The General's Dog Read online

  Nacho reached under the bar and produced a large goatskin bag. ‘Full of red wine,’ he announced grandly. ‘Whatever else happens up there in the mountains, you won’t go thirsty.’

  ‘You’re a real pal,’ Luis told him, raising his glass of Sun and Shade. ‘One of the best.’

  Nacho simpered. ‘It’s the least I can do for a bunch of heroes like you chaps,’ he said.

  But that’s the trouble, we’re not heroes yet, Paco told himself. And even if we ever do earn the title, it’ll probably be as dead heroes.

  Through the window, they saw a red double-decker bus pull up outside the bar. ‘There’s your transport, comrades,’ Nacho said. ‘It’s time for you to get out there and start killing Fascists.’

  And Luis the tailor, Eugenio the postman, Pepe the street-sweeper and all the rest of them – left through the front door of the Cabo de Trafalgar swearing to do just that.

  The new militiamen eagerly clambered on board the bus. A bus! Paco thought. They were not even going out to the battlefront in an open lorry. They were using public transport, as if, instead of being involved in a desperate struggle for survival, they were merely setting off on a holiday excursion. As he took his seat, he half expected a conductor to come to him and ask him for his fare.

  The whole thing was a farce, he told himself but then he supposed that it was no more farcical than many of the things which had happened in the previous couple of days. And along with the farce, there had also been the incredible bravery of the men who had stormed the Montaña barracks – men who had exposed themselves to heavy fire in their efforts to capture the rifle bolts they needed for the guns which the government had finally, and reluctantly, issued them with. Maybe that was what all wars were like, he decided, remembering his experience in Morocco – a mixture of incredible courage and downright stupidity.

  The bus was already three-quarters full. The only thing which identified most of the men as belonging to a militia were their blue boiler-suits and party badges, though a few of them had managed to scrounge steel helmets or forage caps from somewhere, and now wore their new military headgear with an air of bravado. There were regular soldiers on the bus, too, wearing red armbands to show that though much of the army had deserted the Republic, they, at least, had remembered the oath of loyalty they had sworn.

  And there were women! Some of them were dressed much as the men were, wearing cartridge belts across their chests and expressions on their faces which defied anyone to question their right to make the journey. Others, in conventional summer dresses, sat close to young men who could only have been their husbands, pinching their arms affectionately and occasionally whispering in their ears.

  A third group of women sat huddled together at the back of the bus. They, too, were dressed in a uniform of sorts. Their frocks were cut daringly low over their heavy bosoms, and the thick makeup they had applied to their faces did little to disguise the fact that they were all well past their prime. Whores! Of the lowest kind! The ones who were not considered attractive enough to work in brothels on the Calle Echagay, and so had to earn whatever pitiful living they could out on the streets. And now they were going to war, seizing the opportunity to make a few pesetas during any lull which might occur in the fighting.

  Paco lit up a Celtas and sucked the smoke into his lungs. Whores of the lowest kind! he repeated to himself. It did not bother him that the women should have wanted to come along – who could blame them for seeing their chance? – but it did bother him that on a serious mission like this there had been no one with the authority, or the foresight, to prevent them. It was just one more example of the amateur way the whole defence of the Republic was being conducted.

  The few people who were out on the streets at that early hour of the morning gave clenched-fist salutes to the red bus which was on its way to stop the Fascists, and the militiamen on board responded enthusiastically. Wine bottles were passed round, and some of the boiler-suited would-be heroes were already starting to tuck into the food they had packed for lunch-time.

  The bus had soon left the old part of the city, and was passing through the Arguelles district. There were no greetings from the pavement here. This barrio was firmly behind the military revolt, and stood out on the political map of Madrid as one of the few patches of pure blue surrounded by a sea of red.

  *

  The road which led to the sierra was busier than it had ever been before. It seemed as if every available vehicle was being used to transport the eager young militiamen to the heart of the fighting. Trucks which had been hauling vegetables or coal a couple of days earlier were now crammed with men waving their rifles in the air. Private cars, with the initials of one of the trade unions hastily painted on them, vied with each other to get to the head of the queue. There were motor bikes with sidecars, horses pulling ancient, creaking carts, and even men on donkeys, all itching to get a crack at the enemy.

  It was nearly three hours before the bus finally came to a halt, half-way up a steep mountain road. Pepe the street-sweeper, who had been sitting at the front of the bus, now stood up and faced the rest of the passengers.

  ‘When I was here yesterday, the Fascist bastards were dug in over there,’ he said, pointing out of the window into the pinewoods. ‘So what are we waiting for, comrades? Let’s go and get the sons-of-bitches.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Paco said. ‘Before we start out, we should form ourselves into units.’

  ‘Units!’ Pepe echoed him scornfully. ‘What the hell do we need units for? We each have a rifle, don’t we? All we have to do is point them at the enemy and pull the trigger.’

  A roar of approval greeted his remark. Paco shrugged, fatalistically. He had known it would be useless to make the suggestion from the start. These men were so fired up that it would take some considerable losses before they realized the value of organization and military discipline. He could only pray that they came to their senses before it was too late.

