THE ENGLISH WITNESS (24 page)

“A nobleman doesn’t invite a peasant to
his table. I sat at your table, and we spoke as equals. If I’ve abused you, you
have the right to satisfaction, not summary execution.”

Antonio actually smiled. “Very well, my
friend. Lesson in etiquette duly taken on board. Do you have a weapon?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Perhaps our mutual friend can lend you
one.”

Jack looked down at Gallego for the first
time in several minutes. The old man’s face was ashen grey, his eyes glazed,
his mouth slack. “Do you have a gun I can borrow, Adolfo?” The man in the
wheelchair slowly turned his head and looked up at him, then cast his eyes down
at his immobile right leg. With Antonio’s gun trained steadily on him, Jack walked
round to right hand side of the chair, thrust his hand down beneath Gallego’s thigh,
and felt the outline of a weapon embedded in a cut-out in the leather. Trying
to disturb the occupant of the chair as little as possible, he pulled out a
compact .38 automatic pistol.

“Take two paces sideways,” said Antonio
quietly. “Good. Now point the gun away from me and cock it. Good. Now lay it on
the ground. Excellent.”

Jack followed the instructions and stood
behind the weapon with his feet a few inches apart. Then Antonio followed suit.
Jack watched carefully as he rose to his feet again, and was pleased to see
that his former friend was quite stiff in his movements. They stood there for a
moment, eye to eye over a distance of some three metres. Jack seemed to notice
the warm sunshine and the birdsong for the first time. “Isn’t there another
way?” he asked plaintively.

“I can simply shoot you, if you prefer.
And if I’m honest, I might as well do. I seem to remember you were quite handy
with an air pistol, but don’t have any false hopes. I was better, and unlike
you I’ve kept in shape. I’m going to count to ten, then I’m going to pick up my
gun and place the first bullet in your gut. That will hurt, James. In the
unlikely event that you’re still a danger to me at that point, you’ll get a
second bullet in the chest or the head. Otherwise, Gallego and I will watch you
writhe for a minute or two before I start on him. That ought to whet his
appetite for what’s coming, and incentivise you to give it your best shot.” He
looked Jack directly in the face. “Are you ready?
Uno… dos… tres… cuatro…
cinco…”

Then Antonio was interrupted by a shout
from nearby, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a man with a gun pointing
down the path. Without completing the count, he crouched down and snatched up
the gun. Remaining at a crouch, he twisted at the waist and neck, extended his
arm, and fired. A moment later he was startled by a flash from somewhere close
at hand.

Miguel was having another dismal day. It had started badly enough
– a cheap brandy hangover is one of the worst there is – and gone downhill from
there. Through waves of nausea and a throbbing headache, and amid constant
interruptions from the daily routine going on around him, he was trying to
reconstruct the damage limitation plan that had seemed so elegant the night
before. It was beginning to come together in his mind. Thankfully it was the
ever-resourceful Julio who had devised the plan, and that would do something to
exonerate Miguel himself when it went awry—as he had ensured it would.

Typically of Julio, the plan had been
simple and elegant. Word had been spread around HQ that the Englishman wanted to
visit Alzaibar to boost his flagging recollections, and a personal security
contractor had been booked to transport him there. It was inevitable given
Gallego’s reach in the department that information would get back to him, and Julio
was calculating that the former Adolfo would turn out in person to supervise Jack’s
capture. However, the Englishman’s place would be taken by a volunteer from Miguel’s
squad, while Jack himself would be ferried to a safe location in a second vehicle.

Seen through the lens of cheap brandy the
night before, Julio’s decision to take Jack’s place in person had given Miguel grounds
for optimism. As a result of his treachery, both the Englishman and the spook were
almost certain to die. Now, however, in the cold light of day, ‘almost certain’
was not good enough.

In Jack’s case, provided he drew Gallego to
the killing ground, the chance that he might survive the encounter was
something Miguel could live with. But if Julio made it through the day he would
know exactly where to put the blame for his plan’s ruin.

There was much work to be
done. Potential witnesses would need to be got at with Father’s customary blend
of lavish gifts and bloodcurdling threats. And records would need to be discreetly
altered. But above all there was a battle looming, and Miguel knew what he had
to do before anything else.

After a fast but uneventful drive out from the city, Miguel arrived
at Alzaibar to find that the battle had started and finished without him. As he
pulled up alongside Gallego’s helicopter, he surveyed the scene of carnage around
it in disbelief. Then he looked up and saw three men with assault weapons trained
on him, and he wondered if the outcome was still undecided. But as he climbed
out of the car with his arms held away from his body, the men recognised him and
grudgingly stood to attention.

