Winter of the World (36 page)

He wondered what Lenny thought, but Lenny was sitting next to Teresa, talking to her in a low voice. She giggled at something he said, and Lloyd guessed that he must be making progress. It was a
good sign when you could make a girl laugh. Then she touched his arm, said a few words, and stood up. Lenny said: ‘Hurry back.’ She smiled over her shoulder.

Lucky Lenny, thought Lloyd, but he felt no envy. A passing romance held no appeal for him: he did not see the point. He was an all-or-nothing man, he supposed. The only girl he had ever really
wanted had been Daisy. She was now Boy Fitzherbert’s wife, and Lloyd still had not met the girl who might take her place in his heart. He would, one day, he felt sure; but, meanwhile, he was
not much attracted to temporary substitutes, even when they were as alluring as Teresa.

Someone said: ‘Here come the Russians.’ The speaker was Jasper Johnson, a black American electrician from Chicago. Lloyd looked up to see a dozen or so military advisors walking
through the village like conquerors. The Russians were recognizable by their leather jackets and buttoned holsters. ‘Strange thing, I didn’t see them while we were fighting,’
Jasper went on sarcastically. ‘I guess they must have been in a different part of the battlefield.’

Lloyd looked around, making sure that no political commissars were nearby to hear this subversive talk.

As the Russians passed through the graveyard of the ruined church, Lloyd spotted Ilya Dvorkin, the weaselly secret policeman he had clashed with a week ago. The Russian crossed paths with Teresa
and stopped to speak to her. Lloyd heard him say something in bad Spanish about dinner.

She replied, he spoke again, and she shook her head, evidently refusing. She turned to walk away, but he took hold of her arm, detaining her.

Lloyd saw Lenny sit upright, looking alertly at the tableau, the two figures framed by a stone archway that no longer led anywhere.

‘Oh, shit,’ said Lloyd.

Teresa tried again to move away, and Ilya seemed to tighten his grip.

Lenny moved to get up, but Lloyd put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him down. ‘Let me deal with this,’ he said.

Dave murmured a low warning. ‘Careful, mate – he’s in the NKVD. Best not to mess with those fucking bastards.’

Lloyd walked over to Teresa and Ilya.

The Russian saw him and said in Spanish: ‘Get lost.’

Lloyd said: ‘Hello, Teresa.’

She said: ‘I can handle this, don’t worry.’

Ilya looked more closely at Lloyd. ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You tried to prevent the arrest of a dangerous Trotsky-Fascist spy last week.’

Lloyd said: ‘And is this young lady also a dangerous Trotsky-Fascist spy? I thought I just heard you ask her to have dinner with you.’

Ilya’s sidekick Berezovsky appeared and stood aggressively close to Lloyd.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lloyd saw Dave draw the Luger from his belt.

This was getting out of control.

Lloyd said: ‘I came to tell you, Señorita, that Colonel Bobrov wants to see you in his headquarters immediately. Please follow me and I’ll take you to him.’ Bobrov was a
senior Russian military ‘advisor’. He had not invited Teresa, but it was a plausible story, and Ilya did not know it was a lie.

For a frozen moment Lloyd could not tell which way it was going to go. Then the bang of a nearby gunshot was heard, perhaps from the next street. It seemed to return the Russians to reality.
Teresa again moved away from Ilya, and this time he let her go.

Ilya pointed a finger aggressively at Lloyd’s face. ‘I’ll see you again,’ he said, and he made a dramatic exit, followed dog-like by Berezovsky.

Dave said: ‘Stupid prick.’

Ilya pretended not to hear.

They all sat down. Dave said: ‘You’ve made a bad enemy, Lloyd.’

‘I didn’t have much choice.’

‘All the same, watch your back from now on.’

‘An argument about a girl,’ Lloyd said dismissively. ‘Happens a thousand times a day.’

As darkness fell, a handbell summoned them to a field kitchen. Lloyd got a bowl of thin stew, a slab of dry bread, and a big cup of red wine so harsh-tasting that he imagined it taking the
enamel off his teeth. He dipped his bread in the wine, improving both.

When the food was gone he was still hungry, as usual. He said: ‘We’ll have a nice cup of tea, shall we?’

‘Aye,’ said Lenny. ‘Two lumps of sugar, please.’

They unrolled their thin blankets and prepared to sleep. Lloyd went in search of a latrine, found none, and relieved himself in a small orchard on the edge of the village. There was a
three-quarter moon, and he could see the dusty leaves on olive trees that had survived the shelling.

