulls of a cigarette. Most of the smoke was trailing in at Hoffner through the window.

The Modelo 10 was a recent addition for Gardenyes, a four-seater out of Ford’s Barcelona plant that, up until the July fighting, had been churning out cars at an unusually healthy clip. It was unlikely that any of the driving enthusiasts who had bought the Modelo 10s or 8s had realized that they were sporting around on a German-made chassis and brakes and any number of other German components. Back in January, Ford London had sent down the word that Herr Hitler wanted better results out of his Ford Deutschland plants. So, to appease the Fuhrer, Ford Iberica had been told it was suddenly in the market for large stocks of automotive parts coming from Dagenham and Koln. This, in turn, had kept the London office happy, which had kept the American office happy, which was doing everything it could to keep the German office happy. So much happiness churning out of so few moving parts. It seemed to bode well for the future of international detente.

As it happened, this particular Modelo 10 had belonged to a rather successful dentist who had had the very good sense to send his wife, two small children, household staff, dental assistant, and mistress ahead to northern Italy on the night before all the trouble began. He had gotten wind that something was brewing from his brother-in-law, who was married to an older sister living in Morocco, and who was involved with something to do with the export of large metal tubing (he had been in Granada before that, but there had been talk of an incident with a woman connected to the postmaster). The brother-in-law had sent a cable saying he had heard something from someone (no names written down), and that certain events and certain “expediencies” (this was, in fact, the very word he had used, although slightly incorrectly) were “in the works” and might mean a change for the better in Barcelona-the brother-in-law being a staunch fascist and assuming only the best, which is what someone who has never been to Barcelona will always assume. The dentist, knowing better, had acted accordingly.

He had been pulled from his car on the nineteenth while trying to find the coast road. His driver had abandoned him at the first sound of shots, and the dentist, always at sixes and sevens when it came to navigating the roads in and around the city, had gotten lost. Two women and a rough man had beaten and then shot him. The dentist had lain very still for nearly an hour before the loss of blood had finally killed him. One of the women had given the car to Gardenyes in exchange for five completely useless Russian rifles, while the other had cursed her friend for being so stupid. In the meantime, both wife and mistress continued to wait patiently, certain that they would soon be resuming their previously well-balanced lives, albeit with a vaguely Venetian flair.

Hoffner was examining a stack of rubber-banded wooden tongue depressors he had found in the pocket next to the backseat when Gabriel turned on the engine. Aurelio was in the seat next to Gabriel, Gardenyes still in the toilet.

Hoffner said, “He doesn’t use any of these, does he, when things go south? I’m thinking he’s more of a bullet-to-the-head sort of man.”

Mueller tossed his cigarette to the street and leaned in as two spears of smoke streamed from his nose. “That’d be my guess, but you never know. I wouldn’t be all that eager to find out.” Mueller leaned in closer and spoke quietly. “Nothing stupid, Nikolai. You don’t know these boys. I don’t know them, and I’ve spent time with them. I’d like to be at each of their funerals.”

Gardenyes appeared at the cafe door and quickly made his way over to the car.

Mueller said, “They’ll know where to find me.” He stood upright as Gardenyes got in the other side and settled in next to Hoffner. “Three days,” said Mueller.

He was saying something else, but the car was already in gear.

The third-floor corridor of the Hospital Clinic was like any other-stark, white-walled, and overly sanitized. Hoffner had always found something incongruous in the heavy silence of such places: life-and-death decisions behind each door, and yet never more than a whisper from those making them. Even the air moved hesitantly, peering slowly around each corner, as if coming face to face with a forgotten gurney or a figure slumped listlessly across a chair might be too much. Gardenyes walked with purpose, but it was a false bravura that led the way. He, too, was doing his best to keep the healing stench from his lungs.

The double doors at the end of the corridor were fitted with two square windows, level with the eye and large enough to give a hint of the vast ward that lay beyond them. The word RECUPERACION was set above the doors in thick black tile, though the letters seemed to be mocking themselves, saying, “You won’t find it in here, and you know it.” Gardenyes pushed through and Hoffner followed.

The smell was at once sweeter, and the air seemed to widen as if it were reaching for the corners of the ceiling high above. Eight rows of cots, perhaps twenty in each, stretched to the back wall, where three enormous windows-each a collection of iron-rimmed square panes-tinted the sun a gray-yellow. There were pockets of hushed exchanges between the four or five nurses scattered about, none in white, but what else would they be? The door swung closed behind Aurelio, and the squeak of the hinge echoed before it vanished into the dust.

A woman was sitting behind a desk. She had a rifle propped up against it, but there was little chance she knew how to use it. She wore a green short-sleeved shirt, and when she stood, a pair of brown trousers appeared that hugged her narrow waist. They were held in place by a thin leather belt that ran too long through the loops. Her arms were equally slender, everything long and fine, although the hair was short and too carelessly held to just above the shoulders. Hoffner would have expected the jet black from the coast road this morning, but this had a lighter tint to it and seemed a much better fit for the pale, suntanned face and blue eyes. She might have been thirty, but the eyes had her older.

“Salud,” Gardenyes said indifferently. “We need to see a doctor.”

The woman looked at all four men. “Is someone injured?”

“No,” Gardenyes said, scanning the room behind her impatiently. He looked at her. “Does this hospital employ doctors?”

“It does.”

“Then I imagine you can go and get us one.” When she continued to look at him, Gardenyes said, “My name is Josep Gardenyes. When and if you find a doctor, he’ll know the name. Tell him I’m waiting to talk to him.” When he saw her still standing there, he drew up his shoulders. “Well?”

Again she looked at the others. “Of course.” She saw Gardenyes reaching for his cigarettes and added, “We don’t permit smoking in here. Not with all the open wounds.” She moved smoothly past them and out the swinging doors.

Gardenyes pulled the cigarettes from his shirt pocket, put one to his lips, and lit up.

Gabriel-who had been complaining about hospitals and the sick and the stink of formaldehyde since the drive over-shivered with too much drama and said, “Someone’s dying in here. You can smell it. It was worse two weeks ago, I can tell you that. Now it’s just the old dead, not the fresh kind.”

Aurelio said, “She’s from Leon.” He was at the desk, sliding his fingers along the few papers that were spread across it. “The hair and the eyes. People always think I’m Castilian. I’m not, but they always think it. She was pretty.” Finding nothing of interest, he began to open the drawers.

“Leave it,” said Gardenyes. He seemed unable to smoke the cigarette fast enough. He was at the door, staring out, then not. Gabriel might have put a voice to it, but it was Gardenyes who truly hated this place. “What takes so long?” he said, as he dropped the cigarette to the floor. He lit another, and Hoffner stepped over and picked up the stub.

Hoffner said, “So where is it you’re from?”

All three looked over as if he had asked the most idiotic question imaginable. Aurelio shut the drawer, Gardenyes looked back out through the window of the door, and Gabriel simply shook his head in disbelief. Hoffner had no idea why.

Gardenyes suddenly stepped back and moved to the desk. He dropped the half-smoked cigarette to the floor and hid it under his boot as the door squeaked open. Gabriel and Aurelio quickly moved into line. It was like watching three schoolboys waiting for a caning. The woman reappeared, holding several small vials in her hands.

“I’ve found you a doctor,” she said, as she moved back to her chair and sat. She placed the vials on the desk. “Unfortunately, she has no idea who Josep Gardenyes is.” She looked at Hoffner and pointed to his hand. “I told you not to smoke in here.”

Hoffner realized he was still holding the butt. He nodded apologetically. “No, of course not,” and dropped it into the can at the side of the desk. “My mistake.”

She looked up at Gardenyes. “What is it I can do for you?”

Gardenyes was still trying to digest the last few moments. “You’re a doctor?” he said.

“It would seem so, yes.”

“You’re a woman.”

She nodded. “That would also be right.”

Gardenyes was still struggling. “We’re-we’re looking for Germans.”

She said, “Well, that’s two out of three. I know a little Dutch, if that helps?”

Hoffner couldn’t help but smile, and she looked over at him. He thought she might return it, but that would have done neither of them any good. Instead, she looked at Gardenyes and said, “By the way, I’ve saved fascists. The first day, the day after that, yesterday. We all did. We all have. We make no distinctions. So if you’re here to round up-”

“You misunderstand,” said Hoffner. She looked at him, and he explained. “Not Germans. A German. I was hoping you might have records from the last week or two.”

She seemed remarkably at ease with the three bandit anarchists standing over her. It was the strange one at the end-with his even stranger valise and satchel-that was causing the hesitation. Had Hoffner been looking for it, he might have seen something of the familiar in the gaze. Deep and abiding loss was so readily apparent to those who shared it, but Hoffner had long ago given up looking for such things. It was enough for her to blink it away.

