Topaz - Leon Uris [96]
Ezkanazi appeared and ordered them to come into the farmer’s house. A pine-box coffin sat in the center of the floor filled with smuggler’s booty. It was nailed shut and sat on a pair of poles.
“We are in Spain,” the Basque said tersely. “The four of us will carry the coffin to the cemetery in the town of Elizondo. The border guards and police will pass you as family.”
Jacques collected the identification papers of his two friends and burned them along with his own in the stove on orders received in what seemed ages ago in Bordeaux.
They descended to Elizondo holding the coffin on their shoulders in a mock funeral. Robert staggered along with them. A few moments after they entered the cemetery, they were ordered to take off through a rear gate
They made for the road. A half-mile outside Elizondo, four cars filled with Spanish border police descended on them bearing sub-machine guns. They were arrested and driven away.
5
THEY WERE FLUNG INTO the dungeon of a medieval prison and fed gruel and water once a day. The Spaniards refused to respond to a plea for a doctor for Robert.
At the end of a week they were removed in wretched condition to the penitentiary at Pamplona, where, at last, Robert was taken to the sick ward. Each of them had lost some fifty pounds in weight and was a sorry, weak specimen of the human race.
Their interrogation was perfunctory, for many others had come their route. They made the standard claim of being French-Canadians and were placed in the cell block that held a hundred other French escapees also claiming to be Canadians.
The penitentiary was a large affair crammed with Loyalist prisoners of the Civil War. Spanish sentiments were openly pro-German, with a Spanish Blue Division fighting on the Eastern Front against the Russians. The prison authorities dealt particularly harshly with the French, affording them a life of bare existence.
As weeks passed, Robert slowly regained some strength, but they all wallowed in futility. The only ray of hope came when Jacques was permitted to write a letter to the mysterious Miss Florence Smith at the British Embassy in Madrid.
When all hope seemed gone, a sudden wildfire of rumor swept the escapees’ cell. It was true! A British-American delegation appeared in Pamplona to fulfill a deal made with the Spanish government to release the prisoners in exchange for a shipment of wheat and flour.
They were to leave in groups. Jacques and André went to the Americans and asked that Robert be allowed to go first because he needed medical attention. And so the comrades were separated. Two weeks after Robert had departed they received a short letter from him.
DEAR JACQUES AND ANDRÉ,
I am at an enormous camp at Miranda de Ebro. It not only holds military escapees but thousands of Jews who have fled from Holland, Poland, Belgium, and, oh yes, France. By wonderful coincidence I’ve run into a few we took over the Cher River.
There is a permanent British-American committee bartering for our release, and we all feel there is a chance to get to North Africa.
I look for your arrival every day. Please get word to me through the Red Cross office.
I am sorry to cut this short, but they are only allowing a single-page letter. Life is marginal, but I am feeling much better.
Your devoted comrade,
ROBERT
André and Jacques were not to follow to Miranda de Ebro. Their train terminated at the spa of Arnedillo, where a number of smaller hotels and pensions had been leased by the British and Americans, who continued to pay ransom to the Spanish government.
In Arnedillo they were instructed not to try to escape, for if they did it would jeopardize the entire program. Under this honorary parole they were allowed to mingle with tourists