Conspiracy (26 page)

Zadiev looked past the elegantly dressed little man, past the white-lined boundaries of the green soccer field, at the empty terraces and seats of the stadium. Now was the time; the discussion until now had only provided a little meat for the bones of rumor. “Can you tell me,” he asked, “what will be done to bring about this worldwide anti-American sentiment?”

Kormelin’s face remained solemn. “No,” he said flatly. “None of us in Economics has been told. We are simply waiting, and preparing our people to act when the time comes.”

When Zadiev returned to his office in the Palacio de Congresos building across from the stadium, his speculations were interrupted by some good news from the Soviet team physician. The news concerned the left ankle of the Soviet high scorer, striker Anton Volnikov. The “Golden Boy” as Pravda writers were instructed to refer to him, had strained tendons in the ankle during the Soviet demolition of Hungary the day before, in Madrid’s other stadium, Calderon, several miles across town from Bernabeau.

“He can play Sunday!” Zadiev’s secretary announced with shining eyes the moment he walked in. She waved the pink telephone message slip as though it were a flag at a parade. “The doctor says he can play!”

“Good,” said Zadiev. “I put down a hundred pesetas on that game. I could have lost it all!” He smiled, because a hundred pesetas was at that time worth sixty-two cents American—roughly the price of a cup of coffee in a cheap Moscow restaurant. Zadiev was only showing the staff a bit of innocent kicking-up-the-heels away from puritanical opinions on gambling at home. This proved he was one of the boys, and was good for morale.

“Big spender,” said his secretary playfully. She added, “I bought a ticket myself, at one of the little shops. For tomorrow’s game. Do you think the Americans will win?”

“Couldn’t care less,” said Yuri. “Whether they win or not, we’ll not get a chance at them. They’d never get past Argentina in the semifinals.” He spoke from knowledge of the tournament schedule. In the tournament’s second phase, Argentina had already won in the “A” group, and in the semifinals would play against the winner of the “C” group—the one in which the U.S. was placed. The Soviets, if they defeated Uruguay on Sunday, would be the champions of group “D” and would go against Spain, the group “B” winner, in the semifinals. Thus a U.S.-U.S.S.R. confrontation could only come at the championship game. And considering the strength the Argentinians had shown during their defeats of powerful European teams such as the Netherlands and England, the U.S. would be an extremely unlikely winner against them. The Americans had needed a lucky header of a goal and another miraculous defense effort by their goalie to beat Brazil by a score of one to zero on Wednesday. Argentina hadn’t played Brazil during the tournament, but in the qualifying rounds in Latin America, the Argentinians had shown themselves far superior to their Portuguese-speaking neighbors.

“It’s a shame,” the secretary said. “It would be so wonderful to have our men conquer the Americans. Especially in the championship game, with so many people watching.”

Zadiev reminded his secretary that the group assignments of the teams had been determined by lottery drawing. He poured himself a small glass of vodka and set to work writing the press release about Anton Volnikov’s ankle.

6

In many ways, the stadium security guard Raul Coquias thought that his own wife, Maria, surpassed the woman called Helen Bates in physical beauty. Like most Spanish men, Raul preferred a certain illusion of fragility in females. Not a delicacy of spirit, certainly, nor an actual weakness of the body. Only the illusion thereof. A quality that complemented
machismo
, to make a man feel that his strength and daring were somehow not only appreciated but also necessary. 

Helen Bates, to the contrary, gave a man the feeling that she could function on a par with a male in any given situation. Perhaps it was because she was taller than Raul, or because she weighed more, but he had the feeling that Helen would try to dominate a male even in bed. He supposed that was part of the modern spirit, and was grateful that Maria did not share that quality.

Nonetheless, as Helen discussed the task Raul was to perform that Saturday afternoon, he found himself becoming sexually aroused. The feeling embarrassed him, for the setting was highly inappropriate. They were having breakfast in a Cafe California, one of a chain of all-night restaurants in Madrid. It was 4:00 a.m. As instructed by telephone, he had chosen a booth at the rear and waited.

