THE ENGLISH WITNESS (18 page)

I’d ridden a motorbike in my teens. It took
a few minutes to get used to the handlebar-mounted gear change, but after a couple
of wrong turns I came down onto a major road somewhere between Hernani and
Lasarte. From there I was able to navigate my way back towards the city, but I
ran out of petrol near the hospital and had to walk the rest of the way.  By
the time I reached Anoeta, it was broad daylight.

Heading on foot towards the city centre, I
flinched when a car pulled up alongside me. To my relief it was one of the
younger men I’d seen at the meeting three days earlier, who leaned across the
passenger seat to speak to me through the open window. At his invitation I let
myself into the tiny, chugging ‘600’ and listened as he updated me.

“Adolfo was ahead of us, James. We broke
the back window, but we didn’t get time to lob in the gas and we couldn’t get
past his men to follow you. Mind you, it was an idiotic plan. I reckon that if
we’d caught up with him, he’d have killed you on the spot.”

I was suddenly overcome by a wave of
suspicion, and laid my hand on the door-handle. “You must have thought I was dead.
What were you doing waiting down here?”

“If you did get away, this is the way you’d
have had to come. You got here just in time. I’d given you up as lost and was
on my way.”

“Thanks,” I said sarcastically.

“It’s nothing,” he replied, missing the irony.

“I’m going to get that
hijo de puta
if it kills me.”

He looked glanced across at me before
returning his eyes to the road. “Then the priest was right about you.”

       “The
priest is dead,” I answered. “And I’d be dead but for him. Trini who was
important to me is dead, along with her mother. Carlos was on the way to
becoming a friend, and he and his whole family are dead. Who’s going to make
the bastard pay?”

“We will make him pay,” answered the young
guy, who I think was called Juantxo, clearly as shocked as I was by the Ignacio’s
death. He paused for a second time before continuing, “With your help, if you’re
still prepared to give it.”

“No, I won’t help you. I need you to help
me.”

“We can help you get even. But we need your
help putting a new plan into operation.”

“Your plans are part of the problem.
They’re too military, too big, too defensive. We need to take the battle to
him.”

“That’s exactly our problem. We don’t know
where to find him.”

“I do.”

“Then tell us. Take us there,” he urged.

“It won’t work,” I insisted. “He knows
exactly how you think, and whatever you do he’ll expect it. He won’t expect me,
because he’s used to me running away. I’m not asking you to do anything that’ll
get you into trouble. The help I need is with basic things like transport and
equipment. And some cash. And food.”

“Suppose you try and you fail?”

“Then you’re no worse off. You can keep
trying till you’re all dead as far as I’m concerned.”

“We would be worse off. We wouldn’t have
you.”

“As the bait in a trap, you mean. I’ve
already made clear that you don’t have me. Not any more.”

“Actually, I think we do have you. We
don’t have to let you go, you know.”

Clenching my teeth, I pushed the door open
and leaned half way out. He swore, and clutched at my arm but missed. He had to
swerve suddenly to prevent the door from hitting a parked car.

“OK, you’ve made your point,”
he admitted as I pulled it shut. “You’ve been a lucky
cabroncete
, and
you deserve a shot. Tell me what you want and I’ll try to help. But only until
midday tomorrow, and then I’m expected back at the...” He stopped, embarrassed.
“I nearly said too much,” he ended lamely.” In my mind’s ear he adds, “If I’d
said any more, I’d have had to kill you,” but I think that’s just my
imagination working overtime.

It was late afternoon when Juantxo dropped me off in front of the hospital.
I was equipped with two five-litre cans of petrol, a bottle of two-stroke oil, some
bungee cords and a selection of readily available household items. I’d also
acquired a helmet with a full-face visor and a heavy windproof jacket with deep
pockets. Going round to the bicycle stands where I’d left the Vespa the night
before, I trickled a little of the petrol into its tank. Then I used the bungee
cords to secure the cans to the running boards and found my way back to Adolfo’s
place.

I passed the end of the drive that had
such grim associations for me without slowing, but I had plenty of time to
check that his black SEAT was in the drive. And, by standing up precariously on
the running boards as I went past, I was able to confirm the presence of
something else: a second vehicle tucked behind a stand of shrubs. Adolfo’s
backup team was already in position. He’d taken seriously the possibility that
I night find my way back with reinforcements.

