29

Refusing the glass of cheap rum Justa offered him, Kolia managed to seem neither polite nor scornful. This offhand attitude, so unexpected in someone seen as a ruthless N.K.V.D. agent, terrified Higinio Zamora Zamorano far more than any show of malice.

“I simply did what I was told to do,” he said, almost pleadingly. “Snitch the Englishman’s wallet and hand it over to their embassy to alert them to the fact that he was in Madrid. After that, he kept coming back to our humble abode. He’s crazy about the girl.”

The Soviet agent toyed with the little bunch of violets Higinio had left on the table. His lack of interest cut short the romantic fantasy Higinio was about to launch into.

“And how did the people at the embassy react?” he wanted to know.

“When I was there, as if it was routine. Naturally enough. But they’ve talked to him several times, and are keeping their eye on him. When he was taken prisoner at National Security Headquarters, they lost no time getting him out.”

“They don’t want him to blabber. Nor do we. What do we know about why he’s here?”

“Your humble servant knows nothing at all. He himself told me he was only in Madrid for twenty-four hours, yet he’s still here, and it seems he’s got no intention of leaving. I couldn’t tell you whether it’s the English or the coppers who are keeping him.”

“There might be other people involved,” muttered the spy. “No matter. The important thing is to act. Otherwise we won’t be able to do a thing. Where is he now?”

“At this very moment, he’s in the hotel with the girl. Like I said, he’s crazy about her.”

The agent’s cold eyes once again cut Higinio short. In order to show how advantageous the situation was, Higinio told him about the young Falange activist’s visit to the hotel room. Toñina had climbed inside the wardrobe, heard their entire conversation, and the next morning had reported back to him, without leaving anything out. She had also pretended to faint in order not to worry the Englishman. The girl was very quick, and with a bit of help could make a future for herself anywhere but in Spain. Kolia cut him short yet again; he had listened carefully to Higinio’s account, and was now deep in thought. After a few moments he got up and started striding around the miserable room. A strong smell of boiled cabbage seeped in through the cracks in the window frame from the courtyard below. As offhandedly as before, he motioned to Justa to leave. She did so, casting Higinio an apprehensive glance as she went. The object of this doom-laden warning shuddered once more.

“The important thing now,” said the spy once they were alone, “is for him to complete his task. To eliminate the obstacles to the sale of whatever it might be.”

“But I thought . . .”

“Things have changed. Orders from the top. Once the matter is settled, we give him the chop.”

“The Englishman? Does he really have to be bumped off? He’s not to blame for anything.”

The heartless spy repeated his languid gesture and sat down again.

“Once the job is done he’s no use to us, and he knows too much.”

“He won’t say a thing, I can guarantee it: he’s crazy about the girl.”

Kolia drilled him with a cold, penetrating look.

“What about her?” he said. “Can she be trusted?”

“Toñina? For the love of God! She’ll do what we tell her to.”

“She better had.”

The spy had been tearing off the petals from the bunch of violets. Scattered on the oilskin tablecloth and lit by the feeble light of a bulb dangling from a greasy cord, they looked to Higinio like something from a cemetery.

“You’re surely not thinking . . .” he whispered, quivering like quicksilver.

“I don’t think anything. I only carry out orders. But get this into your head: don’t play around with the Central Committee. Do your duty and, when I say so, take care of the Englishman. It won’t be difficult: he trusts you. If you don’t have the guts, tell me and I’ll find someone else to do it. But don’t breathe a word about this.”

At the same hour, far from the courtyard and without the slightest suspicion of the merciless sentence passed on him by the Lubyanka agent, Anthony Whitelands asked the taxi driver to pull up a hundred meters before the mansion. He was determined to cover the last part on foot, protected by the trees and bushes of the verdant Paseo de la Castellana. No precaution was too great if, as experience had taught him, he really was at the center of several concentric circles that were all keeping a close watch on him and on each other. He had already been seized by José Antonio’s personal bodyguard, and it had only been the rapid and friendly intervention of the Chief that had prevented a tragic finale. He also knew that Spanish National Security were tightening the net around the Duke of La Igualada and anyone who had any contact with him or his family. Yet none of this could lessen his determination to speak to Paquita and clear up the misunderstanding.

