Overlord, Underhand

Chapter One

London Crisis

In London, MI6 and MI5 were at war over the soul of Luis Estefan.

You know, Tommy, you are absolutely out of your mind.

‘Mr. Brown,’ acting head of MI6 Section V of the British Secret Intelligence Service, stubbed out his cigarette in the thick glass ashtray in front of him as he frowned across the paper-strewn oak table at ‘Mr. White,’ his counterpart from MI5’s B1 Section.

It’s too damned risky. And no one knows that better than you, Tommy.

Yes, Felix, I am renowned for my insanity, ‘Mr. White’ agreed drily. He spoke with a faint, musical Scottish brogue. "Nevertheless, my Iberia team—and I strongly agree with them—believe it is now urgent that we bring Luis Estefan to London to work with us here."

"That’s if he’d be working for us! scoffed Brown. You’re perfectly aware we still have every reason to believe this Spaniard could be a German plant, a fascist enemy agent with a mission to infiltrate and expose our Double-cross system."

"Possible, perhaps…but very doubtful, Felix, White smiled disarmingly. He dug in, growing more adamant. Even so, it’s a chance we believe we must take."

He fixed his unblinking gaze on Mr. Brown, who shifted restlessly in his chair opposite him.

Tomorrow would be the first day of spring, 1942, and the heated internal debate over the Estefan case had been raging for several weeks in back rooms of London’s clubs, St. Albans, Bletchley Park, and other secluded places British Intelligence experts gathered to weigh options and make plans.

At this moment, the two plainclothes lieutenant-colonels were arguing in a small annex off the Situation Room of Churchill’s War Cabinet office, two floors beneath street level in the bomb-proof catacombs under Storey’s Gate off St. James’s Park.

The faint earthquake of distant bombing in the city rumbled through their chairs periodically. The shaded lamp overhead swayed slightly with the vibrations. The light from its bulb was dim, and wreathed in Brown’s lingering cigarette smoke. The walls around them were covered with large maps of the British Isles, Europe and North Africa, stuck with many pins with colored flags marking the Allied and Axis armies facing off against each other.

Be sensible, Tommy, Brown urged him. "We’d be taking a very perilous risk. You know the Abwehr is crawling all over Lisbon, where Estefan’s based. The place is positively alive with frauds peddling fake intelligence, thick as lice in a beggar’s beard. This character Estefan—if he really is the German V-man he claims to be—he could be trying to lure one of our agents out into the open so they can grab him on neutral ground—"

At this suggestion White made a disapproving face.

"—you know it’s happened before, Tommy. It took us months to rebuild in Holland, remember?"

White raised one dubious eyebrow and shrugged, unmoved.

Brown studied him momentarily, and then shifted tack.

You’re aware this Estefan fellow might well be a gift horse sent by Major Kuhlenthal in the Madrid KO to gain our confidence, an agent whose real mission could be to try to neutralize our deception operations – perhaps even jeopardize Project Ultra itself.

He lowered his voice, a reflex, as he mentioned sacrosanct Project Ultra, Britain’s most secret weapon for eavesdropping on and deciphering coded radio transmissions between the German High Command in Berlin and its various operations and outposts, including the Abwehr, the German military’s Intelligence Service – live access to many of their enemies’ innermost secrets.

White, who had been listening patiently to the same cautions that had all been raised before, shook his head slowly.

Certainly, I agree, anything’s possible in this world of dreams, he replied, his even tone masking the mild sarcasm. "And we’ve considered it very carefully—as you know. But we don’t think so. We’ve seen nothing to indicate the Jerries even suspect the existence of Ultra, never mind that they might have plans to compromise it."

Brown ignored him, pressing White harder.

"This Spaniard could even be a triple agent, sent to find out what’s become of all of their other spies we’ve captured or turned."

You’re giving Kuhlenthal and spy-master Canaris too much credit, sighed White, losing patience. "Look, Felix, let’s stick to what we know. For the past few weeks we’ve been turning over every brick in London hunting for the mysterious uncontrolled Nazi secret agent ‘Hannelore.’ Then there’s this self-proclaimed V-man, Luis Estefan, a Spanish national in Lisbon, who has tried to offer us his services as a double agent since last year. But we’ve turned him down repeatedly, suspecting a trick. Now the evidence suggests that this Estefan character and ‘Hannelore’ are one and the same person. And ‘Hannelore’ has never even been to London, but the Jerries believe he’s based here. It’s an incredible stroke of luck for us."

White’s pace had quickened, and he leaned forward for emphasis, his hands gripping the table edge as if he were about to spring up.

"If this is correct, it gives us an unprecedented opportunity to reel in a trusted GIS operative and maintain our total dominion over German espionage activities in Britain. He could be just the double agent we need to initiate our new high-level deception plans."

White paused and relaxed his stance a little, shifting to lean forward on his elbows and putting his palms and fingertips together, almost a gesture of supplication.

"The stakes are very high, Felix, I admit that; and certainly we could be proved the damnedest bloody fools ever to put on a uniform. But it’s a chance we must take. It’ll never come our way again."

Having made his point, he leaned back again.

Brown sighed, relenting a little. As he reconsidered this dangerous opportunity, he took a silver case etched with his initials from an inside jacket pocket, selected a cigarette, tapped one end of it against the case, put it in the corner of his mouth, and then lit it with the matching silver lighter on the table in front of him. He put the lighter down again.

Brown knew White didn’t smoke, so he didn’t offer one to him. He exhaled the smoke over his head as he considered his response.

"If they are the same individual—and again I say if—that would explain why this Hannelore so often sounds like he’s never even visited England. He’s been tripping over his cloak and fumbling his dagger for months. Have you looked at these?"

Brown poked a stack of Ultra transcripts piled in front of him, and White nodded.

Along with credible-sounding intelligence, the Nazi spy’s reports contained such gaffes as Hannelore arriving his first day in London by train at the Liverpool Street Station from Southampton instead of Victoria Station from the British Airways aerodrome at Poole in Devon; that Glaswegian shipyard workers were drunkards who would repair to their favorite dockside bodegas after work and would tell Hannelore, an obvious foreigner, anything he asked in trade for a liter of wine; and absurdly submitting his expense claims in shillings only, apparently unable to master the British currency system of pounds sterling.

