THE ENGLISH WITNESS (19 page)

Marvelling that a garage was open so late
in the evening, I ran into the office looking for something to stop the
catastrophic leak of air from my friend’s lungs. There was no one at the till,
but as I reached across the counter to take a couple of puncture repair outfits
off the shelf I noticed a small, fat man hunched down behind it.

“Please…” he began.

“No time!” I hissed. “For the love of God
telephone the hospital. My friend is badly wounded and could die.”

“The shooting…”

“It’s over. He’s gone. Quickly, the
hospital.”

Running back outside, I patched Juantxo up.
Drying the wound the best I could with tissues from my pocket, I smeared rubber
cement over one of the patches until it was almost dry and very tacky. I
pressed it on the wound for three or four minutes while the glue bonded, and
was relieved to see his breathing improve immediately. I repeated the drill
with more patches, arranging them so that they overlapped the first one and adhered
to a wider area of skin.

I was still worried whether he’d survive,
but I had another concern now. Adolfo had got away. Even if I had a car of my
own, he was long gone and I thought the driver would only live long enough to
take him where he wanted to go. I asked myself where that would be, and sensed
that the killer knew his time was running out. What would he want to do? Where
would he force the driver to take him?

Take me to your leader
. The cliché echoed in my head. Would the
driver be gutless enough to take the enemy into the heart of his own camp? I
ran into the office again. “Have you got a car?” I asked the cowering
attendant.

“No car. I get the bus.”

“For God’s sake, help me,” I groaned. “I
have to catch that man.”

“You should let the police earn their
wages, my friend. They’ll be here soon.”

“Have you called the police? I said the
hospital.”

“I called both. The police would have come
anyway, once the doctors knew there was shooting.”

“Oh no! My friend out there is an innocent
man, and he’ll probably be arrested.”

The little man shrugged, but he eyed me
warily, perhaps afraid that I’d cut up rough. “I’m sorry, but it’s done. I’m no
lover of the police, but I think it’s for the best.”

Desperate, I ran out onto the forecourt
again. Juantxo looked at me, awake now. His lips were moving, and I knelt down
beside him.

“You mustn’t try to speak,” I warned him.
“There’s only a piece of rubber keeping you alive. Lie still.”

He spoke again. I had to strain my ears to
hear him over the traffic noise: “…. Gun… Pocket.”

I went over and felt the dead man’s clothes.
There was a heavy lump in the right-hand pocket of his trousers. I reached in
and felt the grip of a pistol; I went to pull it out but I couldn’t free it. I
tugged repeatedly, hard enough to tear any normal fabric, but without success.
In the end I had to unbuckle the waistband – it felt horrible and unreal
undressing a corpse – in order to find what was snagging the barrel. The fabric
was wet with blood and urine, and I was even more shocked to find that he had only
half a leg. The long gun barrel had been forced through the pocket lining to
make it fit, and the steeply raked front sight had snagged under the leather
harness that held his prosthetic limb in place. As soon as I’d freed the sight
and pulled the gun clear of the pocket, I recognised it as Adolfo’s.

The weapon was unfamiliar, and in the poor
light I couldn’t make out the maker’s insignia, but it was easy enough to work
out which lever did what. I ejected the magazine and used my thumb to push the
bullets out.

There were three of them. I fed them back
into the magazine, and was about to pull the breach back to chamber a round
when Juantxo managed to attract my attention. I knelt down beside him again, as
he whispered, “Four bullets. One already in...” I got the message. The semi-automatic
pistol had been fired since it was loaded, and there was already a round in the
chamber ready to fire. I thanked my lucky stars that I hadn’t pulled the
trigger, and hastily ejected the unspent cartridge before picking it up off the
ground and loading it into the magazine.

I tried to slide the barrel into my waistband,
movie-fashion, but it was very uncomfortable and felt as though it would fall
out the first time I moved. In the end I did what the chief had done, pushing
it into my trouser pocket hard enough to pop a short length of stitching. The
barrel was unpleasantly cold and hard against my unprotected skin. “Where are
your headquarters?” I asked Juantxo.

