“Damn,” said Florry. “Oh, balls. Perhaps we could somehow bluff our way to—”
“Won’t work. Perhaps it might with the silly amateur Falangists, but the truth is we’ll be up against German professionals. I’ve seen them. I spent the summer of 1933 in Germany and watched all the Hitler stuff going on. I must say, those lads won’t be easy to fool.”
“Then we’ll—”
“Robert, listen to Brilliant Julian. Englishmen would need papers in order to approach the bridge, and upon that premise was this mission planned. But Germans? German officers? Why, they could get close enough to piss upon the thing.”
“But we are not Germans.”
“Oh, no? Stinky, I speak it like a native and I look it a bit, too, with my blond locks and these terribly blue eyes. You’d do for a Bavarian, a lower, coarser sort of brute.”
“I speak it terribly.”
“But you do understand it?”
“Yes. I read it best of all. And papers. We’d need papers and uniforms. How on earth could we change the whole thing in mid-course—”
“Robert, listen. It’s almost one. In half an hour I’m due to meet a chap in a Turkish bath nearby for a bit of sport. It’s that nice young Oberleutnant that I chatted up in the park. We can tell each other, you know. I rather think we could persuade him to lend us something to wear.”
Florry looked at Julian.
“What choice have we?” he asked.
“That’s the best part. None at all.”
Was he a Nazi—or just a big stupid young army officer? Florry tried to convince himself of the former. He’d beaten Jews and tortured the innocent, burned books, worn jackboots, carried torches, the whole ugly theater of the thing. It was difficult, however, to maintain this pretense in the face of his actual flesh, which was on the ample side, the freckles in his great white behind, his almost feminine body, soft and shapeless. Quite a difference once the uniform came off: something about a naked man so defenseless that it almost defies action.
He could hear them talking softly; it was infernally hot in here, the steam and everything, even though he wasn’t quite in the steam room proper, but just outside, having come in after the officer. He glanced at his watch. He was dreadfully tired and yet tomorrow rushed upon them swiftly.
“Yes,” Julian was saying, in German, “I have been to Dresden often. The china is so magnificent, the old town with its gingerbread architecture so ordered. Of course this was before the Party era. Perhaps it’s all changed now, all modern and full of factories.”
The two men, swaddled in towels, sat in the steam room.
“No, Karl,” said the officer. “No, it remains essentially a storybook city. One can have the most fabulous dreams in a place like that. It’s a lovely place. My mother and I were very happy there.”
“Yes. It’s good to know some things haven’t changed.”
“It’s so lovely to have found one in whom I can confide,” said the young officer. “You have such lovely eyes. They are so pale and lovely.”
“Thank you,” said Julian. “It’s odd how one yearns for human contact and touch. For gentleness and sympathy.”
“Yes, yes,” said the officer. “Something deeper than comradeship.”
Florry swallowed hard, pulled out Julian’s automatic, and prepared to play out the final lunatic act.
He burst into the steam and began waving the gun about wildly, shouting, “Attention! Attention! You are under arrest. Gestapo. Do not move.”
He pointed the pistol at the young man’s head.
“It’s Dachau for you, liebchen, you homosexual disgrace!” shouted Julian, leaping up, gathering the towel about his slippery body. “That’ll teach you what the German Reich expects of its young men.”
The officer began to cry. He offered no resistance, as if he knew the inevitable had at last arrived. He had gone ashen with shame and terror. He began to tremble absurdly. They brought him out of the steam room and into the locker room. Julian, pulling on his suit, began to assail him for moral turpitude.
“You swine. The army sends you out here to train these people in the arts of war, to gain valuable experience for yourself, and to show the world the finest of German manhood. Yet you spend your time trying to bugger everything that moves. The KZs are too good for you.”
“Please,” the boy begged. “Sir. You must give me an alternative. I am so weak, but I will not fail. Your pistol and I will end it all if only you tell my parents that I died honorably in battle.”
“There is no honor for you, swine.”
The boy crawled to the toilet and became sick. Florry thought that Julian was rather overdoing it. The naked boy wiped the vomit from his face with a towel. The rancid odor of sweat and farts hung everywhere in the steam. The fat boy was such a nauseating sight that Florry began to feel ill at his plight. Julian continued to harangue him with terrifying force, as if it were his own hated flaws against which he was lashing.
