Winter of the World

4

1937

Volodya Peshkov bent his head against the driving snow as he walked across the bridge over the Moscow River. He wore a heavy greatcoat, a fur hat, and a stout pair of leather boots. Few Muscovites were so well dressed. Volodya was lucky.

He always had good boots. His father, Grigori, was an army commander. Grigori was not a high-flyer: although he was a hero of the Bolshevik revolution and a personal acquaintance of Stalin, his career had stalled at some point in the twenties. All the same, the family had always lived comfortably.

Volodya himself was a high-flyer. After university he had got into the prestigious Military Intelligence Academy. A year later he had been posted to Red Army Intelligence headquarters.

His greatest piece of luck had been meeting Werner Franck in Berlin, while his father had been a military attaché at the Soviet Embassy there. Werner had been at the same school in a more junior class. Learning that young Werner hated Fascism, Volodya had suggested to him that he could best oppose the Nazis by spying for the Russians.

Werner had been only fourteen years old then, but he was now eighteen, he worked at the Air Ministry, he hated the Nazis even more, and he had a powerful radio transmitter and a code book. He was resourceful and courageous, taking dreadful risks and gathering priceless information. And Volodya was his contact.

Volodya had not seen Werner for four years, but he remembered him vividly. Tall with striking red-blond hair, Werner looked and acted older than he was, and even at fourteen he had been enviably successful with women.

Werner had recently tipped him off about Markus, a diplomat at the German embassy in Moscow who was secretly a Communist. Volodya had sought Markus out and recruited him as a spy. For some months now Markus had been supplying a stream of reports which Volodya translated into Russian and passed to his boss. The latest was a fascinating account of how pro-Nazi American business leaders were supplying the right-wing Spanish rebels with trucks, tyres and oil. Texaco’s chairman, the Hitler-admiring Torkild Rieber, was using the company’s tankers to smuggle oil to the rebels in defiance of a specific request from President Roosevelt.

Volodya was on his way to meet Markus now.

He walked along Kutuzovsky Prospekt and turned towards the Kiev Station. Their rendezvous today was a workingmen’s bar near the station. They never used the same place twice, but finished each meeting by arranging the next one: Volodya was meticulous about tradecraft. They always used cheap bars or cafés where Markus’s diplomatic colleagues would never dream of going. If somehow Markus were to fall under suspicion and be followed by a German counter-espionage agent, Volodya would know, for such a man would stand out from the other customers.

This place was called the Ukraine Bar. Like most buildings in Moscow, it was a timber structure. The windows were steamed up, so at least it would be warm inside. But Volodya did not go in immediately. There were further precautions to be taken. He crossed the street and ducked into the entrance of an apartment house. He stood in the cold hallway, looking out through a small window, watching the bar.

He wondered if Markus would show up. He always had, in the past, but Volodya could not feel sure. If he did show up, what information would he bring? Spain was the hot issue in international politics, but Red Army Intelligence was also passionately interested in German armaments. How many tanks were they producing per month? How many Mauser M34 machine guns per day? How good was the new Heinkel He 111 bomber? Volodya longed for such information to pass to his boss, Major Lemitov.

Half an hour went by, and Markus did not come.

Volodya began to worry. Had Markus been found out? He worked as assistant to the ambassador, and therefore saw everything that crossed the ambassador’s desk; but Volodya had been urging him to seek access to other documents, especially the correspondence of military attachés. Had that been a mistake? Had someone noticed Markus sneaking a peek at cables that were none of his business?

Then Markus came along the street, a professorial figure in spectacles and an Austrian-style loden coat, white snowflakes spotting the green felt cloth. He turned into the Ukraine Bar. Volodya waited, watching. Another man followed Markus in, and Volodya frowned anxiously; but the second man was obviously a Russian worker, not a German counter-espionage agent. He was a small, rat-faced man in a threadbare coat, his boots wrapped in rags, and he wiped the wet end of his pointed nose with his sleeve.

Volodya crossed the street and went into the bar.

It was a smoky place, none too clean, and it smelled of men who did not often bathe. On the walls were fading watercolours of Ukrainian scenery in cheap frames. It was mid-afternoon, and there were not many customers. The only woman in the place looked like an aging prostitute recovering from a hangover.

Markus was at the back of the room, hunched over an untasted glass of beer. He was in his thirties but looked older, with a neat fair beard and moustache. He had thrown open his coat, revealing a fur lining. The rat-faced Russian sat two tables away, rolling a cigarette.

As Volodya approached, Markus stood up and punched him in the mouth.

‘You cowfucker!’ he screamed in German. ‘You pig’s cunt!’

Volodya was so shocked that for a moment he did nothing. His lips hurt and he tasted blood. Reflexively, he raised his arm to hit back. But he restrained himself.

Markus swung at him again, but this time Volodya was ready, and he easily dodged the wild blow.

‘Why did you do it?’ Markus yelled. ‘Why?’

Then, just as suddenly, he crumpled, falling back into his chair, burying his face in his hands, and beginning to sob.

Volodya spoke through bleeding lips. ‘Shut up, you fool,’ he said. He turned around and spoke to the other customers, who were all staring. ‘It’s nothing, he’s upset.’

They all looked away, and one man left. Muscovites never voluntarily got involved in trouble. It was dangerous even to separate two scrapping drunks, in case one of them was powerful in the Party. And they knew that Volodya was such a man: they could tell by his good coat.

Volodya turned back to Markus. In a lowered voice he said angrily: ‘What the hell was that for?’ He spoke German: Markus’s Russian was poor.

‘You arrested Irina,’ the man replied, weeping. ‘You fucking bastard, you burned her nipples with a cigarette.’

Volodya winced. Irina was Markus’s Russian girlfriend. Volodya began to see what this might be about and he had a bad feeling. He sat down opposite Markus. ‘I didn’t arrest Irina,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry if she’s been hurt. Just tell me what happened.’

‘They came for her in the middle of the night. Her mother told me. They wouldn’t say who they were, but they weren’t regular police detectives – they had better clothes. She doesn’t know where they took her. They questioned her about me and accused her of being a spy. They tortured her and raped her, then they threw her out.’

‘Fuck,’ said Volodya. ‘I’m really sorry.’

‘You’re sorry? It must have been you that did it – who else?’

‘This is nothing to do with Army Intelligence, I swear.’

‘Makes no difference,’ Markus said. ‘I’m finished with you, and I’m finished with Communism.’

‘There are sometimes casualties in the war against capitalism.’ It sounded glib even to Volodya as he said it.

‘You young fool,’ Markus said savagely. ‘Don’t you understand that socialism means freedom from this kind of shit?’

Volodya glanced up and saw a burly man in a leather coat come through the door. He was not here for a drink, Volodya knew instinctively.

Something was going on, and Volodya did not know what it was. He was new to this game, and right now he felt his lack of experience like a missing limb. He thought he might be in danger but he did not know what to do.

The newcomer approached the table where Volodya sat with Markus.

Then the rat-faced man stood up. He was about the same age as Volodya. Surprisingly, he spoke with an educated accent. ‘You two are under arrest.’

Volodya cursed.

Markus jumped to his feet. ‘I am commercial attaché at German Embassy!’ he screamed in ungrammatical Russian. ‘You cannot arrest! I have diplomatic immunity!’

The other customers left the bar in a rush, shoving at each other as they squeezed through the door. Only two people remained: the bartender, nervously swiping the counter with a filthy rag, and the prostitute, smoking a cigarette and staring into an empty vodka glass.

‘You can’t arrest me, either,’ Volodya said calmly. He took his identification card from his pocket. ‘I’m Lieutenant Peshkov, Army Intelligence. Who the fuck are you?’

‘Dvorkin, NKVD.’

