The Exile (55 page)

She heard a faint metallic sound in the hall. Quickly, she reached for the file, deciding to lock it in the safe before she dealt with her problem visitor. A sudden noise at the door made her look up. Capitán Viana was standing in the doorway. The sound she'd heard had been him fitting the silencer on his pistol.

OROITZ 1954, TORRES PABELLÓN DE CAZA

Guzmán looked in astonishment at the chaos of papers on the walls around him. Almost every available surface had something pinned or glued to it. Papers of all sizes, from large posters to the small pages of notebooks. Some handwritten in various-coloured inks, some typed. Pen and ink drawings, etchings, several small watercolours. Many depicted the
ikurriña
, the prohibited Basque flag. Among the items in the bizarre montage around him he saw a newspaper cutting from
ABC
dated 9 March 1951 announcing the death of
the glorious and celebrated Lieutenant General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano.
Above the picture someone had scrawled
Drunken murderer
in red ink. A fair assessment, though one that would put the writer in jail nonetheless.

Guzmán shook his head, admiring Jiménez's cunning. The man had worked for Torres, posing as a loyal employee, while at the same time, down here, he was scrawling these messages of hate and treachery. And planning the general's murder. It was not just Jiménez's treachery that infuriated him: it was that Magdalena had trusted him.

He continued his examination of the walls. More sketches: cars being machine-gunned, blown up,
guardia civiles
being shot down by men and women in Basque berets. Next to the drawings was a series of small photographs. He moved closer to examine them, his smile fading as he saw the first.

OROITZ 1954, CUARTEL DE LA GUARDIA CIVIL

Viana went down the track to the barracks. As he approached, an old man came out from behind the building and started up the path towards him. Dressed in rough sheepskins, his rope-soled sandals tied with long laces wound round his calves, the man looked like the shepherds in Señora Olibari's paintings.

‘
Buenas días
,' Viana grunted.

‘
Muy buenas
,' the old man said, politely. ‘Is the señor going to the
cuartel
?'

‘That's none of your business,' Viana snapped.

‘No offence to the gentleman,' the old man said, ‘but something terrible has happened. The garrison were all killed yesterday, trying to stop a robbery by that bandit El Lobo. The entire village is in a state of shock.'

Viana glowered at him. ‘That's why I'm here, you old fool. I'm a police officer, so stop wasting my time, I want to use the telephone.'

‘Naturally, sir.' The shepherd swept off his cap with a servile gesture and watched as Viana continued down the path towards the building.

Viana walked fast, annoyed by the shepherd's unwelcome familiarity. These inbreds needed to be taught a lesson. They had clearly forgotten the last one.

Behind him, the old man let out a whistle, high and discordant like the sound of a madman's flute. Viana spun round, wondering if the unkempt peasant was mocking him, but the old man was slowly making his way up the track to the village. Viana snorted. The old man wasn't a problem, though it was always best to be cautious here. He was sick of this region. Once this job was completed, there would be a new challenge waiting, as there always was. Another new identity to acquire once the original owner had been disposed of. Just as he'd done with the late Capitán Viana. The thought of it made him smile. There was no point in killing people if you didn't enjoy it.

Something else amused him. By now, Guzmán was probably starting to realise he wasn't going to see the file Gutiérrez had sent him. It might take a while longer before he realised he was finished. And with any luck Viana might be the one to finish the
comandante
. He reached the
cuartel
and hammered on the door. There was no response and he went inside.

OROITZ 1954, TORRES PABELLÓN DE CAZA

Black and white images. Some framed, others pinned or glued to the wall. The cover of a local newspaper,
El Diario Vasco
, dated Saturday, 27 June 1936. The headline was far from exciting:
Local Sports Day a Great Success, Say Organisers
.
It must have been, since most of the page was taken up with a photograph of the event. It was a familiar sight after his trip to St Jean: the huge stones for the weightlifters, the logs with axes buried in them, ready for the wood-chopping contest. Further away, tents, tables and chairs, women with parasols. A local fiesta, with the war only three weeks away. And in the foreground, smiling, eyes narrowed against the brilliant sun, a posed group of children and an adult. He recognised one face immediately.

Magdalena smiled at the camera, aged maybe nine or ten, Guzmán guessed. She was holding a scroll tied with a ribbon, pressing it to her chest. She wore Basque costume, a white blouse and black waistcoat, a dark skirt and white knee-socks with the laces of her
alpargatas
bound around her calves. Next to her was a smartly dressed man in white with a sash knotted round his waist. He seemed vaguely familiar. Seeing him like this, clean-shaven, his hair combed and oiled, made him difficult to recognise, since whenever Guzmán had seen him, Mikel Aingeru had been dressed in stinking sheepskins. He read the caption beneath the photograph:

1936 Festival Of Basque Culture a Great Success!

The Annual Festival of Basque Culture has once more been pronounced a huge success. As always, the festival was organised by Mikel Aingeru, the local schoolteacher and renowned scholar of Basque Culture. He is seen here with his sons Jesús (13), Iker (15) and Xavier (17). With them is the winner of the under-twelve prize for the best poem in Basque, Señorita Magdalena Torres (9), daughter of General Torres, that loyal servant and faithful military protector of the Republic.

