Текст книги "A Broken Land"

Автор книги: Ludlow Jack

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The arrival of the main body of militias outside Saragossa, nearly three thousand strong and made up of members of the POUM as well as the CNT-FAI, had severely diminished the position of Juan Luis Laporta, who now found himself relegated to being one of a number of leaders instead of in sole control of his men. It did not, however, improve matters in the military sphere.

None of the new arrivals seemed capable of the kind of agreement that would enhance the needs of the Republic, which demanded a rapid advance into the Nationalist heartlands in order to force them to divert their efforts from elsewhere. Comfortably headquartered in an abandoned monastery by the River Ebro, the military hierarchy seemed like the Café de Tranquilidad all over again: endless argument which led to bad compromises, ineffective tactics, and futile mass assaults which burdened the militias with serious casualties.

As before, the need to dig in was scoffed at, which led to an even greater loss when the enemy counter-attacked, the only sector not to suffer the one held by the fully entrenched Olympians, simply because, wisely, the Nationalists, having carried out a thorough recce, came nowhere near it. Yet that secure position had to be abandoned due to the retreat of the main body.

It was obvious that on the Saragossa Front things were going nowhere, so Cal Jardine was not sorry when it came to his attention that time had run out for many of those he led. The young athletes had come to Spain for a period of three weeks – two to train and one to compete – and were now approaching a third month.

As aware as the men who led them of the faults of the Republican leadership, they now found a pressing need to get home to jobs and, in one or two cases, families of their own. Those who elected to stay, twelve in number, would mostly only be returning to the dole queue, but it was obvious that, numerically, they were too small to be useful.

The news that the Republic was forming International Brigades from foreign volunteers provided a solution for them, and Cal agreed to take them to the city of Albacete, where the brigades were being assembled, before determining what to do himself. Vince, funded by the last of Monty Redfern’s money, would see the others home.

Yet detaching the returnees was not easy; their departure was fought tooth and nail by Manfred Drecker, who maintained that no one had the right to desert the cause and anyone who even implied such a thing deserved to be shot; Laporta backed the athletes and took pleasure in doing so.

The antipathy between the men, political and personal, had not improved on the move into Aragón. Laporta took pleasure in pointing out what the Olympians had achieved, as opposed to Drecker’s communist cadres, which led to a blazing row in which accusations of backsliding, cowardice and chicanery were liberally thrown about.

The other anarchist leaders backed Laporta, as did the Trotskyists of the POUM, leaving Drecker isolated and fuming, the clinching argument being that they had joined with Laporta’s column, so any decision on their future was his to make. Cal backed that up; he was more concerned with the outcome than any claim of rights but he knew, from the looks thrown his way, that as far as Manfred Drecker was concerned he had joined the ranks of his enemies.

The day the main party left for Barcelona was a sad one; even prior to fighting, these lads had bonded together merely through their political outlook and shared stories. Yet combat, even the limited amount they had experienced, cemented that even more, while they had a fully justified pride in what they had achieved. It was handshakes and clasping all round, with many not afraid to show a tear as they clambered into the trucks that would take them to the docks and a ship to Marseilles. For Vince and Cal Jardine, this was just one more parting in a life of many.

‘See you in London, guv. Maybe we can go out an’ have a drink.’

‘Only if you promise not to belt anyone.’

Vince threw back his head and laughed. ‘I’ve mellowed.’

That got a disbelieving look; the last time Cal had taken Vince out, the mistake had been to take him first to a pub in Chelsea full of what Vince called ‘chinless wonders’, then to a late-night drinking club in Soho much frequented by what his one-time sergeant described to the police as ‘toffee-nosed ponces and poufs’. Cal was an amiable drunk, Vince a bellicose one, so the night had ended with a brawl, a visit to the cells and a fine from a morning magistrate.

Vince nodded towards Florencia, saying her own goodbyes. ‘How special is that one?’

‘Good question.’

‘You might have trouble getting away.’

‘I might not want to, Vince.’

The tone of the response was not jocular, the indication that his old friend was risking overstepping the mark obvious, but Vince had something to say and, typical of the man, he was going to say it regardless.

