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Subject: {ASSM} (Rewritten and Serialised) Butterfly and Falcon (Part 1) By Katzmarek (Hist, rom,Mf,MF)
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Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 05:10:01 -0500
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 I have completely rewritten Butterfly and Falcon and serialised to 5 chapters.

Katzmarek

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<1st attachment, "Butterfly and Falcon01.txt" begin>

THE BUTTERFLY AND THE FALCON

   By KATZMAREK

   -----------------------------------------------

   Author's note.

   This is a work of fiction based on fact.  Opinions and interpretations
of events expressed are my own and as such are entirely contestable.

   This remains my property and may not be used for gain without my express
permission in writing.

   -------------------------------------------------

   Historical Note

   When King Alfonso XIII assumed power in 1902 he inherited a Spain deeply
divided.  Spanish society was being squeezed between the pressures of
modernisation and a lagging, anachronistic Conservatism.  The
constitutional assembly, the Cortes, had only limited authority.  Not
unlike the Russian Dumas in Tsarist times, it could advise the Monarch, but
not overide his decision.

   Spain had once been a great empire, but the 19th century saw it reduced
to a shadow of its former self.  Rather than move from an economy based on
the exploitation of her colonies and a society dominated by the precepts of
a Tridentine-style Roman Catholic Church, Alfonso was unwilling to
countenance any liberalisation.

   Slowly his rule began to unravel in the years leading up to the 1st
World War as he repeatedly blocked any attempt at agrarian reform or
democracy.  Inevitably, this gave fuel to the growing number of radical
political groups whose only avenues of dissent were sabotage and
assassination.  Eventually, his chaotic rule was brought to an end by
Miguel Primo de Rivera, an Army General, in 1923.

   Vowing to rule for only 90 days; long enough, he claimed, to root out
corruption and pave the way for Democratic reforms; in fact his
dictatorship lasted until 1930.  By then Spain was bankrupt through
financial mismanagement and little had been done to free up society. 
Eventually he was forced to resign and allow elections.

   That election in 1931 was characterised by widespread electoral fraud,
which saw an overwhelming victory by the right wing Catholic Party, the
CEDA, and the 'peasant's Party,' the Radicals.  The Left was badly
fractured, with one of the leading groups, the Anarchists of the FAI/CNT,
calling for a voter boycott.  CEDA promptly began to peel back the few
liberal reforms of the Primo de Rivera Government.  Spain's economic
problems deepened.

   For the election of 1936 Manuel Azana of the Socialists, the PSOE,
organised a 'Popular Front' of all Left Wing parties save the Anarchists.
The Right promptly coalesced into the 'National Front' under Sanjuro, a
General.  The Nationalists had the support of the 'Falange Espanole,' the
Fascists, led by Primo de Rivera's son.  Their anti-Catholic rhetoric made
them uneasy bedmates with the CEDA but their ultra-nationalism and violent
anti-communism attracted the attention of those interested in Spain's
spiritual rebirth as a World power.

   The Popular Front won by a close margin.  One of their first measures
was to outlaw the Falange and exile an outspoken critic of reform, General
Francisco Franco, to the island of Minorca.

   Rumours of a military coup if the Popular Front won had been circulating
for months.  Franco had been implicated along with the Fascists.  Azana
attempted to head off trouble but he merely accelerated the timetable.

   In June 1936 Franco secretly travelled to Tetuan in Morocco and raised
the Spanish Army of Africa in revolt.  Rebellions broke out on the
peninsular led by groups of army officers and in desperation the Government
provided arms to their Left Wing supporters.  This included the FAI/CNT who
successfully defended Barcelona against an attack by rebel units.

   But Franco had allies in Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

   -----------------------------

   August 2005, outside Vladivostok, Russian Federation.

   The Kamov Ka27 helicopter fluttered just 500 metres above the cold
waters of the Northern Sea of Japan.  Visibility was limited to no more
than a kilometre by a low, grey mist.  The two pilots had their eyes fixed
on the central consol, and the pulsing screen of the search radar.

   "Kamov Victor Alpha this is Poltava," the headset crackled, "have you a
visual?"

   "No, not yet, Poltava," replied the Kamov's senior pilot, "I have her on
radar 4 kilometres East of our position.  It's very thick out there."

   "Roger, Kamov Victor Alpha.  Switch to channel seven and tell them
you're friendly," Poltava instructed, "we don't want any international
incidents."

   "Roger out." The pilot clicked the radio dial a few notches.  "Te Kaha,
Te Kaha," he said in English, "this is the Russian Navy's helicopter Kamov
Victor Alpha.  Do you read me?"

   "Loud and clear, Kamov Victor Alpha.  We have been tracking you for ten
minutes," came the reply, "just like old times, eh?"

   "Yes, Te Kaha," chuckled the Kamov's pilot, "except we wouldn't be
guiding you into our Naval base."

   "Rather the opposite, I think.  I'm Lieutenant Rashbrooke, 1st Officer."

   "Welcome to Russia, Te Kaha, an historic occasion.  The Guided Missile
Cruiser Poltava is waiting behind us to guide you in.  My name is Brian, by
the way."

   The bridge Officers on the Te Kaha looked at each other with mild
consternation.  They weren't sure whether they were being put on.  "Brian?"
remarked Lieutenant Rashbrooke, "not a common Russian name, Kamov Victor
Alpha?"

   "Is because I'm a Kiwi, like you," came the reply from the Russian
chopper.  The New Zealand Naval Officers looked at each other in surprise.

   --------------------------------------------

   Early 1937, near Madrid, Spain.

   John watched the old man urge his donkey down the middle of the cement
road on the other side of the hedgerow.  The animal carried a stack of hay
twice its height.  A military lorry rolled up behind, a Tatra, clattering
and steaming from its overworked engine.  The militiamen shouted and cursed
until the old man moved the donkey to the side.  John watched the exchange
of gestures, 'universal' he thought, chuckling.

   Two men played cards under the wing of a parked Mosca.  The plane was
covered in shrubs, except for its long nose.  There, the fat German
mechanic laboured under the hot sun, the cowling peeled back, and his
oil-stained torso buried deep among the bank of cylinders.

   "Hey!" 'Oz' Calaghan called from the card game, "'Shagger,' we need ya
dingle!"

   "Na!" John shouted back, "I'm broke."

   "We'll take ya scrip, eh Roly?" he winked at his partner.  The Pole 'Oz'
called 'Roly' raised his eyebrows knowingly.  John was adamant, however,
those two knew how to relieve a mug of his pesetas, that's for sure.