“You already know,” he whispered. “Where
we were going. Where I told you to go for help. The monastery.”

I stood up, aghast at the cataclysm about
to fall on that beautiful place. Then all of a sudden, a wave of relief spread
over me. “His gun,” I said jubilantly. “We’ve got his gun.”

Juantxo twitched, and I realised that he
was trying to make his whisper heard above my voice. “He’s got mine,” he
managed to gasp. “And a knife.” He slumped back, worn out by his efforts, and
at that moment I heard sirens coming down from the north. “Go!” he mouthed at
me.

I lurched back across the forecourt
towards his car with the intention of driving off in pursuit, but at that
moment another vehicle pulled up behind it, silhouetting the SEAT in the glare
of headlights. Quickly I dodged to my left to take cover behind a foul-smelling
toilet cubicle, and the attendant mercifully chose that moment to kill the
floodlights. Taking advantage of the near-darkness, I stumbled back to the
carriageway and began to walk south along the shoulder.

There was no traffic coming down from the
north, and I guessed that the road had been closed off. It was a relief not to
have to conceal myself from passing vehicles, but I was knotted up with frustration.
I could walk all night and all the next day without reaching the monastery. I had
to keep going, but for the moment my only objective was to take myself far away
from the garage whose position in the distance was now marked by a cluster of
flashing lights.

Picking my way carefully along the uneven
shoulder with nothing but a sliver of moon to light the way, I kept going for
maybe an hour. By that time my neck was stiff and aching from the crash, and the
gun barrel was chafing my leg painfully.

Then the worst happened: a car clattered
past me, swerved onto the shoulder and skidded to a halt. Just as I turned to
head back the way I had come, another vehicle pulled in behind me, bathing me
in its headlights. The scene seemed totally unreal, my shadow stretched out ahead
of me like an elongated finger pointing at the first car. A man was already
standing beside it, one hand shielding his eyes from the glare of the second car’s
headlights, the other pointing a gun at me.

A voice from behind shouted, “Put the gun
on the ground, or you’ll be dead in five seconds…four seconds…three…”

“OK,” I shouted, “I’m doing it. Give me a
moment.” Moving as quickly but as unthreateningly as I could, I eased the pistol
out of my trouser pocket. The under-cut sight snagged on the lining for a
moment, but then it tore free. Holding the weapon out sideways from my body, I
bent my knees and lowered it to the ground.

“Stand up and walk backwards. No, don’t
look round. The ground’s level. Just take it slowly and you won’t trip.”

I walked gingerly backwards, my eyes on
the car and man in front of me. I realised as I walked that if either man
really did open fire he could easily hit the other. I marvelled at their
stupidity but wasn’t about to take risks. I kept going very slowly until I felt
the car bumper touch one of my legs, and stopped.

“Turn round slowly,” said the voice. I
followed the order and saw a tall, thin man standing behind the open car door,
apparently using it for cover—although it would have taken more than a car
panel to stop a high-velocity bullet. “Come and look in the car,” he continued,
and I walked round until I could see over the top of the open door.

In the front passenger seat I was
delighted to see Juantxo. He was no longer at death’s door, but he still looked
deathly pale and had difficulty speaking. “These are friends, James,” he
announced, and left the rest of the conversation to the stranger standing
beside me.

“Your friend has received emergency
treatment and is out of immediate danger,” explained the stranger, “and that’s mainly
thanks to you. But we must get him to hospital right now.”

“You say you’re friends, but what was all
that with the guns. You really scared me.”

“You had the only weapon here,” replied the
man. “From what your friend said, you could easily have shot at us in a panic.
We were just taking care of ourselves and of course our patient.”

“Your patient? Who are you?”

