Tapestry of Spies (40 page)

Florry was halfway through the next load when the bullets sent his way seemed to increase dramatically. One pinged off the girder inches from his face and he felt the sharp spray of fragments, winced, and almost fell. Evidently a Moorish party had worked its way down the
gorge, descended it, and had begun to move along the creek bed toward him. Another bullet exploded dangerously close to his head.

He twisted to see them two hundred meters away, shooting quite calmly, three gray-uniformed, lanky figures who seemed to be potting pigeons.

“THE LEFT!” he shouted. “THEY’RE ON THE BLOODY LEFT!” Another bullet whizzed by. “Damn you,
there
, there on the left!” he screamed again, feeling the panic squeak through his limbs. Oh Christ, Christ, Christchristchristchrist!

Above him the machine gun spoke rapidly, raining spent shells over the railing, and the three Moors collapsed in a lazy string of bullet spurts that kicked up clouds of dust and slate at their feet.

“Do hurry, old man,” yelled Julian. “Jerry’s getting ready for a push.”

Florry now had only the detonator to insert. He plucked it from his pockets and awkwardly plunged it into the exposed end of one of the sticks, felt it crumble into the chalky stuff.

There! Ah! Now for the bloody wire. If only … ah! He unspooled the blasting wire and with his fingers tried to locate the posts on the detonator. It was tricky business. Florry kept thinking there should be an easier way. Twice he … almost had it … blast, the loop coiled off. The damned raincoat felt heavy and constricting; he wished he’d chucked the bloody thing. He could hear the chatter of Julian’s weapon and some others and suddenly an awesome WHOMP as an artillery shell detonated hard by. Florry shivered, shrank, and almost lost his grip on the metal. Shrapnel sang in the air and the odor of smoke hung heavily. He had trouble breathing.

“Stink, damn it, hurry,” Julian called. Florry looked
and saw that Portela had vanished, either killed or done. Damn him. He didn’t think he could find the strength. Finally, with a great lurch, he managed to get the wire twisted about one of the posts and proceeded to desperately knead it tight. He found the other one and duplicated the process, all the while experiencing the terrible sensation of doing sloppy work, but at that second the whole river gorge seemed to break out afresh with fire, as new troops apparently reached it. He hoped he’d done it right, but there simply was no time to check.

He scrambled up the framework, the bullets popping nearby, and he knew that at any moment he’d catch one in the spine or skull, but the Moors shot no better than the Spaniards and he managed his destination and with a last push swung himself over.

“Thank God,” said Julian, crouched near him, the hot gun in his grip.

“Your hand, Christ,” said Florry. Julian’s hand was pink and scalded where he’d been holding the barrel.

“Nothing, old man,” said Julian, and Florry looked down the bridge to see at least fifty Moorish bodies on the road.

“Get going, sport,” said Julian. He pushed at Florry and Florry was off, sprawling toward a ditch beyond the bridge. As he ran, he payed out the wire from the spool. He reached the ditch and skidded into it, the coat flapping around him as he went. He looked back.

Julian was alone now, the fool, the machine gun tucked against his hip. He fired a long burst at the hidden troops across the way and they returned his fire, their bullets cracking at the dry soil and the gravel around him. His hair blew free and his face and shirt were smeared with grime.

“¡Venga, inglés, corra como el diablo!”
someone
yelled. A man took the spool of wire from Florry and was twisting it to the contacts on the exploder box, an ominously crude-appearing wooden machine with a plunger thrusting out of it.

“Come on, Julian!” Florry screamed over the edge of the gully.

Julian at last seemed to hear him, and turned and ran, just as the first Panzer swung into view atop the far crest.

The bullets struck around him and for whatever reason his luck held yet again, and except for a bit of a scrape above his eye, he arrived with a mighty vault and leaped into the gully just as the first PzKpfw II began to advance.

“Blow the bloody thing,” Julian shouted merrily. His hand looked like some hideous lobster paw, puffy red and pussy and twisted, still melted to the ventilated barrel of the weapon. He winked at Florry, as if it were some monstrous joke.

The fellow wiring up the box at last seemed finished and gave way to the massive old lady who, her black teeth gleaming, gave the plunger a shove, as they all melted into the earth for protection against the blast.

But there was no blast.

“Damn!” said Julian.

“Again,” Florry shrieked. “AGAIN!”

Obligingly, the old woman lifted the plunger and again fell forward against it.

Florry could just see the connection he’d so desperately jerry-rigged together having come unwrapped or having been improperly done to begin with. A black, gloomy sense of shame came over him.

“I’ve got to fix the bloody thing,” he yelled, and began to claw his way out of the gully.

Julian smashed him to the ground.

“Don’t be a fool.”

“Don’t you see, I’ve botched it!”

“You’ll botch it good if you go down there and get killed over nothing, chum.”

“If only I’d—”

“Shut up, old man. It’s time to get the bloody hell out of here, bridge or no bridge.”

And indeed it was. Across the bridge, the tanks had arrived. They scuttled down the road with their odd, insectlike approach, somehow tentative. Their machine guns began to rake the guerrillas’ side of the gorge. Bullets peppered the earth about the trench. The guerrillas began to edge back until the ditch petered out against the slope; it was almost one hundred meters up the bare ground to the crest behind which, presumably, there were horses.

A shell—one of the terrifying 88s—whistled in and exploded against the ridge. The air was filled with noise and dust and whining metal and heat. Another went off farther down.

A Moorish suicide squad had reached the far end of the bridge. An officer urged them across, and they began to move forward. The old lady pulled one of the rifles to her shoulder, fired, and one of the men slid to the earth. The others crouched behind the railing, though one hearty fellow made a mad dash to the cover of the far side of the blockhouse. Farther down the gorge’s edge, figures appeared and broke for the cover of the rocks on the hillside a few hundred meters away. The guerrillas opened fire, dropping a few, but the majority found safety and began to fire on the trench.