   John leaned back against the wheel of his 'kite' and pulled his battered
straw hat over his eyes.  This was siesta time and most of the Spaniards
were snoozing somewhere among the trees and revettements.  Only the
foreigners were wandering about or working.  'Mad dogs and Englishmen,'
John thought, but it could equally apply to the Aussies, Kiwis, Poles,
Yanks, Germans, Czechs, Russians and half a dozen other nationalities in
Alcala.  'This is fuckin' mad,' he thought, 'Spain is fuckin' mad and all
those who chose to come and fight here are fuckin' mad too.'

   He closed his eyes but couldn't sleep.  The Spaniards, he reckoned,
could sleep anytime, anywhere.  He reckoned they could sleep standing up
and flick the flies of their faces while doing so.

   Two years ago he hadn't considered joining a war, let alone a Civil one.
He'd been scratching a living dusting fields from an Avro 504k,
superphosphate, tons of the shit.  He'd then seen in a newspaper that the
Spanish Republic was recruiting pilots.  Well, he hadn't been overseas in
his life, not even to Australia, and Spain seemed exotic, ancient, like
some living museum.

   The Spanish liked the 'Internationales.' John's blonde hair and
Anglo-Saxon features stood out in the streets of Madrid.  His first day
there, he recalled, he was practically flattened by the exuberance of a
large well-wisher who plastered him with alcoholic kisses.

   The passion of the people in this country intimidated John.  At one,
extraordinary hospitable and generous, then a careless remark could set off
an argument that could envelop the whole street.  Is there any wonder,
thought John, that such a society, long confined by rigid conformity,
should explode into such extremes of violence?

   ---------------------------------------------------

   Near Madrid, in the Republican lines bordering the river Benares, Benin
sat propped against the wall of a bombed out cottage.  The remnant of the
roof provided scant shade and she longed for an olive tree and green grass.


   Nearby, two militiamen peered attentively through a loophole knocked in
the stuccoed wall.  Benin idly watched them as they tried to pick out a
Nationalist Officer a little way off in the enemy lines.

   "Over there," one said, "he'll poke his head up again, you'll see!"

   "Who?  'El Gordo'?" the other replied.

   "Yeah, the fat bastard!  When he shows again I'll blow his fucking ear
off."

   Benin listened to the snipers laying bets as to who would shoot the
enemy officer first.  She smiled to herself, wondering wryly whether it was
entirely proper to gamble over the death of a human being, albeit a
Falangist.  She'd seen men bet over a spider race.  Nothing surprised her
anymore.

   Their position had once been a fine villa with frescoed walls and marble
tiles.  Yague's artillery had demolished the place before being withdrawn
North to the Ebro front.  The Falangist militia had then replaced the
Foreign Legionaires and Moroccan Zouaves.  The Blueshirts proved to be
brave but incompetent when advancing under fire.  The militiaman of the
Duretti Column had inflicted many casualties.

   'BANG!  KA POW!' The snipers fired practically in unison.

   "Ha ha!"

   "Did you get him?"

   "I blew his fucking cap off.  Can you believe that?  Right off his head,
I can't believe it!"

   "You hear that, Benin?"

   "Tell me when his head is in it," she told them.

   "Next time, comrade, next time!"

   She was tired.  Tired of the boredom, the routine, the dirt, flies, rats
and, above all, the nerve snapping tension of spending day after day in the
front line.

   To relieve the strain, the militiamen gambled or made jokes; grim humour
about death and disease.  To them these things were the mundane, the
everyday, so they made jokes about them.

   She thought about the days in Barcelona.  It seemed an age ago when the
women called Perdita and Conchita arrived at the sweatshop where she
worked. They called themselves 'Mujeres Libres,' the Free Women, and they
came in under the banner of the CNT, the Anarchist Trade Union Federation.

   Perdita told the webstering and wool spinning women and girls that their
liberation was in their own hands.  Freedom from wage slavery and poverty,
from the oppression and exploitation of the bosses, was there for the
taking.

   The women all stood in confusion, until one of them, a young girl called
Maria reminded them all of what the Boss, that pig, had done, and what
continued to do to them.

   She meant, 'that which was not talked about.' How the young girls were
taken into the office on the mezzanine floor, one by one, day after day. 
How they then came back sullen, shamefaced and silent.  How those that
refused were sacked and cast out onto the street.  How the manager of the
Cloth factory was an evil lecher who preyed on the young, the innocent. 
How he turned the factory into his private whorehouse.

   Benin had waited for the tap on the shoulder, had concealed a bodkin in
her knickers for when the time came.

   But Maria had woken them all up and now rage gripped them.  The manager
was hauled out of the closet where he'd hidden, stripped naked and chased
down the street by his screaming employees armed with dressmaking scissors
and cries of 'neuter him.' Afterwards they broke into his liquor cabinet
and held a party.

   'En Masse' the women of the Cloth Factory enlisted in the Mujeres
Libres. A few, like Benin, joined the Anarchist Brigade's Barcelona Column
as they set out to lay siege to Saragossa.

   'And now,' thought Benin, 'the fascists were at the very gates of Madrid
and the Popular Front was turning in on itself.' In the North, General
Franco's Nationalist Forces were closing in on Bilbao.  In the South, they
were advancing on Valencia threatening to cut Spain in two.  Trouble was
brewing in Barcelona between the Anarchist CNT/FIA and anti-Stalinist,
Communist POUM on the one hand and the Moscow backed Communists of the PCE
and the Catalan Nationalists of the PSUC on the other.

   In Spain's fledgling democracy the politicians had yet to learn the art
of compromise and conciliation.  Each faction, each party was determined to
have their own way no matter what.  The very fabric of Spanish society had
torn apart irrevocably in an orgy of violence and destruction.

   But here, on the banks of the Benares, there was only the empty bravado
of the opposing militiamen as they masked the terror each one of them felt
across the brown, shallow waters of the river.  Benin picked up her Labora
sub-machine gun and moved at a crouch to somewhere where she could empty
her bladder.

   --------------------------------------------

   At the airfield in Alcala the peace was shattered by the banging of the
gongs.

   "C'mon, boys!" shouted 'Colonel' Vestuptivich, with his thick Russian
accent, "is formation over Toledo heading this way.  Please, we must fly!"

   John woke with a start and struggled to his feet.  The Colonel's quaint
phrasing always amused him.  "Please, we must start engines...  Otto, you
must put that fucking cover back now!" the Colonel continued.

   Alcala broke into action as engines coughed and wheazed.  Smoke drifted
from the exhaust stacks and airscrews began to rotate.  From around the
perimeter men came running, groundcrew and pilots heaving their parachutes
and flying gear.  Within 5 minutes, the first of the stubby fighters was
clattering and banging towards the taxi area.