The man in the leather coat said: ‘Berezovsky, NKVD.’

The secret police. Volodya groaned: he might have known. The NKVD overlapped with Army Intelligence. He had been warned that the two organizations were always treading on each other’s toes, but this was his first experience of it. He said to Dvorkin: ‘I suppose it was you who tortured this man’s girlfriend.’

Dvorkin wiped his nose on his sleeve: apparently that unpleasant habit was not part of his disguise. ‘She had no information.’

‘So you burned her nipples for nothing.’

‘Lucky for her. If she had been a spy it would have been worse.’

‘It didn’t occur to you to check with us first?’

‘When did you ever check with us?’

Markus said: ‘I’m leaving.’

Volodya felt desperate. He was about to lose a valuable asset. ‘Don’t go,’ he pleaded. ‘We’ll make this up to Irina somehow. We’ll get her the best hospital treatment—’

‘Fuck you,’ said Markus. ‘You’ll never see me again.’ He walked out of the bar.

Dvorkin evidently did not know what to do. He did not want to let Markus go, but clearly he could not arrest him without looking foolish. In the end he said to Volodya: ‘You shouldn’t let people speak to you that way. It makes you look weak. They should respect you.’

‘You prick,’ Volodya said. ‘Can’t you see what you’ve done? That man was a good source of reliable intelligence – but now he’ll never work for us again, thanks to your blundering.’

Dvorkin shrugged. ‘As you said to him, sometimes there are casualties.’

‘God spare me,’ Volodya said, and he went out.

He felt vaguely nauseated as he walked back across the river. He was sickened by what the NKVD had done to an innocent woman, and downcast by the loss of his source. He boarded a tram: he was too junior to have a car. He brooded as the vehicle trundled through the snow to his place of work. He had to report to Major Lemitov, but he hesitated, wondering how to tell the story. He needed to make it clear that he was not to blame, yet avoid seeming to make excuses.

Army Intelligence headquarters stood on one edge of the Khodynka airfield, where a patient snowplough crawled up and down keeping the runway clear. The architecture was peculiar: a two-storey building with no windows in its outer walls surrounded a courtyard in which stood the nine-storey head office, sticking up like a pointed finger out of a brick fist. Cigarette lighters and fountain pens could not be brought in, as they might set off the metal detectors at the entrance, so the army provided its staff with one of each inside. Belt buckles were a problem, too, so most people wore suspenders. The security was superfluous, of course. Muscovites would do anything to stay out of such a building: no one was mad enough to want to sneak inside.

Volodya shared an office with three other subalterns, their steel desks side by side on opposite walls. There was so little space that Volodya’s desk prevented the door from opening fully. The office wit, Kamen, looked at his swollen lips and said: ‘Let me guess – her husband came home early.’

‘Don’t ask,’ said Volodya.

On his desk was a decrypt from the radio section, the German words pencilled letter by letter under the code groups.

The message was from Werner.

Volodya’s first reaction was fear. Had Markus already reported what had happened to Irina, and persuaded Werner, too, to withdraw from espionage? Today seemed a sufficiently unlucky day for such a disaster.

But the message was the opposite of disastrous.

Volodya read with growing amazement. Werner explained that the German military had decided to send spies to Spain posing as antiFascist volunteers wanting to fight for the government side in the civil war. They would report clandestinely from behind the lines to German-manned listening stations in the rebel camp.

That in itself was red-hot information.

But there was more.

Werner had the names.

Volodya had to restrain himself from whooping with joy. A coup like this could happen only once in the lifetime of an intelligence man, he thought. It more than made up for losing Markus. Werner was solid gold. Volodya dreaded to think what risks he must have taken to purloin this list of names and smuggle it out of Air Ministry headquarters in Berlin.

He was tempted to run upstairs to Lemitov’s office right away, but he restrained himself.

The four subalterns shared a typewriter. Volodya lifted the heavy old machine off Kamen’s desk and put it on his own. Using the forefinger of each hand, he typed out a Russian translation of the message from Werner. While he was doing so the daylight faded and powerful security lights came on outside the building.

Leaving a carbon copy in his desk drawer, he took the top copy and went upstairs. Lemitov was in. A good-looking man of about forty, he had dark hair slicked down with brilliantine. He was shrewd, and had a knack of thinking one step ahead of Volodya, who strove to emulate his forethought. He did not subscribe to the orthodox military view that army organization was about shouting and bullying, yet he was merciless with incompetent people. Volodya respected him and feared him.

‘This might be tremendously useful information,’ Lemitov said when he had read the translation.

‘Might be?’ Volodya did not see any reason for doubt.

‘It could be disinformation,’ Lemitov pointed out.

Volodya did not want to believe that, but he realized with a surge of disappointment that he had to acknowledge the possibility that Werner had been caught and turned into a double agent. ‘What kind of disinformation?’ he asked dispiritedly. ‘Are these false names, to send us on a wild goose chase?’

‘Perhaps. Or they might be the real names of genuine volunteers, Communists and socialists who have escaped from Nazi Germany and gone to Spain to fight for freedom. We could end up arresting real antiFascists.’

‘Hell.’

Lemitov smiled. ‘Don’t look so miserable! The information is still very good. We have our own spies in Spain – young Russian soldiers and officers who have “volunteered” to join the International Brigades. They can investigate.’ He picked up a red pencil and wrote on the sheet of paper in small, neat handwriting. ‘Well done,’ he said.

Volodya took that for dismissal and went to the door.

Lemitov said: ‘Did you meet Markus today?’

Volodya turned back. ‘There was a problem.’

‘I guessed, by your mouth.’

Volodya told the story. ‘So I lost a good source,’ he finished. ‘But I don’t know what I could have done differently. Should I have told the NKVD about Markus and warned them off?’

‘Fuck, no,’ said Lemitov. ‘They’re completely untrustworthy. Never tell them anything. But don’t worry, you haven’t lost Markus. You can get him back easily.’

‘How?’ Volodya said uncomprehendingly. ‘He hates us all now.’

‘Arrest Irina again.’

‘What?’ Volodya was horrified. Had she not suffered enough? ‘Then he’ll hate us even more.’

‘Tell him that if he doesn’t continue to co-operate with us, we’ll interrogate her all over again.’

Volodya desperately tried to hide his revulsion. It was important not to appear squeamish. And he could see that Lemitov’s plan would work. ‘Yes,’ he managed to say.

‘Only this time,’ Lemitov went on, ‘tell him we’ll put the lighted cigarettes up her cunt.’

Volodya felt as if he might vomit. He swallowed hard and said: ‘Good idea. I’ll pick her up now.’

‘Tomorrow is soon enough,’ said Lemitov. ‘Four in the morning. Maximum shock.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Volodya went out and closed the door behind him.

He stood in the corridor for a moment, feeling unsteady. Then a passing clerk looked strangely at him and he forced himself to walk away.

He was going to have to do this. He would not torture Irina, of course: the threat would be enough. But she would surely think she was going to be tortured all over again, and that would terrify her out of her wits. Volodya felt that in her place he might go insane. He had never imagined, when he joined the Red Army, that he might have to do such things. Of course the army was about killing people, he knew that; but torturing girls?

The building was emptying, lights were being switched off in offices, men with hats on were in the corridors. It was time to go home. Returning to his office, Volodya called the military police and arranged to meet a squad at three-thirty in the morning to arrest Irina. Then he put on his coat and went to catch a tram home.

Volodya lived with his parents, Grigori and Katerina, and his sister Anya, nineteen, who was still at university. On the tram he wondered if he could talk to his father about this. He imagined saying: ‘Do we have to torture people in Communist society?’ But he knew what the answer would be. It was a temporary necessity, essential to defend the revolution against spies and subversives in the pay of the capitalist imperialists. Perhaps he could ask: ‘How long will it be before we can abandon such dreadful practices?’ Of course his father would not know, nor would anyone else.