Killing the Vespa’s engine a little way past
the property, I coasted silently back down the hill and waited out of sight
from the road. As the time on my watch crept up towards 6 p.m., I tensed.
Something should happen any time now, and if it didn’t then I was in a very
dangerous situation. It would mean that Adolfo had second-guessed us once again,
and as the minutes dragged by I began to sweat. Then a wave of relief swept
over me as the black SEAT roared past my hiding place, and I could see Adolfo
himself hunched over the steering wheel as if willing the car to go faster.

I continued to wait with baited breath for
another three or four minutes, hardly daring to blink in case I missed the
vital information I needed to capture. The best information at Juantxo’s disposal
was that Adolfo had three men on call. If there were three in the car I was
going ahead; less than three and the farmhouse might not be empty when I got
there.

I heard the car coming before I saw it: a
wallowing old Mercedes as black as Adolfo’s SEAT. I wondered for a moment why
he was not using the Merc himself, but then I remembered that he was a
policeman – senior but not at the top of the tree – and had appearances to keep
up. I squinted hard at the car as it came past, and sure enough there were two
men in the front and one in the back. As soon as the sound of the engine and
tyres had faded in the distance, I worked the Vespa’s kick-start lever and felt
relief surge through me as the little engine began to pop.

On reaching Adolfo’s driveway, I switched
off the engine for the last time and pushed the scooter some way into a thicket
of trees on the opposite side of the road. Leaving the helmet perched on the
saddle, I unclipped the petrol cans and carried them towards the tightly
shuttered house.

I was highly nervous. I hoped Adolfo’s
hurried departure meant that the setup had worked—that he’d been misled into
believing I was under arrest down at police headquarters. Similarly, the
departure of the second car ought to mean that they’d been ordered to accompany
him. If he had fallen for the decoy, I had at least an hour to prepare for his
return. If he was just calling our bluff, then I had to be prepared for disaster.

People in movies can usually find an unlatched sash window to climb
through. Failing that, they put their shoulder to a locked door without so much
as a broken collarbone to show for it. It’s not quite so easy in real life, but
houses are not that hard to break into. A lock is more of a psychological
barrier than a physical one: if you force it, you’re committing a crime and
making a lot of noise into the bargain. I was beyond caring about the law, and
there was nobody close enough to hear the sound of a break-in.

We considered a burglar alarm unlikely; for
a man like Adolfo an alarm could attract unwelcome attention. Getting ready to flee
if I did see any electronics, I drew a long steel wrecking bar from a
compartment in the jacket’s lining, forced open one of the shutters facing away
from the road, and smashed all the glass out of the window frame. Taking care
to avoid any shards, I pushed the cans of petrol in ahead of me before hauling myself
over the sill.

The windproof jacket was easier to move
about in without the steel bar, and I began to make myself at home. I very much
regretted what I was about to do, because the house was beautiful. Beneath a
shallowly sloping roof of red tile, it was rendered in crisp white stucco apart
from the neat grey stonework round each window recess. Bright green paint on
the doors and shutters closely matched the meadow grass on the surrounding
hills, while the low parapet walls surrounding the property were attractively
ornamented with plants growing in terracotta pots.

The exterior was thus handsome, but hard
to distinguish from dozens of other hillside farmhouses I had seen dotted
around the region. The inside turned out to be markedly different, however. The
highly varnished floorboards and modern pine furniture were common enough, and
a large family could have lived there in great comfort. Likewise, an elegant light
oak staircase and galleried landing that would have graced any residence. Even
the sizeable portion of the building given over to office space and workshops
was not unusual for a working estate. Apart from the ever-present odour of
carbolic soap, and a room with a securely locked fire door that I guessed was an
armoury, the real difference was down in the basement.

I came back upstairs a few minutes later
going through hot and cold flushes, my stomach heaving. We live in an age of cult
horror movies, and the idea of sadistic serial killers with lavishly equipped
torture chambers has become something of a cliché. By these standards, Adolfo’s
hobby room was quite understated: no pulleys, no cages, no blowlamps or power
tools. What he did have was a basement lounge with a decent hi-fi system, a
television and a comfortable leather sofa. What didn’t fit with the décor was
what today would be called a wet-room—a fully tiled section with sluices in the
floor and shower nozzles set into the walls and ceiling.

