Hesus Romero

Jesús Romero is a career infantry captain assigned to the Military Intelligence Service, introduced as the official military contact for Manuel Arroyo Benítez in besieged Madrid. Cultured, personable, and outwardly at ease among Soviet advisers, he is also a source of persistent suspicion: Manuel believes he may be serving the Fifth Column, while the novel never confirms that judgment. Romero’s polished presence turns an apparent offer of assistance into another uncertainty in a city where even official contacts may be watching the person they are meant to help.

Identity and Assignment

Romero belongs to a liberal military family with a republican tradition. He is younger than Rafael Cuesta Sánchez but somewhat older than Manuel, and is described as handsome, cultured, and more likable than police commissioner Basilio Rodríguez. He has recently joined the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, and serves as a liaison between General Vicente Rojo and the Military Intelligence Service. His assignment makes him one of Manuel’s two official contacts in Madrid, alongside Rodríguez.

The assignment is presented with an explicit reservation: Romero has a good reputation, but Manuel’s superior cannot guarantee his reliability. Manuel is told that he may act independently and that his only chief on the mission is the man who gave him the assignment. If he accepts, he is to communicate directly with that chief through an encrypted code and a secure chamber at the Telefónica, guarded by armed men and operated without an intermediary. The arrangement makes clear that the mission’s communications are designed to limit exposure, even as Romero’s official role places him close to its agent.

Suspicion and Surveillance

From the outset, Romero and Rodríguez keep Manuel under observation. Rodríguez supplies a maid to clean the apartment on Infantas Street where Manuel is installed; Romero provides a car and driver for his movements around the city. Manuel treats both arrangements as potential sources of information for his watchers. He leaves nothing incriminating at home and confines his conversations with the driver to football and women. He nevertheless works without incident through the summer.

Romero’s manners do not settle Manuel’s doubts. He offers persistently to accompany the newcomer to meals and errands, apparently because Manuel’s fluency in several languages, diplomatic manners, and self-possession puzzle him. Those qualities do not fully disguise Manuel’s identity from Romero, who seems to recognize that the newcomer’s bearing is unusual. In turn, Manuel suspects the captain of working for the Fifth Column. Romero behaves cordially with Soviet military advisers and introduces them to Manuel with a familiarity that seems almost intimate, but even that display does not persuade Manuel to trust him. The captain never makes an identifiable mistake; suspicion remains an inference, not a demonstrated discovery.

The Visit to Guillermo’s Home

Romero later appears at Guillermo García Medina’s home, where Manuel is recovering under the assumed identity Rafael Cuesta Sánchez. He introduces himself as an infantry captain in the Military Intelligence Service and says he has come to speak with Rafael about the attack in which they had worked together and in which Rafael was wounded. Romero says he is investigating the attack and has been told by Commander Cuadrado that Guillermo saved Rafael’s life and took him in. His explanation connects an official inquiry to the private refuge Guillermo has provided.

The visit unsettles the household before the interview begins. Romero has entered with Pepe Moya, who explains that his commander asked him to bring the captain to see the patient. When Romero starts toward the corridor as if he were already at home, Guillermo stops him. Romero appears displeased but does not openly defy Guillermo; instead, he remains by the door, visibly trying to identify which room Guillermo enters. Pepe presses Guillermo’s shoulder and raises his eyebrows in warning. Guillermo reads the gesture as distrust of the captain, but is too weary of the household’s continual suspicions to ask Pepe what he knows.

In the bedroom, Manuel recognizes that Romero’s arrival on that particular day is troubling. He knows the captain from their earlier work, but wonders why Romero has waited until now to visit, especially on the day Manuel is being moved and will no longer have an armed escort at the house where he has been living. Manuel briefly bites his lower lip and closes his eyes before agreeing to see him. He asks Guillermo to return after about five minutes, suggesting that he may need to stage a relapse. The request is not proof of Romero’s intent; it shows how little safety the patient can attach to a visit from an official contact.

An Unresolved Allegiance

Manuel’s uncertainty about Romero is part of a wider uncertainty about the attack itself. He cannot identify who shot him or determine whether the assailants meant to kill him or merely frighten him into silence. He has antagonized too many groups in his work as a government delegate on the Madrid Defense Council: possible perpetrators include anarchists, Trotskyists, members of clandestine rear-guard brigades disrupted with information he supplied, Soviet secret-service operatives working with local Communists, or others with an interest in turning his death into evidence against a rival faction. Even the Fifth Column remains among the possibilities. Within this unsettled field, Romero’s apparent offer to remove Manuel from Madrid does not function as reassurance.

Manuel believes that contacting his own Madrid associates to escape would increase the danger. Romero has offered to get him out of the city, but Manuel answers by pretending to suffer a relapse. The visit is therefore double-edged: Romero may be acting as a colleague investigating an attack and offering practical help, or as a suspected enemy arriving when the patient is newly exposed. The narrative supplies no definitive resolution of the captain’s loyalties. Instead, Romero’s combination of formal authority, social ease, and unverified intentions gives concrete form to the novel’s atmosphere of surveillance: in wartime Madrid, an official channel can also be a vulnerability, and no courteous introduction can guarantee trust.