The Second Son

4

In the early spring of 1919, while Detective Inspector Nikolai Hoffner recovered from his investigations into the murder of Rosa Luxemburg, General Severiano Martinez Anido arrived in Barcelona to quell the more dangerous elements within the anarchist Sindicato Unico. The Sindicato was the most powerful union in the country and had recently begun to encourage some of its members to explore alternative measures when dealing with work stoppages, lockouts, and industrialists in general. It seemed that bold words and tossed rocks were getting them only so far. The leadership wanted something more permanent. Thereafter, bullet and garroting-wire sales rose dramatically throughout the city.

General Martinez Anido, a mild soft-spoken little man, had been sent on direct orders from the prime minister, Don Eduardo Dato. Dato’s exact words-if his secretary’s memory can be trusted (she had somehow remained on the telephone line while Dato made his intentions clear)-were to “get yourself to that rat-infested Catalan pisshole, cut off the balls of every last swine-fucking anarcho, and feed them to the bastards’ wives.” Martinez Anido, never one to take an order at anything less than face value, immediately set about infiltrating the dark and murderous secret society of the Unico with men of his own. By December he had rounded up thirty-six of the worst of them-including their leader, Roy del Sucre-and had them all rotting behind bars in the always inviting Fortress of Mahon in the Balearic Islands. Rumor had it that one of these detainees had been accidentally castrated (although how one is accidentally castrated is anyone’s guess), but Dato’s secretary was less than forthcoming on that front. The rest of the inmates languished fully intact, one of them a twenty-two-year-old Josep Gardenyes, although no records show anyone of that specific name on the prison rolls at the time. His cellmate had been a droopy-eyed man with a scar on his left cheek. When, fifteen months later, the two managed to avenge themselves by ambushing and machine-gunning Dato in Madrid’s Plaza de la Independencia (by then Gardenyes had taught himself to steer a motorcycle with his knees), they became brothers in blood.

The sole surviving brother was now sitting in the corner of a dank bar six blocks from the Ritz, his fourth whiskey already gone, his droopy eyes unashamedly weeping. He had felt a moment’s hesitation crying in front of the woman, but she was a doctor and no doubt had seen worse. The two Communists had lived through bloodlettings of their own: who were they to fault a man his passion? And Aurelio was probably more drunk than he was himself. As for the German-he would be dead within a week, so what difference did it make?

Leos pushed the bottle toward the man and hoped one more glass might be enough to stop the wailing. Remarkably, the man was managing to cry even while drinking.

“It would be pointless,” said Aurelio. He had been working through a canteen of water and was in full command of his faculties. “I didn’t recognize any of the boys who picked him up, and I know them all.”

Leos said, “So how do you know these were patrullas?”

“Because they told us,” Aurelio explained. “ ‘We’re with the patrullas,’ one of them shouted. ‘We won’t put up with this kind of disgrace! You have us to thank. The true spirit of anarchism.’ On and on. Then they smacked the rifle across the back of his head and tossed the body into the car. They weren’t even carrying the right kind of pistols.”

Hoffner, who had been listening for the better part of the last five minutes, finally spoke. “So you think they took Gardenyes for another reason.”

Aurelio reached for his canteen. “Whoever they were, they were sloppy.”

“How?”

Aurelio took a drink. “You have one on your belt. Put it on the table.”

Without hesitation Hoffner pulled the Luger out and set it next to his glass.

“That,” said Aurelio. “That was what one of them had.”

“Which means?” said Leos.

Aurelio looked across at Hoffner. “Those names on the list-the ones you gave him-Gardenyes found one of them.”

Vollman had been right, thought Hoffner. The SS had wasted no time in getting here. They had killed Gardenyes for poking around. “I know,” said Hoffner.

“No,” Aurelio said. “Not the chess player, the drugs. Bernhardt. Another German. That was what had these patrullas-not-patrullas looking for him. It’s why Gardenyes sent my crying friend here to find you at the Chinaman’s.” Aurelio glanced over at the man. “All right-it’s enough already.”

The man went on undeterred and Aurelio looked back at Hoffner. “I’m guessing you knew that would happen-the patrullas.”

“I didn’t.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that?”

Hoffner picked up his glass. “The pistol’s there. I’m sure no one would mind if you used it.” He drank.

Aurelio nodded over at Mila. “She would.” Hoffner thought he saw a moment of color in her cheeks before Aurelio said, “She’s the one who’d have to clean it up.”

Leos tossed back the last of his glass and set it firmly on the table. He was done. “I’m sorry your friend is dead,” he said as he stood. “Patrullas or not, I have to get back.”

Hoffner was peering into his glass. “New kind of deliveries to be made?” He lapped at the last of his whiskey and then said, “I’d be careful there.”

It was clear Leos understood exactly what Hoffner was talking about. Leos stared for several seconds before saying, “What else did Vollman overhear?”

“You’d have to ask him that yourself, wouldn’t you?” Hoffner now felt every eye at the table on him; he continued to gaze at Leos. “He thinks it goes through Teruel.”

“Then he thinks wrong.”

Hoffner waited. This wasn’t misdirection; this was a reclaiming of control. For better or worse, Leos was speaking the truth; the drug/gun conduit didn’t run through Teruel. The question was, What had Georg found to send him there?

Hoffner said, “You be sure to tell him that.”

Leos stood silently. He then swept a glance across the table and said, “Salud. You have my condolences.” He turned and headed off.

Aurelio watched him through the door before turning to Hoffner. “What the hell was that?”

Hoffner leaned forward and took hold of the bottle. “He runs drugs. It’s a dangerous business.”

“So what’s in Teruel?”

Hoffner poured himself another glass and set the bottle down. “Evidently not drugs.”

With surprising speed Aurelio reached over and grabbed hold of Hoffner’s hand. The whiskey in the glass spilled to the table. For such a small man, Aurelio had a remarkably strong grip.

Hoffner said, “If you’d wanted a glass, I’d have been happy to pour you one.”

Aurelio tightened his grip.

Hoffner said, “It’s an easy hand to break. It’s been broken before.”

“What’s he moving?” said Aurelio. Hoffner said nothing, and Aurelio’s gaze grew more severe. “This is what got Gardenyes killed,” Aurelio said, “so I think I’d like to know.”

Hoffner was beginning to feel a deep ache up his wrist and into his forearm. Aurelio had done this before. Even so, Hoffner said, “He was already dead-isn’t that what he told me?”

Aurelio brought the thumb tighter into the palm, and the ache moved past the forearm and into the elbow. Hoffner shut his eyes momentarily from the pain, and the grip suddenly released. He opened his eyes and saw the Luger held just above the table and aimed at Aurelio.

Hoffner had been wrong at the clinic; Mila looked very comfortable with a gun.

“Put it down,” Hoffner said.

She was staring across at Aurelio: the little man hadn’t moved. “He was going to break your hand,” she said.

“He might have broken it already,” said Hoffner. He was stretching the fingers and wrist. There would be pain but nothing else.

Piera, silent to this moment, said quietly, “Put the gun on the table, Mila.”

The sound of her father’s voice did nothing to shake her. It was several long moments before she turned and held the gun out to Hoffner. Reluctantly he took it. She sat back and he set the gun down.

Hoffner said to Aurelio, “You can take your hand off your own gun now, or you can shoot me. It’s up to you.”

Aurelio remained absolutely still. He then slowly brought his other hand up from under the table. It was clear Mila had not been aware of this. Aurelio said, “I wasn’t going to shoot you.”

“I know that,” said Hoffner. “She didn’t. So now we all know.” With his good hand, Hoffner poured a glass and placed it in front of her. The color had yet to return to her face. Mila took it and drank, and Hoffner said, “So-about this Bernhardt. Gardenyes found him?”

Aurelio was still studying him. He slid a glass to the center of the table and watched as Hoffner filled it. “His place,” Aurelio said. “Not what you’d expect. Down by the docks. Too nice for the neighborhood and much too nice for a drug addict.”

“But no Bernhardt.”

“No.” Aurelio took the glass.

“And nothing else?”

Aurelio drank.

Hoffner said, “So now they come looking for you and Gabriel?”

Aurelio finished the glass and held it out for another. Hoffner refilled it.

“They’ve made their point,” Aurelio said, “but who knows? The CNT will take credit. This is what they were going to do anyway. They like statements like this-a man tossed in a car, beaten, a bullet to the neck, no trial, no discussion. It keeps the socialists and Communists thinking we anarchists can be trusted. That we can take care of our own loose cannons. Whoever did this knew how to play it.” He drank. “Leos is moving guns?”

Hoffner appreciated how easily Aurelio got to it. He recapped the bottle. “He’s trying to.”

“And your son is helping?”

Hoffner felt Mila’s eyes on him. He ignored them. “No. That’s not why he’s here.”

“A great many people will be coming to Spain for one reason and leaving for another. You know your son that well?”

Hoffner pulled out a cigarette and set the pack on the table. “I need to go south.” He lit up.

“That requires papers.”

“Then it’s lucky I’m sharing a drink with you.”

Aurelio leaned forward, took one of the cigarettes, and waited for a light. He sat back through a stream of smoke. “You know the terrain?”

“No.”

“Then it’s suicide.”

Mila said, “That’s why he’ll be needing two sets of papers.”

The table was suddenly quiet. Even the man with the scar stopped crying. Piera let out an audible breath and Hoffner turned to her. She was staring across at Aurelio.

The little man returned her gaze and then looked at Hoffner. “What is she saying?”

Hoffner was still fixed on her. “I have no idea.”

She turned to Hoffner. “Do you know the terrain?”

There was something so familiar in the gaze. “Stop it,” he said.

“Stop what?”

“This. Whatever you think you’re doing.”

Piera let out another long breath, and Mila turned her head to him. “You knew it would be this the moment he walked in the house,” she said. “The moment you heard him speak.”

Piera was reluctant to answer. “No,” he said. “That’s not true.”

“Then with the boy,” she said. “When I told you about the boy. You knew then.”

Again Piera tried to hold himself. “Yes,” he said at last. “It doesn’t mean a thing. You kill yourself if you do this.”

“I kill myself if I don’t.”

Hoffner was done catching up. He had been there for everything they were talking about, and yet he hadn’t the slightest idea what any of it meant.

“Knew what?” he said. Mila continued to look at her father and Hoffner repeated, “Knew what?”

She turned. The eyes were now completely unknowable.

“You love your son,” she said. “I love my brother. Gardenyes could get you a pass out of Barcelona, and you’d need someone to show you the way. That would get me to Zaragoza.”

Aurelio said, “Zaragoza isn’t the way you get to Teruel.”

“It is now,” she said, as she continued to stare at Hoffner.

He was expecting a look of victory, the conceit a woman holds in reserve for those moments beyond a man’s control, but there was nothing so cunning in the eyes. Mila’s gaze carried only its strength of purpose.

“Who’s to say I’ll take you?” he said.

“Who’s to say there are any other volunteers?”

Hoffner wanted more-stifled hope, desperation-but she gave him none. He would have given none either, and it was why he said to Aurelio, “You can get us two sets?”

Aurelio was weighing something behind the eyes. “Yes.”

“Two sets to get us through,” Hoffner said, “and another two to square us with the Nationalists. You can do that?”

Aurelio said, “I think you’ll want to avoid the Nationalists.”

“Can you do it?”

Again Aurelio stared at Hoffner. It seemed a very long time before he slowly nodded.

“Good,” said Hoffner. He looked at Mila. “I’m assuming you have a gun.”

The details proved surprisingly simple. It was just a matter of finding space on a truck, stuffing a canvas bag with the necessities-Hoffner’s empty satchel and suitcase remained at Piera’s-and then meeting up with Aurelio.

The choice of meeting spot, however, was another matter. At a little before six, the message came through from one of Gardenyes’s-now Aurelio’s-minions that he wanted them out in the Plaza d’Espana within half an hour. And not just on the plaza. He wanted them at the far side, along the westernmost gate of the Arenas bullring. To Hoffner this seemed slightly bizarre; to Mila it made perfect sense. The man had a car waiting downstairs.