It does appear Hannelore’s been feeding them fairy tales from Lisbon, sighed Brown, bemused, tapping his cigarette over his ashtray. It’s astonishing he hasn’t blown his cover a dozen times over.

"Precisely why we need to bring him in now, Felix, before the Jerries figure out they’ve been duped."

Brown leaned back in his chair and exhaled heavily, still weighing consequences. He closed his eyes a moment and smoothed his eyebrows with his thumb and middle finger before he looked back at White.

If we can confirm this German agent Hannelore and Luis Estefan are the same man, we should just leave him out there with our lads—safer that way. He’s bound to implode soon of his own accord.

Or he may get luckier in his guesses, countered White, frowning. He’s been pretty canny at that. You know he has hit the truth or come uncomfortably close on several occasions already. And in addition to plausible guesswork, he has the remarkable ability to read Major Kuhlenthal in Madrid and feed back to him what he wants to hear, confirming German suspicions. You know the almighty masters of the Wehrmacht don’t believe anything outside their own game plans.

Humph, grunted Brown, "that does beg the question of why they trust him at all."

Yes, that’s the mystery of it—they are a pretty hard-headed lot, agreed White. "But they do. And I think the truth is, it’s because they want to—they need to believe in him."

White let that idea sink in, and he gathered himself for a final push.

"Felix, we know Kuhlenthal trusts Hannelore, and so long as that’s true it makes him a valuable asset. We could get a great deal of mileage out of him, feeding his spy-masters what we want them to believe. But the time is now. You’re right, the Jerries could figure out he’s a fraud any day, and then we’d have nothing."

He paused, pushing a stray lock of dark brown hair back in place to look his friend in the eye.

"Really, Felix, he’s their only spy theoretically in England who has actually caused the German military to act on his information. He’s succeeded where we’ve repeatedly failed. If he is the genuine article, and if we can turn that power to our own purposes, then Hannelore could become a brilliant double agent for us—truly instrumental."

Brown nodded and half-smiled at the reference to the Hannelore-inspired ambush recently set by the German Navy and Italian Royal Air Force in the Mediterranean to destroy a convoy of fifteen British ships, including ten freighters filled with relief supplies supposedly bound for besieged Malta – a phantom convoy entirely of Hannelore’s fabrication. His notional intelligence had been passed through from Madrid to Berlin immediately marked priority and of highest value. It was the reason for the frantic man-hunt for Hannelore in London, the reason they were debating this case at all.

"There’s a bloody long string of ifs here, Tommy." Brown’s brow furrowed again with worry, but White sensed he was coming around.

Brown sighed out cigarette smoke.

Well, if we do this, we’d feel a lot more comfortable if you were bringing him to London in chains to be interrogated first at Camp 020— he pronounced zero-two-zero as if emphasizing an inmate’s chances of emerging unscathed from Latchmere House, their SIS detention and interrogation center in Richmond disguised as a disused nursing home —instead of welcoming him here with open arms like a long-lost brother.

I’m sure you understand we can’t risk alienating him if he is who he says he is. If he isn’t, we’ll find out soon enough.

Brown put his cigarette down, and gave White a hard look when he glanced up.

Very well. You…you can have Estefan.

Brown exhaled deeply, a resigned sigh.

"But be damned careful, Tommy, he warned. Have one of our men in Lisbon interview him first; and if he feels this Luis Estefan is genuine, you can make the arrangements to bring him immediately to London. And for heaven’s sake, do not use the damned fishing fleet do it, in case he isn’t legitimate and blows that channel for us! We can fly him here once he gets to the Rock."

Right-o, we’ll take every precaution, agreed White, offering a smile at last.

Commercial flights from Lisbon were monitored by enemy agents, and as such impossible to chance. White would have to spirit Luis Estefan to Gibraltar some other way than by using the British fleet of trawlers disguised as Portuguese fishing vessels, trawlers that ferried bulky parcels like downed fliers, escaped POWs, compromised Resistance fighters, and high-value prisoners of war from the Continent back home.

Brown relaxed, the decision made. He crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

Alright then, let’s bring him in. Then he growled. But on your head be it.

White paused.

Understood.

Chapter Two

Civil War

When the twentieth century was young, children did not grow up with dreams of becoming international spies.

On the playground, young boys weighed up exciting careers as cowboys, firemen, stunt pilots, piratical sea captains, war correspondents, intrepid explorers, brave soldiers – adventurers such as they admired each week at the local cinema.

Espionage and guile were out of the thoughts of even the most inquisitive fellows.

If the Fates had whispered to some young man in high school how his life would turn out, good or bad, he would be incredulous, astonished. He would not believe them. And if they revealed that he would play an extraordinary role in one of the most momentous events in human history, he would be more astounded and skeptical still.

If Dame Fortuna, the smiling goddess of luck herself, left her wheel and climbed down from a medieval painting hanging in Barcelona’s Museo Nacional d’Art de Catalunya and confided to the young Luis Estefan Diaz that he would become one of the most important espionage agents the world has never heard of, in one of the most destructive and all-encompassing wars looming in the long and gruesome history of humankind – and more, he would become a spy for a country other than his own – certainly Luis would have been struck insensible with amazement, and disbelief.

When he recovered his speech he would have politely informed her she was absolutely out of her mind.

Destiny is rightly unfathomable.

Certainly there was nothing auspicious in the young Luis Estefan’s character, education, talents, interests, or inclinations to support the idea that he had in him the makings of a world-class master spy.

Luis was born on Saint Valentine’s Day in 1912, and his childhood in Barcelona with his parents and older sister Elena was happy but unremarkable. His father Miguel was a well-to-do Catalan manufacturer of electrical components, and the family lived in very attractive apartments above street-level shops at 72 Carrer Muntaner.

Their home was located midway between – and within earshot of – the major train depots, both the Barcelona-Sants station, the main rail line to Madrid and points west, and the old Barcelona Estacio Franca station, the railway to France and the rest of Europe.

Even as a little boy Luis thrilled to the distant whistles of the departing trains, sounds which filled his head with thoughts of exotic travel. Early on Luis proved imaginative, restless, rather mischievous…and spoiled.

This is sometimes the fate of youngest sons.