She said, “And I would hand over these records to you because you happen to be in the company of Josep Gardenyes, onetime leader of the anarchist patrullas to whom half of Barcelona owes its safety and undying gratitude.” She looked at Gardenyes. “Yes, I know who you are. I can’t speak for the other half.”

Gardenyes was rather too pleased with himself at this. To his credit, he indulged it only a moment.

She looked again at Hoffner. “It wouldn’t make any difference even if you had Buenaventura Durruti himself standing here. This is Barcelona. We’re led by anarchists. We have no records.”

Gardenyes had fully recovered; he was once again on solid ground. “So you’ll help my friend, then?”

She was still looking at Hoffner. “You call Gardenyes a friend?”

Hoffner recognized the toying disdain in the eyes. Men like Gardenyes were a necessary irritation to a woman like this-a woman who could sit perfectly straight in a ward filled with the dying. It gave her an uncommon strength.

“He calls me one,” said Hoffner. “You can take that as you like.”

Half a minute later the three Spaniards were on their way back to the car. Gardenyes assured Hoffner that he would look into the names and locations Wilson had provided-“Yes, yes, of course, no worries, we’ll be in touch.” It was a flurry of empty promises, leaving Hoffner alone with the desk and the woman behind it.

* * *

She called herself Mila, and he had been right to think her older. Not that much older, but enough distance from thirty to make sense of the steadying compassion she showed as they walked along one of the rows. It was one thing to reassure with a well-schooled, naive precision. It was another to understand the terror that a bleach-soaked sheet and a paper-thin blanket could bring to a man staring hopelessly up at an endless ceiling.

One of the men propped himself on his elbows as she came closer. His face was full with color, healthy even, and held a look of unbridled hatred. His right hand was thickly wrapped. He glanced at Hoffner and, for a moment, seemed uncertain whether he would say anything. Mila came to the end of his cot, and the hatred got the better of him.

“Did you decide on it?” the man said. “Was it you?”

She stood there, allowing him to stare through her. “Yes,” she said, “it was. It’s a terrible thing. I’m sorry.”

There was a silence, and the man again looked unsure. He had expected more, a reason-the details for why his leg was no longer his. A man would have comforted with such things and forced the hatred to run its course.

“The other will be fine,” she said. “And the hand. But it doesn’t make any more sense of it, I know.”

The man continued to stare up at her; then he turned his head, and his eyes seemed to search for something. Finally, he began to shake his head slowly. “You’re sorry,” he said, but the hatred was already draining from him.

“I am. It’s a terrible, terrible thing.”

Hoffner saw it at once: she knew this one would never give in to self-pity. It was why she could console. She began to walk and Hoffner followed.

Ten beds down, she stopped again. “If he’s here, he’ll be in with these. I heard German from a few of them.”

She left him to it. There were six men-boys, really-all with various degrees of injuries, the worst with half his face covered in white bandages. Traces of red had seeped through where the eye would have been. Georg was not among them.

The interviews were brief. One of the boys had, in fact, been involved with the games, a javelin thrower now living in Paris whose left leg was in plaster up to the mid-thigh. He had taken a bayonet somewhere along the Diagonal but had managed to get a round off before his attacker had done more damage. The loss of blood had kept the boy in bed for over a week.

“Bit ironic,” the boy said. “A bayonet. Just imagine what it would have been if I’d been a hammer thrower.”

Hoffner was glad for the resiliency. “And you were part of the German team?” he said.

“I’m a German. What else would I be?”

The boy remembered no one resembling Georg, no filmmakers. It had all been catch-as-catch-can, half the team making it only as far as Paris before being told to turn back (to wherever they had come from) as a war had broken out. Hoffner ran through the names from Georg’s wire. It was pointless. None of the boys recognized a single one.

Mila was writing out something when Hoffner drew up.

“I thought there were no files,” he said, through a half smile.

She continued to write. “We’d have nowhere to put them even if this was one.” She quickly finished with it, set it to the side, and looked up at him. “Was he your German?”

Hoffner found himself taking a moment too long with the gaze. “No.” He nodded back at the beds. “Nice boy. He wants to get in on the fighting. That’s a shame.”

“Is it?”

“Yes-it is.”

She seemed surprised by the answer. “He’ll have his chance.”

“Really?”

“A leg like that-young and healthy-takes about three weeks. You think we’ll still be singing in the streets three weeks from now?”

“I wasn’t planning on being here.”

“No, I’m sure you weren’t.”

For some reason Hoffner had his pack of cigarettes in his hand. He shook one to his lip and saw her staring up at him. “Right,” he said, and removed it.

She looked over her shoulder and said to the nurse nearest her, “I’m taking five minutes. I’ll be outside.” She opened the drawer, slid the sheets in, and stood. “I’m assuming you have more than one in the pack?”

It took a bit of muscle to hoist up the window at the far end of the corridor, but she managed it. She stepped out onto the roof, and Hoffner followed.

The view was mostly trees with a few buildings cut in between. The heat lay across the black-tarred roofing like exhaustion and seemed to rise to just below the chin. Hoffner felt his neck instantly wet. He lit her cigarette, and she let out a long stream of smoke.

“You’ve come a long way for one German,” she said, as she stared out across the trees. “You think he’ll mean as much to you when you find him?”

Hoffner lit up. “Nice to hear when. There’s been a lot of if with everyone else.”

“I might have said if, but that wouldn’t make me much of a doctor, would it?”

“Woman doctor. That’s uncommon.”

She ignored the obvious. “So where in Germany?”

He wiped his neck and his fingers grew slick. “Berlin.”

“That’s not a nice place to be these days”-she looked over at him-“or maybe it is? Is it a nice place to be?”

He took a long pull and nodded out at the buildings. “I’m guessing these saw a lot of the fighting.”

She stared at him until she knew he was growing uncomfortable. “No,” she said. “Everyone needs a hospital. They left it alone.”

“You must have been busy.”

“Yes.” She continued to look at him. It was impossible not to let her. “Finding someone in Spain these days. That’s-” The word trailed off. He expected her to say more, but she did well with silence.

He said, “He’s not here to fight. I’m thinking that should make it easier.”

“Easier to keep him alive or easier to find him?”

Hoffner had yet to figure out why she had taken him out here. He imagined it was an answer he might not want to have. “Both, I think.”

“Such is a father’s love.” The words were almost indifferent. She took a pull as she looked out again. It was several long moments before she said, “You speak a beautiful Spanish.”

Hoffner was studying the face. There was a thin line of perspiration above the lip. It pooled in tiny beads. She showed no thought of brushing it away. “Thank you.”

“That’s also uncommon.” She took a last pull and dropped the cigarette to the roofing. It hissed at the touch of the tar. “Are the rest of the clothes in your valise as ridiculous as the ones you’re wearing?” She gave him no time to answer. “A decent pair of boots, a hat?” She ran her toe over the cigarette. “And I’m sure you’ve got a place to stay?”

“I appreciate the concern.”

“Do you?” She looked directly at him. “You’ll need that and the clothes if you want to find this nonfighting boy of yours. Why did he come, by the way?”

“Does it matter?”

He felt her eyes across him. She offered a quiet smile. “You can’t trust Gardenyes.”

“I think I know that.”

“Good. We have an extra room. And some clothes.”

The suddenness of it caught Hoffner off guard. “You’re being very generous.”

“This is Barcelona. This is what we do.”

“Is it?”

She drew her hand in the air across his chest. “They’ll be a bit big for you here, but the rest should be good.”

“And your husband can do without them?”

“There is no husband.”

“Brother?”

There was a moment in the eyes, and she started for the window. “I’ll write down the address. There should be some food. You look like you could use some sleep.”

The key for the building proved unnecessary. A woman-small, veined, and gray-sat perched on a low stool that stood propping open the front door. She held a pile of green and red peppers on her lap and was slicing them into a bucket. She held the knife by the back of the blade and moved through the peppers with alarming speed. Even when she looked up to see Hoffner staring at her, she continued to slice.

The street was like most of the rest, narrow, and with buildings no more than five or six stories high. They seemed to be leaning into each other with rounded shoulders, as if the whole thing might collapse with a little push. Or maybe it was this woman who was holding them in place? She wiped the knife on her skirt for no apparent reason and went back to her slicing.

Hoffner said, “I’m going to number four. I have the key.”

She reached into the bucket and dug through for something.

Hoffner pulled the valise-cum-satchel off his back. His shoulders were going stiff. “The doctor-” It struck him only now that he had no idea what her proper name was. “I have the key from her.”

The woman brought out a slice of red pepper and held it out to him. The knife was still in her fingers.

“Have it,” she said.

Hoffner took the wedge. It was crisp and wet, and the sweetness settled at the back of his throat. He nodded as he swallowed. “Thank you.”

