‘But how?’ Cal asked. ‘Drouhin was not encouraging.’
‘Many times in my life I have been told that this and that was impossible, only to find a way, and I think now there must be a route to solving this.’ The old man coughed again, gripping even tighter Cal’s hand. ‘You have no idea how it cheers me you have come, Callum — you do not mind me calling you that?’
‘I was not aware you knew it to be my name.’
The frail chest heaved as he laughed. ‘Now you are being disingenuous, for the only other possibility is that you are foolish and I know that not to be true. So, you must leave this with me. You have given me a project and to find a solution will fill my last days on this earth.’
‘Sir,’ Cal protested, only to be tutted into silence.
‘You will go back to Barcelona?’
‘I will, to tell them what is possible, or in this case, unlikely to be so.’
‘Then it is also possible you will not see me again, and before you protest once more, death comes to us all, and if you mourn there are many who will not. They will hope that Satan, having got me into his clutches, is making me pay for the crimes and sins I am accused of.’ Another hacking laugh followed as it took several seconds for him to get his breath. ‘Not a few of which I am proud to have committed.’
For all he had protested, Cal had seen too much death in his time to be in any other mind than that the old man was right; it could not be long, even if he had, which he would, the best medical care going.
‘You know, Callum, I will not apologise if I do meet my maker. I will say to him, as I have often said to my accusers, it takes two to make a bargain. If you wish to call it a sin to sell weapons of death, then is it not also a sin to buy them and use them, which I never did?’
‘You may find, when you get to the Pearly Gates, he’s looking for some Maxim guns to keep his angels in line.’
A bony finger went up. ‘A good point, but I shall make him pay a high price if he does.’
The head went back onto the pillows, he was tiring, and Cal made the noises to leave, but the old man was not finished.
‘I am not sorry to be leaving now, for it is going to be bad, the future, Callum, very bad. In my lifetime the ways we have found to kill our fellow humans have increased so much, until we had slaughter on an industrial scale in the Great War. But I fear it will be worse than even that. There is an evil abroad I do not think was on this earth when I first walked upon it.’ The last grip was the hardest. ‘Stalin and Hitler are a different breed of monster.’
‘Mussolini?’
‘Is a fat fool running a bankrupt nation of soldiers who do not want to fight, and who can blame them? For all his boasting he is as nothing — but the others, take care, my young friend, not to be consumed by them and their schemes. Now, ask Drouhin to come and see me.’
* * *
The arrangement was that whatever was found out would be delivered to the Ritz Hotel in Barcelona with the coded name, Mr Maxim. Cal did not enquire as to how it would be sent; he trusted both the old man and his assistant to secure the secrecy of the communication. As Drouhin imparted this to him he could tell by his tone that he was wondering if the named address would still be in Republican hands. Cal did not bother to suggest anything different — if it was not, then what was delivered would be redundant.
After a night alone in Monte Carlo, where he ate well and visited the casino, he was glad of two things. First, that he did not lose much at baccarat; second, that he managed to avoid the looks of the women who sought to catch his eye, not one of whom was younger than fifty years and a good many of whom, even under pancake make-up, were a good deal older. Anyway, there were enough glossily attired and barbered young men around to drool over them and their money.
The next morning, the mere delivery of his newspaper was enough to galvanise him; he was done here in any case but there would be no leisurely return to Barcelona. The screaming headline in Le Temps told the whole of France that one of the Spanish Nationalist columns had reached and actually breached the outskirts of the capital. Franco was about to launch an all-out assault on Madrid.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
There was no time to wait for a smuggler’s boat — the arrangement had been a loose one and might mean waiting several days or even a week. Cal sent a cable to Florencia at CNT headquarters, bought a car in Marseilles and made straight for the main eastern crossing of the Franco-Spanish border at Le Perthus, where he found a town in some ways like those Wild West frontier settlements so beloved of American film-makers, the only thing missing being ten-gallon hats and shoot-outs.
Thanks to the war, the place was booming, bursting at the seams with those seeking to profit from Spain’s misery, the road to the border post lined with endless overstocked shops, and where there was a gap traders had set up stalls overcharging for everything, especially gasoline. Somewhere among them he knew there would be those tasked to get fighters over the border, if necessary by taking them through the surrounding high Pyrenees on foot.
He had less trouble than he suspected; international communists and Republican sympathisers did not, it seemed, arrive on four wheels, but on foot, though the car was searched to ensure it was not carrying contraband. Besides, he had a British passport and was assumed to be just one of those mad Englishmen so beloved of European caricaturists; if he wanted to go into a war zone and get himself killed, why should a French customs officer stop him?
What news he had garnered from the newspapers indicated that the battles to the west and south of Madrid were bloody and favoured the Nationalists, with the Republicans launching furious counter-attacks only to have them broken up by air and artillery attacks. The French press reported aerial battles as well as those on the ground, and high casualties on both sides.
This did raise the question of the wisdom of his actions — might it not be better to wait until he saw which way the battle went? But then there was Florencia — if the city was lost he would take her out of the country, regardless of any protests; if Madrid fell so would the Republic, and someone like her, taken by the Nationalists, would suffer more than just a summary execution.
When he got to Barcelona, it was to find a woman even more fired up than she had been when he departed, sure that Madrid would hold and even more determined that the political fight should be carried to the communists; there was even talk of the anarchists, pressed by their more pragmatic syndicalist allies, joining the National government on the grounds that they suffered from being outside a leadership in which the communists were exercising influence.
The first thing to do was get travel papers from the Catalan government and that took an age, given there was a long queue at the Generalitat of people needing the same thing. The time taken, nearly a whole day, had to be accepted — it was going to be too dangerous to travel anywhere in Spain without documentation; there were too many armed men out in the country just itching to shoot anyone they suspected of not being for the Republic.
The next morning Cal, dressed once more for fighting, was back on the road, Florencia by his side, speeding towards Madrid, where Andreu Nin had gone to seek allies and to plead with the government for the funds Cal Jardine might need. Juan Luis Laporta had gone back to the Saragossa Front.
There was no doubt many were fleeing the city, already subjected to air attack, and it was not surprising to find that in the streaming refugee column there were poor people from the provinces to the west pushing carts or leading donkeys carrying everything they possessed, fighting for road space with those wealthy enough to afford motor transport, as well as armaments and truck convoys seeking to go in the opposite direction. Progress was slow and a night spent sleeping in the car was necessary.