‘I wouldn’t hitch myself to this lot if I were you.’ He was not talking about Florencia, but the Barcelona militia. ‘The way they are now, they’re on a hiding to nothing and if our lot and the Frogs don’t help I can’t see how they can win.’

‘It’s early days. It might pan out.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ Vince replied as the first of the truck engines began to throb into life. ‘I’d hate to have to come back and rescue you.’

‘Take care, Vince,’ Cal said, hand held out to be grasped and shaken. ‘And don’t forget to send those trucks back. I’m stuck here with the rest of the lads until you do.’

‘Give you a chance to learn some more Spanish.’

‘Hasta la vista, compadre.’

Vince nodded and climbed into the cab of the lead truck, Florencia coming to join Cal as they disappeared in a cloud of dust. What was cheering was the way the road was lined with the men alongside whom they had fought – communists apart – not ribbing them now, but all smiling and yelling encouragement, with their right hands raised, their fists tight in salute.

It was impossible to miss the increasingly febrile atmosphere in the Republican lines; necessity made comrades of the various factions only up to a point. This was especially apparent at the point where the CNT and POUM sectors met that of the communists, now reinforced so that Drecker had under his command a couple of hundred men.

Every time the cadres were subjected to lectures on dialectic materialism and other Marxist nostrums, the anarchist militiamen would gather to jeer, loud enough to make difficult what those lecturing were trying to impart, and no one in authority sought to interfere.

Had he been in command, Cal would have stopped it and quickly, not in support of communism but with the aim of improving the fighting ability of the whole; if the two factions went into action they would not support one another, hardly a sound military policy. Yet even as he registered the mutual dislike, he did not pick up on the increasing tensions behind it, and if it had not been for Florencia, he would have had no idea what was really going on.

When she cursed the Partido Comunista de España he took it as just her usual railing against her political rivals. Certainly, he recorded her fears that they were poaching members from the CNT, as well as her assertion that some hypocrites were joining the PCE as a way of ensuring they were not seen as class enemies, but it did not penetrate deeply and he knew the CNT to be just as guilty when it came to recruitment; it was a game they all played.

The mutual antagonism deepened seriously when Vince’s truck drivers returned with the news that the first Soviet ships had arrived, bringing in fresh arms, including tanks and aircraft. The information lifted everyone’s spirits until it was clear neither of those were going to be seen in Aragón; they were sent straight to bolster the defence of Madrid, in essence a sound policy given that was where the danger to the Republic was most severe.

Yet as another set of trucks arrived, it was very soon obvious that the drivers were communists and what they carried was a cargo exclusively for Drecker’s cadres, who received weapons of a quality and modernity that surpassed that with which they had been supplied before, just as it was clear none of these were being passed to anyone else. There was no attempt at discretion, obvious as the communists paraded to show off their equipment.

Drecker and his squad leaders carried PPD-40 machine pistols, which as far as Cal was aware – and it was his business to know these things – had only recently been supplied to the forces of the Soviet Interior Ministry. Enough Degtyarov light machine guns had been supplied to set up gun teams within every platoon-sized section, while Drecker’s command, now more than company strength, also had possession of two 50 mm mortars.

‘These weapons, mon ami,’ Juan Luis Laporta asked, as they were paraded under the eyes of their supposed anarchist comrades-in-arms. ‘Are they any good?’

On home turf, Cal rattled off their capabilities, ranges and rates of fire, summing it up thus: ‘Let’s put it this way, Juan Luis, if you can get hold of any, do so.’

‘We cannot,’ Laporta replied, his face showing both regret and, under that, a hint of fury. ‘And believe me, I have tried.’

* * *

It took several days to get to Albacete, a medium-sized town on the road from Valencia to Madrid, and what Cal found there was less than impressive, though in fairness he knew that to criticise was far from wholly just; the Spanish Republic had very few of the systems required to deal with an influx of volunteers, a fact much exacerbated by the nature of the recruits, who had come from all over the continent of Europe.