On their return from Berlin, the Peshkov family had moved into Government House, sometimes called The House on the Embankment, an apartment block across the river from the Kremlin, occupied by members of the Soviet elite. It was a huge building in the Constructivist style, with more than five hundred flats.

Volodya nodded at the military policeman at the door, then passed through the grand lobby – so large that, some evenings, there was dancing to a jazz band – and went up in the elevator. The apartment was luxurious by Soviet standards, with constant hot water and a phone, but it was not as pleasant as their home in Berlin.

His mother was in the kitchen. Katerina was an indifferent cook and an unenthusiastic housekeeper, but Volodya’s father adored her. Back in 1914, in St Petersburg, he had rescued her from the unwelcome attentions of a bullying policeman, and he had been in love with her ever since. She was still attractive at forty-three, Volodya guessed, and while the family had been on the diplomatic circuit she had learned how to dress more stylishly than most Russian women – though she was careful not to look Western, a serious offence in Moscow.

‘Did you hurt your mouth?’ she said to him after he kissed her hello.

‘It’s nothing.’ Volodya smelled chicken. ‘Special dinner?’

‘Anya is bringing a boyfriend home.’

‘Ah! A fellow student?’

‘I don’t think so. I’m not sure what he does.’

Volodya was pleased. He was fond of his sister, but he knew she was not beautiful. She was short and stumpy, and wore dull clothes in drab colours. She had not had many boyfriends, and it was good news that one liked her enough to come home with her.

He went to his room, took off his jacket, and washed his face and hands. His lips were almost back to normal: Markus had not hit him very hard. While he was drying his hands he heard voices, and gathered that Anya and her boyfriend had arrived.

He put on a knitted cardigan, for comfort, and left his room. He went into the kitchen. Anya was sitting at the table with a small, rat-faced man Volodya recognized. ‘Oh, no!’ Volodya said. ‘You!’

It was Ilya Dvorkin, the NKVD agent who had arrested Irina. His disguise had gone, and he was dressed in a normal dark suit and decent boots. He stared at Volodya in surprise. ‘Of course – Peshkov!’ he said. ‘I didn’t make the connection.’

Volodya turned to his sister. ‘Don’t tell me this is your boyfriend.’

Anya said in dismay: ‘What’s the matter?’

Volodya said: ‘We met earlier today. He screwed up an important Army operation by sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong.’

‘I was doing my job,’ said Dvorkin. He wiped the end of his nose on his sleeve.

‘Some job!’

Katerina stepped in to rescue the situation. ‘Don’t bring your work home,’ she said. ‘Volodya, please pour a glass of vodka for our guest.’

Volodya said: ‘Really?’

His mother’s eyes flashed anger. ‘Really!’

‘Okay.’ Reluctantly, he took the bottle from the shelf. Anya got glasses from a cupboard and Volodya poured.

Katerina took a glass and said: ‘Now, let’s start again. Ilya, this is my son Vladimir, whom we always call Volodya. Volodya, this is Anya’s friend Ilya, who has come to dinner. Why don’t you shake hands.’

Volodya had no option but to shake the man’s hand.

Katerina put snacks on the table: smoked fish, pickled cucumber, sliced sausage. ‘In summer we have salad that I grow at the dacha, but at this time of year, of course, there is nothing,’ she said apologetically. Volodya realized that she was keen to impress Ilya. Did his mother really want Anya to marry this creep? He supposed she must.

Grigori came in, wearing his army uniform, all smiles, sniffing the chicken and rubbing his hands together. At forty-eight he was red-faced and corpulent: it was hard to imagine him storming the Winter Palace as he had in 1917. He must have been thinner then.

He kissed his wife with relish. Volodya thought his mother was thankful for his father’s unabashed lust without actually returning it. She would smile when he patted her bottom, hug him when he embraced her, and kiss him as often as he wanted, but she was never the initiator. She liked him, respected him, and seemed happy being married to him; but clearly she did not burn with desire. Volodya would want more than that from marriage.

The matter was purely hypothetical: Volodya had had a dozen or so short-term girlfriends but had not yet met a woman he wanted to marry.

Volodya poured his father a shot of vodka, and Grigori tossed it back with relish, then took some smoked fish. ‘So, Ilya, what work do you do?’

‘I’m with the NKVD,’ Ilya said proudly.

‘Ah! A very good organization to belong to!’

Grigori did not really think this, Volodya suspected; he was just trying to be friendly. Volodya thought the family should be unfriendly, in the hope that they could drive Ilya away. He said: ‘I suppose, Father, that when the rest of the world follows the Soviet Union in adopting the Communist system, there will no longer be a need for the secret police, and the NKVD can then be abolished.’

Grigori chose to treat the question lightly. ‘No police at all!’ he said jovially. ‘No criminal trials, no prisons. No counter-espionage department, as there will be no spies. No army either, since we will have no enemies! What will we all do for a living?’ He laughed heartily. ‘This, however, may still be some distance in the future.’

Ilya looked suspicious, as if he felt something subversive was being said but he could not put his finger on it.

Katerina brought to the table a plate of black bread and five bowls of hot borscht, and they all began to eat. ‘When I was a boy in the countryside,’ Grigori said, ‘all winter long my mother would save vegetable peelings, apple cores, the discarded outer leaves of cabbages, the hairy part of the onion, anything like that, in a big old barrel outside the house, where it all froze. Then, in the spring, when the snow melted, she would use it to make borscht. That’s what borscht really is, you know – soup made from peelings. You youngsters have no idea how well off you are.’

There was a knock at the door. Grigori frowned, not expecting anyone; but Katerina said: ‘Oh, I forgot! Konstantin’s daughter is coming.’

Grigori said: ‘You mean Zoya Vorotsyntsev? The daughter of Magda the midwife?’

‘I remember Zoya,’ said Volodya. ‘Skinny kid with blonde ringlets.’

‘She’s not a kid any more,’ Katerina said. ‘She’s twenty-four and a scientist.’ She stood up to go to the door.

Grigori frowned. ‘We haven’t seen her since her mother died. Why has she suddenly made contact?’

‘She wants to talk to you,’ Katerina replied.

‘To me? About what?’

‘Physics.’ Katerina went out.

Grigori said proudly: ‘Her father, Konstantin, and I were delegates to the Petrograd Soviet in 1917. We issued the famous Order Number One.’ His face darkened. ‘He died, sadly, after the Civil War.’

Volodya said: ‘He must have been young – what did he die of?’

Grigori glanced at Ilya and quickly looked away. ‘Pneumonia,’ he said; and Volodya knew he was lying.

Katerina returned, followed by a woman who took Volodya’s breath away.

She was a classic Russian beauty, tall and slim, with light-blonde hair, blue eyes so pale they were almost colourless, and perfect white skin. She wore a simple Nile-green dress whose plainness only drew attention to her slender figure.

She was introduced all around, then she sat at the table and accepted a bowl of borscht. Grigori said: ‘So, Zoya, you’re a scientist.’

‘I’m a graduate student, doing my doctorate, and I teach undergraduate classes,’ she said.

‘Volodya here works in Red Army Intelligence,’ Grigori said proudly.

‘How interesting,’ she said, obviously meaning the opposite.

Volodya realized that Grigori saw Zoya as a potential daughter-in-law. He hoped his father would not hint at this too heavily. He had already made up his mind to ask her for a date before the end of the evening. But he could manage that by himself. He did not need his father’s help. On the contrary: unsubtle parental boasting might put her off.

‘How is the soup?’ Katerina asked Zoya.

‘Delicious, thank you.’

