Tapestry of Spies (45 page)

Julian. You think of everything, don’t you?

Kill me, Julian had said.

Florry turned away from a melancholy recital of his own failures; there’d be a lifetime for that if they got beyond the frontier. He washed out his shirt and watched the grime from it cling to the basin. He hung it on a hanger and hoped it would dry for the morning.

Wrapped in a blanket, he went out into the living room to find Sylvia in the middle of her preparations. She’d brushed and cleaned her dress and hung it out over a pot of steaming water.

“It’ll look smashing,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, “I can hardly believe that tomorrow we’ll be out of here. We’ve got money, we’ve got papers, we’ve got the proper look. We can buy some luggage. Robert, we’re almost—”

He sat down.

“We haven’t had much time together, although we’ve been in each other’s company for about three solid days. I mean, time for us. That is, if there is an us. Now that Julian’s gone.”

“Robert, let’s just concentrate on getting out of here now, shall we? Let’s make certain there’s a you and a me before we worry about an us.”

He looked at her, her neck, her gray green eyes, her mass of feathery hair. A beauty, but someone else’s beauty. He’d lost her, but had she ever been his to begin with—or was that merely another Spanish illusion?

“All right,” he said, “I won’t mention it again until we’re out of here. I—I just wish I could stop thinking about us.”

“If the NKVD catches you, you’ll cease it soon enough, Robert,” she said tiredly.

“There is one other thing,” he said. “I had just thought how nice it would be if we had our
own
luggage, Sylvia. After all, you must have had some—”

“It’s at the hotel, Robert. The clothes I bought, in a suitcase. But they will be watching the hotel.”

“But can they watch it all the time? I mean, let’s look at the odds. They’re looking for escaping POUMistas, not prosperous British travelers. They’re not looking for
us
. They’re looking for a certain category. We are no longer in that category, don’t you see? Thus, it occurs to me how easy it would be to simply pop in and get your bag on the way to the station. Don’t you see?”

She looked at him, and then explained as if to a child.

“It’s too risky. It’s a straight run to the station by tram or cab and we can make it. If we putt around after silly bags, then we’re fools and we deserve our fates.”

“Sylvia—”

“Robert, for God’s sake, we can make it. Don’t you see? There’s nothing—”

“I told Julian I would give his ring to his mother. His ring is in my coat. My coat is in your bag. Your bag is in the hotel. If I could, I would go myself, alone. But don’t you see, the room is in your name. They wouldn’t let me—”

She shook her head.

“Two weeks ago you hated him. Now you love him. Now you’ll risk yourself to perform some foolish romantic gesture in his memory. You really are a fool, Robert. But you certainly won’t risk me.”

“He was my friend. I must help him. Very well, I’ll go by myself. Perhaps I can talk the chaps into letting me in. I’ll see you at the station. We can travel by—”

“Robert—”

“I must get that ring!”
he shouted. He had never shouted at her before and she was stunned. He felt himself shaking.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have raised my voice. It’s just that—”

“God, Robert, the virtue in you is appalling. It’s actually quite repugnant.”

“You have no idea how many times I let him down, Sylvia. How I let him down, how I betrayed him. How at the moment when he asked me for one thing, I could not do it. Perhaps we had better leave separately tomorrow. You go your way, and I’ll go mine. I’m going to get that ring one way or another.”

“Robert, you are such a bloody fool. I shall get your bloody ring for you then, if it means so much.” She was quite angry.

They left early the next morning, a doddering, nittering couple, fascinated into open-mouthed dumfoundment by all they saw about them. They pointed gawkishly at soldiers. They asked foolish questions loudly, in English. They tried to find a good cup of tea.

It was only a matter of hours. The train for the frontier left at one. They took a tram across town.

“Salud, señor,” said the conductor, accepting Florry’s peseta piece.

At the hotel, it went with surprising ease. Sylvia’s bag had been stashed and they went to look for it. Florry stood in the lobby stupidly, waiting until it came. It was a mahogany room, full of flowers, quite civilized in feeling. He looked about. There seemed to be no one of interest in the lobby. There were no secret policemen or Asaltos. At last the bag was produced.

“Splendid,” said Florry heartily, and he gave the boy an enormous tip.

They went outside and found a cab.

“There,” he said, “you see, it was easy.”

“It was stupid,” she said.

“It took us a bloody five minutes. It cost us nothing. We’ve done it. We’ve made it. We’ll be at the station in minutes. Nobody saw us.”

He was almost right. One man had seen them standing outside the hotel, and only one. Unfortunately, it was Ugarte.

U
GARTE’S CHANCE TO REDEEM HIMSELF IN THE EYES OF HIS
boss came at around twenty minutes to one. He was sitting slouched like the pimp he’d once been on the steps of the cathedral watching the hotel; all sensibly gave him wide berth, for he was a dangerous-looking man, chewing a toothpick with the arrogant sullenness of one who is willing to commit violence. As he brought his eyes up in a lazy scan of the crowd—it was that close, another second and he’d have missed them entirely—he saw a tall gentleman of obviously foreign extraction and his missus blinking confusedly as they attempted to negotiate, bag in hand, their way toward the street and eventually a cab.