“Where’s my father?” he asked the squad
leader.

“Round the main block to the right, Sir,”
the man answered.

Miguel jogged across the plaza as quickly
as his bulk would allow. And as he rounded the corner, he saw a bizarre sight
just a little way down the path. The Englishman was standing in a tense,
slightly crouched posture. Beside him was a sleek, technologically advanced wheelchair
occupied by the hated Gallego. And facing them from a distance of some ten
paces meters, bolt upright and watching the Englishman like a hawk, was Miguel’s
father.

As the detective watched in grim
fascination, he observed a movement that must have been masked from his
father’s viewpoint by the chair’s broad, well-padded armrest: Gallego’s left
hand had dropped down beside his withered leg and come up bearing a compact
pistol. Miguel yelled out in warning, but there was no time to frame words of
explanation. Drawing his own weapon, he shouted again and drew a bead on the
man in the wheelchair.

Then his father reacted. With
surprising speed for a man of his age, he crouched down and snatched up a gun
from the ground. Without waiting to straighten his legs, he stretched out his
arm and took aim—not at Gallego, but straight up the path towards Miguel. There
was a flash of light from the outstretched hand. The detective felt a crushing,
numbing blow to his throat, and his sight was already dimming before the sound
of three shots in reached him in quick succession from what seemed a great
distance away.

Predictably enough, Gallego took charge of the situation. He was still
brandishing in his left hand the pistol with which he had shot Antonio, but he
quickly tucked it back into its hiding place as a squad leader came round the
corner at the double accompanied by two heavily built troopers.

“I know your status,” Gsllego barked at
the leader. “You are soldiers of fortune working for Antonio García. As of now,
your contract with him is dissolved and you will take orders from me. You know
who I am, of course, and you are hereby contracted to provide personal security
services until further notice. Now, wheel me back to the transporter, will you?
Get somebody to reconnect this wretched contraption’s batteries. And you may as
well see if you can keep your former employer alive, but I rather think he’s a
gone concern.”

There was a moment’s hesitation on the
part of the three men. Then the two troopers looked to the squad leader for
guidance and saw that it was a done deal. Jack and Gallego watched in silence as
Antonio was hastily treated with field dressings then turned onto his side and carried
away on a stretcher. He was still awake, but Jack knew enough to see that he
was in deep shock and bleeding out from his thigh and shoulder. An urgent blood
transfusion and surgery might save him, but Gallego was not going to be transporting
anyone but himself to hospital. As the stretcher reached the top of the path a
few yards ahead of him, its occupant gazed fixedly for a moment at Miguel’s
blood-spattered body, emitted a sudden inexplicable bellow of pain, and died.

Jack wondered for a moment whether there
had been any meaning to this incident, but there was a more pressing question
to consider: What was his own life expectancy now? He had been foolish in
assuming that Antonio’s treachery had put himself and Gallego on the same side.
He stopped walking, twisted round and addressed the elderly man, who was being
pushed up the slope by the squad leader: “So what have I got to look forward to
now?” 

 “Very good question, James,” said
the politician, who was still clearly in shock but more alert now. He gestured
to the squad leader to stop. “You know, I’m genuinely sorry about the way things
have turned out. I was content to leave you in peace as long as you were far
away in England, but then your friend García dragged you back into the fray.

“It’s frustrating, because I have wanted
to atone for my past—to clean up the private armies left over from the Civil
War, and all the organised crime and violence for which they’re responsible.
But the problem with democracy is that a past like mine disqualifies you from
doing the job. And I’m not going to sacrifice this, the best work of my life.
I’m not going to live in fear that somebody who’s shared the deeper darkness
with me might…”

Jack was white in the face. “So you’re
going to dive back into the cesspit of death and corruption that you inhabited
before? You’re going to get more blood on your hands? And all in the interests
of law and order? That’s the most crass stupidity I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“Careful what you say, Jack. I’m happy to
make it quick and easy, but I don’t have to. It may surprise you to hear this,
but I’ve no reason to love you.”

 Jack was getting desperate. “It
seems to me that you’ve no reason to love yourself either. Isn’t it enough that
you just killed Antonio?” Then his speech organs went onto autopilot as they
had done so often in the past. He heard himself say, “And Miguel. For God’s
sake Gallego, why did you have to kill Miguel? I thought you wanted to wipe out
private armies, not hard-working policemen.”

He was pleased to see the three mercenaries
stop and look round sharply. “Move along,” snapped Gallego, realising that Jack
had deftly undermined his authority with the hastily co-opted henchmen. “Back
to the transport. And hit this impertinent animal hard, now.” 

