An EFE tram car rounded the corner like hollow metallic thunder, little spurts of lightning coming from the electric mast overhead.  In Malaga they were very proud of the tram, a sign of the city’s growth and productivity.   I supposed it was a good enough tram, but I wasn’t particularly interested in public transportation just now.  I could use a car, of which there were none, and I needed to find a treasure, and the trail was ending here.  I wasn’t happy about either of these things.

I smoked a cheap local cigarette holding it in the French style.  It was coarse and bitter without being strong, too much bad Turkish tobacco and no good Virginia leaf.  I was drinking badly made aguardiente.  The name literally meant “fire water” and the stuff was made from pomace, the grape residue left after brandy making.  It was harsh and potent, and it was making me slightly drunk, which I probably didn’t need to be.  It reminded me of old times.

You didn’t see women on the streets of Malaga, and there was a reason for that, and not a very pretty one.  When the Insurgents took the city in February General Gonzales Queipo de Llano turned his Moros – his Moorish troops – loose on the women.  This was the sort of thing that had to be heard to be believed in the modern day.  The General had his own radio program where he talked about the sexual prowess of his Moors and invited the “dirty reds” to send their women to Andalusia to be violated.  The broadcast contained salacious and imaginative discussions of the atrocities that had been and would be committed against the Republican women.  To all accounts, they’d followed through on their threats when Malaga fell.  I suppose when you deal in mass executions, organized rape is just a sideshow. 

The really awful thing was that you kind of wanted to like de Llano.  He came across as very affable and rather a character, and you had a hard time listening to him and not thinking he’d be a fun fellow to drink with. My Spanish wasn’t terrific, but it was enough to understand him.  He was very relaxed, and often kind of funny.  He had a reputation as a brave and swashbuckling cavalry officer. The General’s picture appeared all over the broken buildings of Malaga, a dour, aristocratic and handsome face with a thin moustache and a distinguished receding hairline.  He exerted a personal fascination on the workers, who he advised to “take up the blue shirt of the Falange.”

He was a slick sort of villain I suppose.  Of course that had been said about me.  But I’d never committed mass-murder, which I realize is a pretty negative moral defense of one’s character, but the best one I could muster just that moment. 

The alcoholic sadist Colonel Diaz Criado was his primary henchman.  It was rumored that some of the local women had been able to save their husbands or boyfriends by  sleeping with the Colonel or his assistants, but the carnage had been great and unsubtle.  Everyone with even a remote connection to the left was rounded up.  Teachers were particularly targeted because they were assumed to be liberal, while lawyers were universally spared as being conservative.  The jails were filled to overflowing, and every night prisoners in lots of ten and twenty were taken out to be shot.  The executions were conducted within hearing of the city in the warm summer night, the bodies left along the highway.  General Mola, one of the three heads of the Falangist Junta, had finally issued an order for more inconspicuous disposal, but in General Queipo’s jurisdiction it was largely ignored. 

I was sitting in a café on the Calle Larios, the major shopping street in Malaga.  Across the street I could see the burned out shell of the Casa Larios, the modern office building that had been the headquarters of the most important firms in Malaga.  The city had been bombed by German and Italian planes before it fell, but the Casa Larios had been burned by the Loyalist Republicans the day that General Franco and the other Falangists made their Pronunciamento, launching the coup that started the Civil War. 

I was waiting for my contact, and she was a little late.

Challie turned heads in most places, but especially here, where you didn’t see many women in the streets.  I suppose she was safe enough.  She looked distinctively American and she wore trousers and a grey-brown leather flying jacket which didn’t disguise the fact that she was a woman.  She had light brown hair, which she was wearing up under a somewhat disreputable looking hat.  She had a joke about “light brown hair” that went to an old American song.  Her face was pretty though maybe not beautiful, and her eyes were intense.  They varied from blue to grey to green depending on what kind of mood she was in, and I’d seen them in all those colors once or twice in the past.   Her name was short for Charlotte Allison, but it sounded like Charlie pronounced by somebody from Boston, though she was from nowhere near there.  Her broad soft accent, which struck me as slightly like that of Gloucester, distinguished her as being from the American South. 

Sure she was safe enough.  She was carrying a Smith & Wesson .44 Special under the jacket, and a Bayard model 1908 holdout gun, probably in the back of her waistband or the top of her boot.  I knew Challie well enough.

Unfortunately she knew me pretty well too.

She sat down at the table I’d staked out without ceremony. 

“I’ve only got one lead,” she said, “and it isn’t a good one.”