“Váyanse, hombres
,” the old lady screamed.
“¡Corran! ¡Hace demasiado calor aquí!”

“Go on, Stinky,” said Julian, fiddling awkwardly to get his last belt into the open latch of his gun.

“Hurry,” said Florry, scrambling out of the trench, beginning to backpedal with the others up the slope.

It was a feeling of extraordinary vulnerability. His shoes kept sliding in the dust and the bullets whipped and popped all around. Only the terrible Moorish marksmanship and Julian’s counterfire from beneath kept any of them alive that mad, backward scramble up. Insanely, Florry fired the six charges in his Webley at the chaos of running Moors, screaming Germans, and backed-up vehicles on the other side of the gorge, to absolutely no discernible effect.

He finally reached the top, one of the last. With a sigh of relief and disbelief, he sank to the earth, found a rifle, and began to pot away. He could hear the snorts and shuffles of the horses below him in a little draw, anxious to be gone from the commotion, but it didn’t matter; what mattered now was Julian coming up the slope, raking the opposite side of the gorge with a long burst of fire. He didn’t seem to be enjoying it much though; he looked chalky white with terror as the bullets struck around him, but Brilliant Julian continued to climb through the lazy puffs of sprayed dirt. He had almost made it when the bullet took him down.

“God, Julian, JULIAN!” Florry screamed. Florry rose to run, and hands grabbed to hold him back, but he lashed out with his Webley and felt it strike bone and broke free. He raced down the slope.

“Go on, you fool,” Julian said. He was coughing blood. The machine gun had fallen away uselessly.

“No,” Florry said. He tried to pull him up. The old lady was suddenly at his side.

“Inglés, su amigo está terminado. Muerto. Nadie puede ayudarle ahora.”

“NO! NO!” Florry screamed.

He had Julian’s limp body under his arms and tugged it upward. The old woman helped and in seconds other men were helping, too, and they had Julian beyond the crest and out of the line of fire.

“You’ll be fine, I swear it,” Florry was saying, but his hands were wet with blood. The blood seemed everywhere on Julian. He could not yet believe it.

“Well, Stink,” said Julian, “Brilliant Julian’s brilliant luck finally went belly up.”

“No. NO. You’ll be fine, you’ve only just been nicked.”

“Your imagination again, old boy.”

“No. Horses. Damn you, old lady, get the filthy HORSES!”

“Easy on her, old man.”

Up on the ridge line, the firing increased suddenly, and two shells detonated. Florry was trying to wipe the sweat off Julian’s grimy forehead when the old lady leaned in with a water bottle.

“Thank you, dear,” said Julian.

“Inglés, los fascistas cruzan la puente, tonto. Ven, ovídalo. Tenemos que salir. Están por todas partes.”

“A horse,” Florry said. “Bring this man a horse.”

“Stinky, I hate the brutes. Smelly, filthy beasts, moody and sullen and—”

“Shut up, I’ll lash you to me. I’ll get you out of here, you’ll see. You’ve taken care of me, now I’ll take care of you. Get me a HORSE!”

“Stinky, listen. Tell all my friends to be happy. Tell them Julian’s dying from—”

“You’re not dying!”

“Stinky, the bastards got me in the spine and the lungs. I’m half dead already, don’t you see?”

“¡Inglés! ¡Ven! ¡No hay tiempo, llegarán en segundos!”

“She’s telling you they’re almost here. Go on. Get out of here, old sport.”

“I—”

“One thing, please, Stink. The ring. Take it, eh? Take it to my bloody old mother, eh?” He smiled brightly.

Florry grabbed the ring, popped the chain, and stuffed it into the pocket of the Burberry.

“Now the pistol. Take it. I can’t quite—my bloody arms don’t seem to work. Take that bloody pistol.”

Florry, with shaking hands, removed the tiny automatic from Julian’s holster. It was such a stupid thing; it seemed more like a toy than a weapon, small, almost womanish, difficult to hold in a man’s hand.

“Cock it. I put in a fresh clip.”

Florry snapped the slide back, chambering a cartridge.

“There now. Shoot me!”

He leveled the pistol to Julian’s temple.

“Thanks, Stink,” Julian said. “The bastards won’t use me for bayonet drill. Stinky, God, hold my hand, I’m so bloody scared.”

“¡Inglés!”

“Julian! I love you!”

“Kill me then, Stink. KILL ME!”

“I—I can’t, oh, Christ, Jul—”

The explosion was huge in his ears; it knocked him to his side. The old lady put down her Mauser rifle. Florry looked to Julian and then away; the bullet had pierced his forehead above his right eye and blown a mess out of the rear of his skull.

“Jul—”

At that moment, and for whatever reason, the bridge exploded in a flash that was an exclamation point of sheer light, absolute, blinding, incredibly violent; the concussion seemed to push the air from the surface of the earth and blow Florry back to the ground. The noise was the voice of God, sharp and total. The bridge literally disappeared in the explosion. Stones and timbers and chunks of girder kicked up dust and splashes in a circle for six hundred meters around. A cloud unfurled from the blast, black and rolling and climbing.

“¡Bravo inglés!”
came the cry from the men around him in the stunned second as the echo faded. The Germans had ceased firing.
“¡Inglés bravo lo hizo! Derribó la puente. ¡Viva el demoledor inglés!”
The old lady was kissing him; others pounded him on the back.

Well, Julian, he thought, looking at the rising cloud of smoke, you finally finished your masterpiece.

He dropped the pistol into his coat and climbed aboard a horse. But he could not stop crying.