Read A Broken Land for Free Online Page A

anywhere near a fight.’
    There was a crestfallen air about Florencia as he spoke those words, as if he had gone down miles in her estimation, the rate marked by the spirit of her deflation.
    ‘Look, we are willing, but we must have weapons.’
    ‘I cannot deal with this,’ she cried, with a toss of her blonde curls. ‘I will get Juan Luis Laporta. He speaks French and so do you.’
    ‘And who is he?’
    Florencia managed to give Cal Jardine the kind of look that implied he must have spent the last ten years on the moon. ‘Juan Luis is a senior military commander of the CNT-FAI and a true and experienced revolutionary. Surely you have read about him?’
    Then she was gone.
    ‘Fancy you not knowin’ that, guv, eh?’ said Vince, dryly.

CHAPTER THREE
    D ragging her man away from the heated discussions took time; it was clear he was important, a person whose views counted in the mass of conflicting arguments. In order that they could talk in relative peace, Cal and Vince moved to a corner window that looked out onto the wide and crowded pavement to wait. Coming towards them, edging past people in the bustling café, exchanging words with some and looks with others, allowed Cal to examine Laporta more closely.
    ‘He looks a bit useful,’ Vince said, before he got close, as a boxer, well used to observing a potential opponent.
    Broad-faced and stocky of build, clad in a worn leather coat and a battered forage cap of the same material, with a pistol worn on his hip, he looked like a fighter – and not just with a gun. The way he held his hands indicated he was prepared to use his fists too, while the hunch on the shoulders pointed to a degree of power to backthose up. But most of all, the steady gaze, once he had fixed on Cal Jardine, indicated a man who was confident in his own ability.
    For all his physicality, the thing that impressed Cal most about Juan Luis Laporta, once they had started to converse in French, was his lack of excitability. Unlike many in the room he was calm and controlled, a man who could listen as well as talk, while it was obvious that, if he knew these two strangers were assessing him, he was doing the same to them.
    It is little things that tell you a man is an experienced fighter, especially if you have been round the block a few times yourself. The scars he has and where they are located are the same ones you see in the shaving mirror or when you are washing your hands; another indicator the wary way they carry themselves, as if trouble is a constant possibility.
    ‘Monsieur,’ he said, once Cal had outlined the operation they had been volunteered for, as well as his objections. ‘None of the people you see in this room have such training.’
    There was an obvious truth in that; those present were workers, but Cal was instinctively aware the man he was talking to knew his business, though his fighting was likely, given his politics, to be of the unconventional kind.
    ‘They are not only untrained, but unarmed.’
    ‘Matters are in hand to secure a supply of weapons.’
    ‘I suspected they must be.’
    The silence in such close proximity was highlighted by the surrounding noise, and it lasted for several seconds. ‘Florencia tells me you are an ex-soldier.’
    ‘As is my friend.’
    Laporta flicked a smile at Vince, before casting a long up- and-down stare at Cal, seemingly taken by his looks – the cut of his clothing, blouson aside, and his shoes, which were handmade and recognisably so in a country where people knew about footwear. They also had a patina of age that only came from being well looked after over decades.
    ‘You were an officer, I suspect.’
    ‘That, monsieur, is not a crime.’
    ‘Why are you in Barcelona?’
    ‘Has Florencia not said?’
    ‘She has,’ Laporta replied, his eyes hardening. ‘But a room in the Ritz Hotel is not the place for those who I expect to share our political beliefs, or of the class that have come here to take part in the People’s