"_Siga_," he said. "Continue. But without lights."
They were close behind the tailboard of a truck now, the motorcycle chugging, then Gomez speeded up and passed it and another, and another, and another with the other trucks roaring and rolling down past them on the left. There was a motorcar behind them now and it blasted into the truck noise and the dust with its klaxon again and again; then flashed on lights that showed the dust like a solid yellow cloud and surged past them in a whining rise of gears and a demanding, threatening, bludgeoning of klaxoning.
The man at the control would not give the safe-conduct back. There were two of them, with rifles slung on their backs and flashlights in their hands and they were shouting too. The one carrying the safe-conduct in his hand crossed the road to a truck going in the downhill direction to tell it to proceed to the next control and tell them there to hold all trucks until his jam was straightened out. The truck driver listened and went on. Then, still holding the safeconduct, the control patrol came over, shouting, to the truck driver whose load was spilled.
"Leave it and get ahead for the love of God so we can clear this!" he shouted at the driver.
"My transmission is smashed," the driver, who was bent over by the rear of his truck, said.
"Obscene your transmission. Go ahead, I say."
"They do not go ahead when the differential is smashed," the driver told him and bent down again.
"Get thyself pulled then, get ahead so that we can get this other obscenity off the road."
The driver looked at him sullenly as the control man shone the electric torch on the smashed rear of the truck.
"Get ahead. Get ahead," the man shouted, still holding the safeconduct pass in his hand.
"And my paper," Gomez spoke to him. "My safe-conduct. We are in a hurry."
"Take thy safe-conduct to hell," the man said and handing it to him ran across the road to halt a down-coming truck.
"Turn thyself at the crossroads and put thyself in position to pull this wreck forward," he said to the driver.
"My orders are--"
"Obscenity thy orders. Do as I say."
The driver let his truck into gear and rolled straight ahead down the road and was gone in the dust.
Now they went fast, swooping along the road that mounted steadily toward the mountain. All forward traffic had been stalled at the control and there were only the descending trucks passing, passing and passing on their left as the motorcycle climbed fast and steadily now until it began to overtake the mounting traffic which had gone on ahead before the disaster at the control.
Now they rode on a long slanting, rising stretch of road that ran across the face of the mountain and the grade was so steep as they neared the top that Gomez told him to get down and together they pushed the motorcycle up the last steep grade of the pass. At the left, just past the top, there was a loop of road where cars could turn and there were lights winking in front of a big stone building that bulked long and dark against the night sky.
At the door Gomez spoke to one of the sentries. "Captain Gomez of the Sixty-Fifth Brigade," he said. "Can you tell me where to find the headquarters of General Golz commanding the ThirtyFifth Division?"
"It isn't here," the sentry said.
"What is here?"
"The Comandancia."
"What comandancia?"
"Well, the Comandancia."
"The comandancia of what?"
"I am Captain Rogelio Gomez of the first battalion of the Sixty-Fifth Brigade and I ask where is the headquarters of General Golz," Gomez said.
The sentry opened the door a little way. "Call the corporal of the guard," he shouted inside.
A large man, old and heavy, in an oversized khaki beret, such as _chasseurs a pied_ wear in the French Army, wearing an overcoat, carrying a map case and wearing a pistol strapped around his greatcoat, got out of the back of the car with two other men in the uniform of the International Brigades.
As he came into the door with the other two officers, Gomez saw his face clearly in the light and recognized him. He had seen him at political meetings and he had often read articles by him in Mundo Obrero translated from the French. He recognized his bushy eyebrows, his watery gray eyes, his chin and the double chin under it, and he knew him for one of France's great modern revolutionary figures who had led the mutiny of the French Navy in the Black Sea. Gomez knew this man's high political place in the International Brigades and he knew this man would know where Golz's headquarters were and be able to direct him there. He did not know what this man had become with time, disappointment, bitterness both domestic and political, and thwarted ambition and that to question him was one of the most dangerous things that any man could do. Knowing nothing of this he stepped forward into the path of this man, saluted with his clenched fist and said, "Comrade Marty, we are the bearers of a dispatch for General Golz. Can you direct us to his headquarters? It is urgent."
