‘What would you have done if I’d tried?’

‘Knocked you out, what else? He would have had to kill me too.’

‘Then you’ll be glad to know that my gun has no bullets.’

Hemingway’s shoulders were shaking with mirth. ‘Now that would have been a dandy trick to pull off. Time, I think, for that drink.’

Cal pointed to the crumpled body, with a deep pool of blood seeping from the shattered head. ‘What about him?’

‘Number of bodies laying around Madrid on a day like this, one more won’t make much difference, and the poor shmuck will never know we just left him to the crows. Besides, I have a pressing need. I want to know why it is Tyler Alverson introduced you by a name that’s different from the one that communist guy used, given he seemed to know you real well. I don’t know a heck of a lot of German but I take it your real name is Jardine?’

When Cal looked to demur, Hemingway added, ‘A dollar bill gets me the hotel register.’ It only needed a nod then. ‘In my experience a reporter only does that when he’s trying to hide a story from a rival.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It did not take long to realise that summary executions were taking place all over Madrid, and as far as anyone could tell, all over Spain, if the reports were true. If it was not politics – and there was a lot of that – it would be, Cal thought, all the usual historical reasons that surface when society collapses: the settling of old scores, the avoidance of a due debt or even retaliation for an imagined slight long past. To try and stop it was dangerous and actually futile; it had its own dynamic.

For all they were still amateurs, the International Brigades had halted the Nationalist advance, albeit at a horrendous cost in men wounded and killed, and then began a successful counter-attack. The Foreign Legionnaires – Franco’s best troops – were being pushed out of the University district and still the other columns could not breach the defences before the city centre.

There had been any number of crises, the whole defence a close-run  thing, with aerial combat daily and the front ebbing to and fro. On one black day, the militias before the Toledo Bridge broke, only the prompt action of the top Spanish general stopping a rout, he rallying the fleeing fighters, then leading them personally back into battle with nothing but his pistol as a weapon.

Florencia, over the next few days, was in a state of emotional turmoil, a very changed person from the one Cal had known, given to sudden outbursts of tears during the day and nightmares later, and in no fit state to go back to the fight. There was no mystery to what he was observing, he had seen it too many times and had blessed his luck that though he could recall clearly the death and mutilation he had witnessed, he also had the capacity to contain it within himself.

She was seeing dead comrades, having visions of heads and limbs being blown off, of smashed bodies with staring eyes, while, on top of that, reliving every action of her own, every grenade thrown, the face of each enemy she had killed and many she had not, who would appear in her dreams like ravenous beasts ready to tear her apart. All he could do was hold her soaked-with-sweat body and comfort her with useless platitudes.

That meant he spent time in the hotel, his only action to acquire bullets for his pistol; he was waiting for Florencia to either recover or admit her problem so he could take her away from the front. If his days had their material comforts, they also brought forth a feeling he should really be on the way to Valencia to find out if the government were willing to buy arms from a source that would scare them rigid; they did not know old Zaharoff as he did – if he said it was safe to deal, that would be the case.

Then there was no avoiding Hemingway, or at least his probing. Tyler Alverson had been taken to task for his subterfuge and had come out fighting, telling his colleague, Ernie, in no uncertain terms that he would have done just the same, while admonishing Cal to stay shtum; not that ‘Ernie’, when not writing articles about what he was witnessing, failed to press.

‘You know, Jardine, I work for one of the best-resourced news-gathering outfits in creation, which has a phenomenal library, and as for contacts, well, you can imagine. So if you have been a naughty boy, it is either in the collective memory or the files. You can save them some dollars by just telling me what I want to know.’

‘There’s nothing to tell.’

Hemingway then tried to get him drunk and, given he had hollow legs and a big swallow, it had been a challenge to stay sober, or, in truth, to stay quiet when not. For all that, as a companion he grew on Cal; he had a fund of scabrous tales, many of them in which he was the fool or victim, and he was very much a man’s man, who promised that they would, one fine day, go hunting game in Wyoming and fish marlin together off the Florida coast.

‘Any man that can drink like you, Cal, I call good company.’

Ernie had been an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in the Great War, had a medal for bravery for saving a man’s life when wounded himself and, since publishing his first pieces, had covered as many wars as Tyler Alverson; he was a hard man not to respect, even if, when it came to bullfighting, a sport he extolled, Cal was on the side of the animal.

It was strange to observe these journalists; each day they would go out and seek a story, into the midst of a desperate battle, then come back to their reasonably safe haven – the city was still being bombed – and act as though it was just a normal day’s work. Tyler and Ernie ribbed each other but it was clear there was mutual respect, and Cal took pleasure in both their company, while keeping a tight lid on his own history.

Hemingway had checked up on Manfred Drecker, now a member of the so-called Fifth Regiment, which, once the Civil Guard had been purged, was now responsible for security in the capital. Wholly communist, they were committed killers, and he also pointed out one thing Cal had not noticed: the correspondent of the Russian newspaper, Pravda, did not reside with the other journalists in the Florida Hotel – he was accommodated in the Soviet Embassy.

‘Making up stories.’

‘Lies more like.’

It was all very chummy, but then came the day of the file, produced and waved over a dry Martini by Ernest Hemingway, unusually having stayed in the hotel when everyone else had departed to the front.

‘Cost an arm and a leg in cables, Jardine, but I have got you nailed.’

‘Can I see?’ Cal asked, nodding to the folder lying on the mahogany bar, hoping it did not contain too much.

‘Hell no! If you do you’ll find out who’s spilling your beans. But I now know you are more than just an ex-soldier, so what are you up to?’

‘I can’t be up to much, Ernie, I have spent the past few days eating, drinking and nursing my woman.’

‘Hell, I wish I was nursing mine. How is she?’

Cal looked into his drink. ‘You know, Ernie, that’s the first time you’ve asked.’

‘Don’t like to pry.’

‘She’ll recover, people do.’

‘You?’

‘Never had the problem, too callous probably.’

The folder was lifted and went to Hemingway’s nose, as though he was sniffing the contents. ‘What’s it like shooting a guy in cold blood?’

‘It’s like shooting an animal, and it was not cold blood.’

‘Kinda rough finding a guy in your own bed and with your wife.’

That image was one he saw more often than most: the terrified face of Lizzie’s naked lover, her just as fearful, just as he put a bullet through his eye. He shook his head and lifted it as Ernie responded.

‘Had a dame once who threw me over. Maybe I should have shot the bastard she married but, unlike you, I would not have been acquitted.’

The fact that Cal was now looking into the mirror behind the bar, and the expression on his face, made Ernie turn round, to see Florencia, still pale and drawn but nothing like she had been, standing a few feet away. Had she heard what Hemingway said, because it was not something Cal had ever told her about?