Robert Jordan had taken his pistol out of the holster and pushed the muzzle of the pistol against the leather coat of the armored car driver.
"Here are your orders," he had told him. The man shook his head with the big padded-leather helmet like a football player's on it and said, "There is no ammunition for the machine gun."
"We have ammunition at the bull ring," Robert Jordan had told him. "Come on, let's go. We will fill the belts there. Come on."
"There is no one to work the gun," the driver said.
"Where is he? Where is your mate?"
"Dead," the driver had said. "Inside there."
"Get him out," Robert Jordan had said. "Get him out of there."
"I do not like to touch him," the driver had said. "And he is bent over between the gun and the wheel and I cannot get past him."
"Come on," Robert Jordan had said. "We will get him out together."
He had banged his head as he climbed into the armored car and it had made a small cut over his eyebrow that bled down onto his face. The dead man was heavy and so stiff you could not bend him and he had to hammer at his head to get it out from where it had wedged, face down, between his seat and the wheel. Finally he got it up by pushing with his knee up under the dead man's head and then, pulling back on the man's waist now that the head was loose, he pulled the dead man out himself toward the door.
"Give me a hand with him," he had said to the driver.
"I do not want to touch him," the driver had said and Robert Jordan had seen that he was crying. The tears ran straight down on each side of his nose on the powder-grimed slope of his face and his nose was running, too.
Standing beside the door he had swung the dead man out and the dead man fell onto the sidewalk beside the tram-line still in that hunched-over, doubled-up position. He lay there, his face waxy gray against the cement sidewalk, his hands bent under him as they had been in the car.
"Get in, God damn it," Robert Jordan had said, motioning now with his pistol to the driver. "Get in there now."
Just then he had seen this man who had come out from the lee of the apartment house building. He had on a long overcoat and he was bareheaded and his hair was gray, his cheekbones broad and his eyes were deep and set close together. He had a package of Chesterfields in his hand and he took one out and handed it toward Robert Jordan who was pushing the driver into the armored car with his pistol.
"Just a minute, Comrade," he had said to Robert Jordan in Spanish. "Can you explain to me something about the fighting?"
Robert Jordan took the cigarette and put it in the breast pocket of his blue mechanic jumper. He had recognized this comrade from his pictures. It was the British economist.
"Go muck yourself," he said in English and then, in Spanish, to the armored car driver. "Down there. The bull ring. See?" And he had pulled the heavy side door to with a slam and locked it and they had started down that long slope in the car and the bullets had commenced to hit against the car, sounding like pebbles tossed against an iron boiler. Then when the machine gun opened on them, they were like sharp hammer tappings. They had pulled up behind the shelter of the bull ring with the last October posters still pasted up beside the ticket window and the ammunition boxes knocked open and the comrades with the rifles, the grenades on their belts and in their pockets, waiting there in the lee and Montero had said, "Good. Here is the tank. Now we can attack."
Later that night when they had the last houses on the hill, he lay comfortable behind a brick wall with a hole knocked in the bricks for a loophole and looked across the beautiful level field of fire they had between them and the ridge the fascists had retired to and thought, with a comfort that was almost voluptuous, of the rise of the hill with the smashed villa that protected the left flank. He had lain in a pile of straw in his sweat-soaked clothes and wound a blanket around him while he dried. Lying there he thought of the economist and laughed, and then felt sorry he had been rude. But at the moment, when the man had handed him the cigarette, pushing it out almost like offering a tip for information, the combatant's hatred for the noncombatant had been too much for him.
Now he remembered Gaylord's and Karkov speaking of this same man. "So it was there you met him," Karkov had said. "I did not get farther than the Puente de Toledo myself on that day. He was very far toward the front. That was the last day of his bravery I believe. He left Madrid the next day. Toledo was where he was the bravest, I believe. At Toledo he was enormous. He was one of the architects of our capture of the Alcazar. You should have seen him at Toledo. I believe it was largely through his efforts and his advice that our siege was successful. That was the silliest part of the war. It reached an ultimate in silliness but tell me, what is thought of him in America?"
"In America," Robert Jordan said, "he is supposed to be very close to Moscow."
"He is not," said Karkov. "But he has a wonderful face and his face and his manners are very successful. Now with my face I could do nothing. What little I have accomplished was all done in spite of my face which does not either inspire people nor move them to love me and to trust me. But this man Mitchell has a face he makes his fortune with. It is the face of a conspirator. All who have read of conspirators in books trust him instantly. Also he has the true manner of the conspirator. Any one seeing him enter a room knows that he is instantly in the presence of a conspirator of the first mark. All of your rich compatriots who wish sentimentally to aid the Soviet Union as they believe or to insure themselves a little against any eventual success of the party see instantly in the face of this man, and in his manner that he can be none other than a trusted agent of the Comintern."
"Has he no connections in Moscow?"
"None. Listen, Comrade Jordan. Do you know about the two kinds of fools?"
"Plain and damn?"
"No. The two kinds of fools we have in Russia," Karkov grinned and began. "First there is the winter fool. The winter fool comes to the door of your house and he knocks loudly. You go to the door and you see him there and you have never seen him before. He is an impressive sight. He is a very big man and he has on high boots and a fur coat and a fur hat and he is all covered with snow. First he stamps his boots and snow falls from them. Then he takes off his fur coat and shakes it and more snow falls. Then he takes off his fur hat and knocks it against the door. More snow falls from his fur hat. Then he stamps his boots again and advances into the room. Then you look at him and you see he is a fool. That is the winter fool.
"Now in the summer you see a fool going down the street and he is waving his arms and jerking his head from side to side and everybody from two hundred yards away can tell he is a fool. That is a summer fool. This economist is a winter fool."
"But why do people trust him here?" Robert Jordan asked.
"His face," Karkov said. "His beautiful gueule de conspirateur. And his invaluable trick of just having come from somewhere else where he is very trusted and important. Of course," he smiled, "he must travel very much to keep the trick working. You know the Spanish are very strange," Karkov went on. "This government has had much money. Much gold. They will give nothing to their friends. You are a friend. All right. You will do it for nothing and should not be rewarded. But to people representing an important firm or a country which is not friendly but must be influenced-to such people they give much. It is very interesting when you follow it closely."
"I do not like it. Also that money belongs to the Spanish workers."
"You are not supposed to like things. Only to understand," Karkov had told him. "I teach you a little each time I see you and eventually you will acquire an education. It would be very interesting for a professor to be educated."