The tall, heavy old man looked at Gomez with his outthrust head and considered him carefully with his watery eyes. Even here at the front in the light of a bare electric bulb, he having just come in from driving in an open car on a brisk night, his gray face had a look of decay. His face looked as though it were modelled from the waste material you find under the claws of a very old lion.
"A dispatch for General Golz to be delivered at his headquarters, Comrade Marty."
"Where is it from, Comrade?"
"From behind the fascist lines," Gomez said.
Andr?Marty extended his hand for the dispatch and the other papers. He glanced at them and put them in his pocket.
"Arrest them both," he said to the corporal of the guard. "Have them searched and bring them to me when I send for them."
With the dispatch in his pocket he strode on into the interior of the big stone house.
"What passes with that man?" Gomez said to one of the guards.
"_Est?loco_," the guard said. "He is crazy."
"No. He is a political figure of great importance," Gomez said. "He is the chief commissar of the International Brigades."
"_Apesar de eso, est?loco_," the corporal of the guard said. "All the same he's crazy. What do you behind the fascist lines?"
"This comrade is a guerilla from there," Gomez told him while the man searched him. "He brings a dispatch to General Golz. Guard well my papers. Be careful with that money and that bullet on the string. It is from my first wound at Guadarama."
"Don't worry," the corporal said. "Everything will be in this drawer. Why didn't you ask me where Golz was?"
"We tried to. I asked the sentry and he called you."
"But then came the crazy and you asked him. No one should ask him anything. He is crazy. Thy Golz is up the road three kilometers from here and to the right in the rocks of the forest."
"Can you not let us go to him now?"
"Nay. It would be my head. I must take thee to the crazy. Besides, he has thy dispatch."
"Can you not tell some one?"
"Yes," the corporal said. "I will tell the first responsible one I see. All know that he is crazy."
"I had always taken him for a great figure," Gomez said. "For one of the glories of France."
"Truly shooting them?"
"But you will tell some one of this dispatch?"
"Yes, man. Surely. I know every one of these two Brigades. Every one comes through here. I know even up to and through the Russians, although only a few speak Spanish. We will keep this crazy from shooting Spaniards."
"But the dispatch."
"The dispatch, too. Do not worry, Comrade. We know how to deal with this crazy. He is only dangerous with his own people. We understand him now."
"Bring in the two prisoners," came the voice of Andr?Marty.
"_Quereis echar un trago?_" the corporal asked. "Do you want a drink?"
"Why not?"
"_Vamonos_," he said.
"Stand there," Marty said without looking up.
"Listen, Comrade Marty," Gomez broke out, the anis fortifying his anger. "Once tonight we have been impeded by the ignorance of the anarchists. Then by the sloth of a bureaucratic fascist. Now by the oversuspicion of a Communist."
"Close your mouth," Marty said without looking up. "This is not a meeting."
"Comrade Marty, this is a matter of utmost urgence," Gomez said. "Of the greatest importance."
The corporal and the soldier with them were taking a lively interest in this as though they were at a play they had seen many times but whose excellent moments they could always savor.
"Everything is of urgence," Marty said. "All things are of importance." Now he looked up at them, holding the pencil. "How did you know Golz was here? Do you understand how serious it is to come asking for an individual general before an attack? How could you know such a general would be here?"
"On the other side of the lines?" Marty said. "Yes, I heard him say you came from the fascist lines."
Golz, he thought in a mixture of horror and exultation as a man might feel hearing that a business enemy had been killed in a particularly nasty motor accident or that some one you hated but whose probity you had never doubted had been guilty of defalcation. That Golz should be one of them, too. That Golz should be in such obvious communication with the fascists. Golz that he had known for nearly twenty years. Golz who had captured the gold train that winter with Lucacz in Siberia. Golz who had fought against Kolchak, and in Poland. In the Caucasus. In China, and here since the first October. But he _had_ been close to Tukachevsky. To Voroshilov, yes, too. But to Tukachevsky. And to who else? Here to Karkov, of course. And to Lucacz. But all the Hungarians had been intriguers. He hated Gall. Golz hated Gall. Remember that. Make a note of that. Golz has always hated Gall. But he favors Putz. Remember that. And Duval is his chief of staff. See what stems from that. You've heard him say Copic's a fool. That is definitive. That exists. And now this dispatch from the fascist lines. Only by pruning out of these rotten branches can the tree remain healthy and grow. The rot must become apparent for it is to be destroyed. But Golz of all men. That Golz should be one of the traitors. He knew that you could trust no one. No one. Ever. Not your wife. Not your brother. Not your oldest comrade. No one. Ever.