   The Polikarpov I16 Mk 10 fighter, nicknamed 'Mosca,' (fly), by the
Republicans and 'Rata' (rat) by their enemies was the best monoplane
fighter in operational service in the World when it began to arrive in
Spain in late 1936.  It was more heavily armed, faster and better in every
way against the Italian supplied Fiat CR32 of the Nationalists except in
the turn.  Republican pilots learned not to get into a close dogfight with
the Nationalist biplane.  They made their attacks at full throttle, at a
speed the Spanish and Italian pilots couldn't hope to match.

   Russia supplied 300 of them to the Republican airforce, all smuggled
through the ports of Bilbao and San Sebastion past the somewhat porous
blockade of the 'Non Intervention Treaty partners.'

   One by one the little fighters bounced down the dusty field and into the
air.  Above the base they formed into their 'flying V' formation and headed
south.

   --------------------------------------------

   In the Republican lines on the Benares, Benin looked wearily into the
sky as she became aware of the droning aeroplanes.  She saw seven fighters
in formation, monoplanes, with red-tipped wings.

   "Ours," she told her comrades, matter-of-factly.  The others shrugged.

   "Hey, who's that?" one asked, pointing down the slope behind them. 
Benin followed his finger to see a group of men running, doubled over,
towards their position.  She was instantly on alert until she saw the red
and black scarves around their necks and the black berets on their heads.

   The newcomers fell into the ruined villa and took cover.  "Fuck off,"
the first one said, "you're relieved."

   "Says who?" Benin snapped.

   "Who cares?" one of her companions said, grabbing his rifle and kit. 
Benin looked suspiciously at the relieving militiamen before following her
friends down the hill.

   At the bottom of the low hill was a ruined village that the militia used
as a rest area.  A large red and black flag flew from the pole in front of
the rubble that used to be the post office.  Below the CNT flag was a
smaller one, the red, gold, blue tricolour of the Republic.  A dozen or so
Militiamen lay snoring in the shade offered by the broken walls.

   Benin went through the gap that used to be the front door.  A section of
the former roof had been resurrected into a rough shelter.  Beneath this
was what passed for a headquarters with a map table, chairs and a couple of
'staff officers.'

   In the Anarchist Brigades, such positions were elected and carried
little real authority.  The 'Commander,' too, was elected by the militia
and was expected to convey the unit's view up the chain of 'command.'
Curiously.  the system worked well, even during relatively complicated
operations.

   "Hey!" Benin yelled, "why did you pull us out of the line?"

   "Calm down, Benin," the bearded commander replied, arms up placatingly,
"we just thought you needed a break, that's all.  Go into town, get drunk
and have a fuck, my advice."

   "Sure," one of the 'staff' added, "let me accompany you.  We could get
drunk together and afterwards..."

   "I'd rather fuck a pig," snapped Benin.

   "Can I watch?" laughed the man.

   "Go on, piss off, Benin.  Let your hair down.  You've done your bit for
the present." Glaring at the two men, Benin walked slowly out towards her
waiting comrades.  Already they'd commandeered a donkey cart.  She tossed
up her gear and jumped on.

   A little way down the road towards central Madrid they came across a
column marching towards the front.  "Hey," one of the column called as the
donkey cart waited for them to pass, "that's a pretty Labora, comrade, let
me have it?"

   Benin clutched her machine gun protectively.  She'd spent months when
this gun was the most important thing she possessed and she was reluctant
to part from it.  "C'mon," the man persisted, "I've only got this old piece
of shit and five rounds." He showed her his ancient rifle.  Benin doubted
that it would fire.  The rust was obvious around the lock.

   "Here," she said after a long pause, "take it...  and these," she added,
shedding her bandoliers and cartridge boxes.  The man beamed with pleasure
and fingered the silver grey mechanism of the Labora.  "Use it well,
comrade," she told the man as they set out again.

   "Why did you do that?" one of her comrades asked, "why'd you give that
guy your Labora?  Rare around here, those guns.  Fuck, I wouldn't hand it
over."

   "You want that boy to fight Franco's dogs with his bare fists?" she told
him.

   "Rather him than me."

   "That's not the proper revolutionary attitude," his friend said.

   "No, but it's common sense," he grinned.

   Benin got herself comfortable amid the bags on the cart and dozed with
the jolting, rolling motion of the cart.

   -------------------------------------------

   John Greenhaugh banked his stubby aeroplane slightly to see the jagged
lines of scratched red earth.  He thought it looked like some giant had
drawn a stick over the drab, olive-coloured landscape.  It reminded him of
a child's first attempt with a wax crayon.  Back from the trench line were
once dotted Yague's artillery pieces.  Now, their empty positions looked
like doughnuts from the air.  Across the river, the Republican positions
were concealed with thick brush.  One had to squint hard to find any
movement there.

   White bursts of smoke erupted a few hundred metres away.  'Flak 40s,'
John thought.  He'd noticed a steady increase in antiaircraft fire from the
Nationalists, all, no doubt, supplied by their Nazi German friends.  He was
glad they were in the hands of the Blue Shirts and not the Foreign Legion.
The regular units were much better shots.

   Although the little aircraft carried radios, the Republican pilots had
learned that the use of them brought swarms of enemy fighters.  Instead,
they relied on hand signals from the lead plane, one reason they maintained
such a tight formation, so they all could read them.

   John saw the hand raised with the finger pointing to the right and
upwards.  As one they climbed, banking roughly towards distant Toledo. 
John swallowed with apprehension.  The enemy bombers were almost certainly
escorted by the new German fighter on the scene.  Flown by regular German
Luftwaffe pilots, supposedly 'volunteers,' they'd heard they were called
Messerschmitt Bf109s.  They were at least 50kph faster than the Mosca and
superior in both climb and dive.

   ----------------------------------------------

   The cart bumped over the cobbled streets of the Madrid suburbs.  The
juddering woke Benin.  She opened her eyes to find out where they were.

   Across the street was a burnt-out church, it's wooden pews dragged out
and smashed in the street.  The stained glass windows lay shattered across
the stone steps, their fragments gleaming like spangles under the noon sun.
Benin hoped the priest had been inside it when the vandals came.  She noted
with grim satisfaction the letters 'CNT FAI' scrawled in red paint across
the blackened stonework.  She looked up at her two comrades.  One grinned
and nodded towards the ruined building.