She moved her legs to the side. It was a token gesture, and he picked up his bags and sidestepped inside.

The staircase was almost completely dark. Hoffner smelled almonds and garlic, and something else he couldn’t quite place, but it seemed to go well with the taste still in his mouth. At the second landing, a dim bulb sprouted from the wall and gave off just enough light to bring out the metal 4 on a door halfway down the hall. He stepped over and slotted the key into the lock.

The place was charming enough, walls a bright yellow, windows with sheer drapes in white and pale green. Beyond them stood a wrought-iron balcony that ran the length of the wall. A low sofa sat across from the windows, along with a few chairs and pillows scattered about. There was a table, a bookcase-small things of meaning set along one of the shelves-and an archway that led off to what might be a kitchen. It was neat, inviting, and showed nothing of the life being lived inside it.

Hoffner set down the bags and moved across to the drapes. He pulled them back and noticed that one of the windows had been left open. There was hardly any sound from the street, but for some reason the smell of almonds was stronger here. A window across the way showed a woman sleeping in a small room. She was lying on her back, her hair billowing from some unseen fan. The rest of her lay perfectly still until her hand came up and wiped at something on her cheek. Just as easily the hand fell back to the bed. The stillness returned, and Hoffner wondered if she would remember it ever happening.

Hoffner turned back to the flat and now saw through to the kitchen. There was an icebox, sink, stove, small table, and a man seated at one of the three chairs. He was older than the woman from the street, though not much bigger, and he was peering over at Hoffner. An opened newspaper lay across the table.

The man said, “You have a key.” It was a statement, nothing more.

Hoffner needed another few moments. “Yes,” he said. “The doctor-she gave it to me.”

The man continued to peer across at him. The face showed no fear, no distrust, not even curiosity. It was a look devoid of content. “Are you English?”

Again Hoffner needed a moment. “No.”

“German?”

“Yes.”

The man nodded. “You look German or English. I don’t mean it to offend.”

“It doesn’t. Does she do this often?”

“Do what?”

“Allow people to stay.”

The man thought a moment, then shook his head. “Not that I’m aware of, no.”

“And you live here?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’d be aware of it.”

The man waited. This seemed to make sense. He pushed the chair back and stood. He was a good head shorter than the doctor. “I have some hard eggs in the shell,” he said, “if you’re hungry.” He stepped over to a cabinet, pulled out a plate, and set it on the table. He went to the icebox.

It was always small men who gave Hoffner trouble when it came to age. The back was ramrod straight, but even then he put him at close to eighty. The hair was a fine white.

“She mentioned some clothes,” said Hoffner. It seemed inconceivable that they would have once belonged to this man, but given the circumstances and the last few minutes, Hoffner was open to anything.

The man placed two eggs on the plate. “There’s a closet in the other room. I can show you.” He placed a kettle on one of the burners, lit the gas with a match, and then pointed Hoffner in the direction. “It’s through here.”

Hoffner followed him down a short corridor and into a bedroom. A simple metal-spring bed jutted out from the far wall, with a small table, washing pitcher, and basin next to it. A wooden armoire stood along the near wall. The man unlatched the armoire and pulled open the doors.

He said, “They might be wide in here”-he ran his hand across his chest-“but otherwise they should fit well enough.”

Shirts and trousers hung on hangers, with two pairs of boots wedged underneath. The man stared at the clothes and then placed his hand on one of the sleeves. He stood quietly for several seconds. He closed the doors and said, “You’ll want a bath first.”

Hoffner stood in the doorway. “I’m called Nikolai.”

The man looked over. It was the first sign of emotion to reach his face. “You have a Russian name.”

“Yes. My mother.”

The man showed a moment’s surprise, then approval. “Mine as well,” he said. He seemed to grow taller with this. “I’m called Dmitri Piera. I am the father of your doctor. I’ll go run that bath.”

Hoffner slept first, two hours-maybe more-long enough to feel a different kind of heat when he woke. This one left pockets of cooled air to breathe and made sitting remarkably pleasant. He had bathed in the tub and now wore a shirt, suspenders, and trousers from the armoire as he sipped from a glass at the kitchen table. Both father and daughter had been right about the chest.

Piera offered coffee but said tea would be better. He also explained the other smell. Hazelnuts. He was guessing someone had peppers.

“It might be calcots,” he said, “but the onions are hard to find these days.”

Hoffner set his glass on the table. “I need to thank you for all this.”

Piera set his glass down as well. “She gave you the key, and the clothes were here. She’ll tell me why when she gets home.”

“You have great faith.”

It was the first hint of a smile to cross Piera’s face. “You’re in the wrong house for that.”

“She’s a good doctor.”

Piera dropped a piece of sugar into his glass. “Were you injured?”

“No.”

“Then how would you know?”

“She’s not?”

Piera stirred the tea with a spoon and set it by the glass. “Not easy for a woman to be a doctor.”

Hoffner thought it brave to show this kind of pride in a child. He said, “The clothes-there was a husband?”

Piera took a sip. “There was, but they aren’t his. He was small like me. That’s a long time ago.” Piera was happy to leave it at that. He was on his feet again, opening a drawer at the counter and pulling out a thick wedge of bread. He found a slab of butter inside the icebox and brought it to the table. An old army knife appeared from his pocket. He opened it and began to slice the bread.

“She doesn’t like that I use this,” he said. “She has a proper knife, but what can you do?” He smeared a piece with butter and handed it to Hoffner. He did the same for himself and took a healthy bite. The sound of the door opening brought a momentary lift to the air. Both men listened as the door clicked shut. Piera ran his tongue along his teeth and swallowed. He said, “We’re in here.”

Mila appeared at the archway. She held a bag filled with something, and her hair was now loose and pulled back over an ear. Hoffner imagined the skin had a remarkable smoothness. She stepped over and gave her father a kiss on each cheek. She looked at Hoffner.

“You found the clothes,” she said. “And a bath. That’s good.” She set the bag on the counter and began to pull out the contents: vegetables, fruit, something in a brown paper wrapping.

“You should sit,” said Piera.

Mila continued with the food. “They had fish and escarole. And we have fruit and some cream.”

Hoffner was on his feet. “I can help with that. I also have to thank you-”

She shook him off easily. “No, I enjoy it. And no, you have no reason to thank us. Just sit.” Hoffner did as he was told, and Piera took another sip of his tea. Mila said, “They’re changing the vouchers again, so tomorrow I need to stop down at Casa Cambo and see what we can get.”

Piera said, “You’ll tell them you’re a doctor?”

“I always do.” She reached up for a pan hanging over the stove. “Did you tell him about your son, Nikolai?” She might have spoken with the same ease of only moments ago, but Hoffner heard something else in it. She set the pan on one of the burners and said, “Nikolai has a boy. How old did you say he is?”

This wasn’t something she was likely to have forgotten. More than that, Piera was suddenly rigid in his chair, staring at his glass.

Hoffner said, “Twenty-five. You’re sure I can’t help you?”

Mila poured a drop of oil in the pan and unwrapped the fish. “He was filming the Olimpiada,” she said, too casually. She rinsed the pieces under the tap. “And now he’s gone missing. Nikolai has come to find him. His son.” She lit the burner with a match and gently placed the pieces in the pan. “I usually do just a bit of garlic and salt. That’s all right?”

Piera’s jaw clenched. “That’s enough,” he said quietly. He stood and moved out from behind the table.

Mila pressed the back of a fork onto the fish. She stared down into the pan. “The clothes look good, don’t they?” she said, but her father was already past her. He was in the living room when she finally looked up. It was impossible not to see the frustration and sadness in her eyes.

Hoffner stood quietly. For some reason, he felt shame. Not that he knew what role he had played in getting them here, but the knowing or not knowing was never essential. Shame relied on a kind of empathy-deep, blind, and unthinking until the moment it was too late-and all the more startling because it was so rarely his. That he felt it now, standing awkwardly in a kitchen with a woman he hardly knew and who was unable to meet his gaze, struck him as both exhilarating and terrifying.

He said, “The fish-it’s smoking.”

She looked over at him. The oil popped, and she turned to the pan and quickly flipped the pieces. She said, “Did you sleep?”

“Yes.”

She nodded and sprinkled some salt. “And no word from Gardenyes?”

She knew there wouldn’t have been. Still, it was better to ask than chance the silence.

“No,” Hoffner said. “He’d know to find me here?”

“He’d know how to find you. That’s all.” She lifted one of the pieces with the fork and bent closer to smell it. She set it back in the pan and added more oil.

Hoffner said, “You might have told me.”

“Told you what?”

“Whatever it is I’m doing by being here.” He watched her flip the pieces again. “I’m not in the habit of making old men so uncomfortable.”