Even this could have passed as a rich
man’s
en-suite
but for one additional feature: in the middle of the
tiled area stood a hospital gurney with a hard, shiny surface. At each end, a
pair of handcuffs was attached to the stout chassis by a length of chain. On a
rack nearby stood a roll of heavy-duty adhesive tape and a selection of
surgical instruments. Everything was clean, but it had been washed down only
recently without being mopped dry, and water was still pooling on the gurney
and the tiled floor. Several cans of Zotal disinfectant were lined up along a
shelf, and the reek of phenol – the active ingredient in carbolic soap – was
overpowering. All the same, there was an underlying odour in the air that
immediately took me back against my will to the apartment in Valencia. Suddenly
I no longer regretted what I was about to do to a house that had created such a
pleasant first impression.

Within three quarters of an hour I felt that
I had done enough. I thought of my old Commanding Officer in the Air Cadets—a
wartime saboteur if one believed his yarns. He’d passed the time on field trips
explaining how to make some quite deadly devices from common household objects.
Adolfo was in for a very unpleasant surprise when he got home. Whether it would
have the desired effect I didn’t know, but for the first time in months I felt
in control. I left the house the way I’d entered and pushed the damaged shutters
closed. I had no way of re-fastening them, but that wasn’t a problem. Adolfo would
be leaving the house in a hurry soon enough, and my life depended on him coming
this way and this way only. I settled down to wait for the master of the house
to return.

The light was fading when Adolfo came back to the house, and to my
relief he was alone. He must have been suspicious of the false message about my
capture, and would no doubt have appreciated some backup. But as I learned
later, Juantxo had found the courage to tell his superiors what was happening,
and after warning him of the consequences if things backfired they’d given the
new plan a cautious welcome.

In consequence, Adolfo’s backup team had
been intercepted and detained. Even so, he was still armed, and vastly stronger
and better trained than I was. I had no illusions as to how much luck I’d need to
survive the next few minutes.

Adolfo parked in his usual place but left
the car facing the house, his driving style betraying the ugly mood he was in.
That was all to the good; the angrier he was, the less likely he’d be to think
before acting. He strode up to the house the same way he’d been driving: fast,
jerkily and staring straight ahead. He unlocked the front door, wrenched it
open, stepped inside and closed it behind him.

The first thing he must have noticed was
that the lights didn’t come on when he flicked the switch. The heavy shutters
let in very little daylight, and when other lights also failed to work I was
relying on him going down to the basement to check the main isolator.

Running out of my hiding place
and ducking low, I went to the front door and locked it with the spare key I’d
found in the study. I left it twisted in the lock in the knowledge that he
should now be unable to open it from inside. I had to trust that he didn’t
carry keys to any of the other doors with him, and all the spares I could find in
the house I’d thrown under a hedge. Then, with my heart in my mouth from the
fear that he’d see me through a window and start shooting, I turned my
attention to the car.

Given how tightly the windows of the house were shuttered, I’d have had
to be very unlucky for Adolfo to catch sight of me. And in fact he was down in
the cellar at that very moment, throwing the switch on a fuse-box that I’d
shorted out with a stout woodworking nail. I know that for certain, because just
as I finished with the car a wisp of smoke seeped from the shutter of one of
the upstairs rooms. Then a second window began leaking, and as glass shattered clouds
of dense smoke billowed out  with tongues of fire flickering through the
slats. A moment later I heard someone vigorously rattling the front door handle.

In Adolfo’s place, I’d have known at this
point that I was trapped. As the power came back on, jury-rigged devices
connected to the mains had ignited patches of petrol-soaked bedding, soft furnishing
and timber all over the house. I heard several of the shutters shaking in turn as
he pushed at them, and even a couple of desperate gunshots, but the catches
held and I’d done my best to ensure that he would have nothing available with
which to open the padlocks or to break their hasps. There were only two courses
of action left open to him: either to stay in the house and choke to death, or to
leave by the one route I’d kept clear of flames.

I waited with my back pressed against the
wall to the side of the broken window, and soon I heard a hacking cough as he
headed across the room. In my hands I held the heavy wrecking bar with which I
had forced my way into the house, and my intention was to hit him as hard as
possible as he came out of the window—on the head if possible, but in the
knees, kidneys or arms if that was all he presented to me. But then I ran into
a terrifying problem.