Volodya was already getting the impression of a matter-of-fact personality behind the gorgeous exterior. It was an intriguing combination: a beautiful woman who made no attempt to charm.

Anya cleared away the soup bowls while Katerina brought the main course, chicken and potatoes cooked in a pot. Zoya tucked in, stuffing the food into her mouth, chewing and swallowing and eating more. Like most Russians, she did not often see food this good.

Volodya said: ‘What kind of science do you do, Zoya?’

With evident regret she stopped eating to answer. ‘I’m a physicist,’ she said. ‘We’re trying to understand the atom: what its components are, what holds them together.’

‘Is that interesting?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Yes, that’s true.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Volodya squirmed at the heavy-handedness of this hint.

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

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

The doorbell rang.

‘Again?’ said Grigori.

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

She returned with Volodya’s boss, Major Lemitov.

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

Lemitov saluted smartly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No, sir.’

‘You’d better tell him.’

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

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

‘Exactly,’ said Lemitov.

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

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

Volodya was astonished. He had not seen that coming.

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

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

‘True, true. How soon would he go?’

‘In three days’ time.’

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

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

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

‘Very well,’ said his father.

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

(ii)

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘If,’ said Lenny.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘He might as well be.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Who is he?’

‘She!’ said Dave, and pointed.

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

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

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

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

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

‘I’m illiterate,’ said Dave, who was not.

‘Me, too,’ said Joe Eli, who taught Spanish literature at Columbia University in New York.

Teresa spoke in Spanish. Her voice was low and calm and very sexy. ‘How many times do you think I have heard this joke?’ she said, but she did not seem very cross.

Lenny moved closer. ‘I’m Sergeant Griffiths,’ he said. ‘I’ll do anything I can to help you, of course.’ His words were practical, but his tone of voice made them sound like an amorous invitation.

She gave him a dazzling smile. ‘That would be most helpful,’ she said.

Lloyd spoke formally to her in his best Spanish. ‘I’m so very glad you’re here, Señorita.’ He had spent much of the last ten months studying the language. ‘I am Lieutenant Williams. I can tell you exactly which members of the group require lessons . . . and which do not.’

Lenny said dismissively: ‘But the lieutenant has to go to Bujaraloz to get our orders.’ Bujaraloz was the small town where government forces had set up headquarters. ‘Perhaps you and I should look around here for a suitable place to hold classes.’ He might have been suggesting a walk in the moonlight.

Lloyd smiled and nodded agreement. He was happy to let Lenny romance Teresa. He himself was in no mood for flirting, whereas Lenny seemed in love already. In Lloyd’s opinion Lenny’s chances were close to zero. Teresa was an educated twenty-five-year-old who probably got a dozen propositions a day, and Lenny was a seventeen-year-old coal miner who had not taken a bath for a month. But he said nothing: Teresa seemed capable of looking after herself.

A new figure appeared, a man of Lloyd’s age who looked vaguely familiar. He was dressed better than the soldiers, in wool breeches and a cotton shirt, and had a handgun in a buttoned holster. His hair was cut so short that it looked like stubble, a style favoured by Russians. He was only a lieutenant, but had an air of authority, even power. He said in fluent German: ‘I am looking for Lieutenant Garcia.’

‘He’s not here,’ said Lloyd in the same language. ‘Where have you and I met before?’

The Russian seemed shocked and irritated at the same time, like one who finds a snake in his bedroll. ‘We have never met,’ he said firmly. ‘You are mistaken.’

Lloyd snapped his fingers. ‘Berlin,’ he said. ‘Nineteen thirty-three. We were attacked by Brownshirts.’

A look of relief came briefly over the man’s face, as if he had been expecting something worse. ‘Yes, I was there,’ he said. ‘My name is Vladimir Peshkov.’

‘But we called you Volodya.’

‘Yes.’

‘At that scrap in Berlin you were with a boy called Werner Franck.’

Volodya looked panicked for a moment, then hid his feelings with an effort. ‘I know no one of that name.’

Lloyd decided not to press the point. He could guess why Volodya was jumpy. The Russians were as terrified as everyone else of their secret police, the NKVD, who were operating in Spain and had a reputation for brutality. To them, any Russian who was friendly with foreigners might be a traitor. ‘I’m Lloyd Williams.’

‘I do remember.’ Volodya looked at him with a penetrating blue-eyed stare. ‘How strange that we should meet again here.’

‘Not so strange, really,’ Lloyd said. ‘We fight the Fascists wherever we can.’

‘Can I have a quiet word?’

‘Of course.’

They walked a few yards away from the others. Peshkov said: ‘There is a spy in Garcia’s platoon.’

Lloyd was astonished. ‘A spy? Who?’

‘A German called Heinz Bauer.’

‘Why, that’s him in the red shirt. A spy? Are you sure?’

Peshkov did not bother to answer that question. ‘I’d like you to summon him to your dugout, if you have one, or some other private place.’ Peshkov looked at his wristwatch. ‘In one hour, an arrest unit will be here to pick him up.’

‘I’m using that little shed as my office,’ said Lloyd, pointing. ‘But I need to speak to my commanding officer about this.’ The C.O. was a Communist, and unlikely to interfere, but Lloyd wanted time to think.

‘If you wish.’ Volodya clearly did not care what Lloyd’s commanding officer thought. ‘I want the spy taken quietly, without any fuss. I have explained to the arrest unit the importance of discretion.’ He sounded as if he was not sure his wishes would be obeyed. ‘The fewer people who know, the better.’

‘Why?’ said Lloyd, but before Volodya could reply he figured out the answer for himself. ‘You’re hoping to turn him into a double agent, sending misleading reports to the enemy. But, if too many people know he has been caught, then other spies may warn the rebels, and they will not believe the disinformation.’

‘It is better not to speculate about such matters,’ Peshkov said severely. ‘Now let us go to your shed.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Lloyd. ‘How do you know he is a spy?’

‘I can’t tell you without compromising security.’

‘That’s a bit unsatisfactory.’

Peshkov looked exasperated. Clearly he was not used to being told that his explanations were unsatisfactory. Discussion of orders was a feature of the Spanish Civil War that the Russians particularly detested.

Before Peshkov could say anything further, two more men appeared and approached the group under the tree. One of the newcomers wore a leather jacket despite the heat. The other, who seemed to be in charge, was a scrawny man with a long nose and a receding chin.

Peshkov let out an exclamation of anger. ‘Too early!’ he said, then he called out something indignant in Russian.

The scrawny man made a dismissive gesture. In rough Spanish he said: ‘Which one is Heinz Bauer?’

No one answered. The scrawny man wiped the end of his nose with his sleeve.

Then Heinz moved. He did not immediately flee, but cannoned into the man in the leather jacket, knocking him down. Then he dashed away – but the scrawny man stuck out a leg and tripped him up.

Heinz fell hard, his body skidding on the dry soil. He lay stunned – only for a moment, but it was a moment too long. As he got to his knees the two men pounced on him and knocked him down again.

He lay still, but all the same they started to beat him up. They drew wooden clubs. Standing either side of him they took turns to hit his head and body, raising their arms above their heads and striking down in a vicious ballet. In a few seconds there was blood all over Heinz’s face. He tried desperately to escape, but when he got to his knees they pushed him down again. Then he curled up in a ball, whimpering. He was clearly finished, but they were not. They clubbed the helpless man again and again.

Lloyd found himself shouting a protest and pulling the scrawny man off. Lenny did the same to the other one. Lloyd grabbed his man in a bear hug and lifted him; Lenny knocked his man to the ground. Then Lloyd heard Volodya say in English: ‘Stand still, or I’ll shoot!’

Lloyd let go of his man and turned, incredulous. Volodya had drawn his sidearm, a standard-issue Russian Nagant M1895 revolver, and cocked it. ‘Threatening an officer with a weapon is a court-martial offence in every army in the world,’ Lloyd said. ‘You’re in deep trouble, Volodya.’