"Take them away," he said to the guards. "Guard them carefully." The corporal looked at the soldier. This had been very quiet for one of Marty's performances.
"Comrade Marty," Gomez said. "Do not be insane. Listen to me, a loyal officer and comrade. That is a dispatch that must be delivered. This comrade has brought it through the fascist lines to give to Comrade General Golz."
"Take them away," Marty said, now kindly, to the guard. He was sorry for them as human beings if it should be necessary to liquidate them. But it was the tragedy of Golz that oppressed him. That it should be Golz, he thought. He would take the fascist communication at once to Varloff. No, better he would take it to Golz himself and watch him as he received it. That was what he would do. How could he be sure of Varloff if Golz was one of them? No. This was a thing to be very careful about.
"Don't you see?" Gomez said.
"Yes," Gomez said. "He is crazy. You are crazy! Hear! Crazy!" he shouted at Marty who was back now bending over the map with his red-and-blue pencil. "Hear me, you crazy murderer?"
"Take them away," Marty said to the guard. "Their minds are unhinged by their great guilt."
There was a phrase the corporal recognized. He had heard that before.
"You crazy murderer!" Gomez shouted.
The stupidity of this man angered him. If he was a crazy let him be removed as a crazy. Let the dispatch be taken from his pocket. God damn this crazy to hell. His heavy Spanish anger was rising out of his usual calm and good temper. In a little while it would blind him.
He sat there, his moustache and his eyes focused on the map, on the map that he never truly understood, on the brown tracing of the contours that were traced fine and concentric as a spider's web. He could see the heights and the valleys from the contours but he never really understood why it should be this height and why this valley was the one. But at the General Staff where, because of the system of Political Commissars, he could intervene as the political head of the Brigades, he would put his finger on such and such a numbered, brown-thin-lined encircled spot among the greens of woods cut by the lines of roads that parallel the never casual winding of a river and say, "There. That is the point of weakness."
Gall and Copic, who were men of politics and of ambition, would agree and later, men who never saw the map, but heard the number of the hill before they left their starting place and had the earth of diggings on it pointed out, would climb its side to find their death along its slope or, being halted by machine guns placed in olive groves would never get up it at all. Or on other fronts they might scale it easily and be no better off than they had been before. But when Marty put his finger on the map in Golz's staff the scarheaded, white-faced General's jaw muscles would tighten and he would think, "I should shoot you, Andr?Marty, before I let you put that gray rotten finger on a contour map of mine. Damn you to hell for all the men you've killed by interfering in matters you know nothing of. Damn the day they named tractor factories and villages and co-operatives for you so that you are a symbol that I cannot touch. Go and suspect and exhort and intervene and denounce and butcher some other place and leave my staff alone."
But instead of saying that Golz would only lean back away from the leaning bulk, the pushing finger, the watery gray eyes, the graywhite moustache and the bad breath and say, "Yes, Comrade Marty. I see your point. It is not well taken, however, and I do not agree. You can try to go over my head if you like. Yes. You can make it a Party matter as you say. But I do not agree."
But on this night the old man, his beret pulled forward, was still sitting at the table with his map when the door opened and Karkov the Russian journalist came in with two other Russians in civilian clothes, leather coats and caps. The corporal of the guard closed the door reluctantly behind them. Karkov had been the first responsible man he had been able to communicate with.
"Tovarich Marty," said Karkov in his politely disdainful lisping voice and smiled, showing his bad teeth.
Marty stood up. He did not like Karkov, but Karkov, coming from _Pravda_ and in direct communication with Stalin, was at this moment one of the three most important men in Spain.
"Tovarich Karkov," he said.
"You are preparing the attack?" Karkov said insolently, nodding toward the map.
"I am studying it," Marty answered.
"Are you attacking? Or is it Golz?" Karkov asked smoothly.