Ugarte’s eyes beheld them, almost dismissed them, then almost lost them in the crowd, and then at last brought them into focus for study as they bobbed awkwardly through the crowd: yes, perhaps. They looked older and graver, somehow; he’d been expecting glossy, beautiful children, and these two dodderers were gray and halting. Yet as he watched them he became aware of how much of the illusion of age was merely the result of
profound fatigue, amplified by the gauntness of hunger. And that, furthermore, there was a queer theatrical dimension to them: he sensed their strain. They were not, not quite, who they seemed to be.

Ugarte’s dilemma became vivid. Comrade Bolodin’s instructions had been precise: observe, but do not intercept unless absolutely necessary. At first chance, contact headquarters. Retain observation. Do not apprehend.

Ugarte was most anxious not to offend the great Bolodin, whom he loved and feared as no man he’d ever met in his life. Yet he watched with a sort of hypnotized dolor as they entered the vehicle, closed the door, and it pulled away. His eyes felt hooded and sleepy, his brain damaged. What was involved here was something quite beyond his experience: a decision.
Carrujo
, what to do? His misery increased.

Then, without willing it, his feet begin to move. He found himself racing back through the crowd, pushing his way into the street. He waved down a car and pulled his SIM card. Terrified eyes met his.

“The station!” he shrieked, “or it’s your death!”

When he got there, he could not find them. He had a moment’s terror. It occurred to him he could lie about the whole thing. He could deny it had ever happened. Bolodin would never know. That’s what he would—

Then he saw them. As they pushed their way through the crowds, they moved with uneasy tentativeness that was almost their best disguise. He watched as they made their way. They reached Via 7 where a huge train was loading. They showed their tickets at the gate and were admitted. Ugarte looked up to the black sign under the numeral seven that displayed destinations and saw a long list, the last entry in which was
PORT BOU (LA FRONTERA).

Ugarte leaped ahead through the crowd. He pushed his way along, under the few revolutionary banners that nobody had gotten around to removing yet, and made his way toward the set of iron stairs against the far wall of the station which led up to a balcony, a door, a window, clearly some sort of station headquarters. At the top, there stood a young Asalto with a machine pistol.

“¡Halto!”
screamed the boy, quaking at the apparition of the crazed man flying toward him.

“Fool,” yelled Ugarte, shaking with excitement. He pulled out his SIM card again, feeling very much like a real policeman. “Do you know what this means? I could have you shot! I could have your family shot! Out of the way!”

The boy, a Valencia bumpkin, seemed to melt, and Ugarte pushed his way into the room where several bored and seedy but vaguely official-looking men sat at desks.

“I command you in the name of the people,” said Ugarte, who had heretofore only commanded low women in the name of his wallet, “to delay train number seven. Now, where’s a telephone?”

Lenny did not panic when the call came, nor did he stop to quiver at the closeness, the tentativeness, of the connection to his quarry. He simply knew what had to be done next and set about to do it. He knew that if Florry were leaving, the gold was leaving, presumably among his effects, or perhaps by way of a shipment, melted down in some innocuous way. He knew that the gold was most vulnerable when it was being moved, because guile, not armed guards, were the essence of the GRU operation. Whatever, he knew that the answers rested with the man Florry, who had to be persuaded, somehow, to share his knowledge. Lenny did not doubt that he could
convince Florry to cooperate but what terrified him was the danger of discovery. He wanted to separate Florry from his secrets at his leisure, far from inquiring eyes. He had decided, therefore, to allow the man to leave the country and to take him in France.

Lenny left instantly for the station. In fact, he was packed and ready in more ways than any of the men who worked for him or any of the men he now worked for could possibly know. He had planned toward this day for some time, and the planning was exquisitely complete. It was not merely a question of a bag, a change of clothes, and a tin of toothpowder; he had such a bag, but sewed into its lid were, first, a British passport in the name of Edward Fenney, an expensive forgery, and, second, fifteen crisp thousand-dollar bills U.S., his savings from various unofficial activities in Barcelona.

The plan was simple: Comrade Bolodin of the NKVD/SIM would board the train and Mr. Fenney would emerge to cross the frontier. However, once in France, Lenny had still another identity into which to slip—he would become one Albert Nelson, citizen also of Great Britain—and it would be as Nelson, four full identities removed from the scrawny, furious, half-mute East Side Jewboy whose bones and furies he had carried for so many thankless years, that he would close upon and take his quarry and begin his prosperous new life.

He raced for the courtyard car park with extraordinary eagerness for what lay just ahead. He could feel his heart beat and his blood begin to sing. The moment he had glimpsed months back in Tchiterine’s dying confession had finally arrived.

But he did not even get to his car and driver before a shout came from behind to halt. He was more surprised than angered: who dared address the mighty Bolodin in
such a haughty and commanding tone? He turned to discover his mentor Glasanov closing on him with a look of terrible desperation, at the same time gesturing to two of the other Russian thugs from the new mob who had arrived in the aftermath of the coup.

Glasanov appeared almost mad with fury. Lenny had never seen him so distraught.

“Bolodin!”

Mink fixed him with the dead eyes, waiting.

“Bolodin,” said Glasanov, “damn you. We found the old man, Levitsky, in the convent. He’s been torn to pieces; his mind is gone. What are you up to? What game are you playing?”

Lenny could think of nothing to say. It occurred to him to remove his Tokarev and put a bullet through Glasanov’s forehead, but the others were closing too quickly in the courtyard and he could feel his driver, reacting to the intensity of the moment, beginning to separate himself from the car and its connection to himself.

Glasanov pointed.

“Arrest the traitor Bolodin,” he howled. “He’s a state criminal.”