“It’s nice to see you too,” I said.

“Cut the shit Neil.  You can’t be happy to see me, and I’m sure as hell not happy to see you.”

“Why wouldn’t I be happy to see you?” I asked innocently, taking a sip of the local poison.  It was hard to drink the stuff without grimacing.

“Don’t start Neil.  You know how to show a girl a really good time,  but I’ve gotten really tired of getting shot at.”

“You aren’t afraid are you?”

She gave me a cold, calculating look.  Her eyes were blue, not green.  She was more scared than she was angry.  I’d hit her in a vulnerable spot.  I felt kind of bad, but she’d come on like Gangbusters, and I needed her to back off a little.

“Maybe.  I don’t like much about this job, and I like it a lot less knowing you’re involved in it.”

“I seem to remember showing you a very good time.”  I chuckled.  “You used to be more charming.”

“I can be damn charming when I want to be, I just don’t want to be charming to you.”

“I was hoping for the subtle and devious Challie.”

“That costs extra.  Anyway, you seem to have more use for the ‘accurate covering fire’ Challie.”

“I’m hoping for no shooting on this one.  We’re in a country that’s in the middle of a Civil War and we’re outgunned on every side.  Low key is definitely the way to play this one.”

She lit an English cigarette, which made me jealous.  “Okay.  We’re both low key.” 

I smiled. 

“Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Trying to get back into my good graces.”

“Why shouldn’t I.  We’ve got to work together.”

“That isn’t why you’re trying.”

I nodded.  “You’re right.  That isn’t why I’m trying.”

“Look, Neil. I would have been perfectly happy never to see you again after Mombassa.”

“I thought maybe it was Aden that had you upset.”

“That you sold me to Arab white slavers?  That did have an especial charm.  One of the high points of your career.”

“You agreed to it.  And you ended up liking the Sharif.  You two got along famously.”

“He adopted me into his family.  Technically, I’m his daughter now.  I send him a gift every year at Christmas.”

“Shouldn’t you send him a gift at Ramadan?”

“I don’t know any Arab holidays.  Anyway, he told me not to convert to Islam, or he’d have to have me beheaded.  Apparently, as long as I’m a Christian infidel, my behavior and dress could be overlooked.”

“I’m surprised he tolerates that sort of behavior in his family members.”

“He really liked Camels.”

“Well, most of those tribesmen do.”

“Not the animals, idiot.”

“All the good Turkish pipe tobacco in the world, and they like cheap American cigarettes.  So what about Mombassa.  I thought things were fine.  I took care of the witch doctor…”

“…you took care of a witch doctor.”

“You didn’t say which doctor…”

She laughed, then glared at me

“It wasn’t that and you know it.”

“What was it?”

“Don’t play innocent with me…”

“There was somebody else…”

“I never made any promises there wouldn’t be…anyway, you were gone.”

That was the wrong thing to say.  Yeah, it’s true I hadn’t made any promises.  But you don’t start into the sort of thing we had started into and then go running around with cheap French floozies.   Or anybody.  We had something, even if she’d run out on it. The thing is I hadn’t. I hadn’t started to see Estelle until she’d left Mombassa.  And really the only reason I did see Estelle was to try to take my mind off her – pretty unsuccessfully.  But then apparently I hadn’t taken care of the right Witch Doctor either. 

And apparently she hadn’t run out either.

“I had reason to come back.”

“I didn’t know.  Shit.  Nevermind.  You were gone.  As far as I knew you were gone.”

“I was gone for forty eight hours, Neil.”

“Yeah, well.  You know how it is with me.”

What I should have said is that I’d only been with Estelle because I was missing her, that I was looking for a distraction.  I wondered what she’d seen.  Me passed out probably.  Estelle might not even have still been there, but she’d left plenty of evidence.  I’ve always been neat in my assignations.  Maybe it’s because I’ve lived badly, but once you get in the habit of not leaving a lot of signs around, it’s hard to get out of.  You make sure you leave with what you came with and don’t leave any evidence.  Some women – and for that matter some men – seem to treat the bedroom like a cat treats the furniture.  They have to do everything they can to mark it. 

I don’t even mark my partners.  Unless they ask for it.  Which sometimes they do.  Challie had.  Once upon a time. 

“You said…”

“…you left¸ Challie.”

“I said I’d see you again.”

“Yeah, well how many times have I heard that before.  I thought you were gone for good.  Running scared.”

“I guess I should have been.”

I sighed.  “Look. It’s my fault.  I’m sorry.”

