In theory he should only have had to show the safe-conduct given him by Robert Jordan stamped with the seal of the S. I. M. and the dispatch which bore the same seal and be passed along toward his destination with the greatest speed. But first he had encountered the company commander in the front line who had regarded the whole mission with owlishly grave suspicion.
This officer looked up at Gomez and said, "What doest thou here? Have you never heard of the telephone?"
"I must see the Lieutenant-Colonel," Gomez said.
"He is asleep," the officer said. "I could see the lights of that bicycle of thine for a mile coming down the road. Dost wish to bring on a shelling?"
"Call the Lieutenant-Colonel," Gomez said. "This is a matter of the utmost gravity."
"He is a _guerrillero_ from the other side of the lines with a dispatch of the utmost importance for the General Golz who commands the attack that is to be made at dawn beyond Navacerrada," Gomez said excitedly and earnestly. "Rouse the _Teniente-Coronel_ for the love of God."
The officer looked at him with his droopy eyes shaded by the green celluloid.
"All of you are crazy," he said. "I know of no General Golz nor of no attack. Take this sportsman and get back to your battalion."
"Go obscenity yourself," the officer said to him lazily and turned away.
Gomez took his heavy 9 mm. Star pistol out of its holster and shoved it against the officer's shoulder.
"Rouse him, you fascist bastard," he said. "Rouse him or I'll kill you."
"Calm yourself," the officer said. "All you barbers are emotional."
"Orderly," the officer called in a contemptuous voice.
A soldier came to the door and saluted and went out.
"It is those like thee who obstruct all effort to win this war," Gomez said to the staff officer.
The officer paid no attention to him. Then, as he read on, he remarked, as though to himself, "What a curious periodical this is!"
"Why don't you read _El Debate_ then? That is your paper," Gomez said to him naming the leading Catholic-Conservative organ published in Madrid before the movement.
"Don't forget I am thy superior officer and that a report by me on thee carries weight," the officer said without looking up. "I never read _El Debate_. Do not make false accusations."
"No. You read A. B. C.," Gomez said. "The army is still rotten with such as thee. With professionals such as thee. But it will not always be. We are caught between the ignorant and the cynical. But we will educate the one and eliminate the other."
"'Purge' is the word you want," the officer said, still not looking up. "Here it reports the purging of more of thy famous Russians. They are purging more than the epsom salts in this epoch."
"By any name," Gomez said passionately. "By any name so that such as thee are liquidated."
"Liquidated," the officer said insolently as though speaking to himself. "Another new word that has little of Castilian in it."
"Shot, then," Gomez said. "That is Castilian. Canst understand it?"
"Yes, man, but do not talk so loudly. There are others beside the _Teniente-Coronel_ asleep in this Brigade Staff and thy emotion bores me. It was for that reason that I always shaved myself. I never liked the conversation."
The Lieutenant-Colonel Miranda, who was a short, gray-faced man, who had been in the army all his life, who had lost the love of his wife in Madrid while he was losing his digestion in Morocco, and become a Republican when he found he could not divorce his wife (there was never any question of recovering his digestion), had entered the civil war as a Lieutenant-Colonel. He had only one ambition, to finish the war with the same rank. He had defended the Sierra well and he wanted to be left alone there to defend it whenever it was attacked. He felt much healthier in the war, probably due to the forced curtailment of the number of meat courses, he had an enormous stock of sodium-bicarbonate, he had his whiskey in the evening, his twenty-three-year-old mistress was having a baby, as were nearly all the other girls who had started out as _milicianas_ in the July of the year before, and now he came into the room, nodded in answer to Gomez's salute and put out his hand.
"What brings thee, Gomez?" he asked and then, to the officer at the desk who was his chief of operation, "Give me a cigarette, please, Pepe."
"Is the life very hard there in the hills?" he asked.
"Did they tell thee where would be the closest point to find General Golz's headquarters?"
"It was as usual, my Lieutenant-Colonel. Quiet. Quiet."
"Did I not meet thee in Cercedilla about three months back?" the Lieutenant-Colonel asked.
"Yes, my Lieutenant-Colonel."
"I thought so," the Lieutenant-Colonel patted him on the shoulder. "You were with the old man Anselmo. How is he?"
After they went out he went to a cabinet, took out a glass and a bottle, and poured himself some whiskey and poured plain water into it from an earthenware crock that stood on the floor against the wall. Then holding the glass and sipping the whiskey very slowly he stood in front of the big map on the wall and studied the offensive possibilities in the country above Navacerrada.
"I am glad it is Golz and not me," he said finally to the officer who sat at the table. The officer did not answer and looking away from the map and at the officer the Lieutenant-Colonel saw he was asleep with his head on his arms. The Lieutenant-Colonel went over to the desk and pushed the two phones close together so that one touched the officer's head on either side. Then he walked to the cupboard, poured himself another whiskey, put water in it, and went back to the map again.
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