She took the pieces out of the pan and laid them on a plate. “That’s not for you to worry about.”

“Still-”

“Still nothing,” she said, as she brought the fish to the table. “You have a meal, a bed, and clothes.” She laid a cloth over the plate. “And tomorrow you’ll go and look for your son.”

“And these clothes I happen to be wearing?”

She was now tearing at the escarole and placing the strips in the pan. When she finished, she took a jar from the bag and, opening it, poured in white beans. She stirred them quietly.

Piera’s voice came from behind Hoffner. “She has a brother.” Hoffner looked back and saw the small man holding a bottle; it held a pale liquid. “He wears a different uniform now.”

Piera stepped over and placed the bottle on the table. He went to the shelf and brought over three glasses.

“Knives and forks are in the second cabinet,” he said, nodding to the one by the sink. Hoffner stepped over and found them. He set three places.

The silence waited with them until they were all seated. Mila pulled the cloth from the fish and placed a piece on each plate. She did the same with the escarole and beans, while Piera filled the glasses; she then took her fork and began to eat. The men followed.

“Where is he now?” Hoffner said.

He saw Mila run her fork through the escarole as she stared at her plate.

Piera said, “He fights for the fascists. He’s not my concern.” Piera scooped up some beans.

“Zaragoza,” she said, as she reached for her glass. “At least that’s where they say he was three days ago.”

Piera took his time chewing and swallowing. “Your son is a journalist?” he said.

Hoffner watched Mila as she drank. “Yes,” he said. “Newsreels.”

“Very interesting.” Piera sucked at something at the back of his teeth and took another forkful.

Mila said, “My father is a Communist. So was my brother-a long time ago. Communists aren’t very forgiving.”

Piera picked up his glass. “Nothing to forgive,” he said plainly. He drank.

“He means nothing he can forgive.” Mila brought up another piece of fish. “He thinks it makes him clever to say it.” She ate.

Had Hoffner known the quickest way over the balcony and down to the pavement below, he would have taken it. Instead he was left to jab at a few beans with his fork.

He said, “I also have a son who fights for the fascists.”

Both father and daughter looked over. The same stare of betrayal filled their eyes.

“No,” Hoffner said easily. “Not the one with the newsreels. He also has a brother.” Hoffner went back to his fish. It was uncanny how moist she had kept it in the pan.

Mila said, “And he fights here, the other one?”

Hoffner shook his head as he ate. “No. The older boy is in Berlin-I think. I haven’t seen him in quite some time.”

“And you regret it?”

There was very little subtlety with her now. It made her somehow more endearing.

Hoffner said, “Not for me to regret what he is.”

“No, I meant-”

“I know what you meant,” he said, and took his glass. He drank. He then looked at Piera. “I don’t know this wine.”

Piera needed a moment. “Penedes,” he said. “Light. Nice with fish.”

Hoffner nodded and finished his glass, and Mila said, “And the younger one-does he regret it?”

She showed no backing down. There was no point in not answering.

“The younger boy is a Jew,” Hoffner said. “By choice. His brother is a Nazi. There was some unpleasantness. They haven’t spoken in several years. It’s not all that complicated.”

“But you come for the young one when the other is outside your back door.”

Hoffner set down his glass and took the bottle. He began to refill the glasses. “I don’t have the luxury to care about their politics. I know which one will take my help. That makes the decision much easier.”

“Easier for whom?” she said.

“For the one who’ll use it,” said Hoffner. He finished pouring.

“Or for yourself.”

Piera cut in angrily. “Of course for himself.” It was the first raw emotion to reach his voice. “What kind of question-easier for whom? You think he does this out of spite, to punish the other? He helps the one he can. This is a simple thing to understand.”

Piera realized too late how forcefully he had spoken. It was several moments before he went back to his fish.

Hoffner said, “I don’t know why I mentioned it. I’m sorry.”

Mila was looking at her father. “No,” she said, “I’m the one who is sorry.” Piera’s face softened even as he refused to look at her. She turned, and her eyes seemed to smile. The brightness in the face was all the more staggering given the last half minute.

“You’ll find him,” she said.

She sliced her fork into a piece of escarole. Hoffner watched as she drew it up to her mouth. She glanced at him, and it was all he could do to find the fish again on his own plate.

Two hours later he stared out from the balcony, glass in hand, as he listened to the distant sounds of music and voices from the street. Mila sat behind him on a low chair, her knees drawn to her chest. Her head was cocked lazily to one side as she listened as well. Piera had gone to bed.

Hoffner said, “I’ll try and find the place tomorrow.”

“He’ll want to go with you,” she said. “He’ll insist.”

Hoffner nodded.

An hour ago, Piera had given him Hanshen.

It had been something of a fluke, really, or maybe not-or maybe it was just Hoffner’s turn for a bit of good luck. In any event, it was going to save him some time.

Georg’s wire had indicated Hanshen was a German word. That, apparently, was not the case.

The name had come up during the third glass of Orujo and the second game of chess with Piera, a game that had not gone terribly well for Hoffner.

“You’ve played before,” Hoffner said.

“A bit.” The booze and the game were taking the edge off. Piera was smiling.

“Next you’ll want to put some money on it.”

“I’m a Communist,” said Piera. “What would I do with it if I won?”

“You’d figure something out.”

Hoffner made a move and quickly lost a bishop. He tried to convince himself that he was letting Piera win.

Mila was sitting on the sofa, reading a book. “You need to tell him,” she said.

Piera kept his eyes focused on the board.

She repeated, “You need to tell him, Papa.” When Piera continued to stare, she said, “My father was a chess champion. Quite famous. He’s probably working through a different game in his head while he’s playing you.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” said Hoffner.

“No,” said Mila. “It’s supposed to make him feel worse.”

“You’re not bad,” said Piera. “Not good, but not bad. You should come tomorrow. I play every day. At my club. We could find you an eleven-year-old. You wouldn’t beat him, but it would be good for his confidence.”

His club-renowned as the best in the city-was a little room over a Chinese cafe, down in the Raval section of town. It was called Han Shen’s. Everyone knew it.

Now Hoffner knew. He asked about Vollman, the name linked to Han Shen in the wire. Piera didn’t recognize it.

A boy in the street shouted something over the music. A breeze cut across the balcony, and Hoffner turned to see Mila with her knees still pulled up close to her chest. She said, “I need to sleep.”

Hoffner watched as she uncurled herself from the low chair and stood. She drew up to him and kissed him on both cheeks.

She said, “You need sleep, too.”

She placed a tired hand on his chest and then moved to the balcony door. He watched her step inside and turned back to the city. He looked down to the far end of the street and wondered if there was still enough courage for this left inside him.

Mila was gone by the time he awoke. Piera was in the kitchen, waiting with coffee. There was also a note. It was not from her.

“A little ginger-haired man,” Piera said as Hoffner took it. “I told him there was no point in waking you.”

“Did he say how he found me?”

“He said he came from Gardenyes.” Piera watched as Hoffner opened the envelope. “There was no reason to ask.”

The note confirmed Han Shen. Chess club at a Chink cafe, it read. The club was in the back and up some stairs. Gardenyes gave the address.

As for the rest, Gardenyes had found a Karl Vollman on the Olimpiada rolls. A German. He was a chess player.

Perfect, thought Hoffner.

There was nothing else on the man.

The name Bernhardt had proved more interesting, or at least more plentiful. According to Gardenyes there had been nine Bernhardts listed at the Barcelona telephone exchange as of January. Two were printers (brothers), both of whom had left three weeks after the Popular Front victory in February. They had taken five other Bernhardts (sons) back to Germany with them. The last of the listed Bernhardts was a writer living with a Frenchwoman down by the water. Gardenyes had actually dealt with the man. He was a drug addict and most likely dead, but Gardenyes was sending one of his boys to look into it. As for the name Langenheim-and whatever Hisma might be-Gardenyes had come up empty.

Piera said, “You’ve found your boy?”

Hoffner folded the page and slipped it into his pocket. He had the Luger on his belt. “I’m assuming we can walk to this place from here.”

The smell of garlic followed them as they passed the storefronts and drawn metal gates of the Raval’s cramped streets. Why half the shops were closed remained a mystery. According to Piera, a joint order had come down last week from the anarchist CNT and the Communist POUM for everyone to head back to work: the city needed to move again; a few days of gunfire wasn’t going to stand in its way. Workers’ committees were now running the factories, collectives shipping the goods in and out. Then again, maybe the Raval had always been exempt from such things. Places built on corruption and defeat rarely take notice of the world flickering above them.

Even so, Hoffner had expected something a bit more exotic-animal parts dangling from hooks, barrels filled with God knows what-but there was something disappointingly tame to it all. Barrio Chino was little more than a few token lanterns on taut cords and gates here and there with those perfectly upturned oriental roofs; the whole thing felt a bit insincere.