As he buttoned up he heard a footstep. He turned around slowly – too slowly. By the time he saw Ilya’s face, the club was coming down on his head. He felt an agonizing pain and fell
to the ground. Dazed, he looked up. Berezovsky held a short-barrelled revolver pointed at his head. Beside him, Ilya said: ‘Don’t move or you’ll be dead.’

Lloyd was terrified. Desperately he shook his head to clear it. This was insane. ‘Dead?’ he said incredulously. ‘And how will you explain the murder of a lieutenant?’

‘Murder?’ said Ilya. He smiled. ‘This is the front line. A stray bullet got you.’ He switched to English. ‘Jolly bad luck.’

Lloyd realized with despair that Ilya was right. When his body was found, it would look as if he had been killed in the battle.

What a way to die.

Ilya said to Berezovsky: ‘Finish him off.’

There was a bang.

Lloyd felt nothing. Was this death? Then Berezovsky crumpled and fell to the ground. At the same moment Lloyd realized that the shot had come from behind him. He turned, incredulous, to look. In
the moonlight he saw Dave holding his stolen Luger. Relief swamped him like a tidal wave. He was alive!

Ilya, too, had seen Dave, and he ran like a startled rabbit.

Dave tracked him with the pistol for several seconds, and Lloyd willed him to shoot, but Ilya dodged frantically between the olive trees, like a rat in a maze, then disappeared into the
darkness.

Dave lowered the gun.

Lloyd looked down at Berezovsky. He was not breathing. Lloyd said: ‘Thanks, Dave.’

‘I told you to watch your back.’

‘You watched it for me. But it’s a pity you didn’t get Ilya too. Now you’re in trouble with the NKVD.’

‘I wonder,’ said Dave. ‘Will Ilya want people to know that he got his sidekick killed in a squabble over a woman? Even the NKVD people are frightened of the NKVD. I think
he’ll keep it quiet.’

Lloyd looked again at the body. ‘How do we explain this?’

‘You heard the man,’ Dave said. ‘This is the front line. No explanation needed.’

Lloyd nodded. Dave and Ilya were both right. No one would ask how Berezovsky had died. A stray bullet got him.

They walked away, leaving the body where it lay.

‘Jolly bad luck,’ said Dave.

(iv)

Lloyd and Lenny spoke to Colonel Bobrov and complained that the attack on Saragossa was stalemated.

Bobrov was an older Russian with a cropped fuzz of white hair, nearing retirement and rigidly orthodox. In theory he was there only to help and advise the Spanish commanders. In practice the
Russians called the shots.

‘We’re wasting time and energy on these little villages,’ Lloyd said, translating into German what Lenny and all the experienced men were saying. ‘Tanks are supposed to
be armoured fists, used for deep penetration, striking far into enemy territory. The infantry should follow, mopping up and securing after the enemy has been scattered.’

Volodya was standing nearby, listening, and seemed by his expression to agree, though he said nothing.

‘Small strongpoints like this wretched one-horse town should not be allowed to delay the advance, but should be bypassed and dealt with later by a second line,’ Lloyd finished.

Bobrov looked shocked. ‘This is the theory of the discredited Marshal Tuchachevsky!’ he said in hushed tones. It was as if Lloyd had told a bishop to pray to Buddha.

‘So what?’ said Lloyd.

‘He has confessed to treason and espionage, and has been executed.’

Lloyd stared incredulously. ‘Are you telling me that the Spanish government cannot use modern tank tactics because some general has been purged in Moscow?’

‘Lieutenant Williams, you are becoming disrespectful.’

Lloyd said: ‘Even if the charges against Tuchachevsky are true, that doesn’t mean his methods are wrong.’

‘That will do!’ Bobrov thundered. ‘This conversation is over.’

Any hope that Lloyd might have had remaining was crushed when his battalion was moved from Quinto back in the direction they had come, another sideways manoeuvre. On 1 September, they were part
of the attack on Belchite, a well-defended but strategically worthless small town twenty-five miles wide of their objective.

It was another hard battle.

Some seven thousand defenders were well dug in at the town’s largest church, San Agustin, and atop a nearby hill, with trenches and earthworks. Lloyd and his platoon reached the outskirts
of town without casualties, but then came under withering fire from windows and rooftops.

Six days later they were still there.