“You are not fit,” Julian was screaming, “to wear this uniform.” He had gathered it up.
“Bitte, Herr Offizier,” sobbed the boy. “Please. Please don’t do this to me.”
“You will be taken naked, as you deserve, to the civil guardhouse, and there detained among thieves and pimps and Communists until suitable arrangements can be made. Is this understood?”
“Y-yes, Herr Offizier.”
Julian turned to Florry.
“Have you called headquarters for a car?”
“Yes, Herr Sturmbannführer,” said Florry. “It’s on the way. But Herr Oberleutnant Von Manheim wishes to talk with you.”
“That bloody fool,” cursed Julian. “I trust, Herr Oberleutnant, that without your clothes you can be trusted to remain here.”
The boy only wept into his towel.
“Ah!” snorted Julian in disgust. He stepped out and Florry followed as they raced out through the foyer of the bathhouse, stopping only to gather the boy’s uniform and boots, and then headed down the cold street in the moonlight.
30
THE ENGLISH DYNAMITERS
THE CAR WAS WHERE PORTELA HAD SAID IT WOULD BE, IN a garage, on Ohte, near the Plaza de Toros. Helpfully, it was a Mercedes-Benz, black and spotless, all topped up with petrol.
“Ah, bravo,” crooned Julian, seeing it there, gleaming in the dark. “Splendid. By the way, old man, do you drive?”
“Good God, don’t you?”
“Poorly. Dangerously. I shall smash us up, I’m sure. You must drive. You were in the coppers. Surely they taught you such things.”
“I suppose I drove once. I haven’t driven in years. You’re rich, you’re supposed to have a car.”
“I do have a car. I just never had to drive it. There was a man who drove it. I wish he were here now.”
“I wish he were, too,” said Florry, slipping in behind the wheel. He fiddled with the choke, turned the key, and nursed it into life.
Julian opened the garage doors behind them and Florry edged out into the wet gray street. Dawn was beginning to break. Florry looked at his watch. It was nearly five by now, and he was going on his second day without sleep and the bridge was nearly one hundred kilometers away, and where now was Julian?
Florry looked back. What the devil was he doing? The seconds ticked by as if they weren’t desperately precious until—
“Achtung!”
The officer who emerged from the garage was imperially thin and blindingly correct in the khaki tunic and trousers of the Condor Legion Tank Corps. He wore a black beret, black boots, and black belt. The Panzer skull-and-crossbones gleamed over the swastika on the front of the beret. He had a riding crop and two utterly pale blue eyes, killer’s eyes. Odd that such a terrifying apparition was a queer poet in love with sailor boys.
“Oh, I wish Morty Greenburg could see me now. What a hoot he’d have!” he said.
“Where did you get the crop?”
“Oh, in there. It’s one of the braces to an uncomfortable chair. Don??
?t suppose the owners will miss it, do you?”
Julian climbed in back.
“Pip, pip, fellow,” he commanded with his crop on the seat top.
Florry drove through early-morning Pamplona, crossed the river, and headed toward the flat Argonese plain that led to the Pyrenees. The road climbed, but the trim little Mercedes chugged along. Ahead, the mountains were stony and gray, still capped in winter snow.
“Now here’s the plan. I am Herr Leutnant Von Paupel, newly appointed to the front, a special engineering officer. Expert on bridges. You are Herr—oh, pick a name, old boy.”
“Brown.”
“A German name, Stink. Braun. Herr Braun, of the embassy staff. You’ve escorted me out from Pamplona at the general’s instructions.”
“What general?”
“Just say, ‘the general.’ It will drive Jerry crackers. He’s scared to death of generals. If anybody looks at you hard, merely say ‘Sieg heil,’ and flip up your paw. And believe it. That’s the trick. You must believe it.”
Florry nodded, fascinated. Of course that was the core of Julian: the belief In himself, primarily, and in the primacy of his needs. Julian, the homosexual. Florry pondered it in silence.
If that is what he is, what am I, he wondered.