  *

  The ragged line of blue–boiler-suited men moved noisily through the conifer woods, coughing and spitting, laughing at each others’ crude jokes, cursing when they almost tripped over a tree-root. They could hear the sounds of battle in the distance – the crack of rifle-shots, the boom of light artillery – but after almost an hour of walking steadily uphill, they had still to meet any of the enemy they fondly imagined it would be so easy to vanquish.

  Tempers began to wear thin. Some of the militiamen argued that they should be heading in another direction entirely. Others complained loudly that they were carrying more than their fair share of the food. Only when Luis the tailor suggested that they take a short break was there general agreement.

  They sat in a circle in a small clearing, broke open some of their supplies and passed around the goatskin bag which contained the wine.

  ‘We need to be much better organized than we are now,’ Paco, said, making one last attempt to talk some sense into his hotheaded comrades. ‘We should have two scouts, one on our left flank and one on our right. That’s how we did things in Morocco.’

  ‘Don’t try to lecture us, Paco,’ Eugenio the postman said. ‘We’ve all been in the army. We’ve all served our time in Morocco, just like you have.’

  ‘You haven’t all seen the same kind of action that I have,’ Paco pointed out. ‘During the retreat to Melilla . . .’

  ‘You know what he’s after, don’t you?’ little Alfredo the shoeblack asked the rest of the group. ‘He fancies being our leader.’ He turned to Paco. ‘Well, let me tell you something. We didn’t win our liberty from the capitalists only to start taking orders from you.’

  *

  It was just after eleven o’clock, when the sun was already high in the sky, that the militiamen found the action they thought they’d been looking for. They had left the shelter of the woods, and were crossing an area of fire-blackened tree stumps, when the machine-gun opened fire. Luis the tailor was the first one to be hit. In an instant, he was transformed from a trudgin
g militiaman into a demented puppet which jerked first one way then the other, as the heavy bullets slammed into his frail flesh. For a second his comrades just stood there – frozen to the spot, hardly able to believe what was happening – and then they flung themselves to the ground, getting what protection they could from the tree stumps.

  Paco, already flat on his stomach, fired a couple of rapid rounds into the trees. But even as he pulled the trigger, he knew he was doing no more than wasting ammunition. The machine-gun was probably positioned in a shallow dug-out, he guessed, and though it was possible that the gunner might be hit by a lucky shot, it wasn’t really likely. He and his comrades, on the other hand, while not quite sitting targets, could be picked off by simple attrition.

  The other militiamen had recovered enough from the shock to be able to return fire, and their rifles cracked all around Paco, filling the clear mountain air with the stink of cordite. A fountain of earth spurted up just in front of him, as one of the machine-gun’s bullets buried itself in the ground centimetres from his nose. The machine-gunner was getting the range, he told himself. It was only a matter of time before they would all be dead. He twisted round, and, crawling on his belly, started to make his way back towards the edge of the clearing.

  It could not have been more than twenty metres to the safety of the woods, yet it felt like the longest journey he had ever taken. As he snaked his body over the rough ground, every stone, every twig, seemed to take a malevolent pleasure in digging itself into him.

  The firing continued behind him, and there was the occasional scream as a bullet found its target. Someone – it may have been little Alfredo – called out, ‘Look at Paco! He wanted to be our leader, and now he’s running out on us. The louse!’

  And if he was killed before he reached the woods, that was how he would be remembered, he realized. The louse! The man who had abandoned his comrades to their fate in order to save his own miserable skin. Except that if he didn’t make it to the woods, none of them would be alive to tell that particular tale.

  His elbows and knees were rubbed raw, his ribs and spine ached, but finally he felt his left hand touch the base of a tree. He crawled a little further, then quickly clambered to his feet. Paco glanced back at the clearing. Some of the others were still firing in the general direction of the machine-gun, but many of them lay in the awkward, twisted positions which said, more clearly than words, that they would never again brag in the Cabo de Trafalgar about how many Fascists they were intending to kill.

  A bullet embedded itself with an angry thud in the tree-trunk just above his head. Paco plunged into the deeper safety of the woods.

  *

  He decided to take a circuitous route to his destination, swinging in a wide arc around the clearing. He was aware, even as he took that decision, that it would mean more of his comrades would die. But better that should happen than that he should run into enemy look-outs and lose his own life – because then all of the trapped men would be doomed.

  It took him fifteen minutes to work his way around to a point from which he had a clear view of the shallow dug-out. There were only two men in it – one was firing the machine-gun, the other feeding the belt through. From the piecemeal nature of their uniforms – mismatched jackets and pants – he could tell they were not regular soldiers at all, but Fascist militiamen who, just like his own compañeros, had probably been doing perfectly ordinary jobs a few days earlier. Amateurs! he thought. They had not even gone to the trouble of posting guards on their flank.

  He went down on one knee, raised his rifle to his shoulder, and took careful aim. Yet even with his finger on the trigger, he hesitated. He had killed before. There had been at least a dozen Moroccan warriors he’d accounted for. And during the course of his career in the police, he’d shot several men who’d decided they had more chance of remaining free with him out of the way. But this was different. These men weren’t foreign warriors or homegrown criminals. He couldn’t even say, with absolute certainty, that they were fighting on the wrong side and he on the right one. Even the fact that they’d been so careless made it difficult for him – it seemed almost unfair to take advantage of their incompetence.