"I am only a commissar, as you know," Marty told him.
"No," Karkov said. "You are modest. You are really a general. You have your map and your field glasses. But were you not an admiral once, Comrade Marty?"
"I was a gunner's mate," said Marty. It was a lie. He had really been a chief yeoman at the time of the mutiny. But he thought now, always, that he had been a gunner's mate.
"Ah. I thought you were a first-class yeoman," Karkov said. "I always get my facts wrong. It is the mark of the journalist."
The other Russians had taken no part in the conversation. They were both looking over Marty's shoulder at the map and occasionally making a remark to each other in their own language. Marty and Karkov spoke French after the first greeting.
"Yes," Karkov looked at him contemptuously, "a young American of slight political development but a great way with the Spaniards and a fine _partizan_ record. Just give me the dispatch, Comrade Marty. It has been delayed enough."
"What dispatch?" Marty asked. It was a very stupid thing to say and he knew it. But he was not able to admit he was wrong that quickly and he said it anyway to delay the moment of humiliation, not accepting any humiliation. "And the safe-conduct pass," Karkov said through his bad teeth.
Andr?Marty put his hand in his pocket and laid the dispatch on the table. He looked Karkov squarely in the eye. All right. He was wrong and there was nothing he could do about it now but he was not accepting any humiliation. "And the safe-conduct pass," Karkov said softly.
Marty laid it beside the dispatch.
"Comrade Corporal," Karkov called in Spanish.
The corporal opened the door and came in. He looked quickly at Andr?Marty, who stared back at him like an old boar which has been brought to bay by hounds. There was no fear on Marty's face and no humiliation. He was only angry, and he was only temporarily at bay. He knew these dogs could never hold him.
"Take these to the two comrades in the guard room and direct them to General Golz's headquarters," Karkov said. "There has been too much delay."
The corporal went out and Marty looked after him, then looked at Karkov.
"Tovarich Marty," Karkov said, "I am going to find out just how untouchable you are."
Marty looked straight at him and said nothing.
"Don't start to have any plans about the corporal, either," Karkov went on. "It was not the corporal. I saw the two men in the guard room and they spoke to me" (this was a lie). "I hope all men always will speak to me" (this was the truth although it was the corpora! who had spoken). But Karkov had this belief in the good which could come from his own accessibility and the humanizing possibility of benevolent intervention. It was the one thing he was never cynical about.
"You know when I am in the U.S.S.R. people write to me in _Pravda_ when there is an injustice in a town in Azerbaijan. Did you know that? They say 'Karkov will help us."
Andr?Marty looked at him with no expression on his face except anger and dislike. There was nothing in his mind now but that Karkov had done something against him. All right, Karkov, power and all, could watch out.
"This is something else," Karkov went on, "but it is the same principle. I am going to find Out just how untouchable you are, Comrade Marty. I would like to know if it could not be possible to change the name of that tractor factory."
Andr?Marty looked away from him and back to the map.
"What did young Jordan say?" Karkov asked him.
"I did not read it," Andr?Marty said. "_Et maintenant fiche moi la paix_, Comrade Karkov."
"Good," said Karkov. "I leave you to your military labors."
Gomez wheeled the motorcycle up to one of them. He leaned it against a pine tree and spoke to the chauffeur who was sitting by the car, his back against a tree.
"I'll take you to him," the chauffeur said. "Put thy _moto_ out of sight and cover it with these." He pointed to a pile of cut branches.
Vicente, the chauffeur, came out.
"He is up above where they are deploying for the attack," he said. "I gave it to his Chief of Staff. He signed for it. Here."
"What is the name of him who signed?" he asked.
"Duval," Vicente said.
"Come wait with me," Vicente said, "until the General returns. And I will get thee coffee. Thou must be hungry."
"And these tanks," Gomez said to him.
They were passing the branch-covered, mud-colored tanks, each with two deep-ridged tracks over the pine needles showing where they had swung and backed from the road. Their 45-mm. guns jutted horizontally under the branches and the drivers and gunners in their leather coats and ridged helmets sat with their backs against the trees or lay sleeping on the ground.
"These are the reserve," Vicente said. "Also these troops are in reserve. Those who commence the attack are above."