Odder still were the little men and women standing outside or in, sporting their red neckerchiefs in an act of utterly indifferent solidarity. They wore them for security, nothing else. This week it was anarchists. Next it might be fascists. No doubt they had the appropriate colors waiting somewhere in their back rooms.

Piera walked with a stick, the wood as veined as the hand that gripped it. His neck was already beading from the heat.

“I bought this somewhere in here,” he said. “The Chino do well with wood. You can’t speak to them-maybe five words of Spanish among them-but the work is good.”

“They seem to like the neckerchiefs.”

Piera smiled. “It’s ten years since they’ve come here. Can’t see them staying much longer. Mostly roll carts, flophouses, the occasional shop. They work for almost nothing-at least up until a few weeks ago. Don’t imagine the whores get much out of them.”

As if to make the point, a woman emerged from one of the darkened archways. Her dress was pulled down low on the shoulders, the rest too tight around a figure that could best be advertised as replete with extra cushioning. Still, the face looked young even if the hair and skin had both gone an unnatural white-one from a bottle, the other from too many hours lost to needles and men-and there was a kind of girlish enthusiasm in the way she walked and smiled: big pouty lips encircling a remarkably straight set of teeth, and a chest with enough heft to smother a small cat. It might have been the heroin or the pills or whatever else was coursing through her body, but Hoffner let himself believe she took a pleasure in knowing that, despite the recent upheavals, she had never given up the gate.

She steadied herself against a wall, brought her foot up to adjust the strap of her shoe, and broadened her smile for Piera. The little man offered a surprisingly robust nod that seemed to catch even the woman off guard. Piera continued to walk.

“That’s why the anarchists are idiots,” he said. “You think they’ll get a girl like that off the streets?”

Hoffner looked back as they walked. The woman was still watching them, a handkerchief dabbing at the moist folds of skin on her neck. She seemed so much more impressive than a German whore, as if she had expectations of her own: not enough just to hand her the money; there had to be something in it worth her time.

Piera said, “You see.”

He was pointing his stick at a poster plastered across one of the storefront gates. It showed an intoxicated woman in a classic red dress drawn in hard angles, a cigarette dripping from her fat gray lips, her hand roaming into the jacket pocket of some faceless man. Across her chest was written the warning, THE WHORE IS A PARASITE! A THIEF! LET’S GET RID OF HER!

Someone less troubled by the apparent threat had more recently drawn her other hand: it was reaching a bit lower down on the man’s leg, with the words PLEASE! ROB ME! ROB ME! ROB ME! scrawled across the logo for the CNT.

Piera said, “The anarchists promised to close down the brothels.”

“That’s a sad sort of promise.”

“Not to worry. It’s their boys who fill the places every night.”

Hoffner followed him down a few steps and into an open courtyard. Two young boys and a man were kicking around what passed for a ball. The man had set his rifle against a wall.

Piera said, “It’s not so much that they’re hypocrites.” The smell of the garlic had soured. “They are, but that just makes them anarchists. The question is, Why bother with morality at all? She harms no one-”

“Except perhaps herself.”

Piera dismissed the idea. “A man in a coal mine harms himself. A man who breathes fumes in some factory all day long harms himself. Work is harmful. What shattering news. It’s still necessary. As is what she does.”

“From each according to her ability-”

“Laugh all you want, but if you need a morality beyond that, find a priest. To go looking for it with an anarchist”-Piera shook his head-“that makes you a fool.”

It was heartening to hear this kind of mutual support among the newly victorious.

They moved through to another narrow street and Piera raised his cane and pointed to an archway. Chinese symbols were printed in thick black ink above the door, along with a more Spanish rendering of the name: HAN SHEN. Below it the cobblestones ran with the remains of some recent spillage; tiny yellow bubbles clung to the stone and gave off the distinct smell of onions and chicken fat. Hoffner was careful to step around them.

Inside, two old Chinese sat silently at one of four tables in the dim light, peeling little stalks of something and tossing the beans into a barrel on the floor. The air was damp, cooler than on the street, and smelled of day-old flowers.

A woman was standing in a long black smock by the stairs that led up to the back room. She had what Hoffner imagined to be the widest face he had ever seen. It was as if someone had taken the skin and bones and hammered them flat until the nose had all but disappeared; likewise the eyes and mouth seemed to crease to the very edges of the flesh. To make matters worse, her skin was a kind of mottled gray, and her hair looked as if it had been planted on the scalp in tiny clumps of baled black hay. Hoffner might have taken her for one of those sideshow curiosities one sees for a few coins at a country tent, but there was too much of the familiar in the way she stared across at them to make that mistake.

He said to Piera, “Cafe’s a kind way of putting it, isn’t it?”

Hoffner had seen enough of these faces back in Prenzlauer Berg not to appreciate the stamp of opium. On a German complexion, the needles and pipe left a kind of sticky residue; yellow and smooth, it sank the cheeks and narrowed the pupils to blackened pinpoints. With a Chinese, the face flattened and grew pale. It might have been bloating or bone disintegration, but whatever the reason, the addict was no less recognizable. This, however, was the most pronounced case Hoffner had ever seen.

He said, “You’re sure it’s only chess they play here?”

“The chess is upstairs,” said Piera. “What they do in the basement is someone else’s business.”

The woman was now walking toward them. Her head teetered from side to side but thus far remained planted on her neck. Piera reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin. He placed it in her hand, and they stepped past her to the stairs.

It was a long narrow room above, bare wooden floors and the kind of stone walls that seemed to undulate from too many coats of white paint. A row of small windows were open at the topmost edge of the far wall; they made the air breathable. Fifteen or so tables filled the space, each with a hanging bulb above, along with a small colored shade in deep reds and oranges. There was probably something Chinese to the design, but Hoffner didn’t recognize it. Much to his relief, the place smelled of tobacco and sweat.

Only four of the tables were occupied, a pair of men at each, except for the nearest, where a young man sat by himself, staring at his board. Every few seconds he glanced up at the chair across from him with a look of mild confusion; he seemed genuinely surprised to find it empty.

Piera said, “They used to bring the addicts up here when the asaltos came to arrest them. Those long coats and perfect buttons, with their little truncheons in their hands-and staring in here with no idea who was on the drugs and who was simply crazy.”

“Until someone vomited or passed out,” said Hoffner.

“You’ve never played tournament chess, have you?”

The young man stood and moved over to the empty chair. He looked at it for several seconds before muttering something to himself and sitting. Again he began to examine the board.

“Does he ever win?” Hoffner said.

“Every time, I imagine.”

One of the men a few tables down looked up, not quite so young, rail thin, but with dark slicked-back hair. There were bruises on his face, along with some scabbing on the forehead. Evidently not everyone in the streets had fought with bayonets and guns. The man recognized Piera. He nodded and went back to his game.

Piera said, “He once drew three games with Capablanca. Rome, 1921. Remarkable player.”

Hoffner had given up following chess a long time ago, but even he recalled the great Cuban player.

Piera said, “He can tell you every move of every game, show you how Capablanca held the pieces before he moved them-forefinger and thumb, middle finger and thumb, entire palm-and how much time he took with each piece in the air. It’s like watching a film.”

“And he’s one of the sane ones?”

“He runs the place.”

The other two tables were deep into games. Hoffner said, “Do you recognize everyone in here?”

“No.”

“Good. Stay here.”

Hoffner made his way over to Piera’s friend and stood hovering above the table. Neither of the men playing bothered to acknowledge him. Finally Hoffner cleared his throat.

Piera’s friend reached for one of his rooks-there was more bruising on the knuckles-and said, “Yes, we know you’re there.” It was Spanish, but the accent was from elsewhere. “The idea was we didn’t care.” He placed the rook along the last rank and went back to studying the board.

Hoffner said, “You run this place, a room over an opium den?”

The man showed no reaction as he continued to scan the pieces. “You’re not Spanish, so I’m thinking I don’t have to care what concerns you.”

Apparently even the chess club boys were getting to play it tough these days, although there was something too comfortable in the way this one doled out his aggression. Hoffner wondered how much time the man was splitting between his upstairs clientele and those in the basement.

The man across the table ran the back of his fingers through his beard and then slid a pawn forward one square. Piera’s friend stared a moment longer, peering over at a completely different area of the board before sitting back. Only then did he look up at Hoffner. He took a moment and said, “He has a pretty daughter-Piera. Have you met her?”

“I’m impressed,” said Hoffner. “You’d think you’d be able to smell it up here.”

“What, Piera’s daughter? I hope not.”

In a different place, a different time, Hoffner would have cracked the man across the face, but that kind of brutality was too easy now. Instead, Hoffner picked up one of the pieces on the side of the board.