His cautious attitude proved justified: two cars were parked outside the mansion, their drivers smoking and chatting on the pavement. The vehicles’ as well as the drivers’ appearance led him to dismiss the idea that they were either Falangists or members of the security forces. To think there might be fresh protagonists in the confusing drama he was caught up in made him feel giddy, and so he left all consideration of this for later and continued his stealthy approach. A small detour allowed him to reach the side street without attracting the drivers’ attention. Once there, he hugged the wall until he came to the iron gate. When he tried to open it, he found it was locked. The wall was too high for him to see over into the garden, but by gripping protruding stones he managed to heave himself up and raise his head over the top. The garden was deserted. Through the study window, he could see the duke’s silhouette. To avoid being spotted, he quickly jumped down, and in doing so scraped his right hand on the wall’s rough edges. Tying his handkerchief round his hand to staunch the blood, he carried on down the street in search of a better observation post. A shadier part of the garden allowed him to clamber up the wall again and peer inside, protected from anyone’s curiosity by a row of cypresses. From there he could see the rear of the mansion, with a back door that gave onto the most secluded part of the garden. A staircase descended to a paved rectangle in which stood a summer house designed to provide shade during the hottest months of the year. Inside it were a marble table and half a dozen wrought-iron chairs. The wintry bareness of the surrounding vine and the abandoned state of the summer furniture gave the place a melancholy air.

All at once Paquita came rushing out of the back door. The coincidence of her appearance and Anthony’s reason for being there brought him up with a jolt. He struggled to get a better view without revealing his presence or losing his precarious balance. Neither the distance nor the obstacles nor his own consternation prevented him from noticing how profoundly agitated the young woman looked.

Anthony was not mistaken. A short while earlier the duchess had also come across her daughter, and her maternal feelings had suffered a violent and painful shock. Prevented since childhood by her social condition and an unrelenting education from applying her natural intelligence to any of the practical aspects of life, Doña María Elvira Martínez de Alcántara, by marriage Duchess of Igualada, had graciously accepted her domestic, decorative role. She had developed a notable ability to detect frivolity in all its many guises and to respond to them precisely and rapidly. More recently however, the fateful turn of events in Spain since the declaration of the Republic had brought with it a radical change in her attitude. Her former perspicacity was now employed in glimpsing any sign of an impending drama in the smallest detail. A short while earlier she had been wandering aimlessly through the mansion when she had run headfirst into Paquita who, to judge by the way she was dressed, had just come in from the street. The duchess had instantly perceived the distress the younger woman was trying to hide beneath the distant, rather flippant attitude that characterized their relationship. A mixture of maternal instinct and social awareness told her not to inquire directly if something had happened to her daughter, but she detained her on the slightest of pretexts. Paquita could only hold back her feelings for a few moments; after that she burst out sobbing, then ran off to shut herself in her room. The duchess’s female intuition led her to suppose she could guess the cause of such heartbreak and, incapable of choosing between doing something and nothing at all, she went to find her husband, bursting in on the generals’ plotting. The voices and sounds of doors opening and closing warned Paquita there were other people in the house. Anxious to avoid a family scene until her troubled spirit had calmed down, she fled from her bedroom to seek refuge in the garden.

Perched up on the wall, Anthony watched as she closed the back door, glanced left and right to make sure she was alone, and then walked slowly, head down, over to the arbor, sighing deeply, her body shaking as she went. A swing hung from the stoutest branch of an ancient elm. The young marquess went over to it and gently stroked the ropes, as if that innocent contraption brought back the naïve pleasures of an irretrievably lost childhood. Seeing her so sad, Anthony felt the urge to jump down into the garden and run to comfort the unfortunate young woman. The only thing that stopped him doing so was his certainty that the cause of her sorrow was probably what had just happened between the two of them in the hotel room. He was puzzled by this, however: he could not understand the rapid switch from her initial boldness and self-assurance to her current despair. As he saw it, the untimely arrival of Toñina had not been enough to justify such a dramatic change.

But this paralysis of bewilderment was short-lived. A stern shout from behind shocked him so much he almost fell off again.

“Get down from there this minute, you numbskull!”

Without thinking about it, more from fear than from any instinct for self-preservation, Anthony pushed forward to get off the wall and escape from whoever was shouting at him, and plunged headfirst into the garden. The soil beneath a clump of myrtle bushes that had been composted for spring softened his fall. Bruised but intact, the Englishman crawled to hide behind a hedge. All this happened so quickly that when Paquita looked in the direction the noise and the voice had come from, she saw only the head and shoulders of a stranger at the top of the wall. She had been so wrapped up in her own predicament that the sudden apparition of a purple-faced man only disturbed her still further. She cried out and, paying no attention to the interloper’s plea for her not to raise the alarm, ran back to the rear door of the mansion. It was already open. Alerted by her cries, the butler rushed out, brandishing a shotgun. With all the speed and acumen of a hunting dog, he raced down the steps, looked all around him until he discovered the intruder, and was about to pull the trigger when a shout from Paquita halted him.