"Yes," Vicente said. "It is a full division."
Inside the dugout Duval, holding the opened dispatch from Robert Jordan in his left hand, glancing at his wrist watch on the same hand, reading the dispatch for the fourth time, each time feeling the sweat come out from under his armpit and run down his flank, said into the telephone, "Get me position Segovia, then. He's left? Get me position Avila."
He kept on with the phone. It wasn't any good. He had talked to both brigades. Golz had been up to inspect the dispositions for the attack and was on his way to an observation post. He called the observation post and he was not there.
"Get me planes one," Duval said, suddenly taking all responsibility. He would take responsibility for holding it up. It was better to hold it up. You could not send them to a surprise attack against an enemy that was waiting for it. You couldn't do it. It was just murder. You couldn't. You mustn't. No matter what. They could shoot him if they wanted. He would call the airfield directly and get the bombardment cancelled. But suppose it's just a holding attack? Suppose we were supposed to draw off all that material and those forces? Suppose that is what it is for? They never tell you it is a holding attack when you make it.
"Cancel the call to planes one," he told the signaller. "Get me the Sixty-Ninth Brigade observation post."
He was still calling there when he heard the first sound of the planes.
It was just then he got through to the observation post.
"Yes," Golz said quietly.
He was sitting leaning back against the sandbag, his feet against a rock, a cigarette hung from his lower lip and he was looking up and over his shoulder while he was talking. He was seeing the expanding wedges of threes, silver and thundering in the sky that were coming over the far shoulder of the mountain where the first sun was striking. He watched them come shining and beautiful in the sun. He saw the twin circles of light where the sun shone on the propellers as they came.
"Yes," he said into the telephone, speaking in French because it was Duval on the wire. "_Nous sommes foutus. Oui. Comme toujours. Oui. C'est dommage. Oui_. It's a shame it came too late."
His eyes, watching the planes coming, were very proud. He saw the red wing markings now and he watched their steady, stately roaring advance. This was how it could be. These were our planes. They had come, crated on ships, from the Black Sea through the Straits of Marmora, through the Dardanelles, through the Mediterranean and to here, unloaded lovingly at Alicante, assembled ably, tested and found perfect and now flown in lovely hammering precision, the V's tight and pure as they came now high and silver in the morning sun to blast those ridges across there and blow them roaring high so that we can go through.
Golz knew that once they had passed overhead and on, the bombs would fall, looking like porpoises in the air as they tumbled. And then the ridge tops would spout and roar in jumping clouds and disappear in one great blowing cloud. Then the tanks would grind clanking up those two slopes and after them would go his two brigades. And if it had been a surprise they could go on and down and over and through, pausing, cleaning up, dealing with, much to do, much to be done intelligently with the tanks helping, with the tanks wheeling and returning, giving covering fire and others bringing the attackers up then slipping on and over and through and pushing down beyond. This was how it would be if there was no treason and if all did what they should.
There were the two ridges, and there were the tanks ahead and there were his two good brigades ready to leave the woods and here came the planes now. Everything he had to do had been done as it should be.
But as he watched the planes, almost up to him now, he felt sick at his stomach for he knew from having heard Jordan's dispatch over the phone that there would be no one on those two ridges. They'd be withdrawn a little way below in narrow trenches to escape the fragments, or hiding in the timber and when the bombers passed they'd get back up there with their machine guns and their automatic weapons and the anti-tank guns Jordan had said went up the road, and it would be one famous balls up more. But the planes, now coming deafeningly, were how it could have been and Golz watching them, looking up, said into the telephone, "No. _Rien a faire. Rien. Faut pas penser. Faut accepter_."
Golz watched the planes with his hard proud eyes that knew how things could be and how they would be instead and said, proud of how they could be, believing in how they could be, even if they never were, "_Bon. Nous ferons notre petit possible_," and hung up.
But Duval did not hear him. Sitting at the table holding the receiver, all he heard was the roar of the planes and he thought, now, maybe this time, listen to them come, maybe the bombers will blow them all off, maybe we will get a break-through, maybe he will get the reserves he asked for, maybe this is it, maybe this is the time. Go on. Come on. Go on. The roar was such that he could not hear what he was thinking.