‘There are heroes dying all over Spain, my friend, but more are still living.’

The appellation was interesting; even if the relationship throughout the day had moved from downright abrasive to a degree of mutual respect and cooperation, it had certainly never been friendly. Tempted to push as to why it should be so now, Cal nevertheless hesitated, and asked how matters were progressing elsewhere in the country, only to be given a taste of how confused was the whole situation.

Seville was very much in the hands of the insurgents, the whole of Morocco too, with, it was reported, a quick bullet for any officers who hinted that they might stay loyal to the Republic. Burgos and Valladolid had declared for the uprising – not surprising given the old heartlands of Castile and León had always been rightist in their politics – while the central Pyrenean foothills were a stronghold of the deeply religious and conservative Carlist movement and thus natural allies to the generals.

Elsewhere it was confusion, with no way of knowing whose side anyone in authority was on; before them the Civil Guard were supporting the workers, elsewhere they were in the opposite camp, the Assault Guards the same. Some regional authorities were still refusing to arm the workers, too fearful to give guns to those they trusted just as little as they trusted the army, while in separatist regions like the Basque country, support for the Republic was more an opportunistic grab at regional autonomy than driven by conviction.

Worryingly, the insurgents seemingly held the major military port of Cádiz and the narrows at Gibraltar, though Valencia was an unknown quantity. Most of the navy was loyal – the lower deck had been very organised – yet there existed ships where the officers had prevailed, and it was suspected such vessels would be heading for the Straits to help the Army of Africa get troops and heavy equipment to the mainland.

A depressing rumour was circulating that two large German warships were also actively screening such a crossing from interference, which removed the doubt – if there ever had been any – that this was a fascist coup welcomed in both Berlin and Rome, who had already, it was fairly obvious, supplied weapons like rifles and machine guns.

Unclear was what the democracies would do in response, for neither France nor Britain would be happy to see Spain go into the dictators’ camp, the latter especially, with the route to India to protect. Yet just as telling was the fact that there was no mention of the Royal Navy in what Laporta was telling him; a mere gesture from the fleet based at Gibraltar and Valletta, which included several battleships, would send those two German warships packing.

Tempted to mention the fact, Cal kept silent; from what he knew of the British officer class, naval or otherwise, sympathy for Republican ideals was not a common thread. They would only act if instructed to do so and, quite inadvertently, he was back in Simpson’s, looking into the faces of the kind of folk who constituted what really passed for public opinion in good old Blighty – if they had no sympathy for the dispossessed in their own country, it was highly likely they would have even less for foreign workers.

‘How soon will this end?’ the Spaniard asked, waving a lazy hand at the besieged hotel, as a sudden burst of fire chopped bits of stone from the frontage.

‘It will end as soon as whoever is leading the defence realises they cannot win. It’s a choice, really: die in the hotel, or come out and hope the treatment you receive is better than that being meted out by your confrères.’

Cal waited, not with much in the way of hope, to see if Laporta would condemn some of the excesses being reported from around the city, albeit mostly by rumour; little mercy was being shown to those who failed to quickly surrender, and not much to those who did. A tale was circulating that some priests had been shot, accused by a party of workers of firing at them from their steeples, and in many places it seemed summary executions were taking place as old scores were settled with ruthless employers or outright class and political enemies.

Such acts were troubling but not unexpected; revolutions were always bloody affairs and luck played as much a part in survival as any other factor. Able to intervene, Cal Jardine would have stopped such activities, yet he knew that even if the desire to do so was strong, leaders like Laporta risked a bullet themselves if they interfered with passions let loose after decades of resentment. Turning a blind eye was often necessary, regardless of personal feelings.

That he, himself, had a streak of callousness Jardine did not doubt; how could it be otherwise after the experiences he had endured in the last six months of the Great War? When you have seen your friends die, led men in a battle knowing many will not survive, witnessed mass slaughter and inflicted death on enemies yourself, life loses some of its value. When you have, in cold blood, shot your wife’s lover in the marital bed you shared, it is hypocrisy to expect morality in conflict from others.

‘I would just bring up the Schneider cannon and blast them to hell,’ Laporta said, breaking too long a silence.

‘I wouldn’t. My luggage is in there.’

‘Why did you come to Spain, monsieur, at such a time?’

Implicit in the question was the intimation that he had some prior knowledge of the coup, which was true, not that he was about to say so. ‘The People’s Olympiad.’

‘You are not a socialist.’

‘I am not anything. I was in London, I was asked to do something as a favour and I agreed.’

‘London I do not know, Paris yes, but I think they must be the same, full of rich fascists and oppressed workers.’

‘You lived there?’

‘When I fled Spain, yes.’

‘I won’t ask why you had to get out.’

‘I have spent my life fighting the oppressors,’ Laporta responded, though not with any hint of fire. ‘Even those in France.’

The man was weary, leading Cal to wonder if he had managed even a short nap, something the low wall on which he was sitting had provided during a lull in the fighting. As if in answer to the question not posed, Laporta gave a huge yawn.

‘And at times it seems I wonder if I will ever reach my goal.’

Tempted to enquire about that, Cal hesitated again; the last thing he could face was a lecture on the ambitions of anarchism. Instead he asked Laporta about how he came to be where he was, a leader obviously, and a man deferred to as a fighter of long experience. It was the tale of a poor upbringing for a bright boy, and the struggle to make his way in a world pitted against his class, of fights for his elders and parents with miserly employers who did not hesitate to hire assassins to shoot those who dared to lead strikes demanding better pay and conditions.

The bitter boy had grown into a man determined to effect change, and if those he fought used murder as a weapon, then so must he. He and his colleagues had formed a tight cell dedicated to assassination, even at one time trying to kill King Alfonso. Naturally, those in power had struck back hard and forced flight.

Laporta had fought just as hard in France for those things in which he believed. There was a strong Spanish community in Paris, as well as left-leaning thinkers from all over Europe, many of them exiles rather than living there from choice, and if Spain was a troubled country politically, so was France, with its right-wing madmen, members of organisations like the Croix de Feu and Action Française.

In his time with Florencia, the limited knowledge he had of the Iberian Peninsula had been fleshed out, albeit from her point of view, and even allowing for her bias it was a tale of terrible poverty, haughty aristocrats unwilling to surrender an ounce of their prerogatives, intransigent land and factory owners and particularly pernicious mine managers, of a country mired in the trap of a post-imperial legacy and centuries of an obscurantist Catholic religion, which made the British Isles, for all its manifest faults and problems, sound like a haven of peace and harmony.