In my mind’s eye, I’d seen Adolfo pushing the
shutters fully open so that they were flush with the wall. And I’d imagined him
crawling out backwards the way I would have done. But he was much too
experienced for that. Careful not to expose himself, he first of all opened the
shutters just a crack. Then he pushed them open at ninety degrees from the
wall, so that they stuck out like parallel shields and obstructed me from
getting a clear swing at him. Finally he emerged from the window, but not
climbing slowly out, not exposing his head or legs or kidneys to attack. Rather,
he shot out like a bullet, head first, rolling as he hit the ground. He sprang to
his feet facing back the way he’d come with the gun held in his outstretched
hand. In a split second he’d adjusted his aim and the pistol was pointing at my
chest.

“Good evening, James,” he said calmly.
“There are some things I’d like to talk to you about. Will you please lead the
way to the car? This meeting place is not all it’s cracked up to be. We will go
somewhere more welcoming to talk about my three late friends, one of whom
leaves two young boys to whom I am godfather.”

It wasn’t until later that I thought about
the plume of smoke I’d seen as I left Guadix. For the moment I was baffled by
his comment, and I simply kept silent. “I presume you know how to drive,” he said
as we reached the car. “I’ve heard that all little British boys learn to
drive.”

I climbed into the driving seat and he
walked round to the passenger side, keeping the gun trained on me all the way.
I made a point of fastening my seatbelt, and he did the same.

“We must keep ourselves safe for our
meeting, mustn’t we?” he crooned as he handed me the keys. “Drive now, and
follow my instructions exactly. I don’t promise you a long life, but I promise
that if you do anything else to anger me it will be a lot longer than you would
like.”

I started the engine and moved off as
smoothly as possible, making no attempt to engage him in conversation or plead
with him. But my mind was racing with feverish calculations, and the endgame
unfolded as we passed a row of shops and offices on a quiet stretch of road just
outside the city. A familiar SEAT ‘600’ pulled up at traffic lights alongside
us and revved its engine. I looked across casually at Juantxo in the driving
seat, and it seemed quite natural to let such an impatient driver go ahead. As
he did so, he raised his hand in the kind of acknowledgement calculated not to
arouse suspicion in my captor. And as he pulled away, I saw in my mirror that a
second car had come up behind us: a vehicle with one headlight out of action
but a spotlight mounted on the bumper to compensate.

I accelerated smoothly away from the
lights. Then, judging the speed to the best of my ability, and afraid of the
consequences if I was a touch too fast or too slow, I flicked the steering
wheel to the right and slammed into the rear of a line of parked vehicles. The
wheel buckled in my hands, but the seat belt stopped me before my ribs made
contact with the steering column. Adolfo was also flung forward into his seat
belt, but the section I had earlier sawn almost through with a knife parted
company, leaving him free to continue his trajectory headfirst through the
windscreen. He came to rest with his abdomen over the dashboard and his pelvis
and legs still inside the car. He was alive as it turned out, but unconscious
and surely suffering from severe internal injuries.

I was more shocked by the impact than I’d
expected. By the time I came to my senses, Juantxo’s car was stationary
alongside us with the driver’s door open and the engine still running. He had
already relieved the unconscious Adolfo of the gun still clenched in his fist, and
as soon as I was fully aware he checked me expertly for injuries before helping
me out of the wreckage.

Seeing the two men from the second car at
close quarters, I recognised one of them from the planning meeting; he walked
with a pronounced limp and I knew he was the chief. The other man was just a chauffeur
and bodyguard; he and Juantxo manoeuvred Adolfo into the back of the larger car,
where the injured killer slumped sideways across the bench seat in a welter of
blood. The chief was trying to haul him upright again in order to make room for
me, but I said not to worry as I’d rather travel with Juantxo.

Juantxo wasn’t listening to this exchange;
he’d already gone to his car. He came back a moment later with a can of petrol,
emptied some of it on the seats of Adolfo’s ruined SEAT and then threw the
remainder inside. He told me to get into the ‘600’ quickly. I ran to the
vehicle, and just as I was climbing in there was a whoosh of igniting vapour. As
I pulled the door shut a wave of heat and light overtook me. A moment later
Juantxo thumped into the driver’s seat, engaged gear and pulled away. Soon we
were heading south through the Amara tunnel.

“You are honoured, I think,” he said over
the noise of the straining engine as we headed into the hills. “You’ll be very
surprised when you see where we’re going. The chief says we don’t need to keep
it a secret from you any more.”