“No don’t be.  It’s just as well I found out right away before I wasted anymore time.”

It was going to be a long job.

*          *           *

Challie was not ecstatic about being my date for the evening, but as a professional she recognized the necessity.  There were people we needed to meet and we wouldn’t accomplish it hiding in a rented room beneath the baroque minarets and red tile roof of the Continental Hotel.   

I knocked at a quarter till eight and she said “come in.”  One thing I liked about Challie was that she was always pretty damn professional.  Even when she was pissed off, she could do her job, and wasn’t going to get into the sort of bickering or pointless argument you do when you’re really just cheesed off at someone, and finding excuses to take it out.   She was above that.

I walked in.  The five storey Continental, which stood near the waterfront next to the Universal had been a decent enough hotels before the war, but it was old, and nothing about the crises and Civil fiasco had done anything to improve that.  The rooms were small, and old-fashioned.  They might have been quaint if not for the white-painted steel bedframes, which gave them a slight institutional look. 

One thing I was learning to hate about Challie was how good she could look while being professional.  I’d worked with a fair share of women in my line of work, surprising as that may seem.  Albeit a lot of them had been molls, go-betweens, or “girlfriends of.”  But some had been real players.  The ones who could go even-up with you, didn’t have a breath of sexuality about them.  They had a “no shit,” attitude that let you know that sex wasn’t a part of them.  The ones who exuded sex were the ones who were the molls, the girlfriends.

Challie was different.  She could be damn sexy.  And she was aware of it, and wasn’t hiding it.  She had a sort of confidence.  What the French call je ne sais quois, which means quite literally that they don’t know what they are talking about, but it’s gotta be something.  Sex was a part of her – she was a sexual creature, and she wasn’t trying to hide it or pretending to be something different.  But that didn’t mean that you hadn’t better the hell take her seriously.
Right now, she was looking very good indeed in a deep blue satin evening dress with a boat neckline.  The dress had a matching jacket with strong shoulders, but the sheathe of the dress was bias cut and defined a figure that was maybe not as slender as the Paris designer had intended, but which filled his creation in a way that made it hard not to sweat a little. 
“All right.  My journalistic credentials are kind of thin, but they got us invited to this shindig, courtesy of the British Consulate.”

“I thought you weren’t particularly welcome back home,” said Challie.

“I’m representative of a dying breed.  Britons who are unwelcome at home, but vital to the operation of the Empire abroad.  Used to be more of us, but all the others either settled in Singapore or drank themselves to death in Shanghai.  Thus, I have a lot of friends, none of whom would like to be seen dining with me at the Trocadero.”

“Really?”  She sounded more bored than fascinated, but it was a real question.

“Actually the truth is most of them wouldn’t care.  But there are some good reasons not to go home.  I don’t know if I’d be arrested as soon as I stepped off the boat-train, but I don’t think I’d want to find out.”

“Well, your credentials are going to have to suffice in this case.  What do the Falangists know about you?”

“There’s a good chance they’ve put my name through Interpol.  Interpol is mostly run by the Reich right now, and they’ll have nothing good to say about me.  There’s nothing there that will get me arrested, and because I’m a British Subject, I don’t think they’ll kill me,” I said.  “But I’m on record as having written some pretty nasty things about the Falange. They aren’t going to be real happy to have dinner with me”

”It’s a cocktail party.”

“Same difference.”

“Not at all, we’re supposed to have eaten.”

“There’s some sort of seedy café on the corner.  We’ll grab something there.”

“Have I mentioned the part about knowing how to show a girl a good time.”

We arrived at the soiree just a little on the late side.  The event was being thrown because General Quiepo was paying a visit to Malaga, stirring from his normal haunts in Seville, and the local head honchos all needed to impress him, though I heard the nobles secretly hated him because of his coarseness.  The site was a fine villa in the Caleta-Limonar District on the outskirts of town, one of the ones that had not been burned after the pronunciamento.  The place was the property of some Grandee who felt that it was in his or her best interests to entertain the leaders of the insurgency which was looking likely to control Spain. 

Outside the villa, I had to confess to being slightly impressed.

I hadn’t seen this many operable cars since I got to Spain.  Some of them still had militia names crudely limned on the side, but some of them were nicely kept and polished.  The crowd was overwhelmingly military with anyone who could sporting a uniform.  The local Nationalist junta was well represented, and the rest of the guests were mostly those grandees and land owners who were present to give their sincere thanks to the Falange for keeping their lands and money out of the hands of people who needed it – and likely deserved it – more than they did.   I shrugged.  Probably most of them were decent people who were just trying not to get on the bad side of the people who were in power.  Who could blame them.  I’d found that ninety percent of all people were basically decent and one in ten was a right bastard, but those ten percent did more than their fair share of harm.