“You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?” Hoffner said. When the man continued to stare, Hoffner added, “I was thinking Polish from the accent, but the face is wrong. Maybe Czech or Romanian. You boys are always good with chess.”

It might have been animal instinct, but the bearded man across the table now slowly pushed back his chair. He took out a pack of cigarettes and moved off, happy to go smoke in a corner.

Hoffner said, “Your friend’s accustomed to stepping away from the game?”

“Usually with his king down.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Hoffner said, as he set the piece down. “You’re quite the hero. Drawing with Capablanca. Very impressive.” It was nice to see the jaw tighten. “I’ve never understood that. No winner, no loser. It’s as if the game never happened, so why bother remembering it?”

The man’s tone was equally tight when he spoke. “What do you want?”

“Don’t worry-it’s not about the drugs.” It might have been. Gardenyes’s note had mentioned the writer Bernhardt and his predilection, but Hoffner knew that could wait. Georg’s wire had been very clear: Han Shen was connected to Vollman. Better to keep things simple and start there.

“Germans,” said Hoffner. “You’ve had a few of them playing in here the last few weeks.”

“Have I? We don’t check papers at the door.”

“Not good for business.”

“No.”

“Bit of a drop-off since the fighting started?”

“What fighting?” The man spoke with a goading insincerity. “I haven’t heard any shots today, have you?”

Hoffner regretted not having slapped him. “So, business as usual?”

The man set his hands on the table. “Something like that.” He started to get up, and Hoffner quietly gripped the shoulder and arm and held them in place. The man sat back down.

Hoffner said, “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say you’re too clever to be in deep with what’s going on downstairs. You turn a blind eye and they make it worth your while. No crime in that.”

The man said coldly, “There is no crime in Barcelona these days-haven’t you heard?” Hoffner tightened his grip and the man said, “It’s as a courtesy to Piera I’m talking with you.”

“The same courtesy that’s keeping your arm from snapping in two. We understand each other?”

The man winced, then nodded.

Hoffner said, “There’s a man named Vollman. From the Olimpiada. I need to find him.”

The answer was too long in coming. “I don’t know him.”

“Yes, you do. He would have been in here a few days before the games.” Hoffner turned the elbow and watched as the man’s eyes tried to fight back the pain.

The man said, “I wouldn’t know where he is.”

“We both know that’s not true.”

The man chanced a look at his friend, who was still smoking in the corner. Almost at once, the bearded man tossed the cigarette to the ground and bolted for the door. He was surprisingly agile and might have made it had Piera not whacked his cane across the man’s kneecap. There was the expected yowling, the looks of pain and panic-all the trappings of men caught up in something well beyond their means.

Hoffner said, “That was remarkably stupid. Where is he?”

The sight of his friend sprawled on the floor brought a final tensing of defiance from the man in the chair. Just as quickly his shoulders dropped. He stared down at the board and said, “You’re scum to help these people, Piera.”

Piera looked particularly daunting standing over the bearded one. “This from a man who helps the Chinks run their poison up from the south.”

The man said bitterly, “So it’s not just your son, Piera, is it?”

Hoffner was having trouble following the sudden turn in the conversation. He was, however, quick enough to keep Piera’s cane from landing on the man’s skull.

Hoffner said, “Enough. We all take a step back.”

Hoffner waited and then released. It was another few seconds before Piera slowly brought the cane down.

“What people?” Hoffner asked.

The man snorted to himself, then mumbled something in a Catalan only vaguely familiar. Finally he said, in Spanish, “No, I’m sure you have no idea.”

Hoffner noticed the four sets of eyes peering over from the other tables. Piera was staring at him as well. Oddly enough it was Piera’s expression that was most unsettling. Hoffner did his best to ignore it. He turned to the man and repeated, “What people?”

From behind him Piera said, “You haven’t made a fool of me or my daughter, have you?” There was a quiet accusation in the voice.

Hoffner turned to him. “What?”

“It’s a simple question,” said Piera.

The silence only deepened Hoffner’s confusion. “No,” he said. “I haven’t.”

“Then why does he think you’re hunting down this Vollman for the fascists?”

The thought was absurd. Hoffner continued to stare, and Piera said, “He believes we are also fascists.”

Hoffner was doing what he could to make sense of the last half minute. He turned to the man, the eyes now fixed on the far wall. Hoffner saw their contempt and instantly understood why.

“Who else has been in here asking about Vollman?” said Hoffner. When the man refused to look up, Hoffner again grabbed him by the arm. “Who else?”

The man took his time. “Germans,” he said. “Germans-like you.”

“Not like me. Who?”

“Yes, like you.” The man continued to stare straight ahead. “Twisting arms, beating faces, breaking knees. Exactly like you.”

The hatred in the eyes was now unassailable. It was no match, though, for the sudden revulsion Hoffner felt for himself. He slowly released the man and said, “That’s not who I am. I thought you were-” Hoffner shook his head. “You know what I thought you were.”

The man turned to him. “Do I?”

Hoffner was having trouble matching the gaze. “The drugs. I assumed-”

“What? That Communists can’t peddle drugs? We run it as a collective, if that makes you feel any better. Are even the good Germans like this now?”

Hoffner found himself staring into the man’s eyes even as the words gutted him. “No,” he said quietly. “They’re not.”

“And you believe that?”

It was all Hoffner could do to answer. “I’m trying to find one of the good ones. My son. I assume your Vollman is another.”

The man studied him. There was a moment’s uncertainty. “Your son?”

“Yes. A filmmaker.”

Again the man waited. Hoffner saw another moment in the eyes before the man said, “The boy from Pathe Gazette?”

It was said so easily, and yet Hoffner felt it to his core. Georg had been here. Hoffner nodded.

The man thought something through and then turned to Piera. “Your son, Piera,” he said. There was regret in the voice. “I was sorry to hear about that.”

“So was I,” said Piera. “You know where this Vollman is?” The man nodded and Piera said, “Then you’re lucky. I would have broken the arm.”

The man knew every twist and bend of the Raval’s back alleys. Piera had stayed behind. The morning’s events had taken it out of him. Still, he was in better shape than the one with the beard. The knee was already the size of a melon. Piera offered no apologies.

They drew up to a building and the man pulled out a set of keys. The alley was empty. Even so, he peered off in both directions. Satisfied, he unlocked the door and ushered Hoffner in.

Four worn wood stairways later they stood in front of a single door, and it was through here that they discovered the sleeping Karl Vollman.

The room was a nice molting of chipped plaster and paint, with a tiny sink and spigot wedged into one corner. Water stains-browns and yellows-provided what color there was, while an angled window looked out on endless lines of clothes drying in the heat. Everything smelled of rust. Had there been an easel and a few stacks of drying canvas, Hoffner might have hummed the first bars of “Che gelida manina,” but the place was too hot for frozen little hands, and there didn’t seem to be much hope in it, even if Vollman was sleeping soundly.

Vollman was in undershirt and trousers, with his shoes neatly at the foot of the bed. Even sleeping, there was a power to the body, the arms pale and muscular. Most distinctive, though, was the shock of white hair on a man no more than fifty.

Hoffner’s guide stepped toward the cot and placed a hand on Vollman’s shoulder. Vollman remained absolutely still until he took in a long breath and suddenly bolted upright. The sinew in the chest tightened and then released.

The man said, “Karl.” He spoke in German.

Vollman stared straight ahead. He rubbed his face briskly and began to nod. It was only then that he noticed Hoffner.

“Monsieur,” said Vollman. “Je suis soulage que vous soyez ici. Etes-vous pret a partir?”

Hoffner needed a moment. “What?”

The man from the club said, “He’s saying-”

“I know what he’s saying,” said Hoffner. “He thinks I’m taking him to Paris.”

Vollman spoke in German. “Yes.”

Hoffner said, “You think it’s not safe for you here.”

“No.”

“And why is that?” Hoffner always felt a moment’s regret watching a man’s eyes give in to the truth.

Vollman said, “Who is this?”

Hoffner pulled out his cigarettes and offered one to Vollman. “My name is Hoffner.” He took one for himself. “I believe you know my son.”

Paris faded.

Hoffner thought he would see a few moments of calculation in the eyes-how else were chess men meant to react? — but Vollman showed nothing. He just sat there, remarkably well-shaven, although his shirt and trousers did show several days of sleep and sweat.

Hoffner said, “You’re here because of my son.”

Vollman focused. He looked over, reached for the cigarette, and placed it in his mouth.

Hoffner said, “I’m sorry for that.”

“Is he dead?”

Hoffner lit Vollman’s cigarette, then his own. “No.”

“You know that for certain?”

Hoffner let the smoke stream from his nose. He said nothing.