The sheer number of spoken languages would have defeated even the best-intentioned and most professional army command, while the quality of those who had come to the aid of the cause was so variable as to impose even more strain, many having near-starved to get this far. The only way to organise such mayhem was by nationality, easier with the large French contingent, to whom could be added the Belgians, as well as Germans who had fled over the Rhine from Hitler.

The British were bolstered by volunteers from the various ex-colonies, not that there was much love lost, but that looked like comradeship compared to the Italians and Austrians, while the Russians and Ukrainians – in the main, exiles from Soviet Russia looking for a way home by proving their communist credentials – seemed more likely to turn their weapons on each other than the enemy.

That was if they could first of all find a gun that fired, then locate the ammunition it required to function; the armament was a mess of conflicting patterns and differing calibres, many from well before the Great War, and the bullets were not sorted, even by box – it was necessary to rummage and select the right projectile for the weapon with which you had been issued.

Cal Jardine was not impressed enough to offer his own services, especially given the command was held by an internationally famous communist called André Marty, the man who claimed to have been instrumental in the mutiny of the French Black Seas Fleet in 1919. He was a member, too, of the Communist International, run from Moscow and dedicated to the spread of Marxism-Leninism.

Whatever else he was, Marty was no soldier, which underlined the nature of the brigades; even if he had experienced commanders at unit level, they too seemed to be communists, so the whole would be driven by ideology, not sound military principles, and that was not something he could be part of.

He hung around long enough to get his lads equipped with a combination of rifles and bullets that would at least mean that, should they get into a fight, they could function, and showed them how to scrounge the things they needed – uniforms, rations and some grenades – well aware that there was disappointment he would not be leading them into the coming battle.

‘You cannae be persuaded tae stay, Mr Jardine?’ asked Broxburn Jock, who had assumed the leadership of the dozen brigaders.

Cal shook his head. ‘No, I’ll be more use in Aragón, I think, trying to sort out some of those militias.’

That was a lie and there was no doubt that, in the young Scotsman’s face, he knew it to be so. It had been natural in the few days Cal had been in Albacete that he and his boys should gravitate towards their fellow countrymen, just as it was hardly surprising that many, though not all, were card-carrying members of the British Communist Party or at the very least to the far left of Labour.

In the main, when they were workers, miners, dockers and factory men from the devastated industrial areas of the UK, that was understandable; even if he did not share their politics, he could appreciate the reasons for their allegiance to the cause. Had he shared their life – surrounded by poverty, put upon by rapacious employers, or on the dole, as well as being citizens of an indifferent state – he might also have shared their views.

It was the university and middle-class types that got up Cal’s nose, too many of them from comfortable backgrounds, romantics with no grasp whatsoever of the lives of the poor and certainly not a clue about the nature of life in Soviet Russia, which, when he talked with them, was something they saw through spectacles that were more blacked out than rose-tinted.

A gentle hint that life might not be so sweet east of Poland, that it might be as bad as Nazi Germany, led to a tirade of abuse, well argued and articulate, but utterly wrong, this before he was treated to a quasi-religious attempt to point out that the way he lived his life was to fly in the face of what they called ‘historical determinism’; only good manners inculcated into him from birth stopped him from telling these intellectual idiots to get stuffed.

‘The bodies that have been gi’en officer’s rank are no a bit like you or Vince,’ Jock added. ‘Some ’o them seem right mental.’

‘And the rest of your brigade is not like you, Jock. It will be you teaching them how to fire a rifle now, and if they’ve got any sense they will promote you.’

‘Fat bloody chance.’

Politics apart, that was another reason to leave, albeit there was an element of guilt at abandoning what he saw as ‘his boys’. The command structure was chaotic, and from what he had observed, as had Jock, the senior positions in the brigades went to only two types: megalomaniacs and high-ranking communists – sometimes they were both – and what he had observed of the standard of training, if it could even be graced with such a term, was pandemonium, which was worrying given that they might be pitched into battle before they were ready, as the Republic was still losing on all fronts.

‘I might not even stay in Spain, Jock.’

‘Away, yer lassie will’na let ye go.’

‘Another reason for going back to Aragón, yes?’