‘Don’t be a fool,’ said Volodya. ‘When was the last time a Russian was in trouble in this army?’ But he lowered the gun.

The man in the leather jacket raised his club as if to hit Lenny, but Volodya barked: ‘Back off, Berezovsky!’ and the man obeyed.

Other soldiers appeared, drawn by the mysterious magnetism that attracts men to a fight, and in seconds there were twenty of them.

The scrawny man pointed a finger at Lloyd. Speaking English with a heavy accent, he said: ‘You have interfered in matters that do not concern you!’

Lloyd helped Heinz to his feet. He was groaning in pain and covered in blood.

‘You people can’t just march in and start beating people up!’ Lloyd said to the scrawny man. ‘Where’s your authority?’

‘This German is a Trotsky-Fascist spy!’ the man screeched.

Volodya said: ‘Shut up, Ilya.’

Ilya took no notice. ‘He has been photographing documents!’ he said.

‘Where is your evidence?’ Lloyd said calmly.

Ilya clearly did not know or care about the evidence. But Volodya sighed and said: ‘Look in his kitbag.’

Lloyd nodded to Mario Rivera, a corporal. ‘Go and check,’ he said.

Corporal Rivera ran to the boathouse and disappeared inside.

But Lloyd had a dreadful feeling Volodya was telling the truth. He said: ‘Even if you’re right, Ilya, you could use a little courtesy.’

Ilya said: ‘Courtesy? This is a war, not an English tea party.’

‘It might save you from getting into unnecessary fights.’

Ilya said something contemptuous in Russian.

Rivera emerged from the building carrying a small, expensive-looking camera and a sheaf of official papers. He showed them to Lloyd. The top document was yesterday’s general order for deployment of troops ahead of the coming assault. The paper bore a wine stain of familiar shape, and Lloyd realized with a shock that it was his own copy, and must have been purloined from his shed.

He looked at Heinz, who straightened, gave the Fascist salute, and said: ‘Heil Hitler!’

Ilya looked triumphant.

Volodya said: ‘Well, Ilya, you have now ruined the prisoner’s value as a double agent. Another coup for the NKVD. Congratulations.’ And he walked off.

(iii)

Lloyd went into battle for the first time on Tuesday 24 August.

His side, the elected government, had 80,000 men. The antidemocratic rebels had fewer than half that. The government also had two hundred aircraft against the rebels’ fifteen.

To make the most of this superiority, the government advanced over a wide front, a north–south line sixty miles long, so that the rebels could not concentrate their limited numbers.

It was a good plan – so why, Lloyd asked himself two days later, was it not working?

It had started well enough. On the first day, the government had taken two villages north of Saragossa and two to the south. Lloyd’s group, in the south, had overcome fierce resistance to take a village called Codo. The only failure was the central push, up the river valley, which had stalled at a place called Fuentes de Ebro.

Before the battle, Lloyd had been scared, and he spent the night awake, imagining what was to come, as he sometimes did before a boxing match. But once the fighting started he was too busy to worry. The worst moment was advancing across the barren scrubland, with no cover but stunted bushes, while the defenders fired from inside stone buildings. Even then, what he had felt was not fear but a kind of desperate cunning, zigzagging as he ran, crawling and rolling when the bullets came too near, then getting up and running, bent double, a few more yards. The main problem was shortage of ammunition: they had to make every shot count. They took Codo by force of numbers, and Lloyd, Lenny and Dave ended the day unhurt.

The rebels were tough and brave – but so were the government forces. The foreign brigades were made up of idealistic volunteers who had come to Spain knowing they might have to give their lives. Because of their reputation for courage they were often chosen to spearhead attacks.

The assault began to go wrong on the second day. The northern forces had stayed put, reluctant to advance because of lack of intelligence about rebel defences – a feeble excuse, Lloyd thought. The central group still could not take Fuentes de Ebro, despite being reinforced on the third day, and Lloyd was appalled to hear that they had lost nearly all their tanks to devastating defensive fire. In the south, Lloyd’s group, instead of pushing forward, was directed to make a sideways move, to the riverside village of Quinto. Once again, they had to overcome determined defenders in house-to-house fighting. When the enemy surrendered, Lloyd’s group took a thousand prisoners.

Now Lloyd sat in the evening light outside a church that had been wrecked by artillery fire, surrounded by the smoking ruins of houses and the strangely still bodies of the recently dead. A group of exhausted men gathered around him: Lenny, Dave, Joe Eli, Corporal Rivera, and a Welshman called Muggsy Morgan. There were so many Welshmen in Spain that someone had made up a limerick poking fun at the similarity in their names:

There was a young fellow named Price

And another young fellow named Price

And a fellow named Roberts

And a fellow named Roberts

And another young fellow named Price.

The men were smoking, waiting quietly to see whether there would be any dinner, too weary even to banter with Teresa, who was, remarkably, still with them, as the transport due to take her to the rear had failed to appear. They could hear occasional bursts of shooting as mopping-up continued a few streets away.

‘What have we gained?’ Lloyd said to Dave. ‘We used scarce ammunition, we lost a lot of men, and we’re no farther forward. Worse, we’ve given the Fascists time to bring up reinforcements.’

‘I can tell you the fucking reason,’ Dave said in his East End accent. His soul had hardened even more than his body, and he had become cynical and contemptuous. ‘Our officers are more afraid of their commissars than of the fucking enemy. At the least excuse they can be branded as Trotsky-Fascist spies and tortured to death, so they’re terrified of sticking their necks out. They’d rather sit still than move, they won’t do anything on their own initiative, and they never take risks. I bet they don’t shit without an order in writing.’

Lloyd wondered whether Dave’s scornful analysis was right. The Communists never ceased to talk about the need for a disciplined army with a clear chain of command. By that they meant an army following Russian orders, but, all the same, Lloyd saw their point. However, too much discipline could stifle thinking. Was that what was going wrong?

Lloyd did not want to believe it. Surely Social Democrats, Communists and anarchists could fight in a common cause without one group tyrannizing the others: they all hated Fascism, and they all believed in a future society that was fairer to everyone.

He wondered what Lenny thought, but Lenny was sitting next to Teresa, talking to her in a low voice. She giggled at something he said, and Lloyd guessed that he must be making progress. It was a good sign when you could make a girl laugh. Then she touched his arm, said a few words, and stood up. Lenny said: ‘Hurry back.’ She smiled over her shoulder.

Lucky Lenny, thought Lloyd, but he felt no envy. A passing romance held no appeal for him: he did not see the point. He was an all-or-nothing man, he supposed. The only girl he had ever really wanted had been Daisy. She was now Boy Fitzherbert’s wife, and Lloyd still had not met the girl who might take her place in his heart. He would, one day, he felt sure; but, meanwhile, he was not much attracted to temporary substitutes, even when they were as alluring as Teresa.

Someone said: ‘Here come the Russians.’ The speaker was Jasper Johnson, a black American electrician from Chicago. Lloyd looked up to see a dozen or so military advisors walking through the village like conquerors. The Russians were recognizable by their leather jackets and buttoned holsters. ‘Strange thing, I didn’t see them while we were fighting,’ Jasper went on sarcastically. ‘I guess they must have been in a different part of the battlefield.’

Lloyd looked around, making sure that no political commissars were nearby to hear this subversive talk.

As the Russians passed through the graveyard of the ruined church, Lloyd spotted Ilya Dvorkin, the weaselly secret policeman he had clashed with a week ago. The Russian crossed paths with Teresa and stopped to speak to her. Lloyd heard him say something in bad Spanish about dinner.

