‘She’s some dame,’ Alverson added. ‘A dinamitera.’

‘We had those in Barcelona.’

‘She throws a mean grenade.’

‘I need to get to her, Tyler. Is she still in the Casa de Campo?’

‘The bit they still hold, which ain’t going to be much. That’s the other place the Regulares attacked. I’ll take you there in the morning.’

‘Not now?’

Alverson shook his head as though the suggestion was absurd. ‘You don’t go far after dark, and certainly not towards the front. There are too many trigger-happy guys out there just itching to shoot at anything that moves.’ He looked at Jardine keenly. ‘You haven’t heard about the Model Prison?’

‘No. I’ve been out of touch with news, on the road.’

‘This one won’t be on the radio, unless the Nationalists get hold of it. Some of our finest went to the Model Prison, evacuated the inmates to some place further east and massacred them as potential spies. They say there are hundreds of bodies in a mass grave.’

‘How could they be spies when they were in prison?’

‘Blame that stupid bastard Mola, him and his goddam fifth column.’ Alverson called for another beer. ‘He’s got everybody looking at everybody else like they’re traitors.’

‘He has to have some friends in the city.’

‘They’ve either gone or are in hiding. I gotta eat something. You?’

‘Been there, but I’ll join you and you can bring me up to date.’

What Cal Jardine heard was a sorry tale; the militias were suffering badly and, as he suspected, tanks, artillery and heavy weapons were often not committed, though Alverson insisted it was because of scarcity more than politics.

‘No, brother, the soldiers and airmen are doing their best. The politics are here in the city centre and it runs right to the top. Caballero tried to get the POUM into his government after the anarchists joined, but the Soviet ambassador vetoed that idea, no doubt on orders from Moscow. If Joe Stalin hates anything it’s a Trotskyite, so it was no POUM or no more weapons.’

Talking as he ate, it did not get any better; the communists had taken over security, the Civil Guard had been purged and the Assault Guard sent to Valencia, while suspected opponents were being rounded up by NKVD-led patrols. Yet in amongst the gloom, Alverson had positives, not least the way the madrileños had responded to the threat to their city.

‘Every hand was put to the pump, Cal – women and kids carrying rocks for barricades, men digging trenches, not a factory that did not have its own militia unit. The pity is they do not have enough weapons, and then only small arms. But they don’t hold back, they attack even when they know they can’t win.’

‘That I have seen before.’

‘I don’t know whether to pity them or just admire them.’

‘Can they hold, Tyler?’

‘I’m no military man, Cal, but unless they get reinforcements I think it might be time to light out.’

‘Not without Florencia.’

‘That struck, eh? I wish you luck, brother.’ Just then there was a bellow, another American voice shouting for food and drink, which brought one unnecessary word from Alverson. ‘Ernie.’ Surprisingly he waved Hemingway over, then reacted to the look he got from his companion. ‘He might be a pain in the ass but he’s one hell of a reporter. Ask him if they can hold.’

The man’s dark hair and moustache seemed full of the same kind of dust that lay everywhere, and when he sat down it was clear he was weary, and there was silence until he had a tall glass in front of him, whisky of some kind mixed with water, which he drank from deeply. Then he nodded to Cal.

‘You came back? Not many doin’ that.’

‘Not many stayed either, Ernie.’

‘Nope. As soon as the shit started flying most of our brave colleagues upped and left for safer climes, afraid of taking a dying, I reckon.’

‘And you’re not?’

‘I’ve faced my demons in Italy in ’18.’

‘And,’ Tyler Alverson said, with heavy emphasis, ‘you have been trying to get yourself killed ever since.’

‘Charmed life, Tyler.’

‘Cal wants to know if the place will hold.’

Hemingway sat forward then, in a way so forceful a lesser man might have felt threatened.

‘If it does not, there won’t be many of Franco’s boys still standing. These madrileños will fight for every stone. I have never met folk so fearless. It’s like they welcome death.’

There was a look in the American’s eye then, and it was remarkably like envy. Draining his glass, he hauled himself to his feet, waved a big hand, and left.

Cal Jardine was about to ask Hemingway why someone so successful was here in a war zone, but it died in his throat – it was a question he could have posed to himself. But the subject did surface later as they had a drink in a nearby bar called Chicote’s, where what journos were left in Madrid went to do what they did everywhere in the world, get plastered.

Big Ernie was a topic of conversation it was hard to avoid, so telling was his presence, and, it had to be admitted, there was a degree of envy for his success and reputation, though not from Tyler Alverson. He had come to Spain as soon as the war began with his latest woman and not his wife, another reporter called Martha, who was filing for Collier’s Weekly, though by all accounts it was a pretty stormy relationship in which they competed more than cooperated.

‘So where is she, this Martha?’ Cal asked, as the press corps started singing a filthy drinking song that would see one of them having to down something disgusting as a forfeit.

‘Time to go, Cal, this can only get worse. And Martha – covering somewhere else, which is what she does after every screaming match.’

CHAPTER TWENTY

Having brought his map with him, Cal was able to bring it up to date, and it was not looking good despite Hemingway’s confidence. To the north, the Nationalists, having in fact secured two bridges, should have been able to push deep into the University Quarter, a place of little domestic occupation, large buildings and lots of wide open spaces, sweeping grassy areas, plazas and wide boulevards, perfect for an army intent on avoiding the heavily built-up areas.

The key now was to first contain them there and hold the rest of the bridges to the south, then to counter-attack, though he had no idea if the Republic had the means – it would not have done his thought process much good to have known neither did the Madrid military commanders. He had no concept of the depth of the fog surrounding operations but it took little time to find out.

Alverson took him out just before dawn, the time when any assaults planned overnight would be launched, and they joined a stream of fighters crossing the wide Segovia Bridge, passing through sandbagged emplacements equipped with heavy machine guns and mortars and, only just visible, a pair of heavily camouflaged T26 Russian tanks. Cal was very tempted to look them over out of professional interest, they being some of the best of their kind in the world and reputedly more than a match for the German Panzers, but there was no time.

The signs of actual battle were not long in showing: trees shattered by artillery fire, shell craters and even deeper, wider depressions where the Casa de Campo had been heavily bombed, and, incongruously, little bunches of flowers, no doubt marking where some relative had fallen, their bodies carried back into the city along with those merely wounded. Then there was the smell, of burning and cordite mixed with the gassy odour of churned-up ground, the only one seemingly out of place the strong stink of petrol.

Florencia, when they found her, looked haggard, her face not only grubby but having lost its total fullness, and with bags formed under her eyes. Nor did she possess her usual fountain of energy; the kiss she gave Cal Jardine was as weary as the clasp she managed with her arms, and that was not easy, she being festooned with grenades attached to her overalls with sewn-on thread. Tyler Alverson merely got a nod.