At a glance, you could see some of the Falangist point.  I wasn’t a big fan of the Communists and from what I’d heard the Communists were more or less in control of the Loyalist side these days.  But the original Popular Front hadn’t been Communists.  They’d been a little to the left of Ramsay MacDonald or FDR maybe, but not so far as to be worth carrying out a coup.  They’d been doing a decent job, and were more moderate than not.  As with any war, the radicals were now firmly in charge on either side, with Francisco Franco’s reactionary Falangist hooligans pared up against a bunch of Trotskyite leftist, Anarchists, and Commies.  I thought less of the Falange, but that didn’t mean I was any too thrilled with what I was hearing about the Loyalist Government in Barcelona these days.

I was surprised that the guard at the door didn’t give us much scrutiny.  He was an immaculately uniformed Moor, of immense size, and merely nodded when we gave our names.  I couldn’t imagine he’d memorized the guest list.  I wondered if the Loyalists knew that they could dress anybody up in a suit, and walk in without even being challenged to take a shot at General de Llano.  But then that wasn’t how the game was played here.  There had been some assassinations, even some cowardly ones.  But neither side was much on suicide.  The door guard was there to keep local rabble out.  Challie wasn’t rabble, and I might well have been, but not in the sense he was worried about.  This was not a gathering of portly men in waistcoats.  The Spanish brass was here, but they’d be expected to be quite capable of taking care of themselves, and the General would have his own bodyguards.  No, to start anything here would be to die.  It was a good reminder too that there would be no romantic escapes in the flavor of Scott or Dumas either.  If anything happened in this little gathering we’d be in deep trouble.

The Loyalist leaders would have choked on the provisions set out here while men in the field were hungry and cold (though neither side was – as far as I’d heard – so badly provisioned as to be starving).  The leaders of the Junta took it in stride.  Of course they’d have caviar, and Shrimp Cerviche, and good French Brie.  It must have cost a lot at wartime prices to provide the whole affair, even with the presumption that a good amount of what was being served was from pre-war provisions.

Challie and I stuck together more than we might have otherwise.  There weren’t a lot of friendly faces here.  Most of the Spanish Officers seemed indifferent to us, though a respectable number had the decency to leer a bit at Challie.  Her Spanish wasn’t as good as mine, so I did most of the talking using her as a source for an introduction.  I downplayed being an English Journalist, and when asked about politics pointed out that “Prime Minister Chamberlain has been very supportive of General Franco.”

I thought we were going to get away with it.  I’d made a little casual chit chat, and was working my way toward our target Gavito y Viñanes Duque de Malfereta.
I was making casual conversation with an Army Major who was very interested in Britain.  He apparently had a sister living somewhere in Hampshire, and spoke better English than I did Spanish.  He didn’t seem particularly reactionary, though I carefully steered the conversation away from politics.  I could talk the insurgent line if I had to – I could even sympathize with some of it.  Everybody thought that burning churches and nuns was terrible, and though I knew a lot of that was propaganda, I also knew some of it wasn’t.  I could sympathize with some of the reasons the Loyalists hated the church – nowhere in Europe had it remained more the corrupt edifice that inspired Martin Luther – but I couldn’t countenance what they had done to men and women who weren’t under arms.  The Major was open in his admiration for General Quiepo.  He had carved out his own powerbase in Asturia in a fashion not unlike El Cid, winning the business community of my native country by insuring the absolute continuity of exports of sherry, olives, and citrus.  He’d done the same thing in Lisbon, insuring a steady flow of German chemicals and Fiat motors through neutral Portugal.

“Ultimately, by failing to grant belligerent rights,” the Major was saying “Mr. Chamberlain is causing more deaths.  If we could conduct an effective blockade, we would constrict the Communists and end the war quickly.  As it is, they will fail, but it is a long struggle, that is causing great pain on both sides.”

I began to reply, but I was cut short.

“I do not sink zat Meester Neil Hawkins, carez veree much whether ze do or not,” said a mellow and pleasant voice behind me.  It was a voice I recognized.  Fierce but cultured.  I turned very slowly.

“General.  How delightful to see you.  Good evening.”  I held out my hand.