‘No a bad yin, aw the same.’

‘Take care of the rest of the boys, Jock; you are the best soldier, you know that, and they look up to you.’

That produced a blush on the square face, highlighting, as it flared, his heavy acne, the smile that followed showing his uneven teeth. Then it was time to shake the others by the hand and depart, with a silent hope that whatever they faced they would survive.

He never returned to the Saragossa Front, finding, when he stopped off in Barcelona, as he had said he would, not just Florencia in the city but Juan Luis Laporta as well. As soon as he checked back into the Ritz – they had stored his luggage – both, alerted by some member of the hotel staff, arrived to see him, she very welcome, he much less so.

It was soon made obvious they had left the monastery headquarters seething with tension: the anarchists were furious at being denied the better weapons distributed to Drecker’s cadres, despite repeated requests, and it was the same for the other political groups, including those in Barcelona and Madrid.

The Partido Comunista controlled the distribution of Soviet equipment, and even the non-fighting communists in the rear areas were better armed than their rivals on the fighting fronts, while what had come in with the weaponry was even less welcome to the likes of Laporta: Soviet advisors who behaved as if they were dealing with idiots.

When that was advanced Cal could not but agree with the assessment, even if he could accept such condescension was unwelcome, for, if such advisors were anything like the ones he had met in Albacete, they would not, as he had tried to do since his first dust-up with Laporta, temper their advice with a sugar coating.

He had heard counterclaims in Albacete for the communists, incensed about the way they claimed the anarchists, who controlled the border with France, were denying entry to any party member trying to cross into Spain to join the International Brigades; it was all part of the fabric of endemic mistrust which permeated the Republican cause.

At the same time, it seemed to Cal, no one was doing much to fight the real enemy. When he enquired about the progress in Aragón it transpired there had been none – the Barcelona militias were still stuck outside Saragossa, the only thing of significance being that Drecker and his men, with their superior equipment, had left for Madrid, now threatened with four columns advancing on the city from Burgos, Toledo and two from Badajoz.

Try as he might, Cal could not shift the conversation to the state of the Republican forces and the manifest threats they faced, which made the conversation surreal; there was, to him, in the political bickering, an element that he mentally likened to fiddling while Rome burnt.

‘As long as the communist pigs control the supply of weapons,’ Laporta insisted, banging on, sticking to the same topic, ‘they will use them to strengthen their position.’

As would you, thought Cal, as he yawned, having had a long day of travelling. He was also wondering when they could stop all this, if he could eat with Florencia and if Juan Luis would ever tire of the subject and disappear so they could be alone.

‘And they will do so completely now the government has sent most of our gold reserves to Moscow.’

‘What!’ Weary as he was, when Laporta said that it woke him up. ‘Why in God’s name did they do that?’

It was Florencia who replied, ‘Who else will sell us the guns we need?’

‘France will not, as we had hoped,’ Laporta added, once she had explained to him what she had just said. ‘And as for you British …’

‘Don’t blame me, my friend.’

It came to Cal later that in the pause that followed, and with the looks the pair exchanged, the conversation had come to the real reason they were here, and it was Florencia who first dipped her toe.

‘You know about these things, querido, you have told me. Where else could we buy weapons that we can control?’

Just then the phone rang and Cal went to pick it up, listened for a second, then said, ‘I’m not expecting anyone.’

‘Yes you are,’ Florencia snapped, rushing over to take it out of his hand and spouting fast and furious Spanish. Having learnt quite a bit in the last weeks, Cal understood ‘send him up’.

‘Send whom up?’

‘Andreu Nin,’ she replied, putting the phone down, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. ‘The leader of the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification.’

‘We have invited him to meet with you,’ Laporta added. ‘On a matter of grave concern.’

‘Get back on the phone,’ Cal said wearily; this was not going to end soon, for when this lot started talking, never mind arguing, time lost all meaning. ‘Order up some food.’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

‘I’m not sure I can do what you want.’ Cal said that while aiming a jaundiced look at Florencia, who was too prone to putting him forward for things, albeit he knew it was his own fault for telling her too much about his past. ‘And I certainly could not do it without money, and lot’s of it.’