   Two Civil Guards watched them pass with looks of contempt.  Benin was
reminded that there were many in the Republican cause that despised the
Anarchists as much as any of Franco's soldiers.

   "Hey, Benin," a comrade said, "where do you want to go?"

   She hadn't thought about it.  "The clinic," she said on impulse.

   "What, you sick?"

   "I have a friend working there."

   "Get drunk with us?" the other suggested.

   "The clinic," she emphasised.  The man shrugged.

   By 1937 many of the Mujeres Libres women were working in hospitals,
women's health clinics (the first ones in Spain), schools, where they
taught the young women of the poor who would've normally remained
uneducated, and in the supply trains and rear depots.  Even the idealistic
Anarchists had not fully grasped the idea of women's liberation and, in
some of the columns, women were compelled to leave the front line.  Of
course the men of the regular Republican army were outraged at the thought
of women fighting alongside the men.  Spanish society was still intensely
patriarchical.

   One of the woman forced out of the fighting units was the famous
Perdita. She was born Consuela Maria de Cisneros, a daughter of one of
Spain's leading aristocratic families.  Educated in Paris of the 1920s, she
returned having been subjected to the radical ideas current in the West
Bank Bohemian quarter.  In Barcelona the Mujeres Libres were campaigning in
the interests of the working women of the poor for better health and
education and freedom from the utter control of men.  Perdita instantly
signed up, it was a cause she felt was worth fighting for.

   There she met Conchita, Maria Martinez, one of the early founders of the
Anarchist women's movement in Catalonia.  She was then in her forties, an
ex-nun, whose fierce passion for the interests of her fellow women ignited
many to the cause.  Within a few months, Perdita and Conchita had become
lovers and the spiritual leaders of the Mujeres Libres.

   To join the Mujeres Libres meant leaving your past life behind.  It was
as much a spiritual rebirth as any fundamentalist Christianity.  The women
took on new names, minus family names.  That signified ownership and, after
all, a maiden name was changed when a woman got married to signify 'change
of ownership.' Such things were anathema.

   From the time of the overthrow of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in
1930 and the beginning of the Republic, the CNT steadily came to control
much of Barcelona.  Its members dominated the public services and heavy
industrial workforces.  The CNT could close down the city anytime it liked.

   Formed in 1911, the FAI, (or Federacion Anarchistas Iberias), espoused
its own brand of Feodor Bakhunin's Anarchist ideas.  When merged with the
older Syndicalism of the CNT (Confederacion Nacionale de Trabajores), a
French idea from the early 1840s, it became Anarcho-Syndicalism.

   Society was to be decentralised and classless.  Production was to be run
by worker collectives with a rotating system of representation to ensure
no-one was corrupted by having too much authority.  An Anarcho-Syndicalist
community operated on a simple barter system with all major decisions taken
on a free vote of its members.  Such communities were to be self-contained
and autonomous, sending representatives to regular planning committees at
regional and national level.  Such representatives, of course, were
regularly rotated.

   Along with the Anti-Stalinist, Communist POUM and the pro-Moscow,
Communist PCE these political movements all had their militias in the event
that they would need to defend themselves against a hostile Government. 
When parts of the Spanish Army revolted in June 1936 the desperate Popular
Front Government in Madrid ordered the Militias to be armed because the
they couldn't rely on the loyalty of their own army.

   Spain's armed forces were divided in two, the Army of Africa based in
Spanish Morocco, and the Army of the Peninsular.  Much of the Peninsular
Army remained loyal, except for about 5000 Officers who defected to Franco
and his General, Sanjuro.  The Peninsular Army, however, was considered the
poorer, the least trained and equipped.  Nevertheless, with the aid of the
armed militias, the rebellion was put down, except for Morocco and the
Balearics.  The insurrection was left with merely a toehold on the Iberian
peninsular, centred on Algeciras, the Ports of Cadiz and El Ferol, and some
territory adjacent to the Portugese border.  The rebellion was rescued,
however, by Nazi Germany who supplied transport planes to fly in units of
Franco's Army of Africa, from Ceuta, Morocco.

   Benin was deposited outside the clinic, now used as a hospital.  A line
of men sat along the pavement outside, bandaged, some playing cards and
others dull-eyed in shock.

   Perdita, her fine aquiline features now ravaged by strain and overwork,
moved to embrace her friend with the relief of someone rescued from a
desert island.  To Benin, she was her mentor, her Mother Superior, who had
guided the youngster from poor working class girl to a politicised defender
of her people.

   "Come, comrade," Perdita said with moist eyes, "we'll have a drink and
catch up." The older woman put an arm protectively around Benin's shoulders
and drew her inside.

   -----------------------------------------

   The seven Moscas carefully stalked the enemy bombers to gain the
advantage of the sun.  They were a typically mixed group, Fiat Br20s and
Junkers Ju52s escorted by around half a dozen Fiat Cr32 biplane fighters.
John scanned the sky until he spotted what he was looking for, six black
dots well above them.

   "Bandits, 6 o'clock high," he reported urgently, there not being any
point in maintaining radio silence any more.

   "I see them," crackled the headset, "let's get in and get out, fast."

   "Roger." John banked towards the enemy, pushing his throttle past the
gate.  The Mosca vibrated, the noise of the M25a Radial engine and roaring
airstream over the semi-enclosed cockpit assailed his ears.

   The M25a aero-engine was a Russian copy of the American Wright Cyclone.
Russia had acquired a licence for it way back in 1930.  It was impeccably
reliable, simple to maintain, rugged with a useful amount of power for the
time.  Just the qualities the Russian Ministry of Aircraft Production was
looking for.

   As they closed the bombers, streams of smoke from tracer bullets told
them they'd been sighted.  Focussing on the lumbering bombers, fast growing
large in his gunsights, John tried to put out of his mind the
Messerschmitts peeling into a dive above them.

   John's Mosca streaked down on the enemy, firing bursts from his four
machine guns at anything in his path.  It was an exhilaration hard to
communicate to someone that hadn't experienced it.  To zoom through an
enemy formation, throttle wide open and guns blazing.  Time seemed to stand
still.  Action rarely extended longer than 10 minutes at best, yet most
pilots swore they'd fought for a half hour or more after a dogfight.

   Within seconds, the hovering Messerschmitts had dived on top of the
attacking Moscas.  John was through and diving straight down when he became
aware of a shadow on his tail.  He jiggled the stick to upset the aim of
the enemy fighter behind him.  He'd already worked out in his mind what
evasive tactic to use.  He plunged straight at the ground below in a deadly
game of chicken.