One of the troopers span towards Jack,
turning his assault rifle end-for-end as he did so. Jack braced himself for
pain, and for a moment Gallego thought he had re-asserted his hold over the surviving
hired guns. Then the squad leader barked a command and the trooper brought his
weapon back to his side. “We’re more than just a bunch of whores,” he spat, as
he drew his sidearm and swung his arm in Gallego’s direction. A split second
later his face exploded, and his own bullet flew harmlessly out over the nearby
ravine.

As the sound of a rifle shot reverberated
around the hills and the squad leader’s legs crumpled under him, Jack noticed a
thickset blond man marching down the path. But the newcomer’s size made
nonsense of the perspective. He was further away than he had appeared at first
glance, and what looked like a stick in his hands was a long sniper’s rifle
with a telescopic sight. The barrel swung backwards and forwards in a short arc
as the man advanced, and without any further prompting the two troopers dropped
their weapons and put their hands behind their heads.

“Welcome, Martí,” pronounced Gallego. “In
the nick of time.”

“I can only apologise, Commander,”
replied the big man with a little bow. “I made a serious error of judgement. As
soon as we are stood down, I expect to be court-martialled and at very least
demoted.”

“We will discuss the circumstances in due
course. Any of your men still standing?”

“Just the pilot, Commander. They left him
alone. And a couple the monks are treating who may pull through. I was the only
combatant taken alive, and they handcuffed me to the helicopter’s undercarriage
before they came running down here.” He lifted one arm so that Gallego could
see the heavy bracelet that still encircled his massive wrist, and as he drew
closer Jack could see the marks of a fresh beating on his face.

“Are these two soldiers employable?”

“One is. Not the other.”

“Do what you have to.”

Martí turned to face the trooper who had
been about to administer a beating to Jack. “Pick up your weapon, soldier, and keep
these scum covered.” Then he placed his own rifle gently on the ground, took a
few paces backwards, and beckoned to the other man. Jack sidestepped behind
Gallego’s wheelchair, took the handles, and turned it round ninety degrees so
that it faced the impending action. Its wheels were now in exact line with the
slope, but to his relief nobody seemed to notice in the tension of the moment.

The trooper looked anxiously from side to
side and made as if to run. It took the sound of his former comrade’s weapon
cocking to bring him back to reality. “One on one, or you can die like a dog,”
said Martí pleasantly.

“I’m sorry. Give me another chance,”
pleaded the terrified soldier pathetically.

“Ten seconds to decide,” replied the
blond man.

Reluctantly the doomed man took a step
towards him. Then, with an angry yell, he crossed the distance between them at
a run. He knew what he was doing; his chin dropped and his arms went up as he came
within striking distance of Martí and launched a flying kick at his leading
kneecap.

Martí was ready, and the contest was over
in seconds. Moving with unexpected grace for a man of his build, he sidestepped
the attack and left his adversary off balance. A well-placed elbow caught the
unfortunate trooper under the chin as his momentum carried him past, and he
landed painfully on his hip and shoulder. Before he had time to defend himself,
Martí dealt him a crippling kick in the small of the back. At that point he
might have walked again one day. But then, seemingly without effort, Martí
lifted him clear of the ground, knelt on one knee and broke his back over the
other.

Jack never forgot the sound nor found out
whether the man survived. but for the moment it was put out of his mind as he found
himself once again the centre of attention.

“What’s your name, soldier,” Gallego
asked the last surviving member of Antonio’s private army.

“Abella, Commander,” he replied, standing
to attention with an audible click of his heels.

“We’ll talk about your future in due course,
but you were about to carry out my instructions when you were interrupted.
Please carry on.”   

Abella turned to Jack, his face
expressionless, and for a moment Jack thought he might be about to object. But
the man was simply playing to his audience. Slowly, almost casually, he raised
the butt of his assault rifle to shoulder height and brought it sharply
forward. There was a crack as the flat of the stock struck Jack on the
cheekbone and he fell sideways. Everything went black and purple for a moment,
but he remained conscious as Abella toppled over to join him on the ground. The
next moment, the wheelchair began to creep backwards. Second by second it
gathered pace as Gallego shouted for help.

Then there was a blur of movement on the
edge of Jack’s vision, and suddenly the chair stopped moving. Someone had
caught it—a tall man dressed like a funeral director. And Jack slumped with
relief as he recognised Julio.

“Jack, are you badly hurt?” asked Miguel’s
driver as he pushed the wheelchair back up the path to where Jack was lying.
Bracing his foot behind a wheel, he reached down and helped the Englishman to
his feet.

“Black eye coming,” answered Jack, “but
it could be worse.”