He looked at my hand as if I were offering him a rotten carcass, then took it and shook it in a hearty manner, demonstrating that his grip was strong enough to come near to breaking my hand. 

“Why are you heer Mr. Hawkins.  Come to write more liez?  Come to mock me?”

“Not at all,” I said affably.  “I write about what I can learn.  On the Loyalist side, I was told some bad things about your lot.  I’m trying to be fair, so I came to see for myself.”

“That eees…” he said his accent stronger “as you Anglish say…Bull-sheet.”   I could see he’d been drinking.  Challie was trying to do a slow fade, but the large immobile slab of a Moor stopped her backing up, and she stood her ground.  Good girl.  Trying to make sure at least one of us got out.

“Perhaps I weel show you some things to write about.”  He fingered his moustache, just exactly like a villain in the old Perils of Pauline serials, though his was more neat and shorter.  “You came to write about our atrocitees, no?  Maybe I weel show you some.  You and your lady friend.”

“Well…I was going to try to write some good things about the Falange…”

“Bull Sheet!” He poked a finger at me.  “Do not tell lies to me senor, I do not take it kindlee.  You are here for sometheeng.  Spying?  Sometheeng else.  I weel find out.  Perhaps I make your ladyfriend our guest.  How would you like that.  If I have my moros use her.  See how long she can last?”

I looked at him and made a guess.

“General.  You have insulted a lady.  And an American.  I am a British gentleman, and I will not sit still for such things.”

“You weel do what I like.  I could haf you imprisoned.  Maybee I will do that and haf you watch your ladyfriend while my moros haf their way weet her…and you are no genteelmeen.  Even for a Briteesh.”

“I am the great-grandson of an Earl, and the Cousin of a Baron.  You will treat me, and my guest with some respect.”

“Why should I.  You are spiez.  I should haf her raped and you thrown into preezon.”

“I will tell you this.  If you have any intention of harming her, I challenge you here and now.  You can imprison me, I can’t fight all your Moors.  But know in front of all of these witnesses, that I challenged you to a duel with pistols at any range you care to name.  If you have any honor, and would sic your blackamoors on a civilized woman, at least have the courage to face me.”

He looked at me and his face clouded.  Then he smiled and gave a long rolling laugh that you could best describe as disquieting. 

“For an Anglish you are pretty brave.  Pistols eh?  I am a crack shot.  I weel keel you.”

“Then you will.  I’m prepared to die.”

He laughed again walked up and clapped me on the back.  “Good Good.  I weel not keel you.  Nobody will deesturb you here.  But I haf to know what are you heer for.  I may haf to deeport you.”

He’d backed away and I looked at him.  “It has nothing to do with the war.  I’m here to steal a priceless museum artifact.”

“Museem?  You are telling the truth.  Jes…I can see eet.  You are.  Good.  I weel leeve you alone then.  You want to come see the truth about wod my men do.  I weel happily show you.  Everything I haf said on the radio.  It ees true.  Bring the pretty lady, I weel show you. 

I shook my head.  “I am just here for a job.  I don’t think the pretty lady would like that too much.”

He looked at Challie.  “She might like eet better than you theenk.”

Challie was catching most of what we were saying.   “I would not want to offend the General.”

Jesu, just when I thought everything was going to be all right.

“Perhaps you would like to see, Senorita?  I could arrange a moss edeefying deesplay for you…”

“Sounds fascinating.  Provided you’ll accompany me.”

I just stood in dumbfounded amazement.

The General gave her a careful look and raised an eyebrow.  For all of his mannerisms, he was a remarkably intelligent man.  “I would like that, jess…you will call on my secreetehry…who will make see arrangements…”

“I’ll leave a card first thing in the morning, General.  And it’s an honor.”

We made our exit.  He looked puzzled.  He was all bluster, but beneath it he was sharp as a tack, and something about Challie hitting him up for a date had him flustered.  Maybe that was what she intended.

“What the hell are you doing?” I said.  “He could have you killed.  You just accepted a date to a gang rape.”

She shrugged.  “I think he’ll behave around me.  He may test my tolerances and see how squeamish I am.  But I think he’ll be a little afraid to own up to that offer.  If not, I’ve seen worse.”  She looked distant  “From closer at hand.”

“We should stay away from him.”

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.  He’s got a vested interest in us now, he won’t have either of us executed out of hand.  He wonders if he can make me, and I’ve intrigued him by not being obviously repulsed.”

“You’ve definitely got his attention,” I had to concede.  I still hadn’t found the Duque.

It was going to be a long evening.