‘And if you had money?’ asked Florencia.

‘Let me explain to you about what you have to do to buy weapons.’

Cal had to pause then for a knock at the door, which he opened to find a waiter and a trolley with food for everyone, as well as beers and bottles of wine, a sight so redolent of peacetime it was hard to think there was a war going on, that there were armed men on every Barcelona corner and he went nowhere himself without his pistol. Having wheeled the trolley in, the waiter began to lay things out until Florencia, rudely, told him to leave it and depart.

‘He’s only doing his job,’ Cal said as the door shut behind him.

‘No man should be a lackey to another,’ she snapped.

‘I’ll remember that when we’re in bed.’

She began to go red, until she recalled that the other two men present did not understand English. Florencia then proceeded to deny her own words by doing for the trio of menfolk the task the waiter had been about to carry out, setting the plates, distributing food and pouring wine and beer, translating as Cal talked; her mother would have been proud of her.

‘First you have to find somebody willing to sell, and that is not easy. Then, if it’s a government, you need from them an End User Certificate to say where the weapons are going and to what purpose they will be put.’

He had to pause and explain that further, which took time with Florencia translating. Then there was the fact that the certificate could, in some circumstances, be circumvented by bribery. Some countries were more interested in the money than any morality. By all means kill your own citizens, even fight people we call allies, as long as we get the gold and they do not find out.

‘And when you buy on what is a black market, the price reflects that, to the tune of maybe paying a high premium on the normal cost.’

Seeing he was making the Spaniards glum, he apologised, but he also knew there was no point in gilding the lily; they had to know it was a murky world and a dirty game, and it was also one in which it was very easy to become the victim of what you were seeking to buy if anything went wrong.

Andreu Nin began to talk, Cal listening with concentration as Florencia turned his words into English. Not the histrionic type, he spoke carefully and dispassionately, which accorded with his schoolmasterly appearance and donnish manner, a round, rather inexpressive face, serious glasses and black curly hair, using an unlit pipe to make his points.

Basically, and Juan Luis Laporta nodded along in agreement, he outlined the fact that they must do something to check the communists before they became too strong. Cal, thinking he was exaggerating the perceived threat, was treated to more background about Spanish and Catalan politics than he cared to hear, but what it came down to he already knew: it was a bear pit.

The POUM was adamant the Workers’ Party was, only a few months into the struggle, weakening while the communists were getting stronger and that, if it continued, portended disaster. To prove that led Nin into a long aside regarding the crimes of Josef Stalin and the Comintern – not least the four million reckoned to have died in the Ukrainian famine – with, of course, much reference to the purity of his brand of Marxism. Yet for all his seeming paranoia, he did know how his enemies worked.

They would manoeuvre behind the scenes, steering clear of taking positions, because by doing so they could avoid blame for mistakes while openly criticising and diminishing their more politically active rivals. Yet at the same time they would continue to gather into their hands the levers of power, for example the control of weapons supply and military advice, the keys to the pursuance of the conflict.

Already, on the Madrid Front, no weapons could be committed without their approval; fighter planes would not fly and tanks would not be sent into battle because the pilots were Soviets, and so were the armoured-unit commanders, and they would obey an order only when it came from one of their own generals.

In the purely political sphere the communists were bringing in their secret police – Nin was certain a squad of the Soviet Secret Police, the NKVD, had arrived with the first shipment of weapons. Not one of the leaders, of whatever nationality, Spanish and Catalan included, did anything without a direct order from the Communist International in Moscow.

The Comintern took its instructions directly from Stalin, and those who were actual members and deeply experienced in political subversion were already present: the likes of Marty, who was not the only leading French communist to have come from Paris. Palmiro Togliatti, known to be the Comintern representative for all Spain, was already present from his Italian exile.

Stalin would want to control everything in Spain as he had in Russia – he could not brook dissent, Nin insisted, referring to the show trials in which he was disposing of his old comrades who might be rivals. The Comintern was committed to worldwide revolution, the enforcement of a system based on lies and a bullet for rebellion, real or imagined. Once they had enough influence, they would set out to undermine their political enemies in Spain too.