“I’m a doctor. Call me Seve.” Then he
pointed at the other man who had just walked up. “That’s my brother-in-law,
Miguelito. He usually drives an ambulance, and you can take his car. He’ll ride
back with us.”

We shook hands, and Miguelito asked what I
would do now. “You don’t have to go after the terrorist,” he said. “In fact your
friend in the car doesn’t want you to, but he doesn’t think we’ll be able to
stop you. So, go if you wish, but remember this is our unfinished civil war,
not yours.”

I said nothing. Miguelito took a slim,
black torch out of his pocket and handed it to me. “This was all I had pointed
at you,” he said. “Take it. You may find it useful. This too; I don’t suppose
you’ve had anything for a while.” He handed me a bottle of water, and fumbling
in his coat pocket he produced a rather dry and misshapen length of loaf together
with a chorizo sausage. “The key’s in the car,” he added. “We have to be back
on duty at the hospital.”

“How did you know?” I asked as the two men
turned to get into the second car.

“We promised we wouldn’t tell anybody,”
replied the brother-in-law, “but it can’t hurt. The man in the garage. He’s
scared stiff, but when he phoned for help he made sure he spoke to Seve here.”

“He said he was ringing the police.”

“Yes, and he did. They’ve already taken poor
old Pablo away. They’ll give a little press conference once they’ve worked out who
he is, and then they’ll go through the motions of launching a criminal
investigation…”

I noticed that Seve had looked sharply at
his brother-in-law when the name was mentioned. “Pablo?” I asked. “Who’s Pablo?”

Miguelito seemed to realise that he had
said too much, but he shrugged and carried on. “Pablo is your friend’s boss. Or
was. But please forget I mentioned his name, even though he’s dead.” Out of the
corner of my eye, I saw Seve cross himself.

“Oh, the chief,” I responded. “I’m sorry
he’s dead. How are they going to carry on without him?”

“How are who going to carry on?” countered
Miguelito, carefully avoiding Seve’s gaze.

“You know, Juantxo’s gang.”

“What do you mean, his gang? Do you know
who it is that you’re talking about?”

“I thought they were separatists. Like
ETA, only perhaps a bit less…well, a bit less dangerous.”

“They are separatists,” confirmed Seve,
abandoning his efforts to be discreet, “and they are dangerous—for your sake I
won’t tell them you suggested otherwise. But,” and here he smiled, “they do try
to work within the law—the Higher Law at any rate, the one Franco and his
minions constantly trample on. You must forget all this, but you’re dealing
with the security service—hence all the secrecy. Pablo was a senior officer, a coronel
in fact. But he wasn’t irreplaceable.”

I saw red. “The security service?” I
shouted. “You mean after all this I’ve been working with the government?”

Juantxo was gesticulating with one hand,
and Seve and I both bent down to see what he wanted. He looked at me. “James,
you are so stupid,” he whispered. Then, turning his head towards Seve, he
added, “You need to tell him, before he does something silly.”

I looked expectantly at the doctor. He
looked back and smiled: “The security service of
Eusko Jaurlaritza
.” I
must have looked blank at this, so he translated for me: “The Basque
Government. Do you think it just packed its bags and dissolved itself when
Franco annexed us to Spain? With our country under occupation, our rightful
government has gone into exile. But it’s not idle.” 

I tried to ask questions, but now it was Miguelito
who interrupted me: “If you’re going, you need to go now. I don’t know what you
can possibly do, but there’s a full can of petrol and a box of matches in the
boot, and the gun on the ground over there if you think you could use it. Now
go. I won’t say vaya con Dios, because unlike Seve I’ve seen too much to
believe in a God any longer. But if I’m wrong and there is one, may he forgive
me and help you.”

Turning to go, I was delayed for a few
seconds more by Juantxo, who was flapping his hand to attract my attention. I
bent over one last time to hear what he had to say: “He won’t say it, but I
will. Ve con Dios.” I grasped his shoulder, perhaps more firmly than I should
have done given the nature of his injuries, then turned and left.