He handed Gomez the receipted envelope.
Gomez gave it to Andres, who looked at it and put it inside his shirt.
"What is the name of him who signed?" he asked.
"Duval," Vicente said.
"Good," said Andres.
"He was one of the three to whom I might give it."
"Should we wait for an answer?" Gomez asked Andres.
"It might be best.
Though where I will find the _Ingles_ and the others after that of the bridge neither God knows."
"Come wait with me," Vicente said, "until the General returns.
And I will get thee coffee.
Thou must be hungry."
"And these tanks," Gomez said to him.
They were passing the branch-covered, mud-colored tanks, each with two deep-ridged tracks over the pine needles showing where they had swung and backed from the road.
Their 45-mm. guns jutted horizontally under the branches and the drivers and gunners in their leather coats and ridged helmets sat with their backs against the trees or lay sleeping on the ground.
"These are the reserve," Vicente said.
"Also these troops are in reserve.
Those who commence the attack are above."
"They are many," Andres said.
"Yes," Vicente said.
"It is a full division."
Inside the dugout Duval, holding the opened dispatch from Robert Jordan in his left hand, glancing at his wrist watch on the same hand, reading the dispatch for the fourth time, each time feeling the sweat come out from under his armpit and run down his flank, said into the telephone,
"Get me position Segovia, then.
He's left?
Get me position Avila."
He kept on with the phone.
It wasn't any good.
He had talked to both brigades.
Golz had been up to inspect the dispositions for the attack and was on his way to an observation post.
He called the observation post and he was not there.
"Get me planes one," Duval said, suddenly taking all responsibility.
He would take responsibility for holding it up.
It was better to hold it up.
You could not send them to a surprise attack against an enemy that was waiting for it.
You couldn't do it.
It was just murder.
You couldn't.
You mustn't.
No matter what.
They could shoot him if they wanted.
He would call the airfield directly and get the bombardment cancelled.
But suppose it's just a holding attack?
Suppose we were supposed to draw off all that material and those forces?
Suppose that is what it is for?
They never tell you it is a holding attack when you make it.
"Cancel the call to planes one," he told the signaller.
"Get me the Sixty-Ninth Brigade observation post."
He was still calling there when he heard the first sound of the planes.
It was just then he got through to the observation post.
"Yes," Golz said quietly.