This they would do one by one, targeting the leaders of the other factions, until they had them so cornered as to be able to safely eliminate them, and if it could not be achieved by devious process they would resort to assassination. They had a willingness to kill outside Soviet borders, if necessary using foreign surrogates.

‘In Barcelona,’ Nin continued, ‘first it will be the POUM, for we are weaker than the CNT, but they will suffer too and I will tell you how. If you want to eat, if you want a good weapon, if you want to fight, they will say join the communists. Then, once they have begun to eliminate us, it will be known to all, so they will say join us, or you might be the next victim. First control, then power, and finally terror.’

‘Only with our own supply of weapons can we prevent this,’ Laporta said, having been silent for a longer time than Cal had ever known him to be; for all their political differences, he clearly respected Andreu Nin. ‘Without that we will be powerless.’

‘I come back to my point about money,’ Cal said to him in French.

‘And I, my friend, say to you that we will find whatever funds you need.’

‘Where?’

‘Not all of the gold has gone to Moscow. The government must be persuaded to give us the use of what is left.’

It took no great imagination to guess at the mayhem that would cause and it was hard to believe it could be done secretly; the communists were bound to find out.

‘Juan Luis, you cannot beat the Nationalists if you are openly fighting each other in government.’

‘You did not like the notion of a fascist Spain, my friend.’

‘No, I did not.’

‘Would you prefer a Stalinist one?’ asked Laporta, doing an immediate translation for the POUM leader.

Even if the answer was a heartfelt negative, the question was not one to reply to in haste. In his time, mostly in situations of some comfort and detachment from reality, Cal had met too many people who looked at the Soviet Union with blinkered stupidity. For all the opaque nature of the world in which he had moved over many years, there was a clarity about certain areas that never reached the ears of those outside it, and one of those was the truth about life in Stalinist Russia.

The people who lived on its borders had no illusions, those who had escaped its clutches even less, all the way back to the White Russians who had fled in 1917. Many of both types, forced onto the margins of society by their exile and required to exist in clandestine trades, nevertheless had contacts inside the communist state. One voice spouting outright condemnation could be put down to personal prejudice; a chorus as loud as that which had assailed his ears spoke the truth: if anything, Soviet Russia was worse than Nazi Germany.

‘All I can do is put out some feelers,’ he said, after a long pause.

‘Will you do that, querido?’

‘Not tonight, I need some rest.’

The expression on Florencia’s face then told Cal Jardine that was a forlorn hope.

The cable he sent to Monaco the next morning had to be extremely circumspect; Cal could mention no names, not even his own, and for a location he used his room number. But it was coded in such a way that it would have taken more than a cryptographer to unravel it, given it was between two people who knew each other enough to reference things known only to them. It also went to a nominated address and box number in which the recipient was not named.

The reply he received came within a day and not from the principal to whom it had been sent, albeit Cal was assured he was aware of the contents of both the message and the reply. It had been sent by his private secretary, whom Cal Jardine had met before, this referenced by the date of that meeting without using his name.

Drouhin told him that his master was unwell, and given he was about to celebrate his birthday – no number was used but Cal reckoned he would be eighty-seven – that was a concern. However, should his old friend care to visit, he would seek to find out beforehand where the kind of consignment hinted at could be both located and purchased, though the market was at the moment very difficult.

His suggestion that Florencia should accompany him – Monte Carlo being an enticing place to visit and one which would be made even better in her company – was turned down flat. How could she leave Spain in the midst of what was a fight to the death with the fascist pigs, now intent on taking the capital? There was a question about whether he should leave; the news that came in over the next days was alarming, but rationally, what could he, one man, do? Best to act as requested and go.

The problem did exist of getting across the French border and he worried about the land route, even though Juan Luis assured him the crossing was controlled by the CNT – with the communists complaining about their fighters being blocked from crossing into Spain. That was still a place where the communists were bound to have a presence, and how comprehensive that could be he did not know; they might well check the names on every passport by bribing the French border guards, just to ensure they knew who was coming and going.