For I love him, too.
In the mountains, the German military traffic picked up and it became abundantly clear they were entering a war zone. Moorish sentries—tall, brown, grave men with sour looks and long Mausers slung over their capes—stood watch at crossroads; trucks full of Moors made a slower way along the road, and Florry, pushing ahead smartly, passed them. When the men saw Julian sitting in sober Nazi regalia alone in the back of the Mercedes, they saluted; he responded blankly, touching the riding crop to his hat.
As they climbed into the Pyrenees, it seemed to get colder. The air was thin and pure. Florry opened the vent and sucked in the air as he kept turning to look at his watch at the fleeting seconds. The mountains were white and massive now, chalky, craggy, rugged peaks and beneath them spread the Argonese plain, a patchwork of buff and slate in the bright sun.
They sped along the Embasle de Yesa, a high, green lake that ultimately gave way to the Rio Aragon, along whose stony banks they passed for some time. The jagged mountains were clearer and bolder than they had ever been from the lowland trenches about Huesca.
I lived in a hole in the mud for five months with this man who now tells me he has sex with boys. I never guessed it. Julian was another illusion, it turned out, a self-created one. Or did I, at some odd level, really, truly know, even if I lie to myself about it now?
Finally, they came to the bridge over the Aragon at the Puenta la Reina de Jaca. It was a fine old girdered thing, as sturdy as a Victorian building, and just beyond it, where the road curled almost due south down through a final splurge of mountains toward Huesca still some fifty kilometers off, the Germans had established a car park—except that it was a Panzer park, and the things were spluttering into life, ready for the job ahead. These were the PzKpfw IIs, small gray tanks, no taller than a man, with double machine guns mounted in their tiny turrets.
“Of course,” said Julian, “the Russian T-26 would prang these tinpots like the toys they are. But of course at Huesca there are no T-26s. The Russians have seen to it.”
Farther down, men were limbering up some wicked artillery pieces to lorries. The guns, lean and long-barreled, rode on pneumatic tires and crouched behind shields an inch thick.
Julian carried on like the best ROTC candidate in the world, pleased to be good at this, too.
“And that, of course, is the famous eighty-eight-millimeter gun. Supposedly the most efficient long weapon in the world. Extraordinary velocity and penetration. They can use it with a fused shell against planes, with an armor-piercing shell to pot tanks, with canister to make fish and chips out of infantry, or just good old high explosive to smash buildings. God, Stink, I admire the Germans. They really do do things, don’t they? Bloody pity they do the wrong things. Oh, hullo, what’s this. Sieg heil, Herr Major.” He carelessly threw a salute at a man by the side of the road.
“Let’s go, old man,” he commanded.
But Florry, driving slowly by, watching the force assemble itself, wondered in melancholy at the odd link between him and his chum. He thought of Sylvia, perfectly innocent of it all. He wished she were there. What a laugh they would have once had over something quite this silly! He gunned the car past the vehicles, fled by a sign that said HUESCA 44 KM, and pushed ahead. The road was relatively clear for a time, but after a bit they came to a small garrison town called Baiolo, and pulled into it, under the watchful eyes of several Moorish sentries.
“God, it looks like Berlin,” said Julian.
Indeed it did; the square was jammed with gray Jerry vehicles, not only the tanks but armored trucks with machine guns and tank tracks on them. German specialists stood about barking orders stoutly to their assistants who translated into Arabic. For of the vast population of the village, nearly three-quarters were Moorish infantry, now loading aboard the trucks with the grave look of men headed into battle.
“These would be the shock troops headed for Huesca,” Julian said.
“We’d best get going,” said Florry. “It’s drawing near. The bridge must be just ahead.”
“You. You there!” a voice screamed at them with great authority and Florry could see an ominous figure in black leather raincoat and helmet approach with a forceful stride.
The man, some sort of senior officer, leaned into their car and said to Florry, “Who the devil are you?”
“Herr Colonel, I’m sorry to be a nuisance,” said Julian from the back. “Von Paupel, Panzer Engineers. Poor Braun here of the embassy staff to help me was rather hurriedly pressed into service.”
“Jawohl,” barked Florry earnestly.
