A good map was like a safety blanket — with that, a compass and visibility, getting lost for a good map-reader was impossible and Cal had always prided himself on his ability in that area. No map was a prelude to a fog and he had just assumed Laporta would have what was required. He was about to ask if the Spaniard had a compass but, certain he would reply in the negative, he just left it. More worrying was Laporta’s next remark, that with them all being in trucks, and if they set off at first light, they might get to Lerida before nightfall.
‘Do you intend to just drive on without a reconnaissance?’ Cal asked, ‘through a forest?’
‘Why would I not?’
Cal looked around him, aware that many of Laporta’s lieutenants were once more within earshot. The absurdity of what he then asked did not escape him — they did not speak French — but it was the man’s face he was worried about and his inability to keep hidden his pride when challenged. He waved a hand towards the entrance to the church and the darkened interior.
‘Can I talk to you in private?’
‘This is not?’
‘Not for what I want to say.’
Laporta did not look at Manfred Decker, but he did appear cautious if not downright suspicious. ‘Without our friend?’
Cal nodded, then sauntered off, leaving Laporta to decide how to follow him without causing Drecker offence. The communist, having finished one cigarette — it was the long Russian variety with a tube — immediately lit another.
CHAPTER TEN
‘I have decided to take my athletes back to Barcelona.’ Seeing the Spaniard stiffen, he carried on before he could interrupt, struggling to keep any hint of anger out of his voice.
‘And I will tell you why; it is because I fear they will die to no purpose under your leadership. You intend to advance without knowing what is ahead — and I say you cannot just barge on as if there is no force opposing you and, even worse, you have no idea where they are.’
‘The Falangists do not frighten me and they are cowards.’
‘They are eighty strong and stiffened by Civil Guards.’
‘We are over five hundred, six now that Drecker has joined us.’
‘Advancing along a single-track road.’
‘One they have no idea we will take,’ Laporta snapped. ‘They will expect us to continue on the main road to Lerida.’
That was true, but to Cal it did not obviate the need to reconnoitre any road before they passed through.
‘If I were your enemy, I would be making preparations whichever route you took, and you would find, halfway through on either road, enough trees blocking it to make forward movement impossible.’
‘We have an armour-plated van.’
‘I have seen proper tanks destroyed by men with grenades.’
‘They would die trying.’
‘Perhaps, like you, they are prepared for that.’
‘Then we will fight and kill them.’
‘They may kill you.’
‘So, my men will avenge me.’
‘Will they? Other trees would then be felled behind them to block any retreat, and the enemy have a machine gun.’
‘They cannot kill us all.’
‘No, but they can kill many and then just disappear, leaving you to clear the road. Somewhere up ahead of that I would have already picked the next place to make you pay in blood for your progress.’
‘This is no more than a dream.’
‘Look, my friend, you are a good leader of your men, they respect you, but this is my profession. I don’t say there is an ambush waiting for us, only there might be and the proper course of action is to find out. Let us advance like soldiers and not a rabble.’
The silence was as long as the stare that accompanied it, before the Spaniard spoke. ‘I think we should rejoin Drecker or he will think we are plotting against him.’
‘Why would he think that?’
Laporta laughed out loud, albeit low and hoarse. ‘My friend, he is a communist. They are convinced everyone is plotting against them.’
‘And the road ahead?’ The nod was slow, but positive, so Cal asked, ‘Sentries?’
That killed off any humour and Laporta once more looked grim.
‘Look, if your men are going to behave like soldiers, that is the best place to start.’
The answer did not come immediately; it was the same as sitting on that wall outside the Ritz Hotel. The anarchist suspected he was out of his depth and in need of advice, but he was too proud to ask, yet hanging in the air was Cal’s threat to take himself and his men away.
‘Tonight, they will be my men,’ Laporta said, finally and with confidence.
Later on, when the time came to execute such a promise, it turned out to be a lot less simple, only solved after a noisy discussion, which seemed again to involve every one of the Barcelona anarchists who had an opinion and the conviction of their right to air it. Cal stayed well out of it, but he did observe that Laporta finally began to lay down the law, in essence to begin to act like a proper commander and not the chairman of some revolutionary committee.
Not that his orders were accepted with grace; it was a sullen bunch of anarchists who went out into the gathering gloom, while their leader continued to argue with his senior underlings as to whose job it was to ensure both that the necessary changes were made and who should be responsible.
Vince summed it up in one well-worn phrase. ‘Fred Karno’s Circus, guv.’
‘It’s a new tactic, Vince, you make so much noise arguing the toss you frighten away your enemy.’
* * *
Another salient fact was the way the atmosphere was noticeably changed by the arrival of the chain-smoking Drecker and his men; they kept themselves separate in a way that did not apply to the British contingent, made up of youngsters who had a sunny disposition on life, took the ribbing they had received earlier in good humour and generally showed their Spanish compatriots a comradely attitude.
The communists were not given to smiling at anyone, not even each other, seeming like a particularly committed set of monks in their sense of purpose. They had appropriated one corner of the square and they stayed there, being subjected, after eating, to what looked like lectures that had to be about politics, given by their squad leaders, and Cal, seeing Laporta was still with Drecker, wandered over to listen, though it was more the tone than the words, given he could not understand them; he could tell by the gestures it was all about purpose.
So intent were they that no attention was paid to him, which allowed him to look over their stacked equipment. With the eye of a professional he did not have to get too close to their rifles to recognise them as Mosin-Nagants, the standard rifle of the Russians since czarist times; bolt action and magazine fed, they were a pretty useful weapon.
Idling on, he walked behind their trucks, and with the rear flaps down he could see they had ample ammunition and what he thought were boxes of grenades, all with Cyrillic script lettering to denote their Soviet provenance. It was not too surprising that communists looked to Russia for their weaponry, but it was just another indication of the state of the nation; how easy it had been over the years for such a group as the PCE to smuggle in their own armoury.
Back out in the open, Cal, in reacting to a shout, was dragged into having dinner with Drecker and Laporta — he half suspected the Spaniard could not abide that he should eat with the German alone. That was a sore trial; if the anarchist was given to an excess of pride in the company of his lieutenants, he was positively barbed by the new arrival. Not that he was alone in that. Both were eager to air their differences in a dialectical debate on competing principles, and the German bugger smoked incessantly, holding his cigarette in that affected manner.