They drove in dead silence, probably a good thing, since Hoffner was forced to keep his palm planted firmly on the ceiling to make sure he remained inside the car: Why speak and tempt even a moment’s break in the man’s concentration? Mila sat between them in the front seat, her shoulders bouncing back and forth, her expression devoid of concern. Evidently this was the way one drove through Barcelona-corners taken to the sound of screeching wheels, pedestrians nimble and happy to skip out of the way no matter how narrow the streets. That the sun was perched on the horizon so as to blind them made the prospect of hitting someone-or being hit-slightly less problematic: there might be a thud or a bump, but at least it would come as a complete surprise.

In the rare moments of manageable speed, Mila tried to point out some of the more interesting spots along the way: a palace with some exotic ironwork that looked like a fat scorpion climbing between the two front archways; a music hall with scars still dug into the stone from a decades-old anarchist bomb; a movie house with a Spanish-print poster for Hop-a-long Cassidy-extended through July 24-although Hoffner was guessing that the “yarn with a kick like a loco steer” might be waiting quite some time for its next showing. After that it was a straight shot up the Paralelo, across the plaza, and over to the arena.

The place had the look of any number of killing pits, two vast coliseum tiers behind countless arches, although these were more Moorish than Roman. The red brick was another distinguishing mark, as was the strange little dome atop the main entrance tower, a red cupola more fitting for a mosque than a bullring. Large posters from the most recent combats were still plastered to the front walls. The most daring was of a torero, Marcial Lalanda, painfully suave and a far cry from the six-shooting Senor Hop-a-long. Lalanda was staring down the back of a bull, his haunches raised high-Lalanda’s, not the bull’s-in a pose of ultimate courage: the motionless pase de la firma. According to the lettering, the fight had been to benefit the city’s newspapers in a “sumptuous manifestation of artistry.” If Lalanda’s hindquarters were any indication, the crowd had not gone home disappointed.

Hoffner slammed the car door shut, and the man sped off in a grinding of tires on gravel. Mila was already heading across to the entrance gate, where a long tunnel led down into the ring. Standing inside and in half shadow was Aurelio, with a rifle over his back. He stepped out.

“Did you sleep?” he said.

“No,” said Hoffner, as he drew up.

“That was stupid.”

Aurelio led them down the tunnel-the ground was now packed earth and rock-through torn papers and pieces of metal wire strewn across. The papers were snatches from recent programs and posters, but the wire was a complete mystery. Odder still were the tire tracks that crisscrossed everything, and the walls-chipped stone and brickwork-that seemed to be sweating with the smell of gasoline. The light at the end was a dull orange, filled with aimless clouds of grit and dust rising from the ring.

Everything came clear as the three emerged. It was cars everywhere, in every shape, size, and state of disrepair. They were parked at odd angles, up against the wooden fencing or in klatches across the ring. A few were burned out, most stripped of their tires. The glare off the windscreens made it necessary to bring a hand up. They were Spanish, German, American, and even one of those Dutch Spykers with its ludicrously heart-shaped grille. This particular one had lost its front axle and looked as if it were kneeling in prayer or, better yet, waiting for a swift kick to the backside; even it understood this new Barcelona. Elsewhere a group of about ten saloons stood in an oval, lost in some frozen rally race, eternally waiting for the one just ahead to step on the gas.

These were the remnants of a now extinct race-the bourgeoisie-branded and on display. The markings were simple, the letters CNT-FAI meant to codify and classify for future generations.

Hoffner said, “I’m guessing we can have our pick.”

Aurelio moved them across the ring as he spoke. “You bring one of these back to life,” he said, “it’s yours for the taking.”

They passed a man who was rummaging through the open bonnet of an old Mercedes. Half the engine parts lay in piles in the dust, another piece of metal tubing finding its way onto the heap as the man tossed it to the side.

Hoffner said, “He has no idea what he’s doing, does he?”

“With the car?” said Aurelio. “Of course not. To melt it down and make it into something that fires a bullet? That he knows how to do.”

Hoffner looked back and saw the man toss out another large piece of something. “Clever,” he said.

“Very-if he can find some bullets.”

Aurelio nodded them over to one of the openings in the fencing and ushered them through. The light was now in the form of hanging lamps along the vast scaffolding maze underneath the seats. Deeper in, Hoffner saw two enormous water tanks with a truck that looked almost roadworthy nestled in between. Aurelio led them over, and the smell of gasoline became suffocating.

“Best station in the city,” said Aurelio. “The cemetery out there might give the boys something to play with, but it’s the gas that’s the real prize.” He shouted over to the truck. “You’re loaded?”

“Loaded,” a voice shouted back.

“How many jars?”

“Six.” The voice became Gabriel’s as he stepped out from behind the truck. “Enough to get us out and back.”

He looked exhausted. Worse, his left ear was bandaged, and the right eye and cheek were swollen. The gashes were deep and well-placed: something metal, thought Hoffner, maybe even brass. Whoever had done this had planned to take their time killing him.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Gabriel said. Even with the swelling, he still had a cigarette tacked onto his lip. The thick mustache was all but swallowing it.

“Good to hear. Same men who took Gardenyes?”

Gabriel ignored the question and stepped over for Mila’s bag. “Doctor.” The hand was also black and blue, and two of the fingernails had been torn off.

Mila said, “I should have a look.”

“At what?” Gabriel took her bag and headed to the back. “I’ve had a bit of a sore throat, but aside from that…”

Hoffner followed Gabriel as Aurelio helped Mila into the cab. “You’re lucky to be alive,” Hoffner said.

Gabriel reached the back and pulled up the flap. “Not so much luck.” He tossed the bag in.

Hoffner drew up next to him and saw the two dead bodies laid out against the jars of gasoline. Both were dressed in the usual getup-suspenders, trousers, neckerchiefs-except these had small bullet holes just below the right eyes. From the tiny shards of glass, one of them had worn eyeglasses. The back of the heads had been completely torn off.

Gabriel said, “The Nazis are going to have to send in better than these if they think they’re going to help the generals win the thing. I mean, how clever do you have to be to remove a gun from its holster before you try to torture and beat a man to death? Guns stay outside the room. It’s the first rule, isn’t it?”

Hoffner saw the stacks of rifles, rolls of bandages, and packages of food strewn haphazardly throughout the hold. He looked back at the Germans. “They’re quick learners,” he said.

“That’s a pity.”

These two couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. Hoffner noticed the Bifora wristwatch on one of the arms and thought, They really have no idea what they’re doing, do they?

Hoffner said, “You took the gun when one of them leaned in to pull out the fingernails. Lots of screaming and distraction.” He didn’t need to turn to sense Gabriel’s appreciation.

“Yes,” Gabriel said.

“You shoot well with your left hand.”

“Close range. Not that difficult.”

“And you keep them as souvenirs?”

Gabriel took hold of Hoffner’s bag and tossed it in. “Better if they’re missing. A dead body gets replaced by someone not as good at dying. Let them wonder for a few days where their friends have gotten to.” He let go of the flap and started back to the cab.

Hoffner asked, “They wanted to know if you’d found Bernhardt?”

Gabriel stopped at the door and took the handle. He looked back. “Have I?”

“Not yet,” said Hoffner, “but you will.”

It was three hours later, and a hundred kilometers of safe Republican territory behind them, when Gabriel shut off the headlights.

The sun was long gone, but he continued to drive. Not that there had been much to see since the outskirts of the city. It was fields and hills and, somewhere in the distance, mountains, but even with a full moon there was little chance of seeing any of it as more than vague shadows. Towns had come and gone as pockets of light, with the occasional barking of a dog to remind them of lives being plotted and endured along the way. They had passed two checkpoints. The men at each had gone through their papers; the dead Germans had been admired and forgotten.

After that, Hoffner, Mila, and Gabriel had settled into an easy silence. The constant jolts to the chassis, and the grinding of the gears, continued to beat out a comforting rhythm.

Hoffner stared out through the windscreen. It was a road incapable of holding its line for more than thirty meters at a time. Now, with the light gone, he was strangely aware of the smell of manure. He hadn’t smelled it before but knew it must have been there.

“You know the road?” he said.

Gabriel’s left hand was resting on the steering wheel in a pose far too casual for the speed. Mila sat sleeping between them.

“Let’s hope.” Gabriel lit his next cigarette. He set it on the edge of his lip and tossed the match out the window.

Hoffner said, “It seems very peaceful.”

“It does.”

“But you don’t believe it.”

“I don’t.”

“You do know you’re winning the thing.”

“Yes, so I’ve heard.”

“Tell me,” said Hoffner. “What is it that makes me so lucky to have found the one group of anarchists in Spain who can’t enjoy the taste of victory?”

Gabriel fended off a smile. “Common sense?”

“That’s never it.”

“Then an instinct for your own kind. You wouldn’t know what to do with it either.”

A curve forced them to the left, and Gabriel brought his full focus to the road. He ground the gears until the cab hitched at the loss of speed. Hoffner gripped the dashboard and placed an arm across Mila. She continued to sleep.

Hoffner said, “I think this is different.”

“Then you’d be wrong. It’s never different. Not when you’ve been through it before.”

Hoffner waited for more. Instead, Gabriel reached his hand down to a small tin box on the floor. He flipped open the lid, pulled out a Coca-Cola, and handed it across to Hoffner. For the fifth time in the last two hours, Hoffner opened a bottle and handed it back. This was the last of the stash Gabriel had brought.

Hoffner said, “A Spanish anarchist and his dedication to the American capitalist dream.”

“It tastes good. That’s all.”

“I’ve seen this stuff take the rust off a tire bolt in twenty minutes.”

Gabriel nodded and took a swig. “Just think how clean my insides must be.”

For the first time since Hoffner had met him, Gabriel pulled a healthy cigarette from his mouth. He held it in the hand with the bottle. He was thinking something through. Finally he said, “You know Asturias?”

Hoffner had never been to the northwest of Spain. He shook his head.

“Very beautiful. My family has been there a long time. Gijon. On the coast.”

Gabriel set the cigarette back on his lip and placed the bottle between his legs on the seat. He downshifted as the road began to climb.

“Two years ago we had a miners’ strike. Very bloody. Strikes weren’t popular back then. Right-wing government. The miners tried to take the capital. They marched on Oviedo. They were gunned down. Three thousand killed, another twenty-five thousand thrown in prison. And the man the government sent to break the back of Asturias? Franco. The same Franco who now sits in Morocco and waits to do the same to Spain. Not so different.”

Gabriel spat something out the window, and Hoffner said, “You were there?”

“In the streets, at the barracks, in the hills-of course.” Gabriel took the bottle from between his legs. “I told my wife to spit on my picture when the asaltos came looking to arrest me. I haven’t been back since. Now I go home.” He drank.

“And she knows you’re coming?”

Gabriel remained quiet for nearly half a minute. “Yes,” he finally said; if there was regret in his voice, he refused to admit it. “She knows.”

Hoffner watched as Gabriel tipped the bottle all the way back before setting it on the floor.

Gabriel said, “I hear our doctor pulled a gun. Impressive.”

Mila was now leaning against Hoffner’s shoulder, the heat from her back and neck full against him. She had shivered once or twice in sleep-from a dream or a memory-but now lay perfectly still.

Hoffner said, “I’m sure Aurelio was impressed.”

“She’s too slim for Aurelio to be impressed. You’d think he’d like them that way-little as he is-but he never does.”

“I was talking about the gun.”

“Anyone can pull a gun. It’s the shooting that makes the difference.”

“And you think she can do that?”

“What? Shoot a gun?” Gabriel took a pull on the cigarette. “Why not? Don’t worry. She’ll get through. She’s a doctor. Everyone needs a doctor.”

“If they believe her.”