She had joined him five minutes later. Though it was a week and two days since the furor over her British husband had made her so sought after by the press, she had insisted on the unlikely time and place to meet him, and appeared with a blond wig, a light cotton topcoat, and a walk that suggested she was coming in from a night working the streets. But the
Patrón
trusted her. As she spoke, Raul kept his eyes away, studiously watching the patterns on the blue and tan floor tiles; the cook behind the counter poaching their
huevos andaluz
; the tired waitress polishing water glasses.

They would make the placement tomorrow, she told him, while attention would be diverted to the Calderon stadium, during the game between the Soviet Union and Uruguay. Raul was to expect only one man, with television equipment, and see that his papers were not questioned. A short while later, Raul would report that the man had made his delivery and left. “He has the plan of Bernabeau,” she told him. “He will know where to hide. If all goes according to the timetable, he will leave the stadium about this hour Monday, while it is still dark.”

Then she came to the real purpose of the meeting: an unforeseen development that would require additional action.

Neither the Americans nor the Spanish could be allowed to reach the championship game, yet both were coming close. The Spanish had already reached the semifinals; the Americans needed only a victory this afternoon against Australia.

“But if they win and reach the semifinals, America will surely lose to Argentina,” said Raul, who followed soccer nearly as closely as young Miguelito did. “Even with the incredible streak of luck Palermo is having. And I don’t see how Spain could stop those Russians—”

“If the Americans do not lose this afternoon,” she went on, as though he had not spoken, “you will take Palermo.”

To Raul the instruction meant violence, for violence was in his blood. The Basque language he spoke instead of Spanish was a testimony to the wars of his Iberian ancestors against the government of the Romans—and their Latin tongue—two thousand years earlier. Raul’s father had told him of this. From his father, Raul also had learned how Basques had defeated Charlemagne at Roncesvalles, fighting guerrilla-fashion. Spaniards, unwilling to give credit to Basques for such a victory, later cloaked the battle with the legend of Roland’s trumpet and substituted four hundred thousand Moors for the Basque forces. Raul still brooded upon that perversion of history and on other injustices of the Spanish. 

Since August of 1952, Raul’s hatred of the Spanish had been fierce and unquenchable. On a hot morning of that month, two of Franco’s Guardia Civil rode into Raul’s village to arrest an innkeeper who had not paid his taxes. Predictably, the innkeeper was not to be found at his home, and none of Raul’s village was prepared to tell where in the Pyrennees he was hiding. The frustrated Guardia arrested the innkeeper’s wife in his place. Word of the outrage spread, and when the two soldiers attempted to ride out of town again, they found their pathway blocked by scores of angry villagers. Raul’s father, barrel-chested and stumpy-legged like Raul, was among them. It was he who took the first bullet as he leaped to pull one of the soldiers out of his saddle. A flesh wound only, for after the fighting was done, he led the procession that carried the bodies of the soldiers for burial.

The following day was burned in Raul’s memory. On that morning, not two Guardia, but two hundred—double the entire population of Raul’s town—suddenly appeared in a ring around the village, cutting off all pathways of escape. The men of the town, Raul’s father among them, had been herded to the central square. Then, as their families watched, the Guardia machine-gunned them like pigs. From that day forward, Raul had studied marksmanship whenever he could and dreamed of the day he would be able to strike a telling blow against the hated Spanish.

Until now he had worked with the others in their petty bombings of shopkeepers and restaurants and occasional murders of politicians and military officers. Yet from the perspective of history that he had adopted from his father, Raul knew that such attempts were all doomed to failure. Rather than awakening hatred for the Spanish, they aroused sympathy for the victims. What Raul wanted was to both terrify and humiliate the entire Spanish nation in the eyes of the world. The revenge Raul dreamed of would live on in the memory of Spaniards everywhere, the way his father’s death lived on in his.

