The Eldorado Network by Derek Robinson Read Free Book Online Page B

fighting.'
    'Okay,' Dru said.
    Summers led them over to the wounded soldier. Luis edged his way to the front. He wished very much to learn what it felt like to get hit by a bullet.
    The man was sitting on the floor and examining his left foot, which was bare and black with dirt. It was so uniformly black that to Luis it looked like a negro foot, poking out of the ragged brown-corduroy trouser leg.
    'What did you do at Jarama?' Dru asked.
    The man got to his feet, stood lopsidedly, and gave the clenched-fist salute. He was about twenty-five, short and skinny, and he smiled cheerfully at everyone. 'No two ways about it,' he said.
    'His name is Davis,' Summers told them. 'From Liverpool.'
    'What do you remember about Jarama?' Nicholas Barker asked.
    'Solidarity, comrades.' Davis saluted with the clenched fist again and gave a little, delighted laugh. Luis noticed that his head kept twitching, as if with eagerness.
    'We heard you were very heavily outnumbered,' Barker told him. 'So where did the enemy go wrong?'
    'They certainly did!' Davis exclaimed. He rested his left foot against his right leg and began to fall over. Luis grabbed him. 'See?' Davis said. 'Sol'dar'ty! See what I mean?'
    Townsend came back, stuffing his notebook into his pocket. 'All pissed,' he announced.
    'Oh Christ,' Dru groaned.
    'You really mean all?' Barker asked.
    'Every damn one, my friend. Tanked up and ready to fly to the moon. Pissed as assholes, the whole battalion.'
    'Not really drunk,' Summers put in quickly. 'Just reaction after battle . . .' Nobody was listening. Luis saw the discontented faces and realised there was no story here. Davis laid his head on Luis's shoulder. His body jerked to a gentle belch, and Luis breathed the hot and fruity fumes of cheap red wine. 'We're gonna win,' Davis whispered. 'Gonna win 'cus we're right. Right?' Luis lowered him gently to the floor.
    As they drove back to Madrid the correspondents argued about Jarama. Townsend argued that it must have been a victory for the Government because Franco's forces had failed to knock the International Brigade off the heights. Dru argued that any unit which lost two-thirds of its men was beaten, and it didn't matter a damn who held the heights anyway. Barker suggested that maybe Jarama might not turn out to be a victory for either side, but the others flatly rejected that. 'My paper wants a victory,' Townsend insisted. 'They didn't send me four thousand miles to report a lousy draw.' Luis listened, and learned.

Chapter 6
    Two days later the weather cleared, the sun came out, and the correspondents told him to drive them to Jarama.
    The countryside was calm and pleasant, with gentle hills and wide views. There was no sign of war. Men and women working in the fields paused, half-bent, to watch the car dash by. Mule-carts and donkeys made up most of the traffic, and left a tang of fresh dung in the morning air. Luis felt good. He drove briskly, spinning the wheel and accelerating out of corners so that his tyres sprayed gravel against the drystone walls.
    Brigade headquarters was in a farmhouse at the end of a rutted lane. Two ambulances and a dozen motorcycles were parked in the farmyard, which also contained a group of soldiers washing their clothes at a cattle trough, a. small boy plucking a chicken, and the wreckage of an aeroplane.
    'Jarama,' Luis announced.
    'Horrifying,' said Townsend, picking his way between the puddles and the cowdung. 'Inconceivably dreadful. Look: dead chickens everywhere. My God, will this bloody war never end?'
    'Inside they can tell us,' Luis told him.
    'That I take leave to doubt," Barker said. Luis looked at him uncertainly, but Baker did not seem displeased, and so Luis went over to the sentry on duty at the farmhouse door.
    'Correspondentes,' he announced. 'Muy importantes correspondentes.'
    The man stopped trimming his fingernails with a clasp-knife and looked the visitors over. He had thick black stubble and bad teeth. He gave a grunt which