“Why shouldn’t they believe her? It’s you they won’t believe.” Gabriel was baiting him.

“You think I’m going with her?”

Gabriel tried a laugh, but the pain in his cheek got the better of him. “No, of course not. You’ll be letting her slip into Zaragoza all by herself. By the way, did she sleep alone last night?”

Hoffner let Gabriel sit with this one before saying, “I’ve no idea.”

Again Gabriel snorted, and again the pain was too much. “I imagine she likes them older.”

And Mila said, “I imagine she does.”

Her eyes were still closed, her arms folded gently across her chest. Gabriel was lucky to have the road in front of him; Hoffner stared out as well and tried to piece together the last half minute. There was a chance he had made an ass of himself. Cleverness was never much of a virtue in his hands.

Mila said, “Where are we?” Her eyes were open now as she straightened herself up.

Gabriel said, “Coming up on Barbera.”

She peered out. “And he likes a bigger woman, something to grab onto?”

Hoffner expected a look of embarrassment from Gabriel, but all he saw was the smile underneath the mustache. The cheeks rose and Gabriel suddenly coughed through a laugh. This, evidently, was worth the pain. “Something like that,” he said.

She looked at Hoffner. “Would you have guessed that, seeing how little he is?”

She was giving him a way out. She might have been giving him more, but Hoffner knew not to take it. “He’s keen on guns,” he said. “A girl like that-more space to hide one.”

Gabriel’s laugh became a throaty growl, and Mila said, “What happened to the headlights?” It was only now that she seemed to notice.

Again Gabriel spat something out the window. “Not so good to advertise through here.”

“I thought it was safe up to the Durruti line?”

“It is-mostly. Just not through here.”

“And they won’t hear us?”

Gabriel downshifted and the truck began to climb. “They’ve been hearing us for the past ten minutes. Hearing, seeing-either way it’s not so good, but why take the chance? Even a blind pig finds the mud sometime.”

“This is Republican territory,” she said.

“Is it? My mistake. I must have missed the day they brought the mapmakers out, pictures for everyone nailed to the doors. You be sure to tell the boys guarding the church up ahead that they’re breaking the rules.”

The road leveled off and the truck took on speed. There were lights somewhere in the distance-candles, judging by the flickering-but most impressive now was the moon. It was directly in front of them, its glare spreading out across the fields like foam on lifeless waves. It was only a momentary pleasure.

“Duck down,” Gabriel said. “They won’t hit anything, but just in case.” He tossed his cigarette out the window and accelerated.

Without thinking, Hoffner pulled Mila close into him and the two slid low on the seat. Gabriel held the wheel with two hands and angled his head back against the cab wall as far as he could take it. Hoffner imagined them caught like a rat in a lantern’s beam, scurrying toward the darkness and helpless against the naked light. Then again, a rat has an instinct for survival: not much chance of finding that in a truck heading west to the hills of Zaragoza.

The first ping came from behind them, then beyond, then in a wild series that seemed to stretch out in all directions. Hoffner’s eyes darted aimlessly with the shots until he found himself fixed on a spot outside Gabriel’s window. It was off in the distance, turrets, ancient and stone, clawing at the sky like raised talons. He felt Mila’s body against him. She, too, was staring out.

Gabriel swung the truck hard to the left and the turrets vanished. A last wave of shots flew by and then fell away. Hoffner waited another half minute before pulling himself up. Mila sat with him.

“What was that?” he said.

Gabriel tried his best not to mock. “Boys with guns?”

“No,” said Hoffner. “On the hill. The turrets.”

Gabriel flipped on the headlights, and Mila said, “Montblanc. The old city wall.”

“And they don’t mind the shots at night?”

Gabriel said, “No one’s shooting at them.” He downshifted, and the gears ground out with a sudden kick.

“Besides,” said Mila, “they’ve had worse. They say it’s where Saint George killed his dragon. You live through that, you live through anything, don’t you?”

At just after midnight, Gabriel shut off the engine. Three jars of gasoline remained, but he knew he would have to keep a watch on them. Gasoline had a tendency to go missing with so many militiamen roaming about. Not that they had much use for it-a fire burned better with wood, a kerosene lamp might explode from the added heat-but these were anarchists. They had spent a lifetime scavenging. Why should a bit of freedom get in the way now?

Truth to tell, Osera de Ebro was not the most logical place to have set up the front. Zaragoza was still another thirty kilometers on, but this was as far as the weapons had taken them. Even so, Buenaventura Durruti-the great anarchist leader, the man who had given them Barcelona and would send Franco back into the sea-was insisting he could mop things up. The rebels had at most fifteen hundred troops inside the city. They were requetes-beret-wearing, priest-toting Navarrese monarchists who saw this as a last holy crusade-but why be daunted by that? Truth and fashion stood in equal measure on either side of the line. No, it came down to discipline and experience and weapons, and while these were all firmly in the hands of the requetes as well, Durruti still had one card to play. He had numbers, twice as many men-four times that by the end of the week-each fighting with something perhaps even more essential: a sense of the inevitable. Barcelona had proved that God had forsaken His own. Discipline and weapons be damned.

Remarkably, even the requetes knew this of their foes. In fact, the only person who seemed unaware was a Colonel Jose Villalba. Sadly, Villalba was the leader of the Republican forces and spent most of his time shuttling back and forth between Barcelona and his Aragon headquarters in Bujaraloz. Bujaraloz was another thirty-five kilometers behind the Osera line; in order to reach it, Villalba chose to take the train. The railroads were still under the workers’ control, and he reasoned that he could use the time to study maps and charts and piece together what little information he had on the men who might be dying for him. Had he decided to look out the window he would have seen that the fighting along the way was more skirmish than full-on battle, but Villalba kept the curtains drawn. It was better for the heat, he said. Reading his reports, he decided it was too early to bring the other Republican columns up to the front. He told Durruti-a colonel telling a man who disdained rank, commissions, an equal among equals-that, valiant as he was, he had plowed on too quickly. They would have to strategize together. And so Durruti began to spend much of his own time shuttling back and forth between Osera and Bujaraloz in order to convince the colonel that the time was ripe. There were no trains this far out, which meant that, with all the driving, Durruti needed to get his hands on some gasoline.

Gabriel decided to sleep in the back of the truck.

The smell of day-old flesh woke him at just after six. Gabriel looked over at the dead German nearer him and noticed that a string of flies had made camp below the right eye. Odd that they would have begun there, he thought. The back of the head was so much easier a way in.

He hoisted himself up and pulled back the flap. The heat had yet to take root, but it was already stale enough to bring a sheen to the face. Outside, the small square proved only slightly better in daylight. A few cars and motorcycles stood in a not-terribly-convincing line; two large guns-French 75s, he guessed-sat on the back of trucks, looking as if they hadn’t been fired since the last war; and surrounding it all was a huddle of two-story buildings, hunched and leaning toward defeat. It might have been the burden of insignificance or the thought that they might actually be called upon to serve some larger purpose, but either way they carried their future like the weight of an unwanted boon: Why us, why now-why?

Gabriel saw a bit of movement across the square. It was inside the house that had promised beds for the German and the woman last night. He hopped out of the truck and headed over.

As it turned out, the beds were nothing more than a few flat sections of floor with a collection of equally disappointing straw mattresses laid over them; the word “mattress” might have been kind. There were perhaps eight of them placed at odd angles, with men strewn across in various states of sleep.

Hoffner was just opening his eyes when he saw Gabriel step through the door.

“Did you sleep?” said Gabriel.

Hoffner propped himself on an elbow and shook his head.

Gabriel said, “Is she up?”

They had set up a small barricade around Mila’s piece of the floor. She said it was unnecessary-she would be sleeping in her clothes-but the woman whose house was now the makeshift barracks had insisted. It might be a new kind of war, but not that new.

Hoffner pointed over to the chest of drawers-with the three chairs and blankets spread over them-and said, “She’s in the master suite.”

Gabriel stepped over and rapped a hand against the wood. “Good morning, Doctor.”

He rapped again, then a third time, and Mila’s voice came from behind him. He turned to see her coming through the front door. She was carrying a tray.

“I’ve found some coffee,” she said, “and something that looks like cheese. They said it was cheese. I’m hoping it’s cheese.”

Hoffner sat up. She looked clean, as if she had found a washbasin. The face, though fresh, showed the weight of the night, the age lines more creased as they edged out from the eyes. She had taken care with little else, her hair pulled back to mask its wildness, and the neck speckled pink from exhaustion or the sun. It was a completely unadorned Mila who maneuvered her way through the beds, and it was this careless, untended beauty that brought a tightening to the muscles in Hoffner’s gut.

She set the tray down and handed him a cup. He found himself staring into the dark liquid.

“You’re up early,” he said.

“Four was early,” she said, as she gave another to Gabriel. “You didn’t hear the boy come in?”

Hoffner shook his head.

“He was whispering through the blanket before he finally pulled it back,” she said. “I think he was hoping to catch a glimpse of something.”

“Did he?” Hoffner drank. The coffee tasted of cheese.

“It was dark,” she said, “but let’s hope.” She pulled over one of the chairs and sat. “There was an arm that needed patching. They have a sniper-at night-somewhere up in the hills. It wasn’t so bad.”

Hoffner said, “And they don’t have a doctor of their own?”

“I’m guessing he likes his sleep.”

This was something he would have to remind himself of. Places like this held no surprises for her, at least when it came to the doctoring.

She picked up a wedge of cheese, sniffed it, and took a bite. “I told them I needed to get into Zaragoza. They said it was impossible. I mentioned you.” She sipped at the coffee as she stared at Hoffner. “They said they’re very eager to meet you.”

With no basin or water in the barracks, Hoffner was forced to do what he could to rub the sleep from his face. His eyes felt swollen and his mouth tasted of red onion as he followed Gabriel and Mila across the square and into a one-room shack. Funny, but he hadn’t had onions in days.

The place was dirt-floored and smelled of cooking oil and something sweet-crushed sugarcane or three-day-old sweat, it was impossible to say which. A woodstove stood at the back, tin cups, and a coffeepot resting on top. The exhaust pipe drove up through a hole in the ceiling that was just too wide for its spout. Had it been raining, there would have been no point in lighting it. Then again, it was August; why light the thing at all?

Three men stood leaning over a small table near the stove. Their backs were to the door, and they were pointing at various positions on a map. From the look of the clothes and the rank smell in the air, Hoffner was guessing they had been up all night.

The tallest of the three was the first to turn. He was somewhere in his twenties with a handsome face, a wild, full beard-a beard that inspired confidence-and arms the size of unstripped logs. The hair was thick there as well, as were the tufts climbing up through the top of his open shirt. Two thin suspenders kept his trousers above his narrow waist.

The man kept his eyes on Mila for a moment too long. Hoffner chanced a side glance and saw it in her face as well, a look of complicity, recognition in the light of day. Neither showed regret. Neither showed anything beyond this single moment.

The man turned back and said to one of the others, “Tura. He’s here.”

Hoffner chafed at his sudden feelings of betrayal. They were ludicrous. He had said nothing to her, nothing to himself about her, except perhaps that she was his to protect. And maybe that was most ludicrous of all. He forced himself to keep his eyes on the men at the table.

The man called Tura continued to speak quietly to the third in their company: there was an occasional murmured response, a shake of the head, but this was how it passed for nearly a minute. Hoffner thought the big one might interrupt again, but instead they all stood waiting until the third man finally nodded and headed to the door. Only then did the one called Tura reach for his cigarette-a weedy, self-rolled thing propped on the edge of the table-and turn to the room.

It was a hard face, square and lined, and with a day’s growth to make the cheeks seem even more brittle. There might have been something oafish to it-the wide brow and high forehead-but the eyes were too focused and the color too deep a brown to hide the raw intelligence. This was a stare of perfect conviction. It held Hoffner’s gaze even as the cigarette smoke drifted past him.