Vollman stood and headed for the sink. “I ran out of German cigarettes about a week ago,” he said. “Don’t much like the Spanish ones.” He placed the cigarette on the edge of the sink and pulled a hand towel from some unseen hook. He began to wet it. “Leos here doesn’t smoke, so he doesn’t care.”

The man from the club said, “I’ve different things to care about.”

Vollman ran the cloth along his neck and forehead. “That’s always a good excuse, isn’t it?” Vollman rinsed his mouth, placed the towel back on the hook, and retrieved his cigarette. “He has no idea why he’s protecting me. That makes him a good friend, so I forgive him the cigarettes. You’ve come all the way from Berlin, so you must have a great deal that needs forgiving.”

Hoffner felt oddly at home with a man like this.

Vollman said, “You should go, Leos.”

The man from the club waited and then looked at Hoffner. He said, “I’ll take Piera to the Ritz. Two hours. If you don’t show, I’ll kill him. Fair enough?”

Hoffner liked when things were made this clear. He nodded.

“And you give my friend here your cigarettes,” the man said. “So I don’t have to hear him whine about it anymore.”

Hoffner tossed the pack onto the cot as the door pulled open and shut behind him.

Vollman was not a Jew. It was the least surprising thing about him, even if he did come from a long line of true believers-years spent organizing in the working-class districts of Berlin, with a few scars on his right arm to show for it. He had been at school in Switzerland with all the best revolutionaries and had even spent time with Lenin before the mad dash to Moscow. That Lenin had gotten it completely wrong, and paved the way for Stalin and his thugs, hardly had Vollman giving up on the Soviet experiment just yet. Stalin would have his chance to make things right here in Spain; all would be forgiven if the tanks and planes and men began pouring in.

That said, it wasn’t all that unusual a story until Vollman decided to explain why he was in Spain. He had come as a special envoy of the Unified State Political Administration, working with its foreign department, what he referred to as INO through OGPU. Hoffner stared blankly, and Vollman simplified: he was, for lack of a better term, an agent of Soviet Intelligence. And while that might have been staggering on its own, it seemed even more implausible that Vollman should feel the need to share the information with Hoffner. Yet even that seemed reasonable enough.

“What else would I be?” Vollman said easily, as he lit his third cigarette. He was sitting on the cot. “Why else would Georg and I have been in touch with each other? Birds of a feather.”

Hoffner took a long pull and nodded as if this made any real sense to him.

Vollman said, “I’m not saying anything you don’t know.”

Hoffner realized it was in his best interest to agree. “It’s a recent piece of information, but yes. I knew why Georg was here.”

Vollman reached for his shoes. “You haven’t made some horrible mistake, have you?”

“I don’t think so.”

Vollman began to lace up. “It’s rather funny if you think about it. Three Germans in Spain-a civil war-one working for British Intelligence, one for Soviet Intelligence, and one”-he finished lacing and looked over-“one looking for the other two.”

Hoffner felt the slightest threat of violence slip into the room. “I’m looking for just one,” he said.

“And yet you’ve found the other.”

There was nothing to be gained in retreat. Hoffner dropped his cigarette to the floor and began to crush it under his shoe. “You could get to Paris any time you like, couldn’t you?”

“And why would I want to do that?”

“Your friend Leos seems to be going to great lengths to get you there.”

“He does, doesn’t he? Did you take a few cracks at him yourself? He’s been very good at letting people thrash him on my behalf.”

“It’s very kind of you to let him.”

Vollman’s gaze turned to a smile. It was an odd reaction, odder still to see genuine warmth in it. “It’s a sweet little line-the kindness of my cruelty. I imagine it once had a place.”

There was nothing mocking in Vollman’s tone, more nostalgia than derision. Hoffner was moving well beyond his depth.

Vollman said, “It’s only cruel if that sort of cruelty still exists-the one where a man uses another, wittingly or not, in the name of some larger cause. ‘I will sacrifice you, Leos…’ ” Vollman watched as the words floated out the window. “It’s such a dangerous thing to rely on-sacrifice. Even more ridiculous to ask it of someone. Are we such fools as to think there’s nobility in any of this?”

Hoffner imagined Georg standing in his place, sifting through a conversation built on unspoken truths and unadorned lies, and only then did he realize that he had no idea what his son might be capable of.

Hoffner said, “So, a German socialist working for Soviet communism-and there’s no great cause? I find that highly unlikely.”

“My cause was Germany. Same as yours. That’s long gone. It’s now just making sure the world keeps things balanced.”

“Comrade Stalin never struck me as such a pragmatist.”

“Who said anything about Stalin?” Vollman flicked a bit of ash to the floor. “A grotty little attic-never been the place for ideologies and five-year plans, has it?”

Hoffner was thinking another chair would have been nice right about now. “So the true believer turns out to be not so true. I imagine there’s something sad in that.”

“Why? Would you really want a zealot holed up in here?”

“It’s a long way from this to a zealot.”

“Is it? All it takes is the word ‘truth’ or ‘message’ or ‘cause’-or ‘sacrifice.’ I don’t much cotton to those. For me it’s always been much easier to look at the more practical side of things. Guns, tanks, planes. Who has them, how they get more. That’s why Georg was here. That’s why I’m here. To see how these Spanish generals plan to wage their war. And who they plan to get their weapons from. The practical. That’s why he told me you’d be here.”

Hoffner was getting tired of meeting himself through other people’s eyes. “I’m surprised he mentioned me.”

“No, you’re not. He said you’d come if things went sour. He was actually proud of that.”

Hoffner needed a moment; there was too much caught in his throat to find an answer. “So things have gone sour?”

“He’s been out of touch for what-four days, maybe five?”

“A week.”

Vollman’s eyebrows rose as if to make his point. “That’s not good.”

“No.”

“And you think you’ll just go off and find him?”

“I found you, didn’t I?”

Vollman liked the answer. He moved past it quickly. “The world has never been so ready to declare its allegiances. They’ll all be shipping themselves into Spain by the truckload in the next weeks, months, and every one of them with his arm raised in whatever salute suits him best. It’s a terrible thing to know how pointless it’s all going to be.”

“And yet here you are.”

“Of course I’m here. Who else is going to make sure all those theories and truths don’t muddy what really matters?”

Hoffner nodded quietly. “That balance you and Georg and all the rest of your attic-dwelling friends are keeping safe for us. How lucky for me to be able to thank you in person.”

There was no ruffling Vollman. “Georg might tell you he sees something more in it, something nobler-that can get a man in trouble-but I wouldn’t hold it against him.” Vollman finished his cigarette and began to crush it against the metal leg of the bed. “As for the rest of us, we know exactly why we’re in Spain. We’ve come for the dry run. Germany, Italy, England”-he dropped the butt to the floor-“Comrade Stalin. We’re here to see how it all works before moving onto the big stage. The Spanish have always had such remarkable timing.”

“Your sacrificial lambs.”

Vollman’s smile returned. “They’ve led themselves to the slaughter. There’s no sacrifice in that.”

Hoffner wondered how long it took a man to rid himself of any feeling for the world beyond him: a month, a year, a lifetime watching his own truths ground down to nothing? Easier, then, to toss them all away and damn the world for still trying.

“So your friend Leos,” Hoffner said. “He thinks he’s protecting a frightened little chess player up here, even though the anarchists are running the streets. So what’s he protecting you from?”

Vollman reached for another cigarette; it was clear why he had run out so quickly. “I’m just a poor helpless refugee,” he said, as he lit up. “Leos thinks I might have overheard something or seen something at his club. I need to get out of this war-torn country.”

“And yet here you sit-waiting.”

“Barcelona’s always been much better after dark.”

“And he has no idea what you do then, after dark?”

“It’s all a bit loose-Leos doesn’t press-but there might be a few people who’ve taken an interest in me.”

“And how long have the SS been in Barcelona?”

Vollman spat something to the floor. “A week, ten days. Not early enough to have saved it for themselves.”

“But early enough to have known about Georg?”

Vollman took another pull and let his head rest against the wall. He waited until the smoke had streamed from his nose. “You wouldn’t still be clinging to any hopes of something noble in this, would you? That would be a disappointment.”

“I asked about Georg.”

“Of course you did. And of course they knew. There are never any great surprises in this. Not for those of us who sleep in shithole attics. It comes down to who gets the guns and where they get them from. And how long they can keep it a secret. We know it. The British know it. The Nazis know it. That’s why ideology is meaningless. Something else Georg said you’d understand.”

The truth, once untapped, was such an easy thing for men like this. They used it like a weapon. “So he’s looking for guns?” said Hoffner.