“I’m honoured that you trust me,” I
answered from the depths of my anger and exhaustion. “But why the hell should I
care where a gang of terrorists have their hideout? I’ll respect your
confidence, but I know something about ETA—isn’t that who you are? I love this
country and its people. I hate the way you’ve been treated by Franco’s government.
But how many innocent people have you killed? What makes you think you’re any
better than Adolfo and the Condor Legion?”

Rant over, I fell quiet. Juantxo drove in
silence for a good quarter of an hour, and I felt pleased with myself for
getting him on the defensive. Then, without so much as glancing at me and with
a hint of anger in his voice, he answered me: “If we were ETA, you’d be dead already.”

“So you call yourselves something
different. Who are you? No, don’t tell me. The Basque Popular Front? The Basque
Liberation Army? No? So what do you call yourselves?”

But Juantxo wasn’t listening to my drivel.
“Keep your mouth shut, you idiot, and do exactly what I say,” he snapped.
“Otherwise we’re both going to die. There’s a bag on the floor down there. Take
out what’s in there and hand it to me.”

With no safety belt in this car to undo, I
leaned forward and retrieved a brown canvas bag with a drawstring round the
neck. I was just about to open it when Juantxo saw a gap in the heavy traffic
and pulled away with a jerk. My shoulder hit the door hard as he pulled the
under-powered and poorly balanced car round in a juddering U-turn.

As soon as we were travelling back towards
the city in a straight line, I opened the canvas bag, took out a chunky automatic
pistol and began to examine it. “Hand it to me, now!” shouted Juantxo.

“What’s the panic?” I asked as I handed
him the weapon.

“Listening to your rubbish, I took my eye
off the chief’s car. They were behind us at the last road-junction. They’re not
there now.”

I was embarrassed into silence and peered
into the darkness ahead, trying to make amends by spotting the car before he
did. Suddenly my pulse-rate leapt as I saw the car with the one-up-one-down
headlights. It was parked facing us on the forecourt of a dimly lit petrol
station, over on the southbound side of the road.

“There,” I shouted, although he was going
too fast to make the turn. “The garage.”

“I see it,” he acknowledged, driving
straight past. “And I see something else. We must be careful.”

He continued northwards for nearly half a
mile before turning across a gap in the oncoming traffic and heading slowly
back towards the garage. Well before we reached it, he pulled onto the shoulder
of the road and killed both the lights and the engine.

“He’ll be expecting us, but it would be
stupid to let him know we’re here,” he explained.

“What’s going on? Why don’t you want to
let your chief know you’re here?”

“Not the chief. Adolfo.”

“Oh God! You think he’s…”

“No other reason they’d have stopped. Wait
here. I’m leaving the keys. If I’m not back in ten minutes, find your way to
the monastery at Alzaibar. Ask for Brother Agostino or Brother Bonifacio. Don’t
talk to anyone else. Either of them will get a message to my superiors.”           

“I still don’t know who you are.”

“There’s not time. We’re the good guys.
Well, mostly good. Better than the other guys. Just wait here for ten minutes
like I said. And don’t go any closer to the garage.”

He actually smiled at me for the first
time, and then he was gone. I waited for several minutes, then I heard the
unmistakeable sound of a gunshot—not the flat crack of Adolfo’s favoured weapon
but a sound I associated with larger calibre police and military handguns.

My heart sank, and I nearly got into the
car and drove off. Only that last smile of Juantxo’s, the parting smile of a
friend, stopped me from leaving. I remained in the car for another minute, then
got out and cautiously inched forward on foot. I only had to go a few metres to
see that the car had gone, and disregarding Juantxo’s instructions I broke into
a run.

The floodlighting over the forecourt was
weak, but still clear enough to reveal two dark masses against the pale
concrete surface. One of them was the chief. His heart must have stopped
beating well before he was dragged out of the car, because there was a minimal
amount of blood around him. The other was Juantxo. He was still alive, but he’d
already lost a lot of blood. A ghastly rhythmic sound – hissing and spluttering
– was coming from his chest. If I’d gone for help he’d have bled out or
asphyxiated before it arrived.

I had no proper first aid training, but I had
some idea how a tourniquet worked and fashioned one out of his canvas belt to
slow the bleeding from his thigh. Then I tore open his shirt and nearly gagged
at the pinkly frothing slit between his ribs. His face was white, his lips were
turning blue and he was shaking like someone with a high fever.