  A fresh burst of machine gun fire on his trapped comrades quelled his misgivings. He closed one eye, and pulled the trigger. The machine-gunner leapt backwards, as though he were on a long piece of tightly stretched elastic and could fight against its pull no longer. The gunner’s mate immediately grabbed the gun, and swung it round in the direction of the new, unexpected danger. But before he’d even had time to take proper aim, Paco flicked back the bolt of his rifle, fired a second time, and put a bullet through his forehead.

  For perhaps another half a minute, the militiamen in the clearing continued to fire into the trees. Then, as they began to understand what must have happened, an eerie silence fell, soon to be followed by a loud, triumphant cheer.

  Paco did not feel triumphant. He had done what had to be done, and that was all that could be said of it. He stood up and stretched his legs. Perhaps his surviving comrades would believe him now, when he said that war was more than just an adventure, and that without discipline, the risks were multiplied beyond calculation. He was just about to break cover when he heard the sound of a twig snapping behind him. He turned around – but not quickly enough. The rifle butt caught him a heavy blow on the side of the head. And then everything went black.

  Chapter Three

  In his first few conscious moments, the only thing that mattered to him was the pain. His brain felt as if it were being stabbed by thousands of tiny red-hot needles, and the left side of his head throbbed with a continuous and agonizing rhythm. But then, as he began to fight to get these pains under his control, he became aware of the voices.

  He had only been to the theatre once in his life, and, as luck would have it, there had been a power cut. The management had been unwilling to refund the ticket-money, and so the actors had continued to play their roles in almost complete darkness. And it was like that now with him, he thought, lying on the floor with his eyes closed, and listening to a little drama unfolding.

  ‘What do you think they’re going to do with us, Pepe?’ asked a very frightened voice which he recognized immediately as belonging to little Alfredo the shoeblack.

  ‘Do with us?’ the street-sweeper replied, contemptuously. ‘Isn’t it obvious what they’re going to do? As soon as they can find time to get around to it, they’re going to shoot us.’

  ‘But they brought us food!’ Alfredo said desperately. ‘Why would they have brought us food if they were going to kill us?’

  ‘Who knows the way the bastards’ minds work?’ Pepe answered. ‘But mark my words, we’ll all be dead before morning. What were all those shots we heard earlier, if they weren’t executions?’

  Paco opened his eyes. He was lying on a dirt floor, and from the quality of light which was filtering in through the barred window in the wall opposite, he guessed it was close to dusk. He tried to move, and the pain came back so sharply that he let out an involuntary groan.

  ‘Paco’s come round at long last,’ Pepe said. He knelt down and looked into his comrade’s eyes. ‘How are you feeling, old chap?’

  ‘Not good,’ Paco admitted. ‘What happened?’

  ‘There was a Fascist patrol out there in the woods. Twenty or thirty of them, there were. They must have been drawn towards the clearing by the sound of gunfire. They appeared just after you shot the machine gunners, and told us to drop our weapons. It would have been suicide to do anything else – not that it will make any difference in the long run.’

  ‘They made us carry Paco all the way back here. Why would they have done that if they been planning to kill him?’ said little Alfredo, who was still clutching at straws.

  ‘You’re a fool,’ Pepe told him. He turned his attention back to Paco. ‘Is there, anything I can do for you, old chap?’

  ‘You could help me get to my feet.’

  Pepe put his hands under Pac
o’s armpits, and very gently began to lift him up. Moving caused more needles of pain to stab Paco’s brain, but now he was more concerned about his legs, which seemed to have turned into rubber.

  ‘Do you think you’ll be able to stand up on your own?’ Pepe asked solicitously.

  ‘Lean me against the wall,’ Paco gasped. ‘I’ll be all right in another minute or two.’

  His vision was blurred, but not enough to prevent him from seeing he was in some kind of storeroom, and that, in addition to Pepe and Alfredo, it also held three other men – strangers to him – who were dressed in monos.

  A sound drifted in from the street, a dull heavy sound which could only have been marching feet. ‘Soldiers,’ Pepe said. ‘It seems you’ve come round just in time to be shot, Paco.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Alfredo begged. ‘Please don’t say that.’

  The soldiers had come to a halt, and someone was drawing back the bolt on the outside of the door.

  ‘They’ve probably come to ask what you’d like to eat for dinner, Alfredo,’ Pepe said sourly.

  The door swung open, and Paco saw there were at least half a dozen soldiers standing outside, each with a rifle in his hand. Their sergeant, who had greying hair and bad teeth, stepped forward, but stopped just outside the doorway.

  ‘Now listen very carefully, you Communist scum,’ he said. ‘We’re all going for a nice little stroll. I want you to walk out of here in single file. Stay close to the man in front of you, and don’t try to run away, or you’ll be shot.’

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ Alfredo moaned.

  ‘You’ll find that out soon enough, you piece of shit,’ the sergeant told him. He turned his attention to Paco. ‘You! You’re the one who was unconscious, aren’t you?’