“You’re the German,” the man said. It was a peasant voice, guttural and crackling.

“And you’re Buenaventura Durruti.”

Hoffner had seen too many of the posters across Barcelona, photographs in every newspaper from Moscow to London, not to know him at once. Strange to come face-to-face with the soured breath of an ideal.

Durruti looked over at Gabriel. “Sleep hasn’t improved you, Ruiz.”

Gabriel nodded. It was as much as he had brought to the conversation.

Durruti took a pull on the cigarette. “So. You have a son in Zaragoza, and you’d like to find him.”

Hoffner took a moment. “No,” he said.

Durruti was not one to show surprise. The eyes moved to Mila, then back to Hoffner. Smoke trailed from Durruti’s nose. “You have a son?”

“Yes.”

“But not in Zaragoza.”

“No.”

Durruti took another pull and nodded. “I must have misunderstood.”

“Yes.”

Durruti finished the cigarette and dropped it to the floor. “And yet you’re eager to make your way into a city garrisoned with more than a thousand rebel troops.” He crushed it out under his boot. “That would be reckless even by my standards.”

Hoffner said, “The doctor has a brother-”

“Yes,” Durruti said. “I know. The doctor and I are old friends.” He pulled back his shirtsleeve and showed the bandage; the bullet had hit him just below the elbow. “The fascists have good aim. They’re also smart with a target. I’ve been told they’re even better in daylight.” Stepping to the stove, he picked up the coffeepot; he kept his back to Hoffner as he poured. “So this son-the one not in Zaragoza-he knows something about guns. Tell me about these guns.”

Hoffner looked again at the big one; he was standing by the map, his arms crossed at his chest. He, too, was forcing himself to keep his eyes on the table. Hoffner said, “I’d take a cup of that coffee if you have it.”

Durruti handed him the one he had just poured and looked at Mila. “Doctor?” She shook her head, and Durruti went back for another. Again he kept his back to them.

“They’re German,” said Hoffner.

“Yes,” said Durruti, “I know.” He took hold of a can and dripped some thick milk into the coffee. “And they’re in Zaragoza?”

“I told you, my son isn’t in Zaragoza.”

“That’s right.” Even with something this simple, Durruti was taking no chances. He stirred the coffee. “But they do have guns in Zaragoza. German guns.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I would.” Durruti set the spoon down and turned. “That’s why I’m telling you-so when you take your doctor in to find her brother, you won’t be surprised when you get shot by one of your own.”

Hoffner watched as Durruti drank. Hoffner said, “You know where they’re coming from?”

“What, these German guns? My guess: Germany.”

Anywhere else, Hoffner would have resented the taunt; here it seemed justified.

He took a drink and then said, “Teruel. My son is in Teruel.”

“With guns?”

Hoffner said nothing.

“And you know this for certain?”

“No.”

Durruti nodded once for emphasis. “ ‘No,’ ” he repeated. The eyes sharpened as he stared across. “You’re very close to being helpful, then not. Why is that?”

“Tell me what it is you want to hear.”

An unexpected half smile creased the thick lips, and Durruti set the cup down. “Well-I might like to know that you’ll be bombing the munitions factory once you’re inside, or that you’ve a trainload of rifles up the road. Or that maybe you’re doing all this because you truly believe in the revolution and not because it’s something so meaningless as saving a boy’s life. But you can’t tell me any of that, can you?”

Hoffner gave Durruti the moment. “No, I can’t.”

The smile remained. “At least you’re honest.”

“I’ll take the explosives if you want.”

“Will you? That’s kind. I don’t have any, so I’ll save you the trouble.”

Durruti’s power lay not in his arrogance but in his utter lack of pretense. It was an honesty not meant to impress.

Hoffner pulled out his cigarettes. He offered them to Durruti and Durruti took one. Hoffner lit it, then lit his own.

“That’s good,” said Durruti. “At least you know the first rule.” Hoffner said nothing, and Durruti explained. “A stranger in Spain-you should always offer a man tobacco.”

“And the second?”

Durruti took a pull. He glanced at Mila, then back at Hoffner. “You’re not so good on that one.”

Hoffner held the pack out to Mila, even as he said to the big one by the table, “You know these rules too?”

The man looked up. It was clear now how much of a boy he still was. He glanced at Mila but said nothing.

Mila took a cigarette and said to Durruti, “He’s fine on both.” She let Hoffner light hers. She gave nothing away. “So, can you get me inside the city?”

Durruti had watched all this with mild disinterest. He took another pull and said, “They’ll shoot you, then him, and then where will his son and those guns be?”

Mila said firmly, “In Teruel. He won’t be coming with me. You’ll get your guns.”

“Ah,” said Durruti. “So now they’re my guns.” He nodded slowly. “There are no foreign guns in Spain. You know this, of course.” He seemed to take pleasure in showing his cynicism. “The French won’t come in-Blum’s already said it-not with the Rhineland slipping away. Why provoke more of that? And the English?” He took a pull and shook his head. “Not much money to be gained here either way. They’ll leave it alone. Which leaves us with the Russians.” Even the smoke seemed more aggressive through his nostrils. “They’ll be the ones to send us rifles and colonels, just to make sure we know how to be good Bolsheviks, but the guns will be shit. So will the colonels. They’ve all signed their pieces of paper, those promises to stay away. They’re doing it to keep the Germans and Italians out. Wouldn’t want it to break into a real war, now, would they? And we all know how good you Germans are with a promise.” Durruti took another pull.

Hoffner had expected another bandit anarchist-bullets and ideology ablaze-but Durruti showed a much subtler mind. He knew that his Spain, anarchist Spain, was on its own.

Durruti said, “So no, they won’t be my guns. The only hope I have is to end this war before all those German guns find their way through.”

Mila said, “He’s not coming with me.”

“But that’s not true,” Durruti said. He took a last pull and dropped his cigarette to the floor. “He’s the only way I get you inside Zaragoza.” Not waiting for a response, Durruti looked past Hoffner to Gabriel. “You’re sure you want to do this?”

Gabriel had been leaning quietly against a wall. He pushed himself up and said, “I was sure last night. Why should it be different now?”

Durruti nodded. He looked back at Hoffner. “You still have the German clothes you came in?”

It took Hoffner a moment to answer. “Yes.”

“Good. You’ll need to change.”

It made perfect sense. Hoffner was looking for fascist guns and he was looking for Germans. Why not be a German fascist and see where it took him? Mila was less convinced.

“And Gabriel?” she said.

Durruti was placing bricked explosives inside a hollow in the backseat of an old Mercedes sedan. He leaned farther in. “You’ll need someone to shoot the checkpoint guards if the passes fail,” he said. He was making sure each one had a fuse.

Mila stood outside the door. “I could do that.”

“No-you couldn’t.” Durruti brought the cushion down and bolted it by pulling a lever near the window; it looked like a hanging strap. “Neither could your German. It’s why you need Ruiz.”

Hoffner was sitting back against the car’s bonnet. He was almost halfway through a pack of cigarettes and it wasn’t even ten o’clock. At some point in Barcelona, Mila had washed his shirt. It smelled of lavender. The rest of him wasn’t quite so floral.

She stepped over and sat next to him. They had said nothing to each other since the shack. Closing her eyes, she tilted her head back and let the sun fill her face. She said, “He’s wrong, you know.”

Hoffner tossed his cigarette to the ground and stared over at a group of men who were in line for something-food, toilet, maybe both. They each had a rifle slung over a shoulder or a pistol strapped to a belt. There were berets, metal helmets, an airman’s cap that had frayed at the back, but nothing to say they belonged together. They didn’t stand like soldiers. They didn’t smoke like soldiers. But they talked like soldiers-that hushed, half-joking pose of false hope and unexamined fear. It was good to be brave, thought Hoffner, good to believe in this beyond all else. He looked again at Mila. It was good to believe in something.

Durruti closed the door and stepped over. He took a cigarette from Hoffner’s pack and leaned in for a light.

Hoffner said, “And you really don’t care where we set them off?”

Durruti pulled a piece of tobacco from his tongue and flicked it to the ground. “You won’t have enough to do any real damage. You do it to make them know we can. The real destruction will come from the aeroplanes.”

“If the bombs ever manage to go off.”

“That was bad luck.”

Mila still had her eyes closed. “For whom?” she said.

Durruti forced a tired smile. “Don’t make me think twice about this.”

“I’m glad you’ve thought about it at all.”

Hoffner shook out another cigarette; what else was there to do? He lit up. “You really want to bring it all down to rubble, don’t you?”

Durruti was now looking over at the men. There was nothing in the eyes to show the pain or pride he felt. “I want a free Spain,” he said. “I want collectives-purpose. I want all of what was to be gone. This socialist government won’t give me that. They might even kill me once I get rid of the fascists for them. So it all has to go.”

“And then?”

“We rebuild.” This was something Durruti had thought long on. “We destroy because we’re capable of building. We were the ones who built the palaces and the cities. We’ll build them again, this time better. We’re not afraid of ruins. We have a new world-inside-in our hearts.”

A man emerged from a nearby building and spoke as he made his way over. “It’s Colonel Villalba,” he said. “He’s on the telephone.”

Hoffner said to Durruti, “They have a telephone here?”

Durruti said under his breath, “It’s why we picked the town.” He looked at the man. “Do I need to take a drive?”

“He wants to come here.”

For the first time, Hoffner saw genuine surprise in Durruti’s face. Mila opened her eyes.

“And why is that?” said Durruti.

The man did his best to hide his disgust. “He wants to see what the enemy looks like up close.”

“You’re joking.”

“It was my fault,” the man said. “He asked what we were up against.”

“And?”

“I said the rebels.”

“And?”

The man shrugged. “He wanted to know who exactly, what forces, how many cannons and machine guns, do they have cavalry?”

They all waited until Durruti said, “And what did you tell him?”

“I told him that they’re the enemy because they don’t report their troops or forces. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be the enemy.”

Hoffner couldn’t help a quiet laugh, and Durruti said, “I thought you were a baker, not a comedian.”

The man said, “I’m a soldier.”

“Bravo. A soldier keeps his mouth shut. Tell him I’ll come to the telephone. Don’t let him hang up.”

The man headed off, and Hoffner said, “He has a point.”

Durruti tossed his half-smoked cigarette to the ground. It was his only moment of frustration, but it was enough. “I should be in Zaragoza by now,” he said. “Villalba knows it. All this waiting.” He looked around. “Where the hell is Ruiz?”

Gabriel had insisted on burying the Germans. He had taken three men with him almost an hour ago.

Hoffner said, “It takes time to put a man in the ground the right way.”

“It takes time,” Durruti said sharply, “because he’ll want the same for himself. Gabriel might not believe in a God but he believes in a balance to things.”

Up to this moment Hoffner hadn’t known what to call it with Gabriel, but this made perfect sense. He said, “And he thinks he’ll be with the fascists when he needs burying?”

“He knows it.” Durruti had no reluctance for the truth. “He’s dead if he goes back to Barcelona. The patrullas or your German friends will finish him-or track him here. There’s not much good in that. So he’ll take you to Zaragoza, get you in, and while you and the doctor find what you need, he’ll plant the fuses. And when you get yourselves out, he’ll set them off. If he tries it earlier, he knows none of you make it out. Now you know why he takes his time.”

Durruti spat a piece of tobacco to the ground, and Mila-realizing what Durruti had meant-said, “He’s heading home. To fight in Gijon.”

“Yes. But first he fights here.”

“You mean first he dies here.”

Durruti took his time before answering. “He’ll set off the fuses. He’ll get out. And then he’ll fight in Gijon.”

“I don’t think you believe that.”

“No?” said Durruti. “I’ll tell him when he gets back. I’m sure that’ll make a great deal of difference to him.”

Hoffner said, “There’s no reason for that.”

“There’s no reason for any of it,” said Durruti, “but none of us have that luxury.”