The corpses were stinking in the heat. As well as humans, there were dead animals, for the town’s water supply had been cut off and livestock were dying of thirst. Whenever they could, the
engineers stacked the bodies up, doused them with gasoline, and set fire to them; but the smell of roasting humans was worse than the stink of corruption. It seemed hard to breathe, and some of the
men wore their gas masks.

The narrow streets around the church were killing fields, but Lloyd had devised a way to make progress without going outside. Lenny had found some tools in a workshop. Now two men were making a
hole in the wall of the house in which they were sheltering. Joe Eli was using a pickaxe, sweat gleaming on his bald head. Corporal Rivera, who wore a striped shirt in the anarchist colours of red
and black, wielded a sledgehammer. The wall was made of flat, yellow local bricks, roughly mortared. Lenny directed the operation to make sure that they did not bring the entire house down: as a
miner, he had an instinct for the trustworthiness of a roof.

When the hole was big enough for a man to pass through, Lenny nodded to Jasper, also a corporal. Jasper took one of his few remaining grenades from his belt pouch, drew the pin, and threw it
into the next house, just in case there was an ambush. As soon as it had exploded, Lloyd crawled quickly through the hole, rifle at the ready.

He found himself in another poor Spanish home, with whitewashed walls and a floor of beaten earth. There was no one here, dead or alive.

The thirty-five men of his platoon followed him through the hole and ran through the place to flush out any defenders. The house was small and empty.

In this way they were moving slowly but safely through a row of cottages towards the church.

They started work on the next hole but, before they broke through, they were halted by a major called Marquez, who came along the row of houses by the route they had made through the walls.
‘Forget all that,’ he said in Spanish-accented English. ‘We’re going to rush the church.’

Lloyd went cold. It was suicidal. He said: ‘Is that Colonel Bobrov’s idea?’

‘Yes,’ said Major Marquez non-committally. ‘Wait for the signal: three sharp blows on the whistle.’

‘Can we get more ammunition?’ Lloyd said. ‘We’re low, especially for this kind of action.’

‘No time,’ said the major, and he went away.

Lloyd was horrified. He had learned a lot in a few days of battle, and he knew that the only way to rush a well-defended position was under a hail of covering fire. Otherwise the defenders would
just mow the attackers down.

The men looked mutinous, and Corporal Rivera said: ‘It is impossible.’

Lloyd was responsible for maintaining their morale. ‘No complaints, you lot,’ he said breezily. ‘You’re all volunteers. Did you think war wasn’t dangerous? If it
was safe, your sisters could do it for you.’ They laughed, and the moment of danger passed, for now.

He moved to the front of the house, opened the door a crack, and peeped out. The sun glared down on a narrow street with houses and shops on both sides. The buildings and the ground were the
same pale tan colour, like undercooked bread, except where shelling had gouged up red earth. Right outside the door a militiaman lay dead, a cloud of flies feasting on the hole in his chest.
Looking towards the square, Lloyd saw that the street widened towards the church. The gunmen in the high twin towers had a clear view and an easy shot at anyone approaching. On the ground there was
only minimal cover: some rubble, a dead horse, a wheelbarrow.

We’re all going to die, he thought.

But why else did we come here?

He turned back to his men, wondering what to say. He had to keep them thinking positively. ‘Just hug the sides of the street, close to the houses,’ he said. ‘Remember, the
slower you go, the longer you’re exposed – so wait for the whistle, then run like fuck.’

Sooner than expected, he heard the three sharp chirrups of Major Marquez’s whistle.

‘Lenny, you’re last out,’ he said.

‘Who’s first?’ said Lenny.

‘I am, of course.’

Goodbye, world, Lloyd thought. At least I’ll die fighting Fascists.

He threw the door wide. ‘Let’s go!’ he yelled, and he ran out.

Surprise gave him a few seconds’ grace, and he ran freely along the street towards the church. He felt the scorch of the midday sun on his face and heard the pounding of his men’s
boots behind him, and noted with a weird sentiment of gratitude that such sensations meant he was still alive. Then gunfire broke out like a hailstorm. For a few more heartbeats he ran, hearing the
zip and thwack of bullets, then there was a feeling in his left arm as if he had banged it against something, and inexplicably he fell down.

He realized he had been hit. There was no pain, but his arm was numb and hung lifeless. He managed to roll sideways until he hit the wall of the nearest building. Shots continued to fly, and he
was terribly vulnerable, but a few feet ahead he saw a dead body. It was a rebel soldier, propped against the house. He looked as if he had been sitting on the ground, resting with his back against
the wall, and had gone to sleep; except that there was a bullet wound in his neck.