Guzmán smiled at the description of Magdalena's father. The man had been as loyal as a snake, changing sides without a second thought.

Mikel Aingeru and two of his boys were dressed in white, red sashes tied round their waists. Good-looking lads. But what puzzled Guzmán was the young boy standing behind them, holding an axe, ready for the wood-chopping contest. He didn't resemble his brothers – his face was broader and he lacked their easy smiles. It was his height and bulk that gave it away. That and the large scar on the side of his head. It was Jesús Barandiaran, the wood-chopper, and from his expression he wasn't a part of the happy family gathering.

Guzmán sat brooding amid the rustling papers around him. All these Basques seemed to know one another or were related in some way. Not for the first time, he reminded himself this was not Madrid. He looked again at the photograph, feeling his skin prickle as he saw two young women on one side of the picture, almost out of shot. Clearly sisters, though it was the older of the two that held his attention. The room grew quiet as he stared at her.

It was Nieves Arestigui. Or rather someone who bore a resemblance to her. Someone made from the same flesh: her mother, Arantxa. Chilled, he stared at her dark beauty. Even in this sepia photo she stood out, just as she had when she'd worked in the whorehouse. By her side, Begoña seemed plain, diminished by her sister's compelling looks.

The phone rang in the office above and Guzmán ran to answer it. It was Ochoa.

‘Did you get Viana?' Guzmán asked, straight to the point.

‘No,' said Ochoa. ‘He's gone to collect a file Gutiérrez sent you by special courier.' He paused, listening to Guzmán's stream of obscenities for a moment before he interrupted. ‘There's some good news,
jefe
.'

‘I doubt that.' Guzmán scowled into the mouthpiece.

‘He tore up the telegram. I found the pieces and rearranged them.'

‘Good work,' Guzmán said, grudgingly. ‘So where's he going?'

‘That's the good news, he's headed for Oroitz,' Ochoa said. ‘The document was sent to an agent called Skylark at the Pensión Aralar.'

‘Fuck me, Señora Olibari's an agent? I'll get over there before he can collect it.'

‘There's something else,
jefe
. He left his ID card in the office.'

‘For fuck's sake, Corporal, he might not have worn his dress uniform either. We're the Secret Police, after all. Does it matter?'

‘What does Viana look like, sir?'

‘Tall, thinning dark hair, miserable face and a crappy little pencil moustache. Why? Do you want me to draw you a picture?'

‘So he hasn't got thick blond hair like the photo on his ID?' Ochoa looked again at the card, and read from it, ‘“Colour of eyes, blue”.'

‘I'd fucking know if...' Guzmán stopped. He remembered the body being dragged from the dirty water of the harbour into a boat. The cries of the crowd watching from the quayside as they saw the dead man's staring blue eyes, his shock of pale hair laced with seaweed.

‘Viana's dead,' he barked. ‘They've replaced him with someone else.' His face darkened with anger. ‘No fucking wonder we haven't heard from Gutiérrez. Viana hasn't been passing on our messages.' He slammed his hand down onto the desk. ‘You said he's on his way to Oroitz? I'll get over there and find out who he really is.'

‘Another thing,
jefe
,' Ochoa said, ‘I gave Señorita Torres your message. She said she'd meet you at Lauburu Farm around seven. And something else.' His voice grew serious. ‘Someone's reported finding the bank truck and the dead
guardia
to the local
policía
.'

‘That should keep them busy. Call me at the
cuartel
in a couple of hours.'

Guzmán went back into the underground room and took the photo of young Magdalena from the wall as a keepsake. As he put it into his pocket, he saw a folded piece of paper that had been pinned to the wall behind it. He flattened out the paper on the desk. A large-scale map, covered in spiralling contour lines. Here was the village of Oroitz, the paths and roads all clearly marked. Just a regular map but for one thing. A smudged pencil line followed the smugglers' trail from France, curving round Mari's Peak up to the old convent. Another line led down through the cliffs, ending in a spot overlooking Oroitz half a kilometre or so below at a rectilinear shape imposed on the contours overlooking the road.

Guzmán stared at the map, wondering why anyone would plan a route from France that went via the convent and ended at the abandoned fortress. He realised he already knew. The weapons and ammunition were imported from France along the ridge and stockpiled at the convent. No one wanted to be caught carrying weapons around the countryside, they needed a distribution point where they could leave the cargo for the resistance to collect. He turned the paper over, seeing the handwritten list on the back:

25/6/1954 $1,850

30/7/1954 $1,200

23/8/1954 $1,750