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arms for the Republic on the world market. From the beginning we have lost battles and territory because we lack weapons: rifles, bullets, artillery, airplanes, everything.”
    “I know,” Ferrar said. “The world knows and all it does is watch.”
    “Stalin helps us, to a point, the Russian pilots in Spain fight the German pilots of the Condor Legion, but this alliance will finish us, in the end.”
    Ferrar recalled seeing a headline on the front page of a tabloid in New York. He didn’t remember the headline, what he did remember was the phrase Red Spain . The American president, Roosevelt,was a determined anti-fascist, but the Spanish anarchists murdered priests and nuns and burned down churches. Which meant that Roosevelt’s crucial supporters, Catholic working men and women in the cities, would not tolerate his helping people who did such things.
    “Do you really believe we’ve lost the war?” Ferrar said.
    “Not quite yet, not as long as we hold Madrid and Barcelona. We are doomed, however, if England and France and America don’t help us. And they won’t, politically can’t, as long as victory for the Republic is seen as the creation of a Soviet state in Europe. Meanwhile, every day we are more dependent on the USSR. For example, the French and American banks won’t process our payments, so we can pay for weapons only through the Banque Commerciale pour l’Europe du Nord, which is the Soviet Union’s bank in Paris. Texaco sells oil only to Franco, and Dupont has sold Franco forty thousand bombs and evaded the American embargo by shipping via Germany. The French Popular Front was our great ally, at the beginning, but then the British, and the French right wing, forced France into the Non-Intervention Pact. And they mean it—the Non-Intervention Committee has representatives at the frontiers, making sure no weapons pass through customs. Nonetheless, we persist, the Oficina Técnica continues its work and we have another arms-buying office in New York.”
    “Yes, I know, in fact I stopped by there on my last trip to the States and brought some envelopes back to Paris. Envelopes that couldn’t be mailed.”
    “We are grateful for your help,” Molina said.
    “Is there some way the Coudert law firm can help?” Which had to be, Ferrar thought, why he was having coffee at La Galerie.
    “I don’t believe a law firm can help us now. It’s you who can help your country … if Spain is still your country.”
    “It is. But what would you want me to do?”
    “With Castillo’s death, our staff at the Oficina is weakened, they work hard but they need guidance, they need ideas, they needsomeone who can find a path through the swamp. Will you do that for the Republic?”
    “In my heart I would like to, señor, but I cannot. I must work as a lawyer because my family depends on me. I support them; my parents, my sister, my grandmother. When the war started in ’36 I spoke to friends about going off to fight, but when I suggested to my family that I might join up they were horrified. Nobody objected , quite the opposite. They nodded, they exchanged glances, they were silent, they were brave, and it was that I couldn’t bear, that they would accept terrible poverty in a foreign country.”
    From Molina, a subtle dip of the head, eyes for just an instant closed. Of course I understand .
    “Perhaps now and then, if you face a particular problem, I will gladly help you. But I cannot resign from my firm in order to work at the arms office.”
    “We’ll take anything we can get, it’s what we’ve done from the beginning.”
    “You have my office telephone, and I will give you my number at home.”
    “I should add that you might have to be, perhaps not careful , a better word is aware . Because the Soviets, for their own political reasons, want to be in control of the purchase of whatever arms we can buy. Yes, Stalin sells us armament of Russian manufacture, he likes to see photographs in the newspapers,