   On the edge of the plain lay the river Guadarama as it made its way to
join the Tagus.  The river lay in a valley cut deep into the land and was
an important navigational feature for pilots.  John had flown along this
valley before in an I15 'Chato.' So low, in fact, that the fixed
undercarriage of the biplane had water reeds wrapped around the wheel
struts.  At least that's what was rumoured.

   John flattened out some 50 metres above the dusty earth.  He saw the
Messerschmitt was just above him and gaining.  'This guy's good,' he
thought, 'doesn't waste ammunition.  Just waits until he's close enough for
a clear shot.' John jiggled and swerved, but the maneuvring merely slowed
him down, so he made straight for the river valley.

   They roared over a village.  The square was packed with Nationalist
soldiers and they looked upward, white faced, as the screaming fighters
shot over their heads.  John knew exactly where he was, but he doubted the
German was that familiar with the countryside.

   He hollered as he pushed the stick down and to the left, 'ee ha.' He
flattened out so close to the water that the prop sent misty spray high
into the air around the little fighter.  John looked behind.  The
Messerschmitt had overshot and was circling around to his right.  Before it
could resume the chase, John had gained a kilometre or more and was weaving
down the river valley.  It was altogether too much for the enemy fighter
and John was relieved to see it disappear.

   A half an hour later the Mosca was gingerly touching down on the bumpy
airfield of Alcala.  He looked around at the parked aircraft, counted them
to see who had returned and who was missing.  It was part of the job he
hated.  To lose friends in such circumstances was the hardest thing to
bear.

   One failed to make it back, a Serbian named Kuzmecich.  Oz had nicknamed
him 'Koozer,' apparently one of the many Aussie slang words for penis.  He
was a quiet man with slow penerating eyes.  They belied his quick reflexes
and uncanny marksmanship, a natural hunter.

   To be captured by the Falangists almost certainly meant torture and
death.  So, at least the pilots believed.  However the odds of surviving in
enemy territory were good as the Nationalist forces were thinly spread and
communication difficult.  John hoped he would return, smiling, concealed in
a hay cart.  For all their sakes, they had to believe such things were
possible.

   At the debriefing afterwards John was ordered to hand over his aircraft
to a new pilot, a Russian fresh from the USSR.  The Colonel told him he was
overdue for a furlough.  He took his kit and left quickly, catching a
military lorry to Madrid.

   John travelled to Madrid with mixed feelings.  What would he do in
Madrid?  His life had revolved around flying and the squadron for so long,
life outside seemed like a long past memory.  He jumped off at an
overcrowded hotel and went in search of a room.

   ---------------------------------------

   "What you need, my love," Perdita told Benin after the first bottle of
wine, "is a good fuck."

   "So I've been told," Benin replied, wryly.

   "And what's wrong with that?  You can hand him back afterwards.  You
don't have to keep him."

   "I don't need men in my life, even for one night."

   "Not every man is a perverted priest, Benin," she told her, gravely. 
Benin looked at her hands folded in her lap.  The wine, the talk, had
opened old wounds long plastered over.

   In the close knit poor suburb of Barcelona he was simply known as the
Father.  He was well over sixty when Benin turned 14 years old and had been
the local priest for over forty years.  The position of a churchman in
fanatically Catholic Spain was unassailable when Benin was a young girl. 
He was God's man on Earth.  To defy the wishes and demands of the Father
was like defying God.  One simply courted purgatory.

   As long as she could remember, the Father, as familiar as her own Papa,
had touched her.  It was always with affection, it made her feel special.
He would hug her, pat her hair, always in front of her parents and she
thought little of it.

   One day, a few days before her 14th birthday, she recalled with crystal
clarity his hand drifting down her back to cup her bottom.  She didn't
think much of it at the time and continued laying the table for him.  Benin
remembered how her Mother had panicked the day before finding enough food
to give the Father when he was to call the next day.

   'Barely enough for ourselves,' Benin thought, 'and we would go hungry to
feed that fat parasite.'

   "She must come to see me," he was telling her Mother, "she is growing
up." Benin recalled the knowing looks passing between the adults.  She was
confused and she asked her Mother afterwards why she had to see the Priest.

   "It's because you're growing up and..." she hesitated, "you'll soon be a
woman.  There're things you need to learn if you're not going...  to fall
into sinful ways." Benin was none the wiser, but very curious.

   She thought, however, that it must be something to do with lust, sex and
marriage.  These things that are not mentioned at home but were lambasted
into them at Church on Sundays.  'For a man to take someone as a wife who
was not his wife was a sin.  To look at a man with desire who was not her
husband destined a woman to purgatory.  A man lies with his wife for the
purpose of procreation.' And on and on.  To feel the natural urges of a
girl in puberty was interwined with fear and recrimination.  'No wonder,'
Benin thought, 'that Spain was both fearful and obsessed with sexuality.'

   "Come child," he'd said before drawing her into the Rectory.  The
curtains were drawn, unusually, and the office was dim and intimate.  The
Priest sat on a plush sofa, his back to the thin shafts of sunlight that
filtered past the gaps in the drapes.  Benin stood before him fidgeting,
nervous and confused.  "Now, child, Benin," he continued, "you are growing
into a beautiful woman.  You will make a fine wife for some young man."

   She nodded, managed to make a weak smile at the compliment.  She'd worn
her prettiest dress, the one she'd normally wear to Church.  It had a
bright plaid design and hung modestly down to her ankles.  Over the last
year she'd shot up in height and had grown hips.  Her Mother had told her
she was growing like a weed and her Father would have to work twice as long
to keep her fed.

   Her bust had not blossomed like other girls.  Instead, they were just a
hint of what was to come.  All that height, though, was at the expense of
her waist, for she was a thin as a rake.  "Have patience, Benin," her
Mother had said, "a year or two and the boys will be falling over
themselves."

   "Yes...  very pretty," the Father went on.  Somehow the way he'd said it
made Benin feel more nervous.  This was not the tone the family friend and
advisor, the intercessor with God, used.  There was an edge, something
indefinable and confusing.  "Come closer, let me get a better look at you."
Dumbly she complied.

   She was beckoned closer until she was within his reach.  Then his hands
were on her, stroking her sides, down over her hips and around to her
bottom.  He pulled her closer until she was practically in his lap, his
insistant hands mauling and groping.  "Beautiful!" he whispered, then
swallowed and made a noise as if he was about to choke.

   Suddenly she was perched on his knee and his hand was bunching up her
skirt, his fingers moving up her leg inside the light cotton fabric.  Benin
swallowed in fear and uncertainty.  She could utter no sound, her voice
constricted in her throat.  "Brown eyes," he gurgled, "such depth, such
beauty," as his hand slid higher.  Instinctively Benin squeezed her legs
together, but the Father pushed apart her knees with his hands.