Looking back on his youth, Luis thought it would have been ideal, but for one major irritant: his schooling.

Luis hated school as a boy; and his loathing for it showed – not so much in his marks, for he was a bright lad to whom learning came easily – but in his disruptive conduct, a frequent theme marking his school career from his earliest days.

Even as a boy Luis rebelled at tyranny, and defied those arbitrarily set over him with unearned authority. In his young mind, his teachers were bullies; and if they were not to begin with, his exasperating behavior brought out the harsh despot in most of them.

As Miguel Estefan confessed sadly to his wife Mirabella, after receiving yet another bitter note from Luis’s teachers complaining of his undisciplined behavior, It’s my fault, my dear. I realize I have been too indulgent. I think perhaps we need to temper his spirit somewhat.

To straighten his wayward son’s path – and punish himself for their mutual sins – Miguel Estefan sent Luis for his primary education to a boarding school called Valldemia, renowned for its strictness, some twenty-five kilometers out of town.

The school has an excellent reputation, and it comes highly recommended, Miguel assured Mirabella. And it is too far for Luis to run away home.

This exile proved torturous on both sides; and it lasted four years before the Estefans relented, and brought him back to further his education at the La Salle Brothers private school close to his home. During all that time, Miguel Estefan had never missed a Sunday driving out to visit with Luis at Valldemia after church to watch him play sports and treat him to ice cream afterwards, a ritual that brought comfort to them both.

In these staid institutions Luis was taught by priests, as was customary, and the whole time all parties held a deep-seated mutual suspicion of each other. Luis considered them tyrants; they considered him incorrigible. One of his instructors went so far as to characterize him as feral.

Both sides stubbornly clung to the fixed view that the other was as dull and as shallow as stagnant ditch water. Young Luis had inherited his father’s resolve and his native inclination to despise dictators – the boy’s defiant opinion of most of his teachers.

And so his early education at La Salle remained troubled, as one frustrated mentor understated the case.

Luis just has high spirits, offered his mother apologetically, summoned to yet another disciplinary hearing one afternoon, in pleading with the Jesuit headmaster.

He’s a hellion, the headmaster retorted, indignant, and needlessly set on the path to damnation!

Mirabella Estefan couldn’t have been more horrified if the headmaster had been the Pope himself pronouncing a sentence of excommunication on Luis.

Miguel Estefan thought the truth lay somewhere in between, and he finally counseled his son as he would an adult.

He reminded him of his duty to honor his mother, and to behave himself according to his true nature and do his work like a proper gentleman – whatever the provocations of others – and ignore all enticing temptations to misbehave.

He advised him man to man, very seriously, Luis, you must learn to take charge of your own soul.

Miguel concluded his instructions with a sigh, saying sorrowfully, My son, I am not proud of you.

Luis lowered his eyes, ashamed.

"Not only are you failing to meet your true potentialities, I fear you will end your days leading a wasted life – an entirely avoidable fate. And if you continue on in this way, I will be…greatly…disappointed."

The idea of losing his loving father’s approval, the bedrock of his life, shocked Luis.

Miguel Estefan never raised a hand to either of his children; but Luis would have preferred a dozen beatings than to live even a minute in disgrace in his father’s eyes.

This horror forced him to decide he must settle down. The strong life-lessons of love, empathy, responsibility, honor, justice, and self-discipline that made up the greatest character traits he acquired at school he took from his father, if not from his teachers.

By the time Luis attended high school he was more settled. He had learned to enjoy the arts and literature, although less so the sciences. His real preference was for sports, gymnastics, and hiking; and, later, dating refined young ladies from a Catholic boarding school down the block.

Nevertheless, it came as some surprise to all that he developed a strong interest in and a facility for languages.

Luis became very proficient in French, the first language of civilized men for travel, business, and diplomacy. He won school prizes for his skills and literary efforts in French, to the pride of his family and the amazement of his tutors. His German was passable, and his English serviceable.

Between his native Castilian and these three foreign languages, Luis felt he could converse with virtually anyone on the Continent. And in his teens, he dreamed of applying these skills in future travels, and future adventures. Thanks to literature but chiefly to the cinema, the world outside of Spain fascinated and intrigued him.

Luis’s mother, Mirabella Diaz Estefan, was especially pleased with Luis’s sudden and lasting reformation, a relief to her simple heart.

Mirabella was a beautiful woman with alluring dark features and merry eyes whose people came from the provincial town of Motril, a town of seven sugar mills lying in the heart of Andalusia. Her parents had moved to Barcelona when she was a young teen, an adjustment that had been hard for her to endure initially. She loved and preferred the countryside, and the rural life.

Simple and devout Catalans, the Diaz family were in the habit of attending Mass and taking communion daily, which their neighbors and even their priests considered excessive, bordering on pride. Her upbringing had been loving but closely guarded, and the rules of the house strict, even harsh.

So her marriage to Miguel Estefan, older than she by a decade, came as close as she dared to flirting with impiety. Yet she thought his vices were few, and harmless. He was a man who drank moderately at home and smoked long, thin, black, evil-smelling cigars immoderately everywhere but home. She could tolerate such sins. She loved him and loved her children with an unflagging delight that was as deep as it was warm.

A devoted daughter of the Church but a peasant in her heart, Mirabella’s restricted upbringing conflicted with her pleasure in all things Andalusian – the festivals, the wonderful rich foods, the dancing, the sensuous songs and music – and created in her divided loyalties of spirit, torn between heaven and earth.

A loving and dedicated mother, she was also active with good works and charities. But she was not a philosopher. If concepts in art or science or politics threatened to disrupt her faith in king and Catalonia, she ignored these untraditional modern nuisances as unnecessary to know or understand.

Luis’s father Miguel, while indulgent and respectful of his wife’s deep faith, was considerably more worldly than Mirabella.

Miguel, born and raised to be a minor nineteenth century industrialist, found his sympathies and beliefs were more in tune with the Enlightenment of the previous century. He admired those egalitarians who had created kingless democracies in the United States and in France; and, as a man who cherished the ideals of human freedom, he worried about progress in the modern age, and his country’s future, under its anachronistic monarchy.

Miguel considered himself to be a free-thinker. He loved debates exploring competing philosophies and divergent political opinions, and relished the myriad explorations of contemporary art and science, regardless of their potential effects on Holy Mother Church.

