Adriane: the sequel to a Taxi Romance continues...

At nightfall he waited with a half-dozen of his maquisards lined up and ready to light flares illuminating the improvised landing strip. The feint purr of the Lysander in the distant black sky assured him the plane was on time… within seconds and there would be no waiting around. Gotson didn’t appreciate the help his little band was getting from the British. He didn’t believe in the adage, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” After dealing with the Stalinists, Anarchist and Republican infighting in Madrid, Gotson observed that the worst enemy of the resistance was the resistance itself. Why would the British government be free of similar play-pen shenanigans? This was life or death to him while they at times seemed to view the guidariki as pawns in the big game. He felt better off high up in the Pyrenees where his decisions didn’t have to go through a committee.

“There it is …” a young maquisard called out. The commander’s attention was on the landing strip…  a black Lysander landed squarely in the midst of two rows of flares, having been lit only moments before, coming to a stop fifty feet from those marking the end of the strip. Gotson admired the ability of these pilots to land on a dime and take off without a minute lost. He watched as a tall, broad shouldered man with close cropped, blond hair and a huge backpack, jumped to the ground. The plane was immediately turned around by his men and headed down the strip to disappear into the night, “This way,” he said in English and the group darted off into the forest.

After about a half hour hike they came to a small hut where a young girl, Iniga, one of maquisards waiting for their return, lit a kerosene lamp and put it in the middle of the table. Gotson thought of her as a fiery angel with a moon face and cupid bow lips framed by unruly and wild brown tufts tied down under a provocative Basque Beret. She was only seventeen but had already been slated for a train from Gur to Drancy and sure death before he managed to have her released two years before. She had witnessed the assassination of Durruti at the Bridge when she was barely a teen.

“So, what are we doing… no supplies… no ammo… nothing from you Brits but another face to feed?” She blurted out before the tall muscular, blond man could say anything. He was busy unloading his back-pack onto the table. A suitcase was opened to reveal a radio.

‘The rest will be dropped tomorrow night… we have another radio code… the other has been compromised. That is why I’m here.”

Gotson had heard that accent in Madrid. It was the accent of the Lincoln Brigade he’d fought with in the last days of the Republic in Madrid. He had a kinship with some of the Americans… more than with the British. They were idealists who’d become as disillusioned as he.

The American pulled another kit out of his pack and put it on the table. Beside two dry cell batteries, there were two thirty-two caliber Welrod pistols with silencers and several boxes of ammo.

No one used their real names and very few asked, but Gotson finally recognized the man. He was Harry Baker and had come to Madrid in the last weeks before everyone with any sense scrambled out of there. He never got to know him but he suspected that Mr. Baker played both sides to his benefit. Madrid was far away but the wounds… the distrust… it never heals.

After everyone bedded down outside the hut Baker sat at the table and lit a pipe, “You are familiar… you were in Madrid at the bridge?”

“Yes, and you were with the International Brigade at Manzanares… when Durruti was taken out… It was almost over then. How did you get out?”

“That’s classified, sorry.”

Gotson pulled his Welrod from inside his jacket holding it steady between Baker’s eyes. “This round I put in the chamber is classified too… so tell me Mr. Baker, how did you get out of Madrid?”

Baker didn’t flinch… there was no reaction. It seemed as though the guy didn’t care one way or another whether Gotson pulled the trigger. “Let me just say it was a matter of knowing where the bricks, walls and body parts fell during the bombardments.”

“They say… some I know to be reliable… they, and there was more than one, I’ve heard them say that it was a Stalinist that shot Durruti.” Gotson had been with Durruti, the leader of the anarchist column, during the drive to Zaragosa.

“It could have been,” the American still hadn’t even blinked.

Iniga burst in the door and came to a halt when she saw the two men poised in an absurd diorama… neither moved. “I hate to interrupt…  better put a bullet in his head, Gotson, we have to get moving.”

Two more maquisards entered the hut, “Bind him… we’ll pick up our conversation later.”

Baker put his hands behind his back without resistance while a cord of sinew bound them. Two hand guns, 9 mm Lugar semi-automatic pistol and MP 40 German machine pistol with a detached shoulder stock, were lifted from inside his heavy jacket along with a peculiar knife. Gotson found a makeshift garrote and two knives in shoulder sheaths. He simply grinned at the girl when she examined one of the odd shaped heavy daggers that were also dropped on the table, “It’s a Smatchet. You can jam that fucker right through an SS helmet. You can have it… I’ll keep the other.”

She nodded in approval as they left the hut but Gotson didn’t put the Welrod down until Baker’s hands were secured. Quietly she snuffed the lamp and the band filed out up the hill and split up into two or three man groups. Iniga took the point while Gotson held back behind Baker.

Gotson stood on an outcrop to pause and check his watch. The column in pursuit would be almost to the hut by this time. He could see a few lights from farm houses in the valley below from his viewpoint but the darkness hid nearly everything else. Had he not known the terrain so well, he wouldn’t have been able to guess where the hut they’d just left might have been… he could hear one of their pursuers loudly complaining that they had to dismount their horses at the hut and hike from there before Gotson left his perch… slinging his British Sten and taking up the rear behind his compliant and strangely complacent captive, he puzzled over what to do now. He could have blown the hut with plastique at this time but he didn’t want to give the Regulares any reason to retaliate with reprisals on the villagers below who had as little knowledge of the actions of the maquis as did the Guardia Civil. The Regulars weren’t as brutal with reprisals as the Civil Guard, or the Germans in France, but trouble of any kind in the countryside could turn the locals against them and the Maquis sorely needed the support of the villagers.