“And planes and tanks and ships and anything else they might try to get through to the generals in the south. Franco has thirty thousand troops sitting in Morocco. He needs to move them across the water to the mainland, and he needs something for them to fight with once he gets them across. It’s a little game. The Nazis say they won’t send in the guns, and everyone says they believe them. And then we all go looking for the way the Nazis will send in the guns. It’s more about the where and the how than the what.”

“And Han Shen’s?”

Vollman stared across at Hoffner. It was another few moments before Hoffner saw it.

“The opium lines,” Hoffner said.

“Nice little network for delivery, if you think about it.”

Hoffner hadn’t. “And the Nazis-they think they can use the drug lines to supply guns for the fascists?”

“They did a week ago.”

“And now?”

Vollman shrugged, took another pull, and tossed the match to the floor. “That depends on whether they know who’s running it. If they think it’s still the Chinese, the Nazis will send the guns. Naturally they won’t know it’s Leos and his Communists who’ll be getting them. That’ll make the Barcelona anarchists stand up and take notice of their clever little Communist friends. Duping Berlin. Nice twist, don’t you think?”

“And if the Nazis have figured it out?”

“Then there’ll be a lot of dead Chinese and dead Communists. That’s the way things always go at the beginning. Trial and error.”

There wasn’t even a hint of feeling. “And Georg knew all this?”

Vollman took another pull. He seemed to be deciding whether to mislead or enlighten. “He was following something south,” he said. “Down to Teruel. Something to do with the guns. That’s my gift to you.”

“So who are Bernhardt and Langenheim?” Hoffner thought it time for a little strafing of the truth of his own.

Vollman had been at this too long, though, to show any kind of reaction. He continued to stare across before taking a final pull. “You should get to the Ritz. Leos isn’t one for idle threats.”

“And Hisma?” said Hoffner.

The silence this time was too long. Vollman said, “You should go.”

“I imagine Georg expected me to pass those names along.”

“He’s a clever boy.”

“It’s B-E-R-N-”

“Yes,” said Vollman. “You’ll need to head south if you want to find him.”

“And you’ll be here in Barcelona?” Hoffner knew there would be no answer. He waited and then moved to the door. He had the handle in his grip when Vollman said, “Pawn to queen bishop three. It’s the Caro-Kann defense. My specialty. Leos likes to know I’m safe.”

Hoffner had his back to him. So this was what safety felt like, he thought. He nodded and opened the door.

The wide avenue of the Rambla was up and moving as Hoffner made his way through the heat. Open-backed trucks carrying men and rifles, men and grain, men and pigs, trundled between the lines of trees, careful to avoid the still uncleared piles of brick and stone. A week ago trucks like these, then filled with boys eager for the fight at Huesca or Zaragoza, or maybe even as far west as Madrid, had been cheered on by the thousands. Even now the frenzy of those first few days hung in the branches-hats and scarves tossed high and abandoned-but who could deny the sound of victory still echoing in the leaves?

Vollman had talked a great deal; he had said almost nothing. It was clear he recognized the names in the wire: Langenheim and Bernhardt. Hisma might have been something new to him-or maybe Hoffner just wanted to think that-but at least things were now on the table. This was about guns and the way the Nazis would get them into Spain. And Georg had been sent to expose that. In a world gone mad on truths and malice, ideologies and sacrifice, this was nothing more than a boy’s playground game. Smack the bully and make him cry. That tens of thousands of Spaniards might have to die in the process hardly seemed to matter.

It was a sobering thought as Hoffner came to the Ritz, its ten stories of palatial stone and glass filling the entire block. The curved rise of the facade and the blackened windows did little to soften the appearance; even the row of balconies above seemed to sneer down at the plaza through gritted teeth. Hoffner imagined this to have been the breeding ground for Barcelona’s elite, with chandeliers and dinner jackets and crystal glasses set across endless stretches of brocaded linen tablecloth: all those photographs of withering smiles, men and women staring up in perfectly seated lines of privilege and decay.

It would have been enough to smell the hair tonic and toilet water if not for the riddling of pockmarks along the stone from recent machine-gun fire. Likewise, the ragtag group of trucks parked outside-men hauling carcasses of beef and pork through the front door-cast out any lingering sophistication. Most glaring, though, was the awning where the words HOTEL GASTRONOMICO NO. 1 severed all links to the past. The Ritz was now a UGT/CNT canteen: so nice to see the socialists and anarchists working hand in hand to feed the people.

Hoffner crossed the plaza and joined the line heading in. The man in front of him was reading the latest issue of the Solidaridad Obrera, most of the newspaper’s front page a description of the fighting in Aragon: a pilot by the name of Gayoso-anarchist or socialist was still unclear-had coasted down to 150 meters and dropped a bomb on Our Lady of the Pillar in Zaragoza. The “purring of the engines,” so the article read, had been unfamiliar to those in the streets, but both church and city had escaped any real damage when the bomb failed to explode.

The man in front snorted and shook his head.

“They think Jesus saved their little church,” he said. “You get us some bombs that work, and General Mola will be wishing he never left Navarre.”

Hoffner was expecting more of the history lesson, but the line began to move. Four minutes later he stood in one of the grand ballrooms, now teeming with diners. It was humanity at its chewing best, a long narrow table at the side running some thirty meters to the back wall; large and small round tables filled the rest of the floor. The chandeliers were still above-most without bulbs-but the light pouring in from the ceiling-high windows made them almost an afterthought.

If there was an empty chair to be found Hoffner couldn’t see it-mothers with children bent over bowls of soup and bread, waiters in white coats or shirtsleeves darting in between, and above it all the hum of eager silverware and untamed conversation. These might have been the recently dispossessed, but Hoffner suspected the room brought its own brand of self-satisfaction to those inside. Even eating was a kind of triumph in the new Barcelona.

A man approached through the maze of chairs. “You’re alone, friend?”

It was a single motion to call Hoffner over and send him off toward the long table where the next chair in line stood empty. Hoffner thought to explain, but there was too much movement behind him-in front of him, to the side of him-to stand in the way of progress. He sidestepped his way through and took his seat.

The man next to him was shoveling the last bits of rice onto a fork. He had yet to look up. “Salud, friend,” he said. “He’ll be by in a minute. Best to have your voucher out.”

This was the sticking point. Hoffner realized his time at the Ritz might be short-lived. He turned to have a look around and was nearly flattened by a waiter carrying a large silver tray.

“Watch yourself, friend,” the man said as he buzzed by, and Hoffner pulled back. When he looked out again, Hoffner saw Mila a few meters off, standing directly across from him.

She was in a different pair of trousers, slightly lighter blouse, but the belt, hair, and eyes were exactly the same. She was smiling at him.

She walked over. “You always do what you’re told?”

The shock of seeing her left Hoffner momentarily at a loss.

“We’re down here,” she said, “but you’re welcome to stay with your new friend if you like.”

Piera, Leos, and a third man-with oddly drooping eyes and a scar across his left cheek-were working through several bowls of beans and chicken when Mila and Hoffner drew up.

Hoffner said, “Pawn to-”

“Yes.” Leos cut him off as he continued to eat. “He likes all that. You wouldn’t be standing here if he wasn’t tucked away.”

Mila sat, and Hoffner took the chair next to her. He said, “I didn’t expect to see you.”

“And I didn’t expect to find my father being held hostage.” She was smiling.

Leos had his glass to his lips. “That’s unfair,” he said.

“You would have killed him, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So what else would you call it?”

Leos thought a moment, shrugged, and drank.

Hoffner said, “You just happened to stop by the Ritz?”

She poured them both some wine. “Workers’ Canteen Number One,” she corrected. “And no. When my father goes to the club, I bring him lunch. When he gets kidnapped, I tend to follow along.”

Leos said, “So now it’s kidnapping.” He chewed through a bone. “I suppose next you’re going to tell me I actually killed him.”

Hoffner was struck by how easily they tossed this all about. Leos would have shot Piera without a thought. He was just as likely to share a bowl of chicken with him. Evidently instinct worked minute to minute these days.

Piera pushed his bowl forward and sucked something in his teeth. “Did you find your son?” he said, with no real interest.

There was a commotion by the door, and they all turned to see the head man shaking his head. One or two others in line were doing the same. Finally the head man threw up his hands, stepped back, and little Aurelio-shirt and ginger hair matted in sweat-moved past him. The man with the droopy eyes was instantly on his feet.

Aurelio drew up and stared, his breathing heavy.

The standing man began to shake his head, as if to say, Well?

It took Aurelio another moment to focus. When he did, his voice was quiet.

“Patrullas,” he said. He seemed almost confused by it. “No papers. Nothing.” He looked at Hoffner, then Mila, then Hoffner again. “They took him. On the street.” It was as if he were watching it play out in front of him. “The butt of a rifle to the head and gone. There won’t even be enough of him left to bury.”