Miguel Estefan prided himself on being broad-minded, but he did not love or accept everyone. As he advised his teen-aged boy, My son, do not love hypocrites, the intolerant, hate-mongers, the proudly ignorant, aggressive evangelists of any stripe, or expedient politicians who promise one thing but deliver quite another, to the disadvantage of their fellow citizens.

Then he laughed, and hugged Luis, and gave him a smile like the sun breaking through heavy clouds. Let all other men of good character be welcome.

As Luis understood it later, his father was apolitical; and he had passed that ideal of independence on to his children with his genes. He was renowned as a good man, and active in his community, spiritually responsible if not God-fearing, but loyal to no party and to no ism.

Where Mirabella was closed and conservative, Miguel was open and tolerant. He was honest in all his dealings, and with every person, high or low. He genuinely respected the rights and dignity of all men, regardless of race, creed, color, theology, or political persuasion.

Miguel delighted in teasing his young wife with radical ideas. But he was never mean-spirited about it, and never pushed her beyond mild irritation. She was secretly proud of his worldly success, his charitable nature, his wit and generous wisdom – although she would never admit that to him out loud.

Luis seemed to have inherited the best of both parents, a pleasant combination of their good looks, their good minds, his mother’s patience and affectionate humanity, and her sense of the divine, and his father’s tolerance, curiosity, shrewdness, and quick imagination.

Luis loved his mother without reserve but he especially revered his father, whom he understood in his heart to be one of the world’s great men.

Yet Luis discovered he had no real affinity for his father’s manufacturing business, and he had to admit to himself that he had attended university more to avoid starting in at the family enterprise than for any love of scholarship. He majored in business, to please his father; but he minored in literature and language arts, to please himself.

Following his graduation in the late spring after his twenty-first birthday, Luis found himself faced with compulsory military service. The government of the day required this commitment from all sound and able young Spanish men.

The prospect deadened his heart. No endeavor could have interested him less.

Deeply troubled, he appealed to his pacifist father, who all his life had decried the brutal stupidity, the privations, and the senseless waste of warfare.

Liberal in his outlook and thoroughly democratic in his humanitarian beliefs, Miguel Estefan had been disturbed by the Carlist Wars, depressed by the Spanish-Moroccan War, and deeply horrified by that most blood-soaked conflict of all, the First World War, when he had been appalled to witness greedy statesmen and ignorant generals condemn the cream of their youth to useless death in the name of crown and country, destroy cities and civilians indiscriminately, and cause twenty millions of casualties.

He could never understand why mankind had indulged itself in this insane orgy of self-destruction, as he feelingly put it to Luis, many times, shaking his head in dismay.

So his father understood and approved when Luis wanted to buy his way out of conscription.

Although some state service was required, it was then possible for draftees to escape through the fee-paying military service program.

This scheme enabled those who could afford it to shorten their draftee sentence to six months, yet still allowed graduates to leave honorably with the star of a second lieutenant in the Reserves. During part of that time Luis could live at home; but as a recruit he had to study hard the martial arts required of him and perform all the training courses necessary to real soldiers.

Luis’s military career was therefore short, undistinguished, and involuntary.

He was drafted into the Seventh Regiment of Light Artillery, which turned out to be the light cavalry and involved no artillery or mechanized vehicles at all. He took an immediate and abiding dislike to the harsh life, the bad food, and his mean-spirited superiors, who held fee-payers in undisguised contempt.

Luis also nursed a special hatred for his truculent horse, and the feeling was mutual.

His tough training in the anachronistic cavalry was six months of torture. Luis was saddle-sore for weeks on end. The eye-watering cure for flaming buttocks – wrapping his underside with cheese-cloths soaked in vinegar and sprinkled with salt – was worse.

He rightly felt his officers singled him out for an unfair share of onerous and unpleasant duties. Pointless parade exercises, disorganized bivouacs, and combat training under the blazing summer sun through to the cold and rainy autumn, were no pleasure whatsoever. The army offered nothing he could be proud of, not even his fit condition and more athletic physique.

In all that time, he never fired a weapon of any kind.

Yet, in the end, Second Lieutenant Luis Estefan won his spurs; then hung them up.

Back home and a civilian once more, Luis remained reluctant to follow into the family business; and he persuaded his ever-indulgent father to allow him to make his own way in another field for a while, for seasoning, he assured his papa, before he finally knuckled under to his familial responsibilities.

Miguel sighed, shook his head and smiled his gentle smile, and agreed to let him try.

Through a connection of Miguel’s, Luis secured a job as a desk clerk at the nearby Hotel Majestic, starting on the night shift; and soon after he became the night manager.

Here, everyone assured him, Luis could gain administrative experience necessary to run a business, come to understand the importance of customer service, and practice his language skills with the steady stream of international guests coming to stay.

The job did indeed prove to be a valuable learning experience.

The night shift, as Luis soon discovered, proved a particularly important place to make friends, for it became his responsibility to accommodate the nocturnal needs and wishes of demanding guests. They might want unusual snacks or bottles of alcohol sent to their rooms after the bars had closed, or desire even more specialized items. Luis tried hard to meet even the most eccentric request.

And sometimes guests might ask for extra pillows – code for call girls.

Luis also found that as the night manager he was responsible for ensuring any number of amours and adulterous affairs should proceed smoothly.

In a little space of time Luis had made the acquaintance of quite a number of Barcelona’s richer business men, public officials, some of society’s well-regarded ladies, and other prominent citizens, including, to his surprise, some clergy.

Luis was helpful, non-judgmental, discreet. He was, inevitably, well-liked.

As a result of directing this luxurious night traffic, Luis became better acquainted with the city’s pimps and quite a few ladies of the evening, who occasionally offered him basic services for half-price, if business was slow.

And occasionally, until Luis became otherwise engaged, he accepted their offers.

This was not, however, his first exposure to the oldest profession.

Just after Luis’s eighteenth birthday, his father had taken him to a clean and respectable house of ill repute down by the harbor that a colleague had recommended to him.

As Miguel Estefan explained it to him:

My boy, I expect someday you will marry a virgin, as your mother was when she came to me. I believe, as my father did, and his father before him, it is my Christian duty to ensure that you be able to fulfill your marital obligations with your innocent young bride on your wedding night.

