Tempted to mention the fact, Cal kept silent; from what he knew of the British officer class, naval or otherwise, sympathy for Republican ideals was not a common thread. They would only act if instructed to do so and, quite inadvertently, he was back in Simpson’s, looking into the faces of the kind of folk who constituted what really passed for public opinion in good old Blighty — if they had no sympathy for the dispossessed in their own country, it was highly likely they would have even less for foreign workers.
‘How soon will this end?’ the Spaniard asked, waving a lazy hand at the besieged hotel, as a sudden burst of fire chopped bits of stone from the frontage.
‘It will end as soon as whoever is leading the defence realises they cannot win. It’s a choice, really: die in the hotel, or come out and hope the treatment you receive is better than that being meted out by your confreres.’
Cal waited, not with much in the way of hope, to see if Laporta would condemn some of the excesses being reported from around the city, albeit mostly by rumour; little mercy was being shown to those who failed to quickly surrender, and not much to those who did. A tale was circulating that some priests had been shot, accused by a party of workers of firing at them from their steeples, and in many places it seemed summary executions were taking place as old scores were settled with ruthless employers or outright class and political enemies.
Such acts were troubling but not unexpected; revolutions were always bloody affairs and luck played as much a part in survival as any other factor. Able to intervene, Cal Jardine would have stopped such activities, yet he knew that even if the desire to do so was strong, leaders like Laporta risked a bullet themselves if they interfered with passions let loose after decades of resentment. Turning a blind eye was often necessary, regardless of personal feelings.
That he, himself, had a streak of callousness Jardine did not doubt; how could it be otherwise after the experiences he had endured in the last six months of the Great War? When you have seen your friends die, led men in a battle knowing many will not survive, witnessed mass slaughter and inflicted death on enemies yourself, life loses some of its value. When you have, in cold blood, shot your wife’s lover in the marital bed you shared, it is hypocrisy to expect morality in conflict from others.
‘I would just bring up the Schneider cannon and blast them to hell,’ Laporta said, breaking too long a silence.
‘I wouldn’t. My luggage is in there.’
‘Why did you come to Spain, monsieur, at such a time?’
Implicit in the question was the intimation that he had some prior knowledge of the coup, which was true, not that he was about to say so. ‘The People’s Olympiad.’
‘You are not a socialist.’
‘I am not anything. I was in London, I was asked to do something as a favour and I agreed.’
‘London I do not know, Paris yes, but I think they must be the same, full of rich fascists and oppressed workers.’
‘You lived there?’
‘When I fled Spain, yes.’
‘I won’t ask why you had to get out.’
‘I have spent my life fighting the oppressors,’ Laporta responded, though not with any hint of fire. ‘Even those in France.’
The man was weary, leading Cal to wonder if he had managed even a short nap, something the low wall on which he was sitting had provided during a lull in the fighting. As if in answer to the question not posed, Laporta gave a huge yawn.
‘And at times it seems I wonder if I will ever reach my goal.’
Tempted to enquire about that, Cal hesitated again; the last thing he could face was a lecture on the ambitions of anarchism. Instead he asked Laporta about how he came to be where he was, a leader obviously, and a man deferred to as a fighter of long experience. It was the tale of a poor upbringing for a bright boy, and the struggle to make his way in a world pitted against his class, of fights for his elders and parents with miserly employers who did not hesitate to hire assassins to shoot those who dared to lead strikes demanding better pay and conditions.
The bitter boy had grown into a man determined to effect change, and if those he fought used murder as a weapon, then so must he. He and his colleagues had formed a tight cell dedicated to assassination, even at one time trying to kill King Alfonso. Naturally, those in power had struck back hard and forced flight.
Laporta had fought just as hard in France for those things in which he believed. There was a strong Spanish community in Paris, as well as left-leaning thinkers from all over Europe, many of them exiles rather than living there from choice, and if Spain was a troubled country politically, so was France, with its right-wing madmen, members of organisations like the Croix de Feu and Action Francaise.
In his time with Florencia, the limited knowledge he had of the Iberian Peninsula had been fleshed out, albeit from her point of view, and even allowing for her bias it was a tale of terrible poverty, haughty aristocrats unwilling to surrender an ounce of their prerogatives, intransigent land and factory owners and particularly pernicious mine managers, of a country mired in the trap of a post-imperial legacy and centuries of an obscurantist Catholic religion, which made the British Isles, for all its manifest faults and problems, sound like a haven of peace and harmony.
‘But I have not come to talk of such things, monsieur.’
‘I didn’t think you had.’
There was a very lengthy pause before Laporta continued; it was as if he was looking for certain words and those that emerged seemed to Cal to be somehow amiss. ‘Once we have secured the city, which will be soon, we must seek to aid our comrades elsewhere.’
‘Which ones?’
‘Saragossa first — it is under threat; in fact, it might have already fallen to the generals.’ There was reflected light enough for Laporta to see that the name, even if he knew it to be a large city, did not register in any other way. ‘It is the capital of Aragon and an anarchist stronghold, a place we cannot allow to remain in the hands of the generals and their lackeys, who will shoot anyone who opposes them. The CNT leadership are forming a flying column to bring relief to the city.’
Another pause accompanied by a sigh. ‘Florencia has told me things about you, as you already know.’ Which I now regret telling her, Cal thought. ‘I must go to what I hope will be a final conference-’
‘Another one?’ Cal interrupted, which brought a rare smile to the lips of a man not much given to such expressions.
‘A necessary curse, monsieur; everyone must have their say, even in the highest councils of Catalonia. I have come from the first and I must return soon for a second.’
The conferences were being held at the Generalitat, the seat of the regional government. It seemed all the time Callum Jardine had spent snoozing and as a spectator, Laporta had spent arguing about what course to take next to defeat the insurgency, without a final decision being made. As related, it did not sound like fun, but was Laporta seeking advice or maybe just a disinterested sounding board?
‘You asked me a question before, and I think you will know my opinion of your conferences by what I said then.’
‘We have agreed not to send thousands of men into Aragon without the leadership of an appointed commander; in this case the committee has put forward Colonel Villabova, who has stayed loyal to the Republic.’
‘That is good, surely?’
‘Is it? Villabova is sure he is another Cortez, but he is an arrogant fool who has no idea of how useless he is, and neither do those proposing him.’
‘He will be appointed by vote?’ Laporta nodded. ‘Not yours, then?’
The response was spat out. ‘No!’
Why was Laporta telling him this? Indeed, with so much going on, why had he sought him out? Was he looking for help? If he was, the man was too proud to say the words and Cal would have to think about that. Any decision would have much to do with what Vince and his boys intended and, as well as those committed to the fight, the majority of the People’s Olympians had to be accounted for. Most would want to get out of the country, and he had as much responsibility for that as anything else, given it would be a proper use of what remained of the funds entrusted to him.