   Too poor to wear stockings, the feel of his rough hands on the delicate
skin of her upper thighs made her want to be sick.  She swallowed down the
rising bile.  "I must see how you're developing," the Father said with
authority in his voice.  "Pull up your skirt and down with your panties,
please." She couldn't refuse, it would be the same as defying God.

   She stood, shuffled down her panties, and allowed herself to be pulled
down onto his knee once again.  The Father gestured for her to raise her
skirt.  The young Benin complied until she was completely exposed.

   Benin's skin seemed to crawl.  She felt hot, but trembled as if cold. 
The Father's fingers probed and pushed around her young vagina, covered in
a brown fluffy down.  The Priest pulled her leg tight into his crotch until
she could feel his penis, hard, pulsing and intrusive, under his cassock.
He placed her hand on it, pushed it back and forth while gurgling and
swallowing.  She was aware of him breathing hard and dribbling from the
corner of his mouth.  His face had changed to something ugly.  Benin began
to sob until her tears began to run down her face.

   Suddenly he ordered her to stand and get dressed.  He left the room
quickly leaving the young girl to find her own way out.

   Her Mother was waiting for her in the Church.  Benin wandered up the
aisle sobbing quietly.  Her Mother hugged her and bade her kneel before the
statue of the Virgin.  As she began to pray, however, Benin got up and ran
through the side entrance to the chancel.  In the alley beside the church
she threw up on the flagstones.

   "Benin?" Perdita asked, concern in her voice.  Benin became aware she'd
fallen silent for some time.  She felt a little drunk from the wine,
morose, perhaps.

   "I need to go for a walk," she explained.  Ignoring the worried
expression of her mentor.  She got up and walked quickly out onto the
street.

   -------------------------------------------

   Lieutenant John Greenhaugh wandered from hotel to hotel.  Madrid was
full of Officers and Government Bureaucrats and they all seemed to have
grabbed the best accomodation for themselves.  Troops were quartered in
Churches and halls and camped in tents in the grassy town parks and
squares. No-one seemed to have any room.

   He'd walked far into unfamiliar territory.  Carousing soldiers were
everywhere, singing and arguing among themselves.  Hookers, too, beckoned
him from doorways and street corners.

   He passed an alley and spied a group arguing a little way inside.  He
would have passed on by but for the angry cry of a woman.

   "Go away, get out..  bastard!"

   On impulse, John turned back to investigate.  A couple of drunk soldiers
appeared to have a woman pinned against the bricks.  She was small and
slender, giving away at least 40 kilos each to the men.  It wasn't fair.

   --------------------------------------

   Rage consumed Benin.  The two drunks were calling her an 'Anarchist
bitch,' that she was both a whore and a lesbian.  That what she needed was
a good, hard cock from a real man.  She punched the bigger of the two in
the midriff but he scarcely flinched.  Instead, he groped her breasts.  The
other was laughing, egging his friend on, telling him that he was next and
he could've picked one with big tits, he liked big tits.  Their stale
tobacco and alcohol smelling breath sickened her.

   All of a sudden the drunk's face disappeared to be replaced by the wide
green back of a Spanish Air Force Officer.  She heard a crunch like thin
wood snapping and watched the drunk cannon across the alley and bounce off
the opposite wall.  He then slid down in slow motion to lie crumpled in a
heap on the cobblestones.  The other drunk turned and ran, his progress
sped up with a kick to his fleeing rump.

   Benin looked up in shock as her rescuer turned and raised his cap in
greeting.  She was struck dumb, her jaw sagged.

   "Madam?" he said, "are you all right?"

   "Yes," she replied, automatically.  She couldn't remember ever being
called 'madam' before.  She should have been outraged at his patronisation.
Instead, she felt like a 13 year old girl who's just spied the new
neighbour's cute son for the first time.

   The Officer was tall, broad across the shoulders, blonde with a
guileless, classically handsome face.  He wore a green, Air Force
Lieutenant's dress jacket complete with pilot's brevet and a row of
ribbons. The pilot was clearly a very successful one.  One thing Benin
remembered clearly from that encounter was the man's blue eyes, deep and
profoundly honest.

   "Madam," he said and tipped his cap.  As he turned to go, Benin thought
he looked German.  Perhaps he was one of the many foreigners enlisted in
the Republican cause?  Certainly, his Spanish was halting, his
pronunciation strange.

   "Are you German?" she asked to his retreating back.  She felt panic,
that this was a moment she needed to seize quickly.

   "New Zealander, Madam," he replied.

   "What...  what is your name?" she asked.

   "John," he told her, "John Greenhaugh...  from Taranaki."

   "Taranaki?"

   "Yeah!  A Province...  in New Zealand."

   "Ah!" She was disappointing herself.  Her voice sounded timid, not
confident and proud of her sex, her class.  This wasn't what Perdita had
taught.  He turned to go.  She watched him disappear around the corner
before she gathered herself.  "Hey," she called, "hey!" she repeated,
louder.

   "Yeah?" He turned back.

   "You want to go for a drink?"

   He stared back at her, his blue eyes flashing like a cat's in the pale
street lighting.  "Yeah," he answered, "yeah, why not?"

   ------------------------------------------

   They shared a bottle of wine together at the back of the Montana
Cantina, now serving as an Anarchist watering hole.  Armed Militiamen stood
outside to ward off hostile intruders.

   Benin found herself telling John about her life, about the Anarchist
Brigades and Mujeres Libres.  He seemed to soak up every word, every
gesture.  He was only 23, he explained, had been taught to fly by his
Father when he was 15, had been in the air ever since.  John adored his
Father, he'd been in the RFC in the Great War, an air ace, he insisted.

   "I think," she told him, nodding at his medals, "that you take after
him."

   "These?" he replied, modestly, "they give them out to everyone." She
knew it wasn't true.

   He couldn't believe she was only 20 years old.  Her face was full of
fatigue, of someone who'd seen more than was right and proper. 
Nevertheless, her olive face and brown eyes were beautiful.  Her thick
auburn hair fell to her waist when not tied tightly in a pony tail.

   Benin couldn't remember the last time she'd had a normal conversation
with a man.  'The cold fish,' they'd nicknamed her in the Brigade.  'Ball
breaker,' had been another comment.  She much preferred the company of
women, they understood each other.

   In fact she couldn't remember the last time she'd talked so much.  This
big blonde man was relaxing to be around.  He teased detail from her, such
as she'd never shared with another human being.