He paused and gave his surprised son a meaningful look.

Experience is therefore in order, he said with his quiet smile.

Luis wisely said nothing, but grinned and accepted this fine tradition as the right and natural order of things.

Miguel had sat in the parlor, his hat on his lap, sipping sherry and chatting amiably about business with the distinguished-looking proprietress, while upstairs his son was introduced to the thrilling pleasures of adulthood.

Miguel had intended that this be his son’s first and only such venal life-lesson; and immediately after he hurried him to meet with Father Emilio Garcia, their parish priest, to repair the spiritual damage and confuse Luis further.

But Luis had found his way back to the harbor again, from time to time, to relieve the exquisite pressures brought on when dating nice girls by seeking release in the arms of some naughty ones.

Lately, however, Luis’s thoughts had turned to marriage.

In particular, his eye had been caught by a lively and pretty young woman, Anna Ortega, whose family had moved into 50 Carrer Muntaner down the street from his own home while he had been away playing at soldiering.

The two families had become acquainted through church.

Anna had two older sisters who had already married and moved away. Anna’s father, Juan Ortega, almost invariably dressed in dark three-piece wool suits no matter how hot the weather. He was a man of such solemn dignity that he could be taken for a magistrate, a diplomat, an undertaker; but he was successful in the textile industry, a thriving business he managed from an office in the center of town.

Maria Ortega, Anna’s mother, was a substantially built, broad-hipped woman of the sisterhood of the Mediterranean Venus. Noted for her charities and her community service, Maria dressed well but plainly, typically in a black dress with white polka dots, or a white dress with black polka dots, as she felt befitted her solid status in the bourgeoisie and a pillar of the Church.

Where husband Juan combed his short salt-and-pepper hair straight forward in the Roman way, like a Caesar, Maria parted hers in the middle and pulled it straight back into a perpetual bun, enhancing her dignity but also her general dowdiness.

Anna, a modern woman, was altogether more stylish. Luis looked at Maria Ortega and at times reflected that although his Anna was now a beautifully full-figured woman, pleasingly warm with her musical voice and intimate manner, so ripe and so delicious, she too, through time and gravity, should one day settle into her mother’s shape – just as he expected to grow stout and mostly bald in middle age, like his own father.

But he did not care. For the present, his attraction for Anna continued to grow; and the temptation of lust in his heart was a constant rub as it turned into precious friendship, like a lump of rough sand in an oyster transforming itself into a pearl.

Anna, with jet-black hair like his own, a dazzling smile and mischievous dark eyes, was already an accomplished cook and home-maker. She delighted in playing the piano; and on his days off, Luis would sit in the parlor and listen with admiration, or sing songs with her. He marveled that she could pick out and soon play the latest popular numbers on the radio after only one or two hearings.

Her parents smiled on them indulgently; and, as their friendship grew into affection, and affection transmuted into love, everyone gradually accepted that there was an understanding between them. This attachment pleased both families.

But because Luis was not yet established – still finding his career – it was also understood that theirs was to be a long engagement.

The couple was content to get to know each other slowly, believing, as their parents did, that true friendship lays the best foundation for a happy marriage.

During this period of his young adulthood, as Luis got on with his ordinary life and mundane plans, seething political tensions in Spain grew steadily hotter as anarchists, Communists, socialists, Trotskyites, monarchists, anti-monarchists, separatists, and fascists all struggled bitterly for national power and control.

As this fundamental clash played out, Miguel Estefan and his family tried to shut their ears to the cracking of the country’s social foundations, waiting hopefully but in vain for things to settle among the would-be power brokers.

Miguel never lost his faith in humanity: Most people are fundamentally rational and good-hearted, and will naturally do what’s right. Therefore, he counseled, we must be patient, for life will go back to corrupt business-as-usual before long.

But life did not settle, to his rising dismay, for another kind of rank political decay was in the air, rot like a woolly mammoth half emerging from the ice after a Siberian avalanche.

At the end of January in 1930, when Luis had still been at university, General Primo di Rivera’s long, inept dictatorship as prime minister finally came to an end; and violent social upheaval replaced his relatively stable rule.

In the spirited election that followed, the socialist Republicans claimed victory despite the overwhelming number of voters belonging to the Monarchist party.

The election results were vigorously disputed, as all sides levied ferocious charges of voter fraud.

Spain spent some time in political limbo, until Niceto Zamora, a centrist leader of the Republican faction, finally assumed power; and he declared the establishment of the Second Republic.

King Alfonso XIII fled the country for Rome in 1931, to help avert bloodshed, it was proclaimed. But he did not abdicate, leaving the populace to wonder and to fight over who had the right to rule.

Workers in industrial areas such as Barcelona, who had suffered long under dictatorship endorsed by King Alfonso, now rose up in protest against the prevailing government; and the Estefan family watched in helpless dread as civil power started changing hands more rapidly, small revolutions as one government after another was routed and supplanted.

In January of 1933 a mob of anarchists – leftists even more extreme than the left-wing government of the day – seized the village of Casas Viejas near Cadiz, and were forcibly dislodged by state militia.

Fourteen prisoners who led the rioting were publicly executed.

In October of 1934 another civil revolt occurred, in Asturias, which was swiftly and brutally put down by the then center-right government.

Luis, who had spent his days in military training between those two events, found himself very grateful that his Seventh Regiment had never been called out on the cruel mission of ‘bringing order,’ as the government falsely describes it – violently crushing an insurrection and trampling down unarmed civilians using our swords and horses.

His Anna listened wide-eyed in horror as Luis described to her his training for such police actions.

Thereafter, the Estefans, in an unrelieved state of alarm, watched as government followed quarreling government in quick succession.

Political passions remained enflamed, and ordinary citizens saw parliamentary debates degenerate into shouting matches composed of insults and invective. Chaos reigned. Effective law-making became paralyzed, as did law enforcement itself.

Police forces were overwhelmed with lawlessness, and, in various quarters of the city, they degenerated into criminal gangs themselves, supporting one political rival or another.

Each faction wrapped itself in the national flag and claimed the responsibility of leadership while denying the rights of their hated opponents, as meanwhile the general economy continued to flounder.

