Of course, by running his mouth he also set himself up for Party discipline. He'd faced Party discipline in the States. They told you to quit doing whatever you were doing that they didn't like. Either you did or you dropped out of the Party.
Party discipline in Spain was a different business. They told you to quit doing whatever you were doing that they didn't like. Either you did or they threw your sorry ass into a Spanish jail or a punishment company or they said to hell with it and shot you.
Chaim wasn't altogether surprised when a scared-looking runner summoned him to appear before a Party organizer and explain himself. He wasn't altogether thrilled, either, which was putting it mildly. But what choice did he have? He could try going over to the Nationalists, assuming they or the Republicans didn't shoot him while he was trying to desert. But that would have gagged a vulture. He certainly couldn't stomach it himself.
And so he reported to the organizer. She had her office in a beat-up building (the most common kind in embattled Madrid) that had housed government bureaucrats before the Spanish civil war got going. That she was a she he'd inferred from the nom de guerre the runner gave him: La Martellita, the Little Hammer (with feminine article and ending). That was a good name-Molotov meant son of a hammer, too.
Sure as the devil, she wasn't very big. He'd expected that. He hadn't expected her to be drop-dead gorgeous, but she was: blue-black hair, flashing dark eyes, cheekbones, a Spanish blade of a nose, and the most kissable mouth he'd ever seen. That she looked at him as if he were a donkey turd in the gutter somehow only made her more beautiful. He had no idea how come, but it did.
"Well, Comrade, why are you throwing around such bad ideology?" she snapped, her voice cold as the North Pole.
"I did it so I could meet you," Chaim answered. Not for the first time in his life, his mouth ran several lengths ahead of his brain. "People said you were very pretty, and they were right."
"If you think you can flatter me, you had better think again," La Martellita said, in tones not a tenth of a degree warmer than they were before. "You will only end up digging a deeper hole for yourself-maybe one deep enough to bury you in." She sounded as if she looked forward to shoveling dirt over him. Odds were she did.
"I have a question for you," Chaim said.
"Yes?" she asked ominously.
"What's your real name?"
"None of your business."
"That's a funny name," he said. Her nostrils flared, and not with pleasure. He sighed. "Okay. Um, bueno. I have another question for you."
"If you keep wasting my time, you'll regret it."
"I believe you," he said… regretfully. "Why is it such a sin to say the Fascists have contradictions of their own, and that we ought to do everything we can to take advantage of them?"
"Because you are only a soldier," she answered. "Higher-level policy is none of your business-none, do you hear me? For all you know, for all I know, for all anyone knows, we are trying to exploit those contradictions. But soldiers have no business proposing policy."
"I'm not just a soldier," he said. "I'm a propagandist, too, trying to bring Nationalist soldiers over to the Republic. If I can't talk politics with them, I can't do my job."
"Did you get your views approved before you presented them?" La Martellita asked.
"Uh-no," Chaim admitted. He was a Communist, a loyal Communist. But he was also an American. He was used to doing things on his own hook and worrying about consequences later. Well, here it was, later, and here were the consequences. If this stunner in shapeless denim coveralls-a crime, that!-wanted him shot, shot he damn well would be.
She looked through him. "And why not?"
"It didn't seem necessary," he answered feebly.
"That was very stupid," La Martellita said.
"I thought every man was free to be anything he wanted, even stupid, under the Republic." Chaim threw out the line like a chess player offering a poisoned pawn.
And she took it: "Every man may be stupid under the Republic, Comrade, but you abuse the privilege."
"Didn't Trotsky say something like that?" Chaim knew perfectly well Trotsky had. His voice was pure innocence all the same. If you accused somebody of quoting the Red Antichrist, you needed to sound innocent.
La Martellita's eyes flashed again, terribly. She looked as if she hated him. No doubt she did. But now he had a hold on her. Even if they were dragging him off to the nearest wall, he had a chance of getting her stood up against it right after him. She took out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and smoked in quick, furious puffs. She didn't offer it to him.
She stubbed hers out while it was only half done-a rare thing in Spain these days. When she spoke again, she came straight to the point: "What do you want from me?" She knew what she'd done. Oh, yes.
"A little understanding would be nice," Chaim said.
"What do you mean, 'understanding'? If you think I'll be your mattress or suck your stupid cock, I'd sooner cut my throat." She sure as hell did come straight to the point.
"No, no, no," Chaim said, thinking Yes, yes, yes! He went on, "I was talking about politics. I didn't mean any harm when I said what I said, any more than you did just now. I don't think I should get in trouble for it."
"Oh. Politics." The way La Martellita said the word, it sounded more obscene than cocksucking. She drummed her fingers on the rickety little table she used for a desk. "Can you try not to talk about your own so loudly when you're not reeducating the Nationalists?"
It was like getting sent out of the confessional with a penance of three Our Fathers and five Hail Marys. "I'll try," Chaim said. He didn't even have to promise to do it.
"All right. Get the fuck out of here." La Martellita wanted to pretend she'd never had anything to do with him.
"Tell me your name first."
He would sooner have faced Nationalist artillery than her glare. "Magdalena," she spat. "Now get the fuck out of here."
"See you again, I hope," Chaim said.
"That makes one of us," she said, and for once he quit while he was ahead and got out. PETE MCGILL STOOD SENTRY OUTSIDE the American consulate in Shanghai. Because he wore two stripes on his left sleeve, he commanded the two-man detachment out there. He could have done without the honor. Shanghai was a good bit south of Peking. You couldn't have proved it by him, not this freezing early December morning.
"Fuck, it's cold," he muttered.
"Bet your ass," Max Weinstein agreed. They both spoke with barely moving lips. No one more than a few feet away would have had any idea they were talking. They were there to look impressive, and they did that. Like convicts, they managed to go back and forth without letting the outside world notice.
There wasn't much outside world to notice. Shanghai wasn't used to this kind of godawful weather. Hardly anybody was on the streets. The people who had to go out bundled up in all the clothes they owned. A lot of them seemed to be wearing two or three people's worth, and to be freezing even so. Inside his thick wool coat and tunic and trousers, Pete felt himself slowly turning into a block of ice.
"Liable to be fires in the Chinese part of town," he said. That was something over ninety percent of Shanghai, but he didn't think of it that way. "They'll throw anything that burns onto the brazier."
"Sure they will. And they live in those crappy little houses that go up like billy-be-damned, too," Max answered. "They're the exploited ones."
Sighing out fog, Pete said, "Don't get all Red on me, man. I was just saying it was something we need to be on the lookout for."
"Yeah, yeah. I was saying why we needed to be on the lookout for it. Don't you think why counts?" Weinstein said.
"What I think is, a Commie Marine's as crazy as a fish with fur or a general with sense," Pete said. "You take orders from guys like me, not from Stalin."