Still pointing the gun at the man, the butler ordered him to put his hands up. The prowler replied that if he did that, he would fall off. He made this sensible objection looking first toward the house and then almost at once turning his head, because it also applied to the drivers who, on hearing the shouts, had left their vehicles and were running down the side street calling on him to surrender.

This situation could have lasted some time if the duke and the three generals had not appeared from the house after a few moments. To his master’s silent inquiry, the butler pointed his double-barreled shotgun toward the intruder on the wall.

“Good Lord!” exclaimed the duke when he saw the extraordinary figure. “Who is that fellow, and what’s he doing there, half in and half out of the garden?”

“I don’t know, Your Grace,” the butler replied. “But if Your Grace gives me permission, I’ll blow his head off and then we’ll see.”

“No, no! I don’t want any scandal in my house, Julián! Least of all today,” he added, pointing to the three generals at his back.

With this, the situation seemed to be drifting toward an impasse until, emerging from his apparent indolence, General Franco took the initiative. He went over to the wall and addressed the intruder in his high-pitched, commanding voice.

“You, whoever you may be, jump over the wall into the garden at once!”

“I can’t,” replied the other man. “I’m a war invalid, General sir.”

“General sir?” Franco exclaimed. “So you know who I am?”

“I wish I didn’t, General sir, but I know only too well. I had the honor of fighting under you at Larache. I was wounded, promoted, decorated and retired from active service. At present I am attached to National Security Headquarters. Captain Coscolluela, at your orders as ever, sir. And please, tell these men out here not to shoot.”

In order to prevent his colleague taking the lead in everything, Queipo de Llano’s stentorian voice rang out.

“Put your weapons away, you dunderheads! Do you want the whole of Madrid to find out? And you up on the wall, where did you say you were posted?”

“To National Security Headquarters, General sir, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Marranón,” replied Captain Coscolluela.

“Well, blow me down! What did I tell you? That bastard Azaña is having us followed.”

“Not you, general sir,” Captain Coscolluela protested. “I’m following an Englishman.”

“An Englishman?” said Mola. “An Englishman in the Duke of La Igualada’s house? Do you think we’re fools?”

“Not at all, general sir.”

“Well,” said Queipo de Llano, “perhaps it’s not such a bad idea having him shot. If he’s spying on us or if he’s here for some other reason, our names will come out when he gives his report.”

Frowning, Mola thought this over, stroking his chin.

“Will you do that, Captain?”

“No, General sir. I only have to report on the Englishman’s movements.”

“So who is this blasted Englishman?” asked Franco. “A spy?”

“No, general sir, he’s a professor or something of the sort.”

For their own reasons, the duke and Paquita, who were both watching this interrogation, abstained from corroborating what the captain was affirming. From his hiding place, Anthony watched the development of this farce that he had set in motion and in which everyone but him was playing a role. Even though having Paquita so close to him clouded his judgment, he realized that for the moment at least it would be impossible to talk to her on his own, and that it was absolutely necessary for him to get away from the mansion before he was discovered or before Captain Coscolluela succeeded in convincing the generals he really did exist.

If he managed to get around the group under cover of the hedge, perhaps he could take advantage of the confusion to slip behind the summer house, climb the steps and dash in through the back door, which had been left open. Once inside, with a bit of luck, he could find the door to the basement where the painting was kept, hide there and wait for nightfall. Then he could return to the garden, climb back over the wall and escape.

It was a hare-brained plan, but the first part turned out to be easier and more successful than he could have hoped: everyone in the garden was staring at Captain Coscolluela, who, although Anthony had to pass his line of vision for a short stretch, only had eyes for his former commander, who at that precise moment was haranguing him fervently.

“Listen to me, Captain! Whatever administrative post you may hold, you are still an officer. An officer of the Spanish Army! Do you understand me? Yes? Well then, you will know who to obey and who not to obey. Not merely because of the authority vested in our rank, but because an order that goes against our interests is an unworthy order, one that an officer in our glorious Army should not carry out. Spain is in danger, Captain! International Communism is only waiting for an order from Moscow to launch the revolution and annihilate Spain! Captain Coscolluela! A Spanish officer owes his loyalty to Spain and Spain alone, and we three here represent Spain.”

“Beware of imitations!” added Queipo de Llano, in a slightly mocking tone that mortified the speaker. “And don’t forget that any wall can be used by a firing squad.”

As this ominous threat rang through the air, Anthony reached the door, slid through the gap and found himself in a square lobby with a corridor leading further into the house.