Miguel Estefan worried long hours each day how to keep his business going amid the rising anarchy. He was obliged to raise wages steadily to keep fearful workers at their jobs, further reducing the factory’s already declining profitability.

He also feared for his family’s safety, as the violence and blood feuds escalated.

Soon brutal assassinations and deadly reprisals followed, executed in the streets in broad daylight. Many bystanders were injured as well, as political rivals were targeted by drive-by assassins who sprayed crowded plazas or cafés with machine gun fire, like gangsters in the American movies.

Day followed distressing day as social disorder unspooled and ugly incidents began to impact the Estefans directly – bloody street demonstrations, power outages, acquaintances disappearing suddenly without explanation, businesses stumbling as the economy faltered and fell – and they watched with increasing distress and consternation as uncontrollable events unfolded relentlessly around them.

Every day carried the threat of strikes and worker revolts; and every morning Miguel Estefan took to saying Good-bye to his family when he left for work, as if each day might be his last.

Mirabella thought it was this unrelieved stress that etched creases in his brow and face, and bent his shoulders as if he were carrying a great weight, making her husband look much older than his years. She redoubled her efforts at prayer and good works.

This must be what madness feels like, Luis wrote to a college friend, watching as the world disintegrates around you while you stand helpless, unable to speak or move.

Finally, a military coup d’état occurred as a group of generals declared the overthrow of the democratically elected Republican President Azaña; and bloody civil war broke out openly in the summer, on 18 July 1936.

Miguel Estefan declined quickly and died suddenly; and he was buried the following month.

Nobody could tell for certain what killed him – the undiagnosed liver cancer, or his broken heart at what was happening in his beloved country.

Chapter Three

AWOL

Life for Luis Estefan would never be the same.

The grieving Estefan family suffered a severe double shock – the irretrievable loss of their patriarch Miguel, and civil peace and stability – all within a few weeks; and they experienced a distress and a horror bordering on panic.

The loss of his father was a sidelong blow that shook Luis to his core.

He questioned the heavens how he could feel so deep a hurt without an actual blade stabbing through him. Then he became numb, for many days; and he also felt winded, squeezed, so that he could hardly catch his breath. Everything seemed unreal, falling away from him, his world tilting crazily, as if he were clinging to the deck of a sinking ship.

In the days following Miguel’s unexpected death, everyone in the family spoke in low, detached monotones; and each would pause and cry quietly as one after the other would break out weeping at unpredictable intervals.

Feeling empty and lost for weeks afterward, the Estefan family dressed, they ate, they went about their business, and they drifted through their days distracted, as if bogged in a quicksand nightmare from which there was no relief and no waking.

In his own mind, Luis came to memorialize his father’s death as their first casualty in the bitter civil war now seething around them.

Miguel Estefan was well-beloved and a charitable man, and his funeral and the reception at the Estefan home afterward was crowded with neighbors, friends, clergy, business associates, workers from his factory, and many others whose lives he had touched. His reach had been wide, and Luis came to learn just how deeply his father was cherished by all who mourned him.

Luis had taken his place as one of his father’s pall-bearers, along with several of his father’s business associates, among them Luis’s recently acquired brother-in-law, Rudy Santiago.

Rudy was the chief foreman of his father’s warehouse, a powerfully-built man who was broad in every aspect. He had broad shoulders and big hands, straight brown hair parted in the middle, an open face with a large Roman nose between light brown eyes set wide apart, a rollicking laugh and broad grin when happy or drunk. He was gentle, patient, and good-hearted, and, like the younger Estefans, he was also broad-minded and apolitical.

Luis had been delighted for his sister Elena when their father announced the engagement, and he had been very pleased to welcome Rudy into his family earlier that May.

As Luis took after his father, Elena most resembled their mother, both in form and temperament – a kind and natural-born nurturer. Within a short time after her marriage Elena had become pregnant. But this news followed not long after their father had passed away, muting the family’s joy.

With Miguel gone, with Mirabella sunk in a dark grief, and with indiscriminate violence making the city increasingly dangerous, Elena and Rudy decided to give up their small apartment and move into the family home with Mirabella.

Rudy regarded himself now as a family guardian, and he worked hard to help keep the Estefan factory running smoothly.

In moving home, so Elena could be close to her mother, he offered Luis this hope: A grandchild should cheer your mother’s depressed spirits.

Luis had smiled sadly and replied, I pray you’re right, my brother, that it will be so.

He often stayed over at the Majestic, where he now worked a day-shift, to give them space.

General Franco’s bloody attempt to seize power for the Nationalists sparked the tinderbox of civil war.

Armed insurrection enveloped Barcelona as a sudden sea-storm blackens the skies and blows violently ashore, driven by tempestuous winds. But unlike a natural squall, this man-made upheaval did not dissipate again or return the sunlight for a very long time.

Fighting broke out openly in the streets that summer, raging battles that terrified the citizenry and damaged entire neighborhoods. Street battles remained a waking nightmare for everyone who suffered or witnessed them.

Disheartened, Luis watched warily as militiamen – whose militia, Red or Blue, no one could tell, because they displayed no flags and their members all wore civilian clothing – put up barricades and check-points, and made summary arrests on suspicion; and angry men fought hand-to-hand, and shot pistols at one another at close range, while passersby ducked for cover in doorways and fled in terror down the side streets.

Some days Luis could see columns of smoke rising in distant parts of the city, and in dread he would wonder what was burning, and why.

Rumors ran rife, with distrust and fear pervading each neighborhood. The Estefans, like the other non-combatants, tried to lay low and wait for the violence to blow itself out, praying earnestly for order to return.

But the irregular pitched battles and the inevitable disruption of all services persisted.

Luis, distracted by his heavy grief, initially found himself disinterested in the outcome. Yet he observed that general sentiment in Barcelona favored the socialist Republicans at first, the democratically elected coalition government. He knew they were popular because they claimed to support the ideal of political autonomy for the region that Catalonians had long sought from Prime Minister de Rivera and subsequent rulers.

The Republicans and their Communist kin seemed to take a firm grip on the city early, quelling the rebellious Nationalist soldiers threatening war and rioting in their barracks.

As the government got control, the tense, fearful and politically divided citizenry relaxed a little; and the Estefans welcomed first signs of the settling of the deadly unrest.