As if to save them all, Gabriel appeared from around one of the houses across the square. Three other men were with him, and Gabriel raised his hand in a single wave.

Durruti started out toward him, but the sudden ping of bullets forced him instantly to the ground, two shots, then a third. Hoffner grabbed hold of Mila and pulled her down behind the car as Durruti began to crawl his way back. The square was filled with shouting. Half the line of men were diving through doorways and windows. The other half stood frozen. Another two shots, and then silence. Durruti drew up next to them and leaned his head against the car.

“Our sniper’s getting bold,” Durruti said. “Broad daylight.” There was a hint of respect in the voice. He shouted over to the men who had yet to move. “Get down!”

The men quickly ran for cover, but there was no point. Ten seconds was as much mayhem as the sniper could muster. Nonetheless, Durruti edged his way up to the bonnet and began to fire out into the trees. He was joined by several others along the houses until he shouted, “Enough. Save your bullets.”

The echoes faded, and Durruti listened for another half minute. He continued to look out beyond the village.

“He’s running,” he said. “That’s what I’d be doing.” He stood upright and stepped out from behind the car. Slowly, others began to make their way out.

“It’s done!” he shouted. “We need a patrol.”

Durruti waited for more of the men to move into the square before he turned and extended a hand to Hoffner.

“It’s fine,” he said. “Just be glad he didn’t hit the explosives.”

Hoffner took the hand, then helped Mila to her feet. She seemed completely unruffled.

She said, “You’re all right?”

Hoffner nodded. He was about to say something when he saw a single figure lying unmoving in the square. The body had fallen forward, the shot clean to the back of the skull. A line of blood had curled down to the mustache.

Even a blind pig.

Hoffner stared at Gabriel’s body and knew that Mila, too, was staring out with him.

“No,” said Hoffner. The force in his tone surprised even him. “We still go.”

“Then you take my man,” said Durruti.

“No.”

They were in the shack. The bearded twenty-year-old stood silently at the door. Mila was sitting by the stove.

Durruti said, “Then you don’t find your son.”

Hoffner looked over at Mila. She was refusing to help him. She was agreeing with Durruti.

Hoffner said, “Gabriel was willing to kill himself for this. Fine. Your man isn’t. It would be for show-you said it yourself. The explosives stay here.”

“And I give you a car and gasoline and bullets because I’m feeling generous? No. You take the explosives-with or without my man-and you plant them. What you do after that is no concern of mine.”

“My son-”

“You think your boy is more capable than Gardenyes or Ruiz?” Durruti let this take root. “They took Gardenyes. They had Ruiz. They nearly killed him. These guns from the Germans will find their way into my country no matter what you or your boy do. We’re done.” He looked at his man. “When the others return, send them out to find the shooter. They buried Ruiz. They’ll want his killer.”

The man nodded and headed out. Durruti turned to the table and, with as much focus as he could, began to study the map.

Hoffner said, “So either I let you sacrifice your man, or I sacrifice myself and the doctor. That’s quite a way to win a war.”

Durruti refused to turn. “It’s the way we win this war.”

“I’ve heard. Men charging at cannons, refusing to dig trenches.” And with perhaps too much bitterness, “Better to be shot full in the chest, in plain view, than to survive like a coward.”

Durruti stood unmoving. When he turned, his face was empty, the heat gone from him.

“These men,” Durruti said. “My men.” It was a rare admission. “For every fifty, I have one who knows how to fight. The rest have passion, daring-what they take for quality. Arrogant men because they fight with ideals, not guns. And it’s these ideals that tell them not to think, not to question, not to die. Sit them down in a trench-where they can learn to flatten themselves against a wall at the first sound of an aeroplane engine or feel the terror of hours trapped in a mudhole with guns and fear staring back at them-and they become nothing. Then they are nothing but sacrifice. And if that’s what they are, this war is already lost.”

Hoffner had misjudged Durruti. The venom wasn’t pride; it was a need to shut out the inevitable. “Then turn them into soldiers.”

Durruti snorted dismissively. “A German speaks. We haven’t time for that. We have numbers-now-and somewhere we have guns: Spanish, Russian. The rebels inside Zaragoza-those troops with all their years of training and killing in Asturias and Morocco-they’re happy to wait. Happy because while they wait my bricklayers and bakers and peasants come to understand what they themselves truly are. So I sacrifice one, and he sacrifices himself, and the passion and daring go on.”

Hoffner stood with no answer. There was no answer for any of this, and Mila asked, “Did you know Gabriel well?”

It took Durruti a moment to remember she was in the room. He looked at her. “Yes.”

“And Gardenyes?”

Durruti hesitated. “Why do you ask this?”

“Because I didn’t,” she said, “and I feel the pain.” She stood. “We do it ourselves, and you keep your man. Show us on the map.”

She stepped passed him. There was a moment between Hoffner and Durruti before they both stepped over. Durruti picked up a wax pencil and began to mark.

She had changed into a silk dress, flower print, sleeves long to the wrist. And her hair was pulled up in a bun.

Durruti had shown them how to get north of the city. It would have made no sense to soldiers at an outpost to have a car coming from the east: How would a German fascist and his lady friend have made it through? Durruti had promised two hours, maybe three, of dirt that passed for tracks and roads, but at least they were avoiding the river.

It was a puzzling terrain, flat and open, at times barren and then wild with green. There were rises here and there, little houses, but more often than not it was the sudden looming of a castle in the distance-ancient and decayed-that traced the path Durruti had given them. Twice they heard gunfire; twice they maneuvered around wagons pulled by mules. Hoffner noticed no neckerchiefs. These were peasants, smart enough to keep their loyalties to themselves. If Durruti pushed through, so be it. Until then, they would wave and nod to anyone passing by.

It was nearly half past one, and the heat in the car was making quick work of the little air coming through the windows. Mila had brought a lipstick. She gave her lips a brown-red coating and looked at herself in a small mirror. As if anticipating his question, she said, “They’ll expect it. Anarchists have bland lips. Fascists have red ones. Not too red. It’s a fine line for God.”

Hoffner nodded but said nothing. He had said very little since the shack. She put the lipstick in her purse and stared out. She, too, had said almost nothing.

The road was suddenly bounded on both sides by fields of sunflowers, each turned up to the midday sun. The smell was strong, the heat stronger.

“The boy,” she finally said. “Last night. He was young. I let him hold me.”

Hoffner focused on the twin line of ruts ahead of him. He felt his throat go dry. Again he nodded.

She said, “He was a chemist.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

She looked at him. “Why do you think I’m telling you?”

Hoffner hesitated before turning to her. There was nowhere for the car to go but along the track.

Her face showed nothing, no longing or need. And yet it was strange to see this intimacy given so freely. It was the loss behind her eyes that reached out to him, and made plain-only now-why he himself felt the longing. It had never been about her beauty, raw and fine as it was. It was this. And while he could find nothing safe in it-its pull no less daunting than if she had offered him love-Hoffner let it take him. She placed a hand on his cheek. She held it there, then brought it down and looked out again to the road.

She said, “It’s your son who’s not here-the one you don’t follow-that makes you this way. Why is that?”

Hoffner stared at the powder on her cheek, the soft ridges she had failed to smooth. He turned, and his eyes settled on the fields in the distance. They swayed with a momentary wind.

“You know this for certain?” he said, trying to sound too cavalier.

“I do.”

There was no hope of distracting her.

“He’s called Sascha,” he said. “He hasn’t been a boy for quite some time.”

“And he knows the pain it gives you?”

“He thinks I’m not capable of feeling it.”

“But he tries anyway.”

“He did-once. Not for a long time now.”

“But that doesn’t matter, does it?”

They were halfway through a canteen of water. Hoffner picked it up and unscrewed the top. He drank. When he looked out again, he was relieved to see what Durruti had called the Ontinar Crossroads just over a rise-two or three houses and another dirt track coming in from the west.

Hoffner had kept his collar buttoned, his tie tight to the neck. The jacket was soaked through, down to the waist. Still, better to be the bitter German sweating his way through Spain than a man comfortable with the Aragon summer. He noticed the telephone wire sprouting from the roof of one of the small buildings. It was exactly as Durruti had described it.

“No,” he said, “it doesn’t.”

He slowed the car as they reached the buildings. It might have been due to the three Nationalist soldiers standing with their rifles raised, or the sandbag barricade that was clearly a recent addition. More likely it was the sight of the Renault tank perched behind them. The tank was old, maybe not even a match for the big guns back in Osera, but it made its point. Hoffner pulled up to the barricade and turned off the engine.

Two of the men kept their rifles raised as the third now walked over. He was wearing the green and tan uniform of a requete, with the dual leather straps that cut across his shoulders and chest. The belt buckle was well polished, although the three leather bags that clung to the belt-ammunition, cigarettes, papers-looked as if they had seen better days. A silver crucifix was pinned just above the heart, with a red barbed X sewn onto the pocket. The jodhpur pants were narrow at the shin and looped over the boots. He wore a crimson beret angled to the forehead and without a hint of panache.

There was no mistaking these for soldiers. The one approaching pulled his pistol from its holster and cocked the barrel. He held it at his side.

“Out of the car,” he said, when he had positioned himself just beyond the grille.

Hoffner opened the door slowly, stepped out, and put his hand back for Mila as she slid across. He took her hand. The two stood and waited.

The man said, “This road is closed.”

“I have papers,” Hoffner said calmly. His Spanish was now simple, halting, and with a distinct German accent.

The man stared. “This road is closed.”

“I have papers.”

The man looked at Mila for the first time. Hoffner wanted to turn to her, but he kept his eyes on the man, who looked back and said, “How do you come to be on this road?”

“I am not a Spaniard,” said Hoffner. “I do not know these roads. I have come down from the north. My driving instructions were poor. I am going to Zaragoza.”

The man glanced again at Mila, then at Hoffner. He held out his hand. “Show me these papers.”

Hoffner slowly reached into his jacket pocket. He retrieved them and held them out. The man took them and, with the pistol still in hand, unfolded them. He read.

“Where did you get these papers?” he said.

“Berlin,” said Hoffner.

The man quickly looked up. Despite himself, he showed a moment’s uncertainty. “This is a Safe Conduct.”

“Yes.”

“Signed by Nicholas Franco.”

“Yes,” said Hoffner. “The General’s brother sent it by dispatch eight days ago.”

“To Berlin.”

“Yes.”

The man was finding himself well beyond his capacity, but still he held his ground. Durruti had been wise to be so precise with the story.

“Your passport,” said the man.

Again Hoffner reached into his jacket. He handed the papers to the man and chanced a look at Mila. Her face was moist from the heat, but she stood without the least sign of discomfort. It was a remarkable pose of submissive indifference.

The man looked up from the papers. “And the woman?”

Before Hoffner could answer, Mila said, “My papers are in my purse.” She turned to the car, but the man stepped over and raised his pistol.

“No, Senora,” he said. “Where is the purse?”

Mila looked at the man. Hoffner couldn’t be sure if this was genuine fear in her eyes or not. She said, “I was only trying to get them.”

“Yes, Senora. Where is the purse?”

Mila pointed to the seat and the man called over to one of the others. The second man quickly walked up, leaned his rifle against the car, and reached in through the passenger window for the small purse. He held it up, took his rifle, and brought it around.

The first man opened it. He looked through and brought out a small crucifix on a chain of prayer beads. He looked up at Mila.

“This is yours, Senora?”

She nodded and he held it out to her. She took it and kissed it.

“There are no papers, Senora.”

Mila’s look of panic was only momentary before she quickly turned to Hoffner. “You have them,” she said. “Remember? The man gave them both to you when we left the last post. You put them in the other pocket.”

Durruti had been very specific on this. A woman-a good Catholic woman-in distress was almost irresistible to a soldier of God. And the man able to save her-His obvious emissary.

Hoffner nodded, relieved, as if he had just remembered. He reached into his pocket. “Yes, of course. I’d forgotten. I’m sorry to have caused any trouble.”

