Then there was no avoiding Hemingway, or at least his probing. Tyler Alverson had been taken to task for his subterfuge and had come out fighting, telling his colleague, Ernie, in no uncertain terms that he would have done just the same, while admonishing Cal to stay shtum; not that ‘Ernie’, when not writing articles about what he was witnessing, failed to press.
‘You know, Jardine, I work for one of the best-resourced news-gathering outfits in creation, which has a phenomenal library, and as for contacts, well, you can imagine. So if you have been a naughty boy, it is either in the collective memory or the files. You can save them some dollars by just telling me what I want to know.’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’
Hemingway then tried to get him drunk and, given he had hollow legs and a big swallow, it had been a challenge to stay sober, or, in truth, to stay quiet when not. For all that, as a companion he grew on Cal; he had a fund of scabrous tales, many of them in which he was the fool or victim, and he was very much a man’s man, who promised that they would, one fine day, go hunting game in Wyoming and fish marlin together off the Florida coast.
‘Any man that can drink like you, Cal, I call good company.’
Ernie had been an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in the Great War, had a medal for bravery for saving a man’s life when wounded himself and, since publishing his first pieces, had covered as many wars as Tyler Alverson; he was a hard man not to respect, even if, when it came to bullfighting, a sport he extolled, Cal was on the side of the animal.
It was strange to observe these journalists; each day they would go out and seek a story, into the midst of a desperate battle, then come back to their reasonably safe haven — the city was still being bombed — and act as though it was just a normal day’s work. Tyler and Ernie ribbed each other but it was clear there was mutual respect, and Cal took pleasure in both their company, while keeping a tight lid on his own history.
Hemingway had checked up on Manfred Drecker, now a member of the so-called Fifth Regiment, which, once the Civil Guard had been purged, was now responsible for security in the capital. Wholly communist, they were committed killers, and he also pointed out one thing Cal had not noticed: the correspondent of the Russian newspaper, Pravda, did not reside with the other journalists in the Florida Hotel — he was accommodated in the Soviet Embassy.
‘Making up stories.’
‘Lies more like.’
It was all very chummy, but then came the day of the file, produced and waved over a dry Martini by Ernest Hemingway, unusually having stayed in the hotel when everyone else had departed to the front.
‘Cost an arm and a leg in cables, Jardine, but I have got you nailed.’
‘Can I see?’ Cal asked, nodding to the folder lying on the mahogany bar, hoping it did not contain too much.
‘Hell no! If you do you’ll find out who’s spilling your beans. But I now know you are more than just an ex-soldier, so what are you up to?’
‘I can’t be up to much, Ernie, I have spent the past few days eating, drinking and nursing my woman.’
‘Hell, I wish I was nursing mine. How is she?’
Cal looked into his drink. ‘You know, Ernie, that’s the first time you’ve asked.’
‘Don’t like to pry.’
‘She’ll recover, people do.’
‘You?’
‘Never had the problem, too callous probably.’
The folder was lifted and went to Hemingway’s nose, as though he was sniffing the contents. ‘What’s it like shooting a guy in cold blood?’
‘It’s like shooting an animal, and it was not cold blood.’
‘Kinda rough finding a guy in your own bed and with your wife.’
That image was one he saw more often than most: the terrified face of Lizzie’s naked lover, her just as fearful, just as he put a bullet through his eye. He shook his head and lifted it as Ernie responded.
‘Had a dame once who threw me over. Maybe I should have shot the bastard she married but, unlike you, I would not have been acquitted.’
The fact that Cal was now looking into the mirror behind the bar, and the expression on his face, made Ernie turn round, to see Florencia, still pale and drawn but nothing like she had been, standing a few feet away. Had she heard what Hemingway said, because it was not something Cal had ever told her about?
‘Good news. Juan Luis is on the way from Saragossa and he is bringing with him the Barcelona militia.’
‘I hope you’re not planning to join them?’
She nodded towards Hemingway. ‘This, what he said, is it true, querido?’
There was no point in denying it, so he nodded, unsure of her reaction given she turned and left. ‘Thanks, Ernie.’
The reply showed that for a man not easily embarrassed it was still possible. ‘I didn’t shoot the poor guy, you did.’
* * *
Florencia neither immediately mentioned what she had overheard, nor allowed herself to be swayed when Cal found her changing into her fighting overalls. His assertion that she was unfit for combat was not met with her usual temper, but quietly rebuffed.
‘Querido, sometimes you must just do things. These are my people coming to Madrid, men and women I have grown up with, and they are coming to drive the Nationalist pigs into a sewer, which is too good for them.’
‘OK. But I will be with you at all times.’
‘In battle?’ she asked, with just a hint of her old coquettishness.
‘No.’
The hand on his cheek was cool. ‘That pleases me.’
‘One promise: that once Mola’s columns have been thrown back, you will come with me to Valencia. You know why and I will need your help.’
She smiled. ‘For the cause, querido, as much as to be with you.’
‘I can’t marry you, much as I would like to. My wife is a Catholic and won’t consider a divorce.’
For the first time since he had brought her back from the Casa de Campo she laughed. ‘I am an anarchist, I don’t believe in marriage. Tell me about what the American said.’
‘How long before Juan Luis gets here?’
She accepted that he did not want to say. ‘Not long, and I want to meet him on the Saragossa Road. Let me come into Madrid as a Catalan.’
If anything, Juan Luis Laporta, as well as his men, looked hardened by what they had been experiencing, leaner and fitter, not that their efforts had produced much in the way of an advance in Aragon; that had become a stalemate, thus, on paper, the reason for the shift to Madrid where they could be of more use.
It did not take long to establish the real reason — the communists were taking control and needed to be checked; three thousand Barcelona anarchists were just the people to do it, this extracted from their leader as Florencia went down the long line of trucks to say hello to many of her old comrades. It was plain he was now trusted.
‘You must be careful, Juan Luis,’ Cal said, having told him of what he had witnessed: not just that one execution but clear evidence of others, hard to miss with their bodies left in the street or hanging from lampposts with placards pinned on their chests detailing their supposed crimes. ‘And don’t think they won’t suspect your reasons for coming here. I don’t have to tell you they are suspicious of everyone.’
‘Task number one, my friend, is to eject the Nationalists, then we can deal with Stalin’s lackeys.’ He had lost none of his bravado, Laporta, evidenced by what followed. ‘And when we have cleansed Madrid, we can go back to Barcelona and shoot their Catalan cousins.’
‘There’s a couple of war correspondents I’d like you to meet. Americans.’
Laporta’s eyes narrowed. ‘To tell them what?’
‘About yourself and the aims of your movement.’
‘In America they execute anarchists.’
‘They’re not in America, they are here.’
‘To the front first, let us see the eyes of Franco’s pigs, then maybe I will talk with these Yanquis.’