But then, after a brief respite, some dim Republican city official, a renowned anarchist, decided an amnesty was needed to clear the prisons of their criminal cargo and those awaiting trial, in order to make room for their growing collection of political prisoners – snatching defeat from the jaws of early victory.

The Estefans, and other horrified ordinary citizens, protested in vain as thoughtless Red Militia leaders dutifully swore in the newly pardoned murderers, rapists, thieves and assorted gangsters, requiring their solemn oaths To behave lawfully, protect the rightful government, and join our just cause in the name of eternal brotherhood. The trusting fools opened Pandora’s Box by arming their new recruits, turning them loose to join paramilitary groups roaming the city in search of rivals and plunder.

Disorder and fear quickly reigned again.

In addition to settling old scores, these unprincipled and ungoverned terrorists began bursting into peoples’ homes to enjoy a thieves’ holiday under the guise of looking for subversives. Who they claimed to be searching for depended on their mood; it was immaterial. They were equal-opportunity hooligans, looters licensed by the state.

Armed men in civilian clothes and unmarked cars roared through the streets, shooting first and not bothering to ask questions later. In broad daylight, gangs snatched innocent people thought to be revolutionaries – or counter-revolutionaries, no one could tell – into trucks and transported them to prison. To go out was to take one’s life into one’s hands; and many businesses ground to a halt as workers hid at home.

Luis learned to dodge these random patrols on his way to and from the Hotel Majestic with a skill that made his invisibility in plain sight something of an art form.

Shopkeepers barred their doors to stop marauders. Mirabella Estefan, along with the rest of her neighbors, resorted to phoning her grocer, butcher, pharmacist and other trades-people. Merchants would only deal with customers they knew; and they only kept clandestine appointments under cover of darkness.

If a shop owner was unlucky enough to be caught by roving militia in the act of opening his shutters for a customer, state thugs ransacked his place and dragged him off to prison as a strike-breaker. Mirabella’s favorite grocer, Paolo Luz, was one such victim.

Food soon became scarce, expensive.

The fascist rebels spread the rumor that there was a secret fifth column army of Nationalist sympathizers hiding in every major city, spies ready to spring into action as saboteurs; and this false fear prompted the Republican government to visit savage reprisals upon thousands of unoffending civilians.

Staunch Catholics, who had seen their churches burnt and parish clergy humiliated – and worse, sometimes murdered – tried to affect neutrality by becoming radishes, pretend Reds or Republicans on the outside who remained conservative white Monarchists at their core.

Nevertheless, it soon became clear to many people that to hide and disappear to survive was the most sensible choice suited to the chaotic times.

Luis and his family were well-known by their friends to be apolitical; yet they could only watch in helpless desperation as neighbors with grudges denounced other neighbors, disgruntled workers deposed their employers, and unwanted spouses were disposed of with simple lies and baseless accusations.

Anyone who had something of value that someone else could covet was at risk.

Many of their friends vanished, some by deliberate choice, but most involuntarily, seized by secret police.

Priests and nuns became especially endangered, much to the loyal Estefan family’s distress, as the more extreme and violent Communists in the Republican ranks eagerly tried to exorcise from society those dealers in the opiate of the masses, religious orders and their supporters.

Conservatives of all stripes, who likewise represented the old order, also came to be associated with the Nationalists, and so lumped in with Republican targets in general.

Hushed stories of summary executions at the city’s bull-fighting ring began to circulate.

The Estefans watched as hopes for a swift victory collapsed on both sides, suffering deep anguish as their own wishes for peace and a normal life were repeatedly dashed.

The civil war escalated. As fighting intensified and spread throughout Spain, and attrition took its violent toll, both factions tried to enlist more cannon fodder.

Recruiters for the Nationalists and Republicans set up in parks and on street corners like doomsday preachers. Some wore sandwich boards decorated with slogans as they ranted and harangued for able-bodied warriors to step forward to defend the nation.

Luis listened cynically to each self-righteous group claim to be battling on behalf of the good of the country, for order, peace, prosperity and respect – conditions they themselves were responsible for destroying – mouthing nearly identical promises and patriotic platitudes despite being at opposite ends of the political spectrum.

But the pool of willing patriots dried up early, and volunteers soon became as scarce as noontime rainbows.

As Spain suffered, at terrible war with itself, Luis, like most of the country’s rational, peaceable citizens, told his family he deplored helping one faithless, tyrannical regime to power over the other because it meant killing or being killed by his brothers, his fellow countrymen.

In his pacifist heart, Luis resolved that politics was among the most worthless of reasons to take up arms.

Civil war holds attractions for so very few, Luis told Anna solemnly one evening, as they left a Mass conducted in secret by their parish priest, Father Garcia. Everyone loses, even the victors.

Anna, who was in that phase of her betrothal when silent agreement with her somewhat pompous fiancé seemed the wisest course, simply nodded.

As volunteers vanished, kidnappings replaced the draft; and forced conscriptions began at the end of a rifle.

Technically, as Luis knew, he remained a second lieutenant in the Reserves. In this confused and violent atmosphere it was not too long before he was called up by the Republicans to help in the defense of the government. Officials sent notice to his home that he was to report for duty to his old barracks, and rejoin his Seventh Regiment.

Luis felt obligated to turn his orders down.

My military oath demands that I defend my country against all invaders, he wrote back. It does not require me to slaughter my fellow Spaniards. Since Spain is not at war with any foreign power, I must decline this commission on moral grounds.

He rightly feared his principled refusal would be considered treason.

Nevertheless, as Luis swore to Anna, I prefer to risk being declared ‘Absent without Leave’ to murdering my fellow countrymen.

In his heart, he believed his father would approve; his mother certainly did.

Luis understood well how prudent it was then to disappear.

He explained his circumstances to his employers at the Hotel Majestic, and left them on good terms. Then, in haste, before any Republican enforcers could be sent to escort him to what they insisted were his responsibilities, he went into hiding with his fiancée Anna Ortega and her family down the street from his family home.

The senior Ortegas loved Luis and considered him almost their son, and so they agreed to conceal him, despite the grave danger. They did not do so lightly, but with heavy hearts. Their sacrifice in harboring a fugitive was freighted with great personal risk; and no one knew how long this uncomfortable arrangement would have to last.