He handed the papers to the man, who quickly glanced through them.

“Another Safe Conduct.”

“Yes,” said Hoffner.

The man continued to look through them. “How did you get on this road?”

Hoffner waited for the man to look up. “There was gunfire,” Hoffner said. “I was stopped and told to drive around. The soldier said it would meet up with the first road. He was mistaken.”

The man held the papers out to Hoffner. “And why do you go to Zaragoza?”

Hoffner took them, placed them in his pocket, and said, “That I cannot say.”

This, more than anything, seemed to convince the young requete. He said, “We’ll need to check the car.”

Three minutes later, Hoffner drove them past the barricade and into Nationalist Spain.

Augustus Caesar, born Gaius Octavius Thurinus, son of the she-wolf Atia Balba Caesonia, adopted nephew of the tyrant Gaius Julius Caesar, husband of the harridan Livia Drusilla, and first Emperor of Rome, hated Spain. He had fought there against Pompey as a boy, at the side of his uncle, and had developed a “horrible burning” in his meatus urinarius after an evening spent with two young women from the Tarraconensis province. The burning eventually subsided (a doctor familiar with the women suggested a combination of herbs and minerals), but young Octavian never forgot his days of agony in the city of Salduba. In later years he even went so far as to blame his inability to produce an heir on the peoples of Hispania. That Rome would have to suffer through the likes of Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero was hardly the fault of two welcoming young virgins (or so they described themselves), but who was really to say? In an act of contrition, and with the hope that Spain might seem more than a cauldron of filth and whores to the people of Rome, the men of Salduba renamed their city after the young Octavian when he ascended the throne. They called it Caesaraugusta, which, over time-and due to dialect and the influence of the conquering Moors-became Zaragoza. It seemed highly unlikely that now, under the watchful gaze of the requetes, the city might offer a glimpse into that distant past. Then again, Zaragoza was filled with soldiers. Even the holiest of men needed something for which to repent.

Hoffner brought the car to a stop. A barricade stretched along the entrance to an ancient-looking bridge, with the thick brown water of the Ebro swirling below it. Wide enough for perhaps two trucks to pass, the bridge was six stanchions in limestone brick-a pristine nod to Rome in the vaulted archways in between-and looked untouched by the recent fighting. Not that there had been much to speak of. Zaragoza had followed the Seville approach to self-defense: Let the soldiers take what they will and never-never-hand a rifle to a worker. It had saved the city from any real scarring, though not so much the workers. Those who had fought with their shouts of ?Viva la Libertad! had been rounded up, shot, or worse. It was a terrible blow to Zaragoza, as the city had always been known as a hotbed of CNT activities. Passion without guns, though, has a tendency to end badly. It had in Zaragoza, and it was why the Puente de Piedra-after five hundred years surviving Moors and floods and the occasional rumble from the French-stood whole. Perhaps it had been saving itself for this unit of requetes now standing atop it.

Watching them from the car, Hoffner suspected that the young soldiers making their way over were thinking much the same thing.

“Senor,” one of them said. “Papers, please.”

Things were more relaxed here. They were twenty kilometers inside Nationalist territory, with fifteen hundred armed men just the other side of the bridge. A cordial “Senor” was the least one of them could offer.

Hoffner handed both sets of papers to the man and waited. If the boys at the Ontinar Crossroads had used their telephone correctly, this would be a quick stop, after which Hoffner would be ushered through to meet someone with real questions. If not-well, “if not” wasn’t something to dwell on these days.

The man with the papers told the others to wait while he returned to the small shack by the barricade. At just after three o’clock, Hoffner and Mila drove across the bridge.

It was good to be out of the open country; the sun through the windscreen had made the air almost unbreathable. Now looming above them and providing shade-perhaps for the province as a whole-was the basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar, a massive and unwavering reminder of God’s bountiful dominion. Palatial walls sat below four fortresslike towers, each standing sentry over the Roman dome and tiled cupolas within. If this was a place to inspire quiet devotion, it was for a God dressed in full armor. Hoffner suspected that even had the bombs exploded, the spires themselves would have risen up to slap the aeroplane from the sky.

Mila stared up as they drove. “Welcome to Aragon.”

A motorcycle led them into the plaza, which stretched out behind the basilica. The square was large enough to land a plane, the buildings surrounding it a collision of Roman and Moorish design, with a few that seemed forever lost in the struggle. At the far end stood a second cathedral-why a square should need two was something only Zaragoza could answer-and a church tower that made the hunched houses of Osera seem perfectly upright by comparison. A line of military trucks was parked at the center, with two more of the Renault tanks thrown in for good measure. There was a starkness to it all, and not for the presence of the guns. It was the emptiness. A few soldiers stood at various posts, but the heat and God and common sense were keeping the rest of Zaragoza indoors. If this was victory, thought Hoffner, it was a far cry from the kind he had seen in Barcelona.

The motorcycle pulled up in front of a building and the soldier kicked out his stand. The place was one of the newer ones on the square, eighteenth or nineteenth century, and with the wrought-iron balconies and ornate stonework of a municipal courthouse. Two soldiers with rifles flanked the entrance. Hoffner turned off the engine, and the motorcyclist led them through and into the enclosure of a wide receiving hall.

It was all stone and wood, vaulted ceilings-and surprisingly cool. Doorways and corridors led off toward more doorways and corridors, while a staircase climbed along the walls to the upper floors. Peppered throughout were men in uniform who moved with a look of deep concentration. This was the hushed feel of newly minted authority-muffled conversations and telephone bells ringing from above. Hoffner might have been mistaken, but he thought he caught the smell of sweet incense drifting down from on high.

The motorcyclist led them up the stairway and, somewhere on the third floor, took them into an office that looked like a small banquet hall. The wall facing the street was a series of long, narrow windows that stepped out onto equally narrow balconies, each with a singular view of Our Lady of the Pillar. It was unclear which of the buildings was keeping watch on which, but Hoffner imagined that the man at the far end of the room-desk, bookcase, and telephone-readily deferred to the will of the Holy Mother across the square.

A second man in uniform approached. He and the motorcyclist exchanged a quick salute, and the motorcyclist retreated. The man then motioned Mila and Hoffner toward the distant desk-a sudden and almost jarring “Senor, Senora” to break the Spanish silence-before leading the way.

The other man stood as they drew up. He was tall, with a chiseled face, a nobleman in the most recent guise of Spanish privilege. He was no more than twenty-five, his hair black and slicked above a high forehead, his uniform perfectly pressed. Where Durruti had defined hunger and passion, this showed centuries of refinement. The only flaw was a red patch of skin under the right eye. Something from birth. Something to cause shame.

He was a career officer, only weeks removed from his betrayal of the Republic. He wore his treason with the easy assurance of a divine right.

“I am Captain Doval.” The voice was nasal and lingered on the words. “I have been expecting you, Senor, though not expecting you.”

From the slight curl of the lip, Hoffner imagined this to be some form of humor.

Hoffner offered a clipped nod. “Captain.” His Spanish was once again fluent, though no less Germanic. “What we have to discuss does not concern the senora. She has a brother in your garrison whom she wishes to see. The last name is Piera.” He looked at Mila.

“Carlos,” she said. “First Sergeant Carlos Piera, under General Cabanellas.”

The curl inched toward a smile. “We are all under General Cabanellas, Senora, but I shall see what I can do.” Doval nodded to the second man, who retreated to a small desk and a telephone. The conversation was brief and successful.

The second man said, “Your brother will be in the Gran Cafe within half an hour. The senora is welcome to wait in the anteroom just here”-he motioned to a door beyond the desk-“until an escort can be found to take her to the cafe.”

Hoffner said, “I’d like to see this anteroom.” He removed his papers from his jacket pocket and placed them on the desk. “You may examine my papers while I’m with the senora.”

Hoffner took Mila by the elbow. He had been swimming in Nazis for the past three years; it was easy enough to strike a convincing pose. The Spaniards offered their own clipped nods before Hoffner led Mila to the door and through.

The room was small, one window, a few chairs, and with a second closed door that led out to the corridor. Hoffner shut the door behind him and held his finger to his lips. Waiting perhaps fifteen seconds, he suddenly pulled the door open. As expected, the second man was only half a meter off, ostensibly reading through a file.

Hoffner said, “A glass of water for the senora. And one for myself. And perhaps a few crackers. I’ll take mine at the desk.”

He waited for the man to move off before closing the door. Mila was at the far end by the open window. Hoffner joined her.

“You’re very good,” she said quietly. “You’ve even got me believing you’re a son of a bitch. You know what you’ll say to them?”

“No.”

It had been a long time since he had seen admiration in a woman’s eyes. It was there only a moment before she said, “The captain seems young.”

“He does. How long do you think you’ll need?”

“Not long. Half an hour.”

“Good.”

A small wind came through the window and she looked up at him. Hoffner was learning to trust her silences. She slowly brought her hand to his cheek and pressed her lips to his. When she pulled back, he was still staring at her.

“That would take longer,” he said.

It was good to see her smile. She rubbed her thumb across his lip and said, “A handkerchief would be better.”

Hoffner pulled one from his pocket and wiped off what lipstick remained.

She said, “You didn’t need me to get you through last night or this morning. You could have gone south on your own. You knew it in Barcelona.”

“Zaragoza needs guns,” he said. “Coming here helps me find my boy.”

“Yes,” she said, something too knowing in her eyes, “I’m sure it does.”

She stared up at him, and he felt his hand move to the soft of her back. He kissed her again, her lips parched but smooth. She drew him in closer and he released. There was a rapping at the door.

Mila said, “Don’t underestimate them.”

Hoffner used the handkerchief again and turned to the door. “Come.”

The door opened, and the second man stepped through with a plate of crackers and cheese and a glass of water.

Hoffner said, “Good.” He turned to Mila with a nod. “Senora. I’ll see you at the cafe.” With nothing else, he headed into the office.

“You came through Barcelona?”

Captain Doval sat behind his desk. He held Hoffner’s papers casually in his long fingers, which showed a recent manicure.

“Yes,” said Hoffner. He placed his empty glass on the desk and reached for another cracker. The cheese was surprisingly fresh.

“And you encountered no difficulties?”

Hoffner dabbed his finger at the crumbs on his shirt. “You wear a red neckerchief, raise your hand with a ?Viva la Republica! and Barcelona is your friend.” He licked at the crumbs.

“I wish it were all so easy.”

“It will be.” Hoffner finished the cracker and brushed off his hands. “So. I can expect your help in finding this man?”

Doval’s expression remained unchanged. “Your German. Herr Bernhardt.”

“Yes.”

There really had been no other choice. If guns were coming in, this was where they would be heading. Besides, it was always best to bring a bit of truth to the table with a man like Doval. And arrogance-German arrogance-with crackers, brushed hands, and a thoroughly polished indifference.

Doval placed the papers on the table. He rubbed something off one of his nails, and said, “Papers are an easy thing to come by these days, Senor Hoffner. Especially in Barcelona.”

Hoffner showed nothing. “I imagine they are.”

“A Safe Conduct is impressive.”

“Especially one signed by Senor Franco.”

Doval seemed less convinced. He waited before saying, “Your Spanish is excellent.” Even a compliment seemed a sneer.

Hoffner could see where this was going. Papers wouldn’t be enough. Funny, he thought: where better than Nationalist Spain to be forced to have it all come down to an act of faith. It was now just a matter of waiting for the right moment. Hoffner continued, “But not your German.”

“No-I don’t speak German.”

“Odd,” said Hoffner. “I would have expected a bit more from the Reich’s liaison.”

“Odd is having a member of the Reich appear without warning.”

Hoffner appreciated Doval’s impatience. It was coming now. “You’re going to waste both our time, aren’t you?”

“I have a man with the woman at the cafe.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“He can detain her if need be.”

“Or shoot her. Or you could shoot me. There are so many possibilities for you.”