But one does not devastate a nation by starving to death, so Raul had kept his thirst for retribution hidden, and found work. As soon as he was old enough, he had left his village. The Guardia remembered the massacre of August and suspected all witnesses, so Raul changed his name. But he could not disguise the round head, light eyes, and short-legged mountaineer’s body that marked him as a Basque. In the North, few wanted Basques during that time of economic uncertainty when Catalans and Castilians were looking for work. In the South, Andalusian men and boys were living in France and Germany eleven months of the year and sending their wages back to their families because there was no work at home. 

The only alternative was the army. Raul found a satisfying irony in serving the government that he longed to bring down, and trained himself to become a sharpshooter. Soon he was the best in his battalion, then the best in the regiment. He would have defeated the Castilian who held the championship of the brigade during the spring festival competition, but the brigadier general, a Castilian too, had been unable to bear the thought of pinning the gold medal onto the uniform of a Basque. 

The day before the marksmanship competition, Raul had been transferred. He had spent the spring festival patrolling the docks of Cadiz, two hundred miles from the marksmanship competition. It was a lesson, he told himself, not ever to seek a reward from a Spaniard.

His years in the army, however, gave him what he had been lacking when he first sought work: maturity, experience, and a good employment record, symbolized by his certificate of honorable discharge and several letters of recommendation from officers who had admired his ability with a rifle. With those papers he was able to find work as a security guard. That position helped him greatly in his support for the Basque “terrorists” who were fighting valiantly to make the Basque region independent of Spain. Through his guard duties he also met Maria, the widow of a separatist, and married her.

And through his guard duties he met the man he had waited to find for twenty-five years: the
Patrón
.

“When do you want Palermo killed?” he asked Helen. The question seemed a strange one to come from a face that had lost only a little of its youth and still radiated sturdy good health, and almost innocence. But Raul saw nothing sinister in his question. He was fighting a holy war, a war for his ancestors, a war that would enable his children to grow up speaking Euskara, the Basque tongue, in a free Basque state that shared the same mountain boundaries his ancestors had defended against the Romans two thousand years ago and against the Celts 3,300 years ago, and on back into the mists of time. To kill in such a war was only duty.

“Palermo is to be kept alive until a week from today,” Helen replied. “You are to determine the place where he is to be held, take him there, and see that he is treated well. His face is not to be marked. Do you understand? I particularly want his face to remain handsome.”

“And at the end of the week?”

“Kill him. Saturday afternoon the Americans will play the Spanish for third place, in Seville. The world’s press will be there, and so will you; we have arranged for your transfer to Sanchez Pizuan Stadium beginning early next week. You will see that the reporters in the press room are witnesses to the discovery of a package, a gift to the people of America from their friends in Spain. A box that appears to contain a soccer ball.”

“And inside the box?”

“Inside they will find Keith Palermo’s severed head.”

Raul blinked once and looked up at the woman called Helen. “How very Spanish,” he said.

7

There is a small church visible from the rear of Bernabeau Stadium. From the rear gate to the stadium parking lot, it is only a few steps to the church entrance across the narrow Calle de Padre Damian. Tourists do not bother to visit, for the building is new and undistinguished. Brick walls and a slablike, nearly flat roof make it look like a laundromat built to serve the surrounding brick high-rise apartments of that area. Were it not for the crosses on the front doors and for the presence of the bell tower—a three-story pillar that resembles an abandoned elevator shaft—few would realize that the Sacramento Maria y Jose was indeed a house of God.

Keith Palermo was one of those few. He had seen the church the first night of the World Cup games, when he was strolling around in the Madrid night after his TV interview, waiting for Sharon to complete her work. The doors had been open to all, and he had felt like taking a load off his feet, so he wandered in. He was thinking of Sharon and his Catholic upbringing at the time. 

He sat quietly, watching the flickering candles and the kneeling women in their black dresses who prayed before them. Soon he found himself on the verge of saying a prayer that he would succeed in making love to Sharon before he left Madrid. 

Knowing what fits of apoplexy his parish priest or family in Brooklyn would fly into if they heard him asking the Lord for help in a seduction, he laughed quietly to himself and left the prayer unsaid.