Nevertheless, they volunteered their home without hesitation; and Luis never heard them utter a word of complain in the months of close confinement and privation that followed.

Unable to work and earn, Luis was another mouth to feed; and he chafed constantly under his enforced dependency. His family helped him out with what food and money they could spare; while Juan Ortega – ever the sound businessman and devout pragmatist – charmed, bluffed or bribed whoever it was necessary to in order to keep his business going.

As conditions in the city deteriorated, his business slowed; then it gradually picked up again as the civil disorder began to stabilize. Both warring factions ordered materials for uniforms from his mills, although payment was invariably slow in coming, if at all.

Luis tried his best to help out by doing the business’s books at home, for Juan Ortega’s accountant was numbered among the disappeared ones.

Throughout the long winter of 1936-37 and into the next spring, Luis hid by day, and he only went out for limited periods at night when it was deemed safe. He ventured into the dark on walks, or, by appointment, to fetch groceries and supplies with Anna, like two country mice scratching for food in a shadow world of owls and night-hawks.

The Ortegas kept their curtains perpetually drawn at night, and rarely entertained, and only then invited small groups of intimate, trusted friends. Even so, state police called at the Ortegas’ home in search of Luis on eight different occasions, each time presenting a warrant for the deserter Second Lieutenant Estefan.

Crowded together at close quarters for months, often hungry, fearful of any knock at the door, everyone in the Ortega household suffered a stressful and miserable existence.

At the dinner table in the evening, family discussions would center on conditions in the city, on business in general and the textile business in particular – for Luis was now knowledgeable on this topic – or how the war was proceeding elsewhere in the country, according to radio bulletins and newspaper reports.

Luis often waxed philosophical in decrying the war, in the vein of his late father at table debates at home. He even quoted some of his father’s favorite lines, apposite thoughts from philosophers and fond snatches from literature, as a text for his sermons, quotations that seemed dearer to him now that his father was no longer present to offer them himself.

At times, Luis wondered aloud why so many adventurous young men, excited by patriotic fervor and convinced of the utter righteousness of their cause, enlisted to test their passions on the battlefield.

This conundrum was a favorite subject. Luis, confounded by the blunt stupidity of it, swore he could not comprehend their blind trust and youthful confidence. Although he was only a few years older than these zealots, Luis confessed: I do not understand them at all.

As he lamented to his future father-in-law, I think it’s a very curious thing that inexperienced teenaged men should cherish an unbounded faith in their invulnerability, against all proofs to the contrary; and believe with an unflagging inner conviction that God will shield them from all harm, while contemptuously holding their enemies to be fools for believing the same thing.

Juan Ortega just looked up at Luis from his account books and offered him an indulgent smile. The irony that his future son-in-law’s own fierce and rigid pacifism was an equally implacable passion was lost on Luis.

One evening, Luis dared to quote Count Joseph de Maistre’s famous adage that Every nation gets the government it deserves, and he proceeded to expound on this aphorism in light of current conditions.

But, for once, Juan Ortega stopped him immediately.

"What we have now is the law of the jungle, not government, he observed – a shade curtly, Luis observed. Nobody deserves this. Or don’t you agree?"

Luis nodded, and, for once, wisely, he shut up.

Despite such minor setbacks in home debate, Luis tried to embody his late father’s stern pacifist precepts, handed down through the generations, and to let his limited military experience, and his daily observations of distant battles through news reports, substitute for wisdom.

It was his way of trying to encourage the Ortegas, to offer hope.

There was no dusty commonplace, no ancient truism, no careworn cliché about the horror and futility of war that did not regularly pass his lips. Luis’s agitated theme most evenings came down to War is Hell.

The Ortegas were tolerant.

Listening repeatedly to such fervent musings, Juan Ortega would pause between mouthfuls and give a wan smile, and nod agreeably, as would Maria and Anna.

Privately – they usually felt it was unprofitable to challenge the principles of such an excitable young man – the senior Ortegas thought Luis’s conscientious objection was restricted to the civil war. They believed in their hearts that he would defend his hearth and homeland if a foreign power attacked, or if anyone directly threatened their family.

After dinner, like many families in the besieged city, the Ortegas entertained themselves in the parlor each evening, in relaxed conversation, listening to the radio, reading periodicals and books. Often they listened to Anna playing the piano, and sometimes they sang along with old favorites.

But at ten-thirty, Juan Ortega invariably put aside his paper, rose from his armchair, stretched, announced I believe it is bedtime, and they would all retire upstairs.

The winter of the long tease began for Luis and Anna innocently enough.

Certainly the betrothed couple, confined alone together at close quarters, suffered an abiding and natural sexual tension. They were driven by the powerful internal forces of surging hormones – youthful desire heightened and made more acute by their constant proximity to one another and by the tension of the fearful situation outside their doors.

But they did not begin to explore a physical release of their growing lust until they woke up before dawn one morning, startled, to find they had fallen asleep together while talking on Luis’s bed in the guestroom.

Anna had come to visit him after her bath, dressed in her floral pink flannel pajamas and thick brown corduroy bathrobe, to speak with Luis about their hopes and plans and other private things not suitable for the parlor; and they had inadvertently fallen asleep cuddling on top of his bed, still dressed, with the reading light still on.

It was just before first light when Anna awoke suddenly, alert with fear, and she scuttled frantically back to her room just ahead of her father rising to get ready to go to work.

But the thrilling sense of having gotten away with something forbidden sparked further trials of carnal satisfaction, and they explored their needs and their curiosities.

Betrothed but unable to marry because of Luis’s situation, they both felt an intense desire to consummate their passion, an ache of longing that steadily grew; and night upon night they came closer to scratching this overwhelming itch, feeling a strong electric attraction like powerful magnets too near each other to resist nature’s pull.

Anna, as Miguel Estefan had accurately assumed – as, indeed, anyone who knew her would assume – was almost completely inexperienced in physical love-making.

Like other young ladies at her convent boarding school, she had experimented a little among the girls who admired each other’s developing figures, kissed their thumbs and forefingers pressed together like lips, graduated to kissing a few of their adventurous classmates, giggling and breathless, and even tried a little tentative touching of one another here and there with fingers and tongues, to gauge the experience and develop some technique