Doval tried to match Hoffner’s effortlessness, but it came off as preening.

“You will admit it’s surprising,” said Doval. “A German with rare yet ideal papers arriving with a Spanish woman. She was also in Barcelona?”

“She was.”

“And you just happened to be carrying a second Safe Conduct for her?”

Doval was taking them closer and closer. Hoffner pulled out his cigarettes. He chose not to offer one. “You ask very good questions.”

“I hope they’re not wasting your time.”

“Not at all.” Hoffner lit up and let out a long strain of smoke. “When we speak about Bernhardt, I’ll be happy to explain it to you.”

“Assuming I know who this Bernhardt is.”

Hoffner took another pull. “But that’s not the point, is it-whether you know.”

The power of German arrogance lay in its cruelty; Spanish arrogance relied too willingly on dignity. It placed Doval at a considerable disadvantage.

Hoffner said, “The better question is why do I know about Herr Bernhardt, and why do I choose to come to a rebel stronghold to talk about him. The rest is meaningless. I’m assuming you can set up a direct telephone line to Berlin.”

Doval needed a moment. He had never imagined the request coming from across the desk. “Yes.”

“How long will it take?”

Again Doval hesitated. He was convincing himself of the logic. “Twenty minutes,” he said.

“Good. And you have someone here who speaks a perfect German?”

“I have.”

“Then I’ll save us both some time.” Acts of faith require so little preparation, he thought. “You’re to have your man contact Gruppenfuhrer Edmund Prager at the SS offices of the Sipo in Berlin. Prager. With an umlaut. I have the number, but coming from me you’d question it. So we’ll sit together while your man tracks it down. When he has the Gruppenfuhrer on the line, I’ll tell your man what he needs to ask. And then you’ll tell me what I need to know about Bernhardt. We’re clear?”

Eighteen minutes later the telephone on Doval’s desk rang through. Hoffner had spent the time drinking a second glass of water and finishing the cheese and crackers.

Doval said nothing. Instead, he chose to watch Hoffner. It was an old technique and not terribly effective in the hands of a man still green with his own power.

Doval nodded to the man who had promised a perfect German, and the man picked up the telephone.

“Hello?” The man’s eyes darted as he listened. “Yes … slower please … yes … thank you … I can wait.” The eyes settled on the rind of cheese before suddenly refocusing. “One moment.” He cupped the receiver and looked at Doval. Doval looked across at Hoffner, and Hoffner said in Spanish, “You’re to tell the Herr Gruppenfuhrer that SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Nikolai Hoffner is in Zaragoza, Spain, at the Nationalist headquarters with a Captain Doval.”

Doval nodded to the man. The information was relayed in German and Hoffner watched as the man continued to listen. Either Prager would understand or Hoffner would be dead. It was as simple as that.

The man with the perfect German said in Spanish, “I think he’s asking why you’ve contacted him, Captain.”

Doval again looked at Hoffner, and Hoffner said, “You’re to say this and only this: ‘Braunschweig.’ ”

Doval again nodded and the man said hesitantly into the receiver, “Braunschweig.” There were several more seconds of darting eyes, and the man said in Spanish, “SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Hoffner has the Gruppenfuhrer’s complete authority. Contact is not to be made again.” The man listened for more and then said, “Hello?… Hello?” He held the receiver out to Doval. “The line has disengaged, Captain.”

Doval was looking across at Hoffner. “Set it down, Lieutenant. You’re dismissed.”

The man placed the telephone in its cradle, saluted, and moved to the door. Doval waited until they were alone.

“I’ve never heard of this Prager,” said Doval. His caution remained.

“No,” said Hoffner, “I’m sure you haven’t.” It was nice to know that two old bull cops could still wreak a little havoc. “The Gruppenfuhrer’s immediate superior is SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich. That, I suspect, is a name you’re more familiar with. We can put a call directly through to the Obergruppenfuhrer if you prefer.”

Doval had evidently spent time enough in the company of the SS not to give way to this kind of bullying. Instead he said, “Langenheim never mentioned Braunschweig.”

Langenheim, thought Hoffner. All the names from Georg’s wire were finding their way onto the table. Granted, Hoffner had no idea how Doval knew Langenheim-or who Langenheim might be-but at least they were heading in the right direction.

“No,” said Hoffner. “I’m sure not.”

“And the woman?”

Hoffner pulled out his cigarettes. This time he offered one to Doval. “The woman is no concern of yours.” Doval took one and Hoffner lit it. “She has a brother who fights for you. That should be enough.” He lit his own and sat back. “When was Bernhardt here?”

Doval was doing what he could to reassert control. He sat back as he stared across through the smoke. “He wasn’t,” he said.

Hoffner knew to tread carefully. Any moment this could all come crashing down. He began to feel a dull throbbing at the back of his neck. He took another careless pull on the cigarette and said, “Really?”

“But I would have assumed you knew that.”

Doval was proving surprisingly adept. Hoffner let the smoke trail from his nose. “Would you?” he said. His only choice was a quiet contempt. “And when would I have learned this, Captain, having been in Barcelona for the past four days? When I telephoned to Berlin from the Ritz? I’m sure no one at the anarchist telephone exchange would have thought to ask why.” And with no time for a response, “I need to know when Bernhardt was here. Do we understand each other?”

Doval might not have found the sweating German-with his half stories and vague papers-compelling, but Hoffner had brought something else with him: the aura of Nazi infallibility. It was enough to cut through any lingering concern.

“It was the nephew,” said Doval. “The boy from Barcelona. No doubt you’ve met him.”

Nephew, thought Hoffner. The drug addict was a nephew. Which meant there was a second, older Bernhardt. Hoffner had spent a career being told things he was meant to know. It made revelations like this quickly digestible.

Hoffner said, “I don’t trust anyone involved with that. Opium is a mind without control, too easily persuaded. When was he here?”

Doval flicked a bit of ash into the ashtray. “Six days ago. He said he was having trouble establishing contacts.”

“The Chinese were being less than accommodating?” Hoffner let this settle for only a moment. “As I said, I don’t trust any of it. I haven’t from the start.” Hoffner finally saw what he had been hoping for: an instant of mutual understanding. They would find common ground in their distaste for the drug lines. Hoffner said, “Bernhardt thinks he’s helping the nephew. I’m here to make sure he understands that’s no longer in his best interests. Where was the nephew heading?”

“South.”

“And the elder Bernhardt knew this?”

“I assume so.”

Hoffner decided to take a chance. “You assume so? You have wires to this effect?”

It was not a good choice as Doval looked momentarily puzzled. “I don’t think I follow.”

The throbbing became a dull ache. Hoffner retreated to frustration. “The elder Bernhardt. Did he communicate this to you?”

Doval was no less forthright. “He made it clear we were no longer to continue in this direction.”

“With the Chinese and the drugs?”

“Yes.”

“And the nephew knew this?”

“Yes.”

“He knew the guns were still coming from the south?”

Doval’s hesitation returned. The SS never asked; they gave orders. This was too many questions. Regardless, Hoffner had swum well beyond his limits; there was no point in worrying about getting back to shore now.

“The elder Bernhardt,” Hoffner pressed. “He made it clear that the drug lines were no longer a possibility, that the new routes were to go through Teruel.”

Doval showed a moment’s pause. This had struck a nerve.

Hoffner said, “I’ve said something that confuses you, Captain?”

Doval kept his eyes fixed on Hoffner. “No, Hauptsturmfuhrer, you haven’t.”

The answer was too weak, and with nothing behind it. “You’re aware of Teruel, Captain?”

“Yes,” said Doval. “Of course.”

“You’re not filling me with tremendous confidence. I need to see these wires.”

“You continue to refer to routes, Hauptsturmfuhrer.” Doval spoke with an unexpected resolve. “What routes would those be?”

The gaze across the desk showed none of the weakness of only moments ago. Mila had been right. These were not men to be underestimated. Hoffner wondered if this was where Doval had been leading him all along.

Hoffner waited. He took another pull on his cigarette. He let the smoke spear through his nostrils. And then he did what any good Nazi would do. He smiled.

“You don’t speak German,” said Hoffner. His voice carried a newfound respect. “Now I see why.” He leaned forward and slowly crushed out his cigarette. “Ambition is a far more vital quality.”

Doval showed nothing, and Hoffner knew it was only a matter of time before there would be a second telephone call to Berlin.

Hoffner continued. “Bernhardt chose not to tell you about the routes, Captain. I have to accept that. My mistake was assuming you knew, Teruel notwithstanding. If that means you take me outside and shoot me, so be it.”

Doval sat remarkably still. Hoffner returned the gaze and understood the reason Gabriel and his kind had taken no time for celebrations: if this was Spain’s future, there would be no Spain worth remembering.

Doval said, “I wouldn’t bother taking you outside, Hauptsturmfuhrer. The walls in my office are sturdy enough.”

Hoffner gave in to another smile, and Doval opened the top drawer of his desk. He reached in and pulled out a thin file of papers. He handed them across and sat back while Hoffner read.

The air outside was remarkably fresh. Or perhaps it was just that Hoffner felt himself breathing again for the first time in the last hour. The young lieutenant assigned to escort him to the cafe walked with no such appreciation for the air.

Hoffner said, “Your German was excellent on the telephone.”

The young lieutenant nodded once. He spoke again in German. “Thank you, Hauptsturmfuhrer.”

“In the coming weeks, Captain Doval will need you more than he knows.”

“Yes, Hauptsturmfuhrer.”

Hoffner found himself lighting a cigarette as he walked.

He suspected Doval might be telephoning to Berlin at this moment, perhaps even to Langenheim. That said, there was very little in the wires to concern Doval-at least in showing them to someone who had mentioned routes and guns and Teruel.

As far as Hoffner could tell, the wires served as confirmation: the nephew had been in Barcelona; he had come to Zaragoza; he had gone on to Teruel. After that, he was due to head west, stopping along the way in places now, or soon to be (God willing), in fascist control: Cuenca, Tarancon, Toledo, Coria, and finally Badajoz on the Portuguese border; a straight line across the heart of Spain.

More than that, there were contact names in each of the towns and cities, along with addresses for each man. Hoffner had written them all down.

The travel itinerary was the elder Bernhardt’s way of assuring Captain Doval and his fellow liaisons across the country that mechanisms were being set in place to guarantee the steady flow of guns and ammunition from Germany into Spain. How they hoped to accomplish that-and how these contact names played a role-remained the mystery.

Hoffner was guessing Georg might be trying to piece that together himself.

“Here we are,” the young lieutenant said.

Hoffner tossed his cigarette to the ground and followed the boy to the cafe door.

The Gran Cafe was wall-front windows and wooden pillars throughout, with the smell of fresh coffee and garlic hanging in the air. Mila was at a table at the back, beyond the bar. A man in the uniform of a requete sat with her. He was reading through a letter.

Only two of the other tables were occupied: a trio of officers sat knee to knee as they sipped silently through bowls of something brown; closer to the door an old priest was reading a newspaper and drinking from a glass of yellow liquid. He looked up with a gentle smile as Hoffner stepped inside. Mila’s own escort stood by the bar with a cup of chocolate and a plate of churros. The strips of dough were powdered and had left white specks under his nose. They made the man’s sharp nod to Hoffner’s lieutenant somewhat less imposing.

Hoffner drew up to Mila’s table. The lieutenant was now with his friend at the bar, delicately trying to inform him of the powder. There was a flurry of nose activity over Hoffner’s shoulder, and Mila said, “Everything all right?”

Hoffner nodded. The brother looked up with the same features as his father, although here they were hidden behind a neatly cropped beard and mustache. It was unclear whether he had been crying, but the eyes showed a heaviness. He stood. He was tall like his sister.

Hoffner said, “Sergeant Piera.”

“Senor Hoffman.”

Mila corrected. “Hoffner.”