She replied, he spoke again, and she shook her head, evidently refusing. She turned to walk away, but he took hold of her arm, detaining her.

Lloyd saw Lenny sit upright, looking alertly at the tableau, the two figures framed by a stone archway that no longer led anywhere.

‘Oh, shit,’ said Lloyd.

Teresa tried again to move away, and Ilya seemed to tighten his grip.

Lenny moved to get up, but Lloyd put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him down. ‘Let me deal with this,’ he said.

Dave murmured a low warning. ‘Careful, mate – he’s in the NKVD. Best not to mess with those fucking bastards.’

Lloyd walked over to Teresa and Ilya.

The Russian saw him and said in Spanish: ‘Get lost.’

Lloyd said: ‘Hello, Teresa.’

She said: ‘I can handle this, don’t worry.’

Ilya looked more closely at Lloyd. ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You tried to prevent the arrest of a dangerous Trotsky-Fascist spy last week.’

Lloyd said: ‘And is this young lady also a dangerous Trotsky-Fascist spy? I thought I just heard you ask her to have dinner with you.’

Ilya’s sidekick Berezovsky appeared and stood aggressively close to Lloyd.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lloyd saw Dave draw the Luger from his belt.

This was getting out of control.

Lloyd said: ‘I came to tell you, Señorita, that Colonel Bobrov wants to see you in his headquarters immediately. Please follow me and I’ll take you to him.’ Bobrov was a senior Russian military ‘advisor’. He had not invited Teresa, but it was a plausible story, and Ilya did not know it was a lie.

For a frozen moment Lloyd could not tell which way it was going to go. Then the bang of a nearby gunshot was heard, perhaps from the next street. It seemed to return the Russians to reality. Teresa again moved away from Ilya, and this time he let her go.

Ilya pointed a finger aggressively at Lloyd’s face. ‘I’ll see you again,’ he said, and he made a dramatic exit, followed dog-like by Berezovsky.

Dave said: ‘Stupid prick.’

Ilya pretended not to hear.

They all sat down. Dave said: ‘You’ve made a bad enemy, Lloyd.’

‘I didn’t have much choice.’

‘All the same, watch your back from now on.’

‘An argument about a girl,’ Lloyd said dismissively. ‘Happens a thousand times a day.’

As darkness fell, a handbell summoned them to a field kitchen. Lloyd got a bowl of thin stew, a slab of dry bread, and a big cup of red wine so harsh-tasting that he imagined it taking the enamel off his teeth. He dipped his bread in the wine, improving both.

When the food was gone he was still hungry, as usual. He said: ‘We’ll have a nice cup of tea, shall we?’

‘Aye,’ said Lenny. ‘Two lumps of sugar, please.’

They unrolled their thin blankets and prepared to sleep. Lloyd went in search of a latrine, found none, and relieved himself in a small orchard on the edge of the village. There was a three-quarter moon, and he could see the dusty leaves on olive trees that had survived the shelling.

As he buttoned up he heard a footstep. He turned around slowly – too slowly. By the time he saw Ilya’s face, the club was coming down on his head. He felt an agonizing pain and fell to the ground. Dazed, he looked up. Berezovsky held a short-barrelled revolver pointed at his head. Beside him, Ilya said: ‘Don’t move or you’ll be dead.’

Lloyd was terrified. Desperately he shook his head to clear it. This was insane. ‘Dead?’ he said incredulously. ‘And how will you explain the murder of a lieutenant?’

‘Murder?’ said Ilya. He smiled. ‘This is the front line. A stray bullet got you.’ He switched to English. ‘Jolly bad luck.’

Lloyd realized with despair that Ilya was right. When his body was found, it would look as if he had been killed in the battle.

What a way to die.

Ilya said to Berezovsky: ‘Finish him off.’

There was a bang.

Lloyd felt nothing. Was this death? Then Berezovsky crumpled and fell to the ground. At the same moment Lloyd realized that the shot had come from behind him. He turned, incredulous, to look. In the moonlight he saw Dave holding his stolen Luger. Relief swamped him like a tidal wave. He was alive!

Ilya, too, had seen Dave, and he ran like a startled rabbit.

Dave tracked him with the pistol for several seconds, and Lloyd willed him to shoot, but Ilya dodged frantically between the olive trees, like a rat in a maze, then disappeared into the darkness.

Dave lowered the gun.

Lloyd looked down at Berezovsky. He was not breathing. Lloyd said: ‘Thanks, Dave.’

‘I told you to watch your back.’

‘You watched it for me. But it’s a pity you didn’t get Ilya too. Now you’re in trouble with the NKVD.’

‘I wonder,’ said Dave. ‘Will Ilya want people to know that he got his sidekick killed in a squabble over a woman? Even the NKVD people are frightened of the NKVD. I think he’ll keep it quiet.’

Lloyd looked again at the body. ‘How do we explain this?’

‘You heard the man,’ Dave said. ‘This is the front line. No explanation needed.’

Lloyd nodded. Dave and Ilya were both right. No one would ask how Berezovsky had died. A stray bullet got him.

They walked away, leaving the body where it lay.

‘Jolly bad luck,’ said Dave.

(iv)

Lloyd and Lenny spoke to Colonel Bobrov and complained that the attack on Saragossa was stalemated.

Bobrov was an older Russian with a cropped fuzz of white hair, nearing retirement and rigidly orthodox. In theory he was there only to help and advise the Spanish commanders. In practice the Russians called the shots.

‘We’re wasting time and energy on these little villages,’ Lloyd said, translating into German what Lenny and all the experienced men were saying. ‘Tanks are supposed to be armoured fists, used for deep penetration, striking far into enemy territory. The infantry should follow, mopping up and securing after the enemy has been scattered.’

Volodya was standing nearby, listening, and seemed by his expression to agree, though he said nothing.

‘Small strongpoints like this wretched one-horse town should not be allowed to delay the advance, but should be bypassed and dealt with later by a second line,’ Lloyd finished.

Bobrov looked shocked. ‘This is the theory of the discredited Marshal Tuchachevsky!’ he said in hushed tones. It was as if Lloyd had told a bishop to pray to Buddha.

‘So what?’ said Lloyd.

‘He has confessed to treason and espionage, and has been executed.’

Lloyd stared incredulously. ‘Are you telling me that the Spanish government cannot use modern tank tactics because some general has been purged in Moscow?’

‘Lieutenant Williams, you are becoming disrespectful.’

Lloyd said: ‘Even if the charges against Tuchachevsky are true, that doesn’t mean his methods are wrong.’

‘That will do!’ Bobrov thundered. ‘This conversation is over.’

Any hope that Lloyd might have had remaining was crushed when his battalion was moved from Quinto back in the direction they had come, another sideways manoeuvre. On 1 September, they were part of the attack on Belchite, a well-defended but strategically worthless small town twenty-five miles wide of their objective.

It was another hard battle.

Some seven thousand defenders were well dug in at the town’s largest church, San Agustin, and atop a nearby hill, with trenches and earthworks. Lloyd and his platoon reached the outskirts of town without casualties, but then came under withering fire from windows and rooftops.

Six days later they were still there.

The corpses were stinking in the heat. As well as humans, there were dead animals, for the town’s water supply had been cut off and livestock were dying of thirst. Whenever they could, the engineers stacked the bodies up, doused them with gasoline, and set fire to them; but the smell of roasting humans was worse than the stink of corruption. It seemed hard to breathe, and some of the men wore their gas masks.

The narrow streets around the church were killing fields, but Lloyd had devised a way to make progress without going outside. Lenny had found some tools in a workshop. Now two men were making a hole in the wall of the house in which they were sheltering. Joe Eli was using a pickaxe, sweat gleaming on his bald head. Corporal Rivera, who wore a striped shirt in the anarchist colours of red and black, wielded a sledgehammer. The wall was made of flat, yellow local bricks, roughly mortared. Lenny directed the operation to make sure that they did not bring the entire house down: as a miner, he had an instinct for the trustworthiness of a roof.

