André Marty

André Marty is a senior figure in the International Brigades whose suspicion obstructs the delivery of an urgent dispatch to General Golz. His authority is formidable, but in this encounter it is governed by an increasingly indiscriminate fear of betrayal: he treats the bearers’ papers as grounds for arrest, while Karkov ultimately overrides his order and restores the mission’s route.

Identity and Authority

Marty enters the episode as a man already known by reputation. Gomez recognizes him from political meetings and from articles in Mundo Obrero translated from French, and understands that Marty holds a high position in the International Brigades. Gomez also knows of his role in leading the French Navy mutiny in the Black Sea and assumes that Marty can direct the couriers to Golz’s headquarters.

The encounter makes that standing tangible. Marty arrives with two other officers and speaks Spanish with a strong Catalan accent, although his initial instructions to his chauffeur are in French. When Gomez identifies himself and Andrés as bearers of a dispatch for Golz, Marty asks to see the papers rather than immediately helping them onward.

The Dispatch and the Arrest

Marty takes the dispatch and accompanying papers, glances at them, and puts them in his pocket. Instead of directing the couriers to Golz, he orders the corporal of the guard to arrest both men, search them, and bring them back when summoned. Gomez and Andrés are consequently searched and held in the guard room while Marty carries the dispatch into the large stone house.

The order follows a specific misreading. When Andrés explains that the message comes from behind the fascist lines, Marty interprets the fact as evidence that Golz is in communication with the enemy. The dispatch, intended to speed a military operation, becomes in Marty’s reasoning a suspicious link in a supposed conspiracy.

Suspicion and Political Judgment

Marty’s thoughts move rapidly from the dispatch to a wider network of imagined disloyalty. He recalls Golz’s long record of military and political association, including campaigns in Siberia, Poland, the Caucasus, China, and Spain, but treats even that history as insufficient reassurance. Golz’s past closeness to Tukachevsky becomes grounds for suspicion; Marty then turns to other connections and rivalries, including Karkov, Lucacz, Gall, Putz, and Duval.

This chain of conjecture ends in a general conviction that no one can be trusted, not even a wife, brother, or longtime comrade. Marty’s order to keep the couriers under careful guard gives that private certainty an immediate institutional consequence: the men carrying the urgent message are detained, and the communication with Golz is delayed. His suspicion is not presented as a considered investigation so much as a self-reinforcing process in which each association supplies another reason to distrust.

Karkov’s Intervention

Karkov breaks the impasse by instructing the corporal to take the papers to the two men in the guard room and direct them to Golz’s headquarters, adding that there has already been too much delay. The intervention reverses the practical effect of Marty’s command: the couriers are to be released to complete their task, and the dispatch can continue toward its intended recipient.

Marty watches the corporal and then faces Karkov, who tells him that he will find out how untouchable Marty really is. The exchange exposes a limit to Marty’s authority. He can detain the bearers and seize their papers, but another senior figure can challenge his conduct and prevent his suspicion from permanently stopping the message.

Narrative Role

Marty’s brief appearance turns a logistical handoff into a political crisis. The dispatch must pass through a hierarchy in which authority does not guarantee sound judgment: the man expected to help the couriers instead sees treason in their contact with Golz. The episode’s sharp reversal—from request, to arrest, to Karkov’s counter-order—shows how private mistrust can interrupt collective action, while also making the chain of command itself a source of both obstruction and correction.