“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.”
André Marty looked away from him and back to the map.
“What did young Jordan say?” Karkov asked him.
“I did not read it,” André Marty said. “Et maintenant fiche moi la paix, Comrade Karkov.”
“Good,” said Karkov. “I leave you to your military labors.”
He stepped out of the room and walked to the guard room. Andrés and Gomez were already gone and he stood there a moment looking up the road and at the mountain tops beyond that showed now in the first gray of daylight. We must get on up there, he thought. It will be soon, now.
Andrés and Gomez were on the motorcycle on the road again and it was getting light. Now Andrés, holding again to the back of the seat ahead of him as the motorcycle climbed turn after switchback turn in a faint gray mist that lay over the top of the pass, felt the motorcycle speed under him, then skid and stop and they were standing by the motorcycle on a long, down-slope of road and in the woods, on their left, were tanks covered with pine branches. There were troops here all through the woods. Andrés saw men carrying the long poles of stretchers over their shoulders. Three staff cars were off the road to the right, in under the trees, with branches laid against their sides and other pine branches over their tops.
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.
With the sun just starting to come through the high branches of the pine trees, Gomez and Andrés followed the chauffeur, whose name was Vicente, through the pines across the road and up the slope to the entrance of a dugout from the roof of which signal wires ran on up over the wooded slope. They stood outside while the chauffeur went in and Andrés admired the construction of the dugout which showed only as a hole in the hillside, with no dirt scattered about, but which he could see, from the entrance, was both deep and profound with men moving around in it freely with no need to duck their heads under the heavy timbered roof.
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.”
He handed Gomez the receipted envelope. Gomez gave it to Andrés, who looked at it and put it inside his shirt.
“What is the name of him who signed?” he asked.
“Duval,” Vicente said.
“Good,” said Andrés. “He was one of the three to whom I might give it.”
“Should we wait for an answer?” Gomez asked Andrés.
“It might be best. Though where I will find the Inglés and the others after that of the bridge neither God knows.”
“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.”
“They are many,” Andrés said.
“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.