   At some point in the evening she'd made up her mind to sleep with him.
After all, she could always give him back afterwards.

   "You have a place to stay?" she asked him, matter-of-factly.  She knew
the answer already.

   "Nope."

   "Where's your gear?"

   "Air Force Hostel.  I left it there until I could find a room."

   "Then perhaps you should fetch it?"

   "Yeah...  Ok." He seemed to take awhile to digest the import of what
she'd suggested.  Benin watched realisation dawn slowly in his face.  It
amused her and she began to laugh.  The first time she'd laughed in two
years.

   A Militiaman agreed to drive him in the unit's vehicle, a delivery van
with 'Camel Cigarettes' still faintly visible on its high sides.  A guard
perched on the front bumper armed with a Thomson machinegun complete with
round magazine.  John felt like he was in some Depression-era gangster
movie.

   The Anarchists dropped him at the gates of a girls' Catholic school,
requisitioned as the Madrid headquarters of the Mujeres Libres.  Benin
ushered him past the gates, where two fiercelooking women stood guard.  He
followed her up stairs to a top room.  It appeared to be the former cell of
one of the nuns, a sparse room with a desk and single bed.

   "Here," she told him, unceremoniously, and grabbed his kit bag heaving
it into a corner.  "You mind sleeping against the wall?" she asked.  John
shrugged.  "Not much room," she continued, "but it will have to do."

   "It's all right," he mumbled, "better than a ditch."

   "I've slept so long under the stars," she told him, "that this seems so
strange."

   John undid his jacket and took it off.  It was hot in the cell and it
had little ventilation.  "Maybe we can go out onto the roof?"

   "Yes," she brightened, "help me drag this cot out.  There's a door to
the roof just down the hall." Together they hauled the bed outside, past a
couple of bemused women soldiers.  They found a secluded spot, under the
high narrow window of their cell.

   It was cool, and faintly damp from the humidity.  They squeezed into the
little cot together in their shirtsleeves and underwear.  Benin placed her
Webley revolver under the straw pillow, in case of emergencies.

   They lay there for an uncomfortably long time, each wondering when, or
how, to begin.  She nestled into his neck, looking upward at the stars.

   "What if we lose?" she asked, suddenly, "what are you going to do?"

   "The Poms and Frenchies, maybe the Yanks, will have to come to our help.
Perhaps the Russkies..."

   "They won't come," she said firmly, "France and Britain fear Russian
control here.  America won't interfere in European affairs and Stalin is
trying to build an alliance against Fascism.  He doesn't want to provoke
those he wants as allies."

   "The Government wants the dismantling of the collectives in Catalonia
and the return of farms and factories to their former owners.  The word is
they want to disarm the Anarchist Brigades to prove to Britain and France
they are a moderate, democratic and capitalist Government defending their
so-called democracy against totalitarianism.  But," Benin said sadly, "it
won't make any difference so long as the Russians are here and they are the
only ones supplying arms to the Republic.  You see the dilemma?  We cannot
win because Germany and Italy have no such constraints.  They will support
Franco with everything he needs to destroy the Republic.  Without Russia we
are doomed and that will happen very soon, I think."

   "I see," John said, thoughtfully.

   "So what will you do?"

   "Go home, I guess.  Maybe wait for another crack at the Jerries and
Eyeties?"

   "Ah," she smiled, "you are an anti-Fascist?"

   "Sure."

   "Then perhaps we might meet again as comrades?"

   "Sure," he agreed.  She smiled and kissed him on the cheek.  He turned
to look into her face and smiled back.  Gently he touched his lips to hers.
She pushed at his questing mouth until they became locked together, tongues
playing.  John felt her body soften, move sensuously against him, until
their crotches were grinding together.  Breathing heavily, she allowed him
to explore her body, run his fingertips over her breasts, down her tummy,
over her hip and onto her bottom.

   A fleeting memory passed and was a gone, the Father's hand groping her
like he was inspecting a prize hog.  But John's hands made her tingle with
desire and need.  Her friends were right after all, what she needed was a
good fuck.

   John parted her shirt and followed with his lips.  Her nipples stiffened
as he suckled them.  She sought him, hard and pulsing, with her hand,
pulling open the buttons of his underpants, and drawing his cock free.  In
response his hand pushed between her legs and inside her panties.  She
shivered as his fingers found her, played with her.  She was open for him,
gushing with desire.

   Benin moaned as John pushed her panties down around her ankles.  They
rolled and maneuvred on the narrow bed until she was lying, legs spread and
exposed, with John lying on top of her propped on his elbows.  She giggled
at the awkwardness of it all.

   His hard cock probed at her waiting pussy.  Sucking in her bottom lip,
she seized him with her hand and guided him downwards.

   "Y'sure?" he gasped.

   In answer, her legs came up and crossed over his thighs.  Her hands
grabbed his hard arse and pulled him into her.  His reluctance disappeared
in an instant and Benin felt him fill her, stretch her deliciously.

   "Ohh," she gasped, and urged him faster.  She pushed at him, grinding
her clitoris against the ridge of his pubic bone.  "Uhh, Ohh, mmm..."

   They rocked faster together.  John grabbed her lower bottom, cheeks. 
The feel of his hands excited her, made her cry out in lust.  Benin had
never orgasmed before on a man's cock, no man had ever touched her deeply
enough, either physically or emotionally.  But Johns beautiful, hard body
stirred her.  From the very moment he'd entered her she was coming, and the
feeling kept growing and growing, spiralling out of control.

   She remembered afterwards the feeling of being as helpless as a rag
doll, of not having any strength left, of howling and crying out.  His dick
throbbed and pulsed inside her, sending fountains of his warm essence to
her very core.  She remembered frantically kissing him as he ground slowly
to a halt, his chest heaving with effort.  She remembered sobbing into his
shoulder as her held her tight with his big, strong arms.

   "Y' right?" he'd asked.

   "Yes, baby...  fine," she told him, before continuing crying.  'The dumb
ox,' she thought, 'thinks he's hurt me.' She kissed him on the cheek before
settling back against his shoulder.

   ------------------------------------------

   The ornate Romanesque fa�ade of the Barcelona Telephone Exchange fronted
a building of truly industrial proportions.  More than a thousand workers,
toll operators, technicians and office staff, worked in its labyrinthine
interior.  Since the 'July Days' of 1936, when General Franco began his
rebellion against the Popular Front Government, the Exchange had been taken
over and operated by a CNT worker's collective.

   Since December of that year, however, the Catalan Government, the
'Generalidad,' began complaining of 'irregularities.' Calls were broken off
or sometimes misconnected.  Politicians and officials suspected, too, that
Government phones were being monitored.