When the hole was big enough for a man to pass through, Lenny nodded to Jasper, also a corporal. Jasper took one of his few remaining grenades from his belt pouch, drew the pin, and threw it into the next house, just in case there was an ambush. As soon as it had exploded, Lloyd crawled quickly through the hole, rifle at the ready.

He found himself in another poor Spanish home, with whitewashed walls and a floor of beaten earth. There was no one here, dead or alive.

The thirty-five men of his platoon followed him through the hole and ran through the place to flush out any defenders. The house was small and empty.

In this way they were moving slowly but safely through a row of cottages towards the church.

They started work on the next hole but, before they broke through, they were halted by a major called Marquez, who came along the row of houses by the route they had made through the walls. ‘Forget all that,’ he said in Spanish-accented English. ‘We’re going to rush the church.’

Lloyd went cold. It was suicidal. He said: ‘Is that Colonel Bobrov’s idea?’

‘Yes,’ said Major Marquez non-committally. ‘Wait for the signal: three sharp blows on the whistle.’

‘Can we get more ammunition?’ Lloyd said. ‘We’re low, especially for this kind of action.’

‘No time,’ said the major, and he went away.

Lloyd was horrified. He had learned a lot in a few days of battle, and he knew that the only way to rush a well-defended position was under a hail of covering fire. Otherwise the defenders would just mow the attackers down.

The men looked mutinous, and Corporal Rivera said: ‘It is impossible.’

Lloyd was responsible for maintaining their morale. ‘No complaints, you lot,’ he said breezily. ‘You’re all volunteers. Did you think war wasn’t dangerous? If it was safe, your sisters could do it for you.’ They laughed, and the moment of danger passed, for now.

He moved to the front of the house, opened the door a crack, and peeped out. The sun glared down on a narrow street with houses and shops on both sides. The buildings and the ground were the same pale tan colour, like undercooked bread, except where shelling had gouged up red earth. Right outside the door a militiaman lay dead, a cloud of flies feasting on the hole in his chest. Looking towards the square, Lloyd saw that the street widened towards the church. The gunmen in the high twin towers had a clear view and an easy shot at anyone approaching. On the ground there was only minimal cover: some rubble, a dead horse, a wheelbarrow.

We’re all going to die, he thought.

But why else did we come here?

He turned back to his men, wondering what to say. He had to keep them thinking positively. ‘Just hug the sides of the street, close to the houses,’ he said. ‘Remember, the slower you go, the longer you’re exposed – so wait for the whistle, then run like fuck.’

Sooner than expected, he heard the three sharp chirrups of Major Marquez’s whistle.

‘Lenny, you’re last out,’ he said.

‘Who’s first?’ said Lenny.

‘I am, of course.’

Goodbye, world, Lloyd thought. At least I’ll die fighting Fascists.

He threw the door wide. ‘Let’s go!’ he yelled, and he ran out.

Surprise gave him a few seconds’ grace, and he ran freely along the street towards the church. He felt the scorch of the midday sun on his face and heard the pounding of his men’s boots behind him, and noted with a weird sentiment of gratitude that such sensations meant he was still alive. Then gunfire broke out like a hailstorm. For a few more heartbeats he ran, hearing the zip and thwack of bullets, then there was a feeling in his left arm as if he had banged it against something, and inexplicably he fell down.

He realized he had been hit. There was no pain, but his arm was numb and hung lifeless. He managed to roll sideways until he hit the wall of the nearest building. Shots continued to fly, and he was terribly vulnerable, but a few feet ahead he saw a dead body. It was a rebel soldier, propped against the house. He looked as if he had been sitting on the ground, resting with his back against the wall, and had gone to sleep; except that there was a bullet wound in his neck.

Lloyd wriggled forward, moving awkwardly, rifle in his right hand, left arm dragging behind, then crouched behind the body, trying to make himself small.

He rested his rifle barrel on the dead man’s shoulder and took aim at a high window in the church tower. He fired all five rounds in his magazine in rapid succession. He could not tell whether he had hit anyone.

He looked back. To his horror he saw the street littered with the corpses of his platoon. The still body of Mario Rivera in his red and black shirt looked like a crumpled anarchist flag. Next to Mario was Jasper Johnson, his black curls soaked in blood. All the way from a factory in Chicago, Lloyd thought, to die on the street in a small town in Spain, because he believed in a better world.

Worse were those who still lived, moaning and crying on the ground. Somewhere a man was screaming in agony, but Lloyd could not see who or where. A few of his men were still running, but, as he watched, more fell and others threw themselves down. Seconds later no one was moving except the writhing wounded.

What a slaughter, he thought, and a bile of anger and sorrow rose chokingly in his throat.

Where were the other units? Surely Lloyd’s platoon was not the only one involved in the attack? Perhaps others were advancing along parallel streets leading to the square. But a rush required overwhelming numbers. Lloyd and his thirty-five were obviously too few. The defenders had been able to kill and wound nearly all of them, and the few who remained of Lloyd’s platoon had been forced to take cover before reaching the church.

He caught the eye of Lenny, peering from behind the dead horse. At least he was still alive. Lenny held up his rifle and made a helpless gesture, pantomiming ‘no ammunition’. Lloyd was out, too. In the next minute, firing from the street died away as the others also ran out of bullets.

That was the end of the attack on the church. It had been impossible anyway. With no ammunition it would have been pointless suicide.

The hail of fire from the church had lessened as the easier targets were eliminated, but sporadic sniping continued at those remaining behind cover. Lloyd realized that all his men would be killed eventually. They had to withdraw.

They would probably all be killed in the retreat.

He caught Lenny’s eye again and waved emphatically towards the rear, away from the church. Lenny looked around, repeating the gesture to the few others left alive. They would have a better chance if they all moved at the same time.

When as many as possible had been forewarned, Lloyd struggled to his feet.

‘Retreat!’ he yelled at the top of his voice.

Then he began to run.

It was no more than two hundred yards, but it was the longest journey of his life.

The rebels in the church opened fire as soon as they saw the government troops move. Out of the corner of his eye, Lloyd thought he saw five or six of his men retreating. He ran with a ragged gait, his wounded arm putting him off balance. Lenny was ahead of him, apparently unhurt. Bullets scored the masonry of the buildings that Lloyd staggered past. Lenny made it to the house they had come from, dashed in, and held the door open. Lloyd ran in, panting hoarsely, and collapsed on the floor. Three more followed them in.

Lloyd stared at the survivors: Lenny, Dave, Muggsy Morgan and Joe Eli. ‘Is that all?’ he said.

Lenny said: ‘Yes.’

‘Jesus. Five of us left, out of thirty-six.’

‘What a great military advisor Colonel Bobrov is.’

They stood panting, catching their breath. The feeling returned to Lloyd’s arm and it hurt like hell. He found he could move it, painfully, so perhaps it was not broken. Looking down, he saw that his sleeve was soaked with blood. Dave took off his red scarf and improvised a sling.

Lenny had a head wound. There was blood on his face, but he said it was a scratch, and he seemed all right.

Dave, Muggsy and Joe were miraculously unhurt.

‘We’d better go back for fresh orders,’ Lloyd said when they had lain down a few minutes. ‘We can’t accomplish anything without ammunition, anyway.’

‘Let’s have a nice cup of tea first, is it?’ said Lenny.

Lloyd said: ‘We can’t, we haven’t got teaspoons.’

‘Oh, all right, then.’

Dave said: ‘Can’t we rest here a bit longer?’

‘We’ll rest in the rear,’ Lloyd said. ‘It’s safer.’