Piera looked at his sister. His mind was clearly elsewhere. He looked again at Hoffner. “Yes, of course. Senor Hoffner. My apologies.”

Hoffner motioned to the chairs, and the two men sat. Mila said nothing, and Piera went back to his letter. Hoffner noticed a loose stack of perhaps twenty on the chair beside him, a brown piece of twine at the side. Three of the letters had already been opened and read.

Mila kept her eyes on her brother as he flipped to the back of the one in his hand, read it, and set it down. He stared for several moments before saying, “That’s the last?” His eyes remained fixed on the table.

“Yes,” said Mila.

Piera’s eyes moved as if he were reading something only he could see. “She wrote well.”

“She did.”

He nodded. His mind was struggling to find its way back. The eyes filled and his breathing became heavier, but he refused to cry. Mila placed her hand on his.

She said, “I don’t like the beard.”

Even his smile showed pain. “Then you’re lucky you don’t have to see it that often.” He looked at Hoffner. “Forgive me. A friend has died. I’ve just been told of it.”

It was clearly more, but Hoffner knew to say only, “I’m sorry.”

Piera tried to move past it. “You’ve been to see Captain Doval?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve come from Barcelona?”

Hoffner nodded. He had no intention of opening this up, but Piera saved him by saying, “Thank you, then. For bringing Mila. I won’t take any more of your time.”

Piera stood. He reached down and collected the letters, and Hoffner noticed how large the hands were. Odd to notice that, he thought. He watched as Piera embraced his sister. Mila was not so good with the tears. She rubbed her eyes against her brother’s shoulder. Piera released her and said, “It’s a bit strange, isn’t it?”

She stared into his face. “Yes. It is.”

“To see each other this way.”

They were finding anything to keep him from going. She nodded. “Yes.”

Piera looked at Hoffner. “She’s a doctor, you know. Did you know that?” Hoffner nodded and Piera tried a ragged smile. “Of course you knew. We could use doctors this side, too.” He looked at his sister and seemed momentarily confused.

Her eyes filled, and she said, “Be well, Carlos. God be with you.”

Piera stared a moment longer and then nodded. He looked again at Hoffner and went past him. As he walked to the door, Piera set his beret on his head. He opened the door and stepped out onto the street.

Mila watched him through the glass, even when she could no longer see him.

She said, “I asked him to come with us.”

Hoffner could only imagine that moment.

“We should go,” he said. He turned to the soldiers at the bar. “Lieutenant.” He was once again the man from Berlin. “Bring my car around. And I’ll have a cup of the chocolate with the-” He pointed to the strips of dough.

“Churros,” the man said.

“Yes. And call ahead to the city’s southern barricade. The road to Teruel. Tell them to expect us in the next half hour.”

The sky took on a deep blue just before sunset, softening a landscape that was growing more desolate by the hour. The few patches of green now came as sudden eruptions, clumps on a hillock or straggling weeds of wild brush that seemed beaten down by earth and rocks. It was a place unchanged for centuries, and it made the past a kind of comfort.

There had been no further contact with Captain Doval. The car had appeared fully gassed; the two lieutenants had been sent on their way. Nonetheless, it was now more than an hour, and Hoffner was still expecting to peer into the rearview mirror and see the dust of an approaching car rising in the distance.

Mila was staring out, her head resting back against the seat. She had slipped in and out of sleep, barely moving, not even to swat the fly that seemed incapable of finding its way to an open window. The thing battered itself against the dashboard, and she began to follow the lazy line of telephone poles, one after the other after the other.

Hoffner was fighting off his own exhaustion, the strain from his performance still knotted in his neck. Even the miracle of having come through did nothing to help. His head felt light, and there was a tackiness at the back of his throat. He imagined that nausea would follow, but for now he focused on the road.

Again he glanced in the mirror, and Mila said, “Either they’re coming or they’re not. Staring in the mirror won’t change it.”

She was suddenly aware of the fly. She followed its flight, cupped it in her hands, and held it before releasing it at the window. She closed her eyes and let the last of the sun stretch across her face.

It was nearly a minute before she said, “Do you ever miss her-your wife?”

Hoffner felt the back of his neck compress.

He had been foolish just beyond the city. He had let her ask questions. More foolish, he had answered them. Now she had Martha’s death and Sascha’s hatred to toss back at him. Seventeen years removed and he still felt the stale taste of his own arrogance in his mouth. The Nazis had been nothing then-nothing but a distant rumbling from Munich and the south. And yet he had underestimated them. He had dismissed them as thugs and charlatans, and they had murdered his wife. To have his son blame him for her death and to let them steal his Sascha away-maybe that was what lingered in his throat.

He had no strength for that past.

“The girl in the letters,” he said. “She was his wife?”

Mila took a moment before answering. “Near enough. It was a long time ago.” She opened her eyes and stared out. “She never sent them. She was killed in the fighting last week.” She looked over at him. “Do you ever miss her?”

Hoffner peered into the mirror. “No,” he said. He focused on the road ahead. “I don’t think I do.”

She nodded quietly and turned again to the window. “He was a doctor, my husband. At a clinic in the Raval. I was a terrible nurse.”

Hoffner was glad for the lift in her voice. “I don’t believe that.”

“I was. It’s what you get when you have a twenty-year-old who knows better than everyone else. They all hated me.”

“Except for this doctor of yours.”

“Yes.”

“He fell in love with you?”

“He did.”

“And he trained you?”

She smiled, recalling something. “No. He was much more of an idealist than that. He married me and took me to Moscow.”

“How romantic.”

The smile remained. “The Revolution was good for opening all those doors. He found me a place at one of the medical academies: Sechanov-old, prestigious. He was at a prison hospital: Butyrki, I think. Funny how you forget those things.”

Hoffner glanced in the mirror again. Not so hard to forget.

“It must have been cold,” he said. “Moscow-for a Spaniard.”

“It wasn’t the cold that was the problem.” A pack of cigarettes lay bouncing on the seat and she took one. She lit it, placed it between his lips, and did the same for herself. “He began to write,” she said. “Always a mistake. A pamphlet on medical reforms. They arrested him.” She spoke as if she were reading from a manual. “He was sent to build roads in a work camp near Ukhta, in the north. March of 1930. He died three months later.”

Hoffner thought to say something consoling but managed only, “I’m sorry.”

“Yes.” She was staring down at the cigarette in her hand. “Do you think you ever really loved your wife?”

Hoffner had told her almost nothing, and yet he now wondered how much she had heard. There was never any safety in this.

She wasn’t expecting an answer, and said, “I loved my husband. Very much, although it’s hard to imagine it now. I suppose you either choose to forget quickly or not at all. I chose to forget.”

Hoffner needed them past this. “And then you came home?”

There was a vague sad smile on her lips when she looked up. “No. Carlos wouldn’t be in Zaragoza now if I’d managed to make it home then.” She took a pull and spared him the question. “They arrested me a month later and sent me to a camp: Siblag, also in the north.” She thought of something and shook her head. “There was a letter I’d written, nothing in it, but I was the foreign wife of a foreign counterrevolutionary. It was easy enough.” Her voice was distant as she turned to the window. “A year in prison for two lines in a letter.”

Hoffner glanced over. She was so matter-of-fact, and yet the eyes were full as she stared out. He watched as she let the wind dry them. It was the only moment of hardness to find her face. He saw it drain from her, and she said, “It doesn’t make me callous not to remember, does it?”

What an unfair question, he thought: you only remember the pain, nothing else, so why not shut it all out? He looked out at the road and said, “No. It doesn’t.”

She seemed to agree and took another pull. “When I came back, things were bad. Carlos blamed my father-Russia, Stalin, Communism, my father again. Me.” It was another moment before she said, “And one day he said God would never have let it happen. God. Can you imagine? What could be crueler than that, until he actually began to believe it?” She tossed the cigarette out the window. “Not much God to be had in Barcelona.” Her head found the back of the seat again and she stared out at the poles. “So he left.”

Hoffner was glad for the silence. The sun had turned a blood red; he watched as it dipped lower on the horizon.

She said, “They look like giants, don’t they? Stubby arms all in a row.”

It took him a moment to understand. He bent his head closer into the windscreen and glanced over at the poles. He leaned back and nodded. Again he turned to the mirror.

She said distantly, “No knights to fight off these days.” She looked over at him and, with a sudden energy, hitched herself around and stared back through the rear window. “There’s nothing, Nikolai. No one’s following. No dust rising from tires or hooves. You pulled it off. And now you can find your son and not worry that some distraction might have thrown it all away.”

She was looking directly at him. Her hair had slipped from its knot, and her face was pale. It was an endless few seconds before she sat back and stared out at the road.

She waited for him to answer until she finally said, “It wasn’t for luck or courage, that kiss. You know that.”

Hoffner knew almost nothing. He was having trouble enough keeping up, but this-it was such a long time since any of this had made sense to him. And to have it here, now. It seemed beyond his grasp and made him feel weak.

Without warning, he jammed his foot on the brake and brought the car to a sudden stop. Mila bounced against the seat and instantly glanced back, expecting to see something on the road, but it remained empty. She looked at him as if she thought he might reach for her, but instead, he turned back and pulled on the strap that released the backseat cushion.

“What are you doing?” she said.

He opened his door and stepped out. “Slaying giants.”

“What?”

He opened the back door and took out one of the brick explosives. He then stepped around to the nearest telephone pole and, crouching down, set the brick against its base. He looked over at her in the window. “What do you think, three or four?”

She was staring at him. “What?”

“Three or four of the poles? Would that be enough?”

“You’re not serious?”

“Very serious.”

“Then you’re not thin enough to be playing the part.”

“Thank you. No, this is for Durruti and our friends back in Zaragoza. They decide to call ahead, I need them not to get through.” He stood and moved to her door. “You’ll drive so I can light them before jumping in.” He opened her door. “Move over.”

She sat staring up at him. “You’re going to light the fuses and then jump in the car?”

“Yes.”

“And then I speed us away so you can light the next one?”

“Yes.”

“And this does what?”

“Did Sancho Panza always ask so many questions?”

“Yes.”

“Well, at least we’re true to form. Move over.”

She drove them to each of the four poles. Hoffner set the bricks in place, and she took the car back around to the first. She watched him as he stepped out. “This is madness,” she said.

“Yes.” He leaned over. “Ready?” He looked back to see that she had the car in gear. She nodded and he lit the fuse. He then ran and jumped in.

“Ride, Sancho, ride!”

Dust and earth kicked up as she accelerated, then more smoke as she screeched to a stop at the second pole. Another match, another mad dash. It was just as Hoffner was diving back in the car for the fourth time that the first of the bricks exploded.

She drove off, looking back through the mirror, while he angled his head and shoulders out the window.

It was a wonderful thing to see, the pole ripped from its roots, the wire limp to the ground. Suddenly the second exploded and the pole jumped into the air, tearing at its mooring and keeling over. The third and fourth followed suit, the last stripping the wire with such force that it snapped across the ground like the lash of a whip. Mila stopped the car, and they both got out.

Pale clouds hovered above the four felled poles, the remaining stumps jagged shards of wood cutting through the plumes of smoke. The standing poles at either end of the gap stared helplessly across at each other, as if they could conceive of nothing to fill the chasm between them: one world at an end, another begun.

Hoffner listened. There was absolute silence, not even the sound of settling dust. It was such a small thing-four meaningless poles of wood-yet he felt a surge of energy. Even the knot at the back of his neck was gone. Mila drew up next to him.

“Are we done?” she said, no less gratified.

He watched for another few seconds and said, “Get in the car.” He stepped around and slid in behind the wheel. They drove and he glanced back in the mirror, this time for the sheer pleasure of it.

That night, they stopped twenty kilometers from Teruel. It was late and they were exhausted. They found a tavern with two rooms above. Mila took a bath while he smoked. Hoffner bathed while she went for a second bottle of wine. And they shared a bed and knew that this was how they would find their way through.