“I’ve got to get to that damned bridge,” said Julian nonchalantly. “They’re worried that the thing might last only a few hours under beating from the tanks. I must say, I had no idea Panzer Operations had such a show planned up here.”
Florry could feel the colonel’s breath warm upon him.
“You damned engineers, if you can’t build a bridge that’ll hold up my tanks, I’ll see you in the guardhouse.”
“Of course, Herr Colonel. But we want to get it down pat. When we move across the Russian plains, we won’t have time for mistakes. You bring your Panzers and I’ll build a bridge to hold them.”
“In future, Herr Leutnant, the Panzers will get bigger,” said the colonel.
“And so will the bridges, Herr Colonel,” said Julian tartly.
“Go on then. Fix that bridge. I’m planning to liberate Huesca by suppertime.”
“Yessir.”
“And keep your damned eyes open, Von Paupel. We’ve received word saboteurs are about, English dynamiters. It seems the reds have fifth columnists also.”
“Jawohl, Herr Colonel. Sieg h—”
“Please, leave that paperhanger’s name out of it. This is a war, not some Bohemian’s political fruitcake. Now, get going.”
He waved them on brusquely, and Florry pressed the gas, the car shooting with a squeal through the square, narrowly missing a queue of Moors filing into a huge iron boat of a vehicle. He slipped into another lane and began to zip along. He took the Mercedes-Benz south. The country was scruffy and severe. Off on the left an immense mountain, looking like an ice-cream cup, bulked up, gleaming with impossible whiteness in the sun.
“Hurry,” said Julian, looking at his watch. “It’s after eleven.”
“Somebody betrayed us,” said Florry.
“Oh, Robert, rubbish. Keep driving.”
“They knew. ‘English dynamiters.’ If we’d have come on with Harry Uckley’s credentials, we’d be dead. Your Russian chum. Did you tell him?”
“He’d never do such a thing.”
“You’d be surprised what he’s capable of.”
“Robert, he’d never do such a th
ing. I won’t talk of it. Some lout at Party headquarters talked too loud in a Barcelona café—”
“It was your bloody Russian chum who—”
“HE WOULDN’T!” Julian screamed. Florry was stunned at the passion. “He’s above that, don’t you see? He’s a real artist, not a poseur like me. I don’t want to hear another bloody word.”
They drove on in silence. Florry could hear Julian breathing heavily in the back seat.
“He’s different, don’t you see?” said Julian. “All this is squalid and base. Politics, compromise, bootlicking: it’s all dung. Brodsky wouldn’t—”
“When I knew him he was a bloody German cabin boy. With a plate in his head. Good Christ, Julian, the man can—”
“Stop it. I won’t hear another WORD! Not another word, unless you want to turn back now, chum.”
Florry said nothing.
In time the land changed, yielding its arid, high stoniness to pine forest, which spread across rolling ridges and gulches and crests like some kind of carpet.
“What time is it?” Julian asked at last.
“It’s half past eleven,” he said.
“Oh, bloody hell, we shan’t make it.”
But they came suddenly to a slope, and a half mile down the tarmac, flanked by stately green pines and high, shrouded peaks on either side, they saw it: the bridge.
31
THE SUPPRESSION
At 0600 ON THE MORNING OF JUNE 16, TWO ARMORED cars equipped with water-cooled Maxim guns in their turrets pulled up the Ramblas and halted outside the Hotel Falcon. The range between the gun muzzles and the hotel’s ornate façade was less than thirty meters. Two more armored cars went to the hotel’s rear. Down the street lorries unloaded their troops of Asaltos, and German and Russian NCO’s formed them into action teams.
At 0605 hours, the machine guns opened fire. Three of the four guns fired approximately three thousand rounds into the first two floors of the old hotel; the fourth gun jammed halfway through its second belt, perhaps the only Russian setback of the day. Still, the firepower was adequate. Lead and shrapnel tore through the hotel, shattering most of the glassware in the Café Moka, ripping up tiles and woodwork and plaster in the hotel meeting rooms and offices, cutting through the chandeliers and the windows. In seconds the three guns transformed the lower floors of the building into a shambles of wreckage and smoky confusion.