They made their way back along the row of houses, using the holes they had made in the walls. The repeated bending made Lloyd dizzy. He wondered if he was weak from loss of blood.

They emerged out of sight of the church of San Agustin, and hurried along a side street. Lloyd’s relief at still being alive was rapidly giving way to a feeling of rage at the waste of the lives of his men.

They came to the barn on the outskirts where the government forces had made their headquarters. Lloyd saw Major Marquez behind a stack of crates, giving out ammunition. ‘Why couldn’t we have had some of that?’ he said furiously.

Marquez just shrugged.

‘I’m reporting this to Bobrov,’ Lloyd said.

Colonel Bobrov was outside the barn, sitting on a chair at a table, both of which items of furniture looked as if they had been taken from a village house. His face was reddened with sunburn. He was talking to Volodya Peshkov. Lloyd went straight up to them. ‘We rushed the church, but we had no support,’ he said. ‘And we ran out of ammunition because Marquez refused to supply us!’

Bobrov looked coldly at Lloyd. ‘What are you doing here?’ he said.

Lloyd was puzzled. He expected Bobrov to congratulate him for a brave effort and at least commiserate with him over the lack of support. ‘I just told you,’ he said. ‘There was no support. You can’t rush a fortified building with one platoon. We did our best, but we were slaughtered. I’ve lost thirty-one of my thirty-six men.’ He pointed at his four companions. ‘This is all that’s left of my platoon!’

‘Who ordered you to retreat?’

Lloyd was fighting off dizziness. He felt close to collapse, but he had to explain to Bobrov how bravely his men had fought. ‘We came back for fresh orders. What else could we do?’

‘You should have fought to the last man.’

‘What should we have fought with? We had no bullets!’

‘Silence!’ Bobrov barked. ‘Stand to attention!’

Automatically, they all stood to attention: Lloyd, Lenny, Dave, Muggsy and Joe in a line. Lloyd feared he was about to faint.

‘About face!’

They turned their backs. Lloyd thought: What now?

‘Those who are wounded, fall out.’

Lloyd and Lenny stepped back.

Bobrov said: ‘The walking wounded are transferred to prisoner escort duty.’

Dimly, Lloyd perceived that this meant he would probably be guarding prisoners of war on a train to Barcelona. He swayed on his feet. Right now I couldn’t guard a flock of sheep, he thought.

Bobrov said: ‘Retreating under fire without orders is desertion.’

Lloyd turned and looked at Bobrov. To his astonishment and horror he saw that Bobrov had drawn his revolver from its buttoned holster.

Bobrov stepped forward so that he was immediately behind the three men standing to attention. ‘You three are found guilty and sentenced to death.’ He raised the gun until the barrel was three inches from the back of Dave’s head.

Then he fired.

There was a bang. A bullet hole appeared in Dave’s head, and blood and brains exploded from his brow.

Lloyd could not believe what he was seeing.

Next to Dave, Muggsy began to turn, his mouth open to shout; but Bobrov was quicker. He swung the gun to Muggsy’s neck and fired again. The bullet entered behind Muggsy’s right ear and came out through his left eye, and he crumpled.

At last Lloyd’s voice came, and he shouted: ‘No!’

Joe Eli turned, roaring with shock and rage, and raised his hands to grab Bobrov. The gun banged again and Joe got a bullet in the throat. Blood spurted like a fountain from his neck and splashed Bobrov’s Red Army uniform, causing the colonel to curse and jump back a pace. Joe fell to the ground but did not die immediately. Lloyd watched, helpless, as the blood pumped out of Joe’s carotid artery into the parched Spanish earth. Joe seemed to try to speak, but no words came; and then his eyes closed and he went limp.

‘There’s no mercy for cowards,’ Bobrov said, and he walked away.

Lloyd looked at Dave on the ground: thin, grimy, brave as a lion, sixteen years old and dead. Killed not by the Fascists but by a stupid and brutal Soviet officer. What a waste, Lloyd thought, and tears came to his eyes.

A sergeant came running out of the barn. ‘They’ve given up!’ he shouted joyfully. ‘The town hall has surrendered – they’ve raised the white flag. We’ve taken Belchite!’

The dizziness overwhelmed Lloyd at last, and he fainted.

(v)

London was cold and wet. Lloyd walked along Nutley Street in the rain, heading for his mother’s house. He still wore his zipped Spanish army blouson and corduroy breeches, and boots with no socks. He carried a small backpack containing his spare underwear, a shirt, and a tin cup. Around his neck he had the red scarf Dave had turned into an improvised sling for his wounded arm. The arm still hurt, but he no longer needed the sling.

It was late on an October afternoon.

As expected, he had been put on a supply train returning to Barcelona crammed with rebel prisoners. The journey was not much more than a hundred miles, but it had taken three days. In Barcelona he had been separated from Lenny and lost contact with him. He had got a lift in a lorry going north. After the trucker dropped him off he had walked, hitch-hiked, and ridden in railway wagons full of coal or gravel or – on one lucky occasion – cases of wine. He had slipped across the border into France at night. He had slept rough, begged food, done odd jobs for a few coins and, for two glorious weeks, earned his cross-Channel boat fare picking grapes in a Bordeaux vineyard. Now he was home.

He inhaled the damp, soot-smelling Aldgate air as if it were perfume. He stopped at the garden gate and looked up at the terraced house in which he had been born more than twenty-two years ago. Lights glowed behind the rain-streaked windows: someone was at home. He walked up to the front door. He still had his key: he had kept it with his passport. He let himself in.

He dropped his backpack on the floor in the hall, by the hatstand.

From the kitchen he heard: ‘Who’s that?’ It was the voice of his stepfather, Bernie.

Lloyd found he could not speak.

Bernie came into the hall. ‘Who . . . ?’ Then he recognized Lloyd. ‘My life!’ he said. ‘It’s you.’

Lloyd said: ‘Hello, Dad.’

‘My boy,’ said Bernie. He put his arms around Lloyd. ‘Alive,’ Bernie said. Lloyd could feel him shaking with sobs.

After a minute Bernie rubbed his eyes with the sleeve of his cardigan then went to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Eth!’ he called.

‘What?’

‘Someone to see you.’

‘Just a minute.’

She came down the stairs a few seconds later, pretty as ever in a blue dress. Halfway down she saw his face and turned pale. ‘Oh, Duw,’ she said. ‘It’s Lloyd.’ She came down the rest of the stairs in a rush and threw her arms around him. ‘You’re alive!’ she said.

‘I wrote to you from Barcelona—’

‘We never got that letter.’

‘Then you don’t know . . .’

‘What?’

‘Dave Williams died.’

‘Oh, no!’

‘Killed at the Battle of Belchite.’ Lloyd had decided not to tell the truth about how Dave had died.

‘What about Lenny Griffiths?’

‘I don’t know. I lost touch with him. I was hoping he might have got home before me.’

‘No, there’s no word.’

Bernie said: ‘What was it like over there?’

‘The Fascists are winning. And it’s mainly the fault of the Communists, who are more interested in attacking the other left parties.’

Bernie was shocked. ‘Surely not.’

‘It’s true. If I’ve learned one thing in Spain, it’s that we have to fight the Communists just as hard as the Fascists. They’re both evil.’

His mother smiled wryly. ‘Well, just fancy that.’ She had figured out the same thing long ago, Lloyd realized.

‘Enough politics,’ he said. ‘How are you, Mam?’

‘Oh, I’m the same, but look at you – you’re so thin!’

‘Not much to eat in Spain.’

‘I’d better make you something.’

‘No rush. I’ve been hungry for twelve months – I can keep going a few more minutes. I tell you what would be nice, though.’

‘What? Anything!’

‘I’d love a nice cup of tea.’