and stared despairingly into his coffee laced with Cognac.
Ana folded her arms. ‘You are what?’
‘A Communist. They have even promised me a party card. That was a Communist meeting; I sent Ramón to tell you.’
‘Ramón? Who is this Ramón?’
‘My assistant. But he probably got drunk on his way.’ He stroked his damp moustache with one nail-bitten finger. ‘You were making an anti-Communist speech at a Communist meeting. Mi madre!’ He smiled grimly.
‘I was making a pro-Spanish speech.’
‘The capital of Spain is Madrid, not Moscow … Yes, very patriotic, cousin. I congratulate you on condemning us to the firing squad.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Ana gulped her coffee. ‘How could any true Spaniard disagree?’
‘It wasn’t exactly diplomatic. Not when Moscow is supplying us with our arms.’
‘We are paying for them in gold.’
‘They have our gold: we still need their arms.’
‘And so now we should give them our souls? Do you want Spain to become a colony of the Soviet Union?’
‘Keep your voice down; you aren’t in the pulpit now.’ Diego took off his glasses and glanced around as though he could see better without them. ‘We need them,’ he said. ‘Without them we are doomed.’
Ana said softly, ‘Why did you sell your soul, Diego?’
‘Because I believe that salvation lies with the Communists.’
‘What about those dreams of Anarchism you once cherished? “There is only one authority and that is in the individual.” Who said that, Diego?’
‘Me?’
‘You. What did they buy you with, Diego?’
‘We are all fighting for the same cause.’
‘That wasn’t what I asked.’
‘I have been promised a high office in the administration when the war is over.’
‘And a grand house and a decent salary?’
‘Commensurate with my office,’ Diego said.
‘Perhaps,’ Ana said, ‘they will pay you in roubles.’
‘I tell you, we are all fighting for the same cause.’
It was then that Ana realized that one contestant had been missing from the conversation – the enemy, the Fascists.
Has it come to this? she asked herself. She strode out of the bar and down the street to the cinema where her children were watching the Marx Brothers.
On the Jarama front the fighting had stopped for the night. The combatants had retired to debate how best to kill each other in the morning and, except for the intermittent explosions of shells fired to keep the enemy awake, the battlefield was quiet.
In a concrete bunker captured from the Republicans Colonel Carlos Delgado considered the two foreigners interfering in his war. A picture of Franco hung from the wall recently vacated by Stalin; a map of the Jarama valley and its environs, crayoned with blue and red arrows, was spread across the desk.
Delgado’s fingers searched his freshly-shaven cheeks for any errant bristles, tidied the greying hair above his ears where his cap had rested. His khaki-green tunic was freshly pressed and his belt shone warmly like dark amber. His voice, like Franco’s, was high-pitched.
‘So why,’ he asked in English, ‘were two mercenaries fighting on opposite sides sharing a shell-hole?’
‘I guess you could call it force of circumstances,’ Tom Canfield said.
‘It does neither of you any credit. What is your name?’ he asked Canfield.
‘You’ve got it there in front of you. José Espinosa.’
‘Your real name: non-intervention is a stale joke.’
‘Okay, what the hell – Thomas Canfield.’
‘Why are you fighting for the rabble, Señor Canfield?’
‘Name, rank and number. Nothing more. Isn’t that right, Colonel?’
The glossy captain pulled his long-barrelled pistol from its holster. ‘Answer the colonel,’ he said.
‘You don’t have a rank or number,’ Delgado said.
‘José Espinosa does.’
‘Are you Jewish?’
‘Espinosa, José, pilot, 3805.’
‘This isn’t a movie, Señor Canfield. Please enlighten me: I cannot understand – really I can’t – why any reasonable man should want to fight for a ragged army of peasants and city hooligans whose sport is burning churches and murdering anyone industrious enough to have earned more money than them.’
‘Then you don’t understand very much, Colonel.’
‘Anti-Hitler? Anti-Mussolini? Anti-Fascist?’
‘Anti-gangster,’ Tom said.
‘So we have one anti-Fascist.’ Delgado turned to Adam Fleming who was standing, legs apart, hands clasped behind his back, beside Canfield. ‘And one anti-Communist. Do you both find Spain an agreeable location to indulge your politics?’
‘Your politics, sir,’ Adam said.
‘Nice climate,’ Tom said.
Delgado lit an English cigarette, a Senior Service. ‘You, I presume,’ he said to Canfield, ‘were trying to find your way back to the Republican lines.’
‘Wherever those are,’ Tom said.
‘And you,’ to Fleming, ‘were hiding from an unexploded shell?’
‘I got lost,’ Adam said.
‘Perhaps we should provide foreign mercenaries with compasses as well as rifles.’
‘Good idea,’ Tom said. ‘They might find the right side to fight for.’
The captain prodded him in the back with the barrel of his pistol.
Delgado blew a jet of smoke across the bunker. It billowed in the light of the hurricane lamps.
‘So what shall I do with the two of you? One American fighting for the enemy, one Englishman displaying cowardice in the face of the enemy …’
‘That’s a lie,’ Adam said.
‘He