   Luis Companys of the moderate Socialists, the PSOE, headed the
Generalidad.  A fierce Catalan Nationalist when it came to dealings with
Madrid, he was something of a conciliarist when trying to hold his shakey
left coalition together.

   First there was the PSUC, the Party of Catalan Unity, who were Socialist
but becoming steadily under the sway of the PCE, the Communists.  This
bloc, though, was, in turn, increasingly under the control of the Russians.
There were 18,000 members of the Russian Secret Police, the NKVD and its
intelligence section, the GPU, in Spain at that time and many were posted
to Barcelona, Spain's first city.

   The PSUC/PCE's main protagonists in the Generalidad were the two CNT
members and their companions on the 'far left,' the POUM, the Worker's
Party of Marxist Unity.

   The POUM was a new party, only formed in 1936, and a byproduct of the
split between Josef Stalin and Leon Trotsky.  Andres Nin had been a founder
member of the PCE before gravitating towards Trotsky when he was in exile
in France.  He worked for a time with the revolutionary before the Russians
coerced France to expel Trotsky.  Returning to Spain, Nin formed the POUM.

   The POUM and many of the CNT committees shared the same view, that the
'July Days' had been the beginning of the Spanish Revolution.  This opinion
was hotly disputed by the Communists, who proclaimed they were fighting for
the preservation of a legitimately elected Government against Fascist
aggression.  Socialism had to wait, they said, until Franco was beaten.

   In Madrid, Prime Minister Largo Cabalero was being put under intense
pressure by the two competing sides.  Deeply suspicious of the Communists,
he was a moderate Socialist, a member of the PSOE and its Trade Union
Federation, the UGT.  He was alarmed, however, by the antics of the far
left factions in Catalonia.

   The Non Intervention Treaty Partners had stifled aid to the Republic. 
Only the Russians were prepared to court international disapproval by
smuggling military supplies to the Popular Front.  But that aid came at a
price.

   Firstly a third of the Spanish gold reserves, the fourth largest in the
World, had been handed over to Moscow.  Secondly, as sole donors, the
Russians demanded a larger say in the affairs of Republican Spain.  It was
clear to Largo Cabalero that the Russians were primarily concerned with
their own foreign policy.

   That policy was Stalin's Anti-Fascist Alliance dream and the Fascist
insurrection in Spain was a gift.  It demonstrated to all the World Nazi
Germany's and Fascist Italy's ambitions in Europe.  Stalin was convinced
that Russia was next on the menu after Spain.

   But Britain and France viewed Russian influence in Spain with suspician
and were horrified at the thought of a Russian 'client State' controlling
entry into the Mediterranean.  Blum's Popular Front Government in France
caved in to British pressure in August 1936 and ceased covert supplies of
arms to the Republicans.  That decision, ironically, forced Madrid into the
arms of the Russians.

   Russian 'advisors', mostly GPU, pressured Cabalero to clean up
Catalonia. In their view, the 'Far Left' was wounding the international
reputation of the Republic.  'The Catalonian Government was being held
hostage by the CNT's control of Barcelona.  Government authority needed to
be re-exerted.'

   At this time of Stalin's purge of the Russian military and Party,
inevitably Moscow's displeasure fell on Andres Nin's POUM.  Opposition to
Stalin's rule in Russia, in the shape of the 'Left Opposition,' was being
eliminated.  That opposition centred on Leon Trotsky and all political
parties that identified with his ideas earned the NKVD's attention.

   A story appeared in the PCE's Newspaper claiming the POUM's leaders were
Fascist agents.  According to the Communists, they were preparing the way
for a German and Italian sea invasion of Barcelona.  Remarkably, this gross
lie gained a great deal of currency in Madrid and Catalonia.  Even the
CNT's leadership accepted the story as credible.

   The CNT delegates to the Popular Front in Madrid seemed to be
increasingly out of touch with events in Catalonia.  It is likely they
didn't comprehend the full ramifications when they they acquiesced to
Cabalero's decision to seize the Barcelona Telephone Exchange.

   One person who understood the danger of provoking the 'far left' in
Barcelona was Catalonian leader Luis Companys.  However, he was more
concerned at the time with Madrid's violation of Catalonian independence.
His protests were weak, though, and had little effect on Cabalero's
decision.

   That decision couldn't have come at a worse time.  Coincidently, the
7000 strong 29th 'Lenin' Division of the Republican Army was on leave in
Barcelona.  The Division were all POUM members, including many from
overseas.  An Irish Republican Army contingent were there as well as
members of Britain's Independent Labour Party.  Other's were supporters of
the 'International Left Opposition,' and Leon Trotsky's 4th International,
founded in New York City.

   -------------------------------------------

   Benin woke with a start.  The sun was well up in the sky and it bathed
her face in its radiance.  An aircraft droned overhead, a commercial
airliner flying along the strict corridor reserved for civilian traffic. 
Benin saw the three broad bands painted on its wings, the red white and
blue of the Dutch airline, KLM.  She hardly noticed such things before. 
But now she thought of all the activities that still continued on in the
midst of war.

   The Dutch, one of the few Nations that continued regular air services to
Republican Spain, no doubt also flew to Nationalist held cities, like
Cadiz. 'Nothing,' she thought, 'must get in the way of making money. 
Certainly not morality.'

   She became concious of her nakedness under the thin, grey blanket.  She
was cramped, and her arm was thrown over the slumbering body next to her.
That body, too, was naked.

   Unlike past lovers, she didn't want to instantly tumble out of bed and
run for a bath.  A bath to wash off the smell, the stain, of a mistake and
too much hard liquor.  Instead she felt the urge to play and molest him. 
To hold his hard penis in her fist and watch him grin.

   Benin pressed herself against John's broad back and stroked his chest.
His body twitched in sleep and she smiled.  She slid her hand down until
she found his penis lying, soft, on his thigh.  Running a fingernail along
it, she heard John murmur.  He murmured again when Benin ran a hand over
his arse, between his legs, and tickled his scrotum.

   Slowly, John twisted his body around until he faced her, eyes watery
from sleep.  Benin braced herself against side board of the narrow cot lest
she fall out onto the tiles.  He was grinning softly at her, and pulled her
closer.  His semi-flaccid cock tickled the soft flesh of her thigh.

   "Good morning," she said in deliberate English.

   "Hi, are you well?" Benin smiled at his awkward Spanish.

   "Si," she replied, before advancing for a good morning kiss.

   -------------------------------------------
   KATZMAREK(C)

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