The Sentinel: 1 (Vengeance of Memory) (49 page)

‘Like Communism?’

‘Of course. They’ll start thinking they’re free to look at alternatives. Thinking new ideas, foreign ideas,
joder
, even thinking about democracy, and where will we be then?’

‘Out of work for a start,’ Peralta said glumly.

The sarge walked past, cradling a rifle across his forearms.

‘We’d be on trial, wouldn’t we,
jefe
?’ He looked at Guzmán for support. ‘Like all those Nazi
pendejos.
The ones that didn’t take poison, that is. Would you take poison,
jefe
?’

Guzmán shrugged. ‘Hard to say. If it was the rope, maybe not. Hanging’s quite quick. You get a good meal first.’

‘That’s right,
jefe.
A condemned man can have anything he wants.’

‘I don’t seem to remember you doing much cooking for any of those Reds you killed,’ Guzmán sneered. ‘It was all we could do to make you do it quickly.’ He looked over at Peralta to see if he was suitably disgusted. He was.

Guzmán picked up the hand grenade from the table. ‘Sarge, you weren’t seriously thinking of taking this on our trip to the Bar Dominicana?’

The
sargento
shrugged. ‘Best to be prepared, sir.’

‘Even so,’ Guzmán said, ‘that might just be a bit excessive.’ He handed the grenade back to the Sarge. ‘Better leave that for another day.’

The sarge moodily collected the satchel of grenades and trudged into the armoury.

‘Shame to spoil his fun,’ Guzmán said, ‘but he can get carried away.’

‘I can imagine,’ Peralta said.

‘Enough of him,’ Guzmán said, becoming more animated. ‘We’ve got to find out who did this. All these bodies are going to cause a fuss. Even if we suppress the news of it, those upstairs will be getting jumpy. And we don’t want them interfering.’

‘You think they will?’

‘Almost certainly,’ Guzmán said. ‘The question is how long we’ve got before they find out.’ He paused as the doors to the reception hall crashed open. ‘
Mierda
, it’s happened already.’

They recognised Carrero Blanco at once. He stormed towards them, his overcoat flapping, the buttons and badges of his admiral’s uniform twinkling under the faint lights.

‘Almirante.’
Guzmán snapped to attention and saluted smartly. Peralta struggled to do the same – without experience in the army his military bearing was at best sloppy.

‘Joder,
Guzmán, what the hell is going on, man? There are corpses all over the city,’ Carrero Blanco barked.

‘We’re well aware of it,
Almirante,’
Guzmán said. ‘Perhaps you’d like to step into my office to appraise the situation?’

Carrero Blanco nodded and waited for Guzmán to open the door for him. Inside the office, he sat at Guzmán’s desk – just as Guzmán had expected.
They all do that. Like dogs pissing on a tree.
Guzmán took the other chair. Carrero Blanco was taking off his heavy leather gloves, his peaked cap placed in the middle of the desk. Peralta paused in the doorway.

‘Not you,’ the admiral said coldly. ‘You’re one of the Valverde clan, no?’

‘Only by marriage, sir,’ Peralta said, standing to attention.

‘Get out,’ Carrero Blanco snapped. ‘I want to speak with the
comandante.’

‘A sus ordenes, mí Almirante.’
Peralta executed a clumsy salute and stepped backwards into the corridor, pulling the door closed as he went.

He turned and was startled to find the sarge half a metre behind him.
‘Jesus Cristo, hombre,
don’t you know not to sneak up on someone like that?’

The sarge’s mouth split into his ghastly grin, exposing the broken remnants of his teeth. ‘Sorry,
Teniente
, I was trying to tell the
comandante
that
Almirante
Carrero Blanco had arrived but the
almirante
pushed me out of the way before I got the chance. Is he with the boss now?’

‘He’s with
Comandante
Guzmán, yes.’

‘About the bodies, I suppose?’

‘I imagine so. Any more news on them?’

‘There’s forty-nine now. I expect there’ll be a few more who no one’s noticed yet.’

‘And what do you make of it?’

The sarge looked at Peralta contemptuously. ‘Not difficult, is it?’

‘Then perhaps you’d explain anyway,
Sargento?’

‘I’d say someone’s brought a load of dope into Madrid hoping to get rich quick. Likely got it in Barcelona, since the place is full of drugs. Then they cut it to make it go further. As long as the colour looks about right, the dope fiends will buy it.’

‘So you don’t think it’s linked to the Dominicans? We know they’ve been muscling in on the local drugs trade.’

The sarge shrugged. ‘Be a bit odd, that. If you’re dealing drugs you want your customers to come back, not die. Cutting a big consignment is a risky business – for the buyers. A bag of bad shit, sold off in little parcels, it’s like a shotgun. You pull the trigger and there’s a mess all over the fucking place.’ He paused. ‘Sir.’

Peralta bit his lip. ‘You’ve made a list of the names and addresses of the victims?’

The sarge shrugged. ‘Of course. Some of these people have families who’ll need to know.’

‘And what are we going to tell them?’

‘That there’s been a mystery virus. That’s what the
comandante
said. We’ve already contacted the press to let them know what they can print. Thirty dead will be the official figure. They’ll be buried immediately – because of the risk of infection. The coffins will be sealed at the hospitals as well.’

Peralta rummaged unsuccessfully in his pocket for a cigarette. ‘That doesn’t get us any nearer to explaining why anyone would do this.’

The sarge watched Peralta continue his hunt for a cigarette for a moment before wearily pulling a crumpled packet from his pocket. ‘Here you go,
Teniente
.’ Peralta took the cigarette and waited for a light.

‘It’s easily explained,’ the sarge said. ‘The more you cut the dope, the more money it makes. But the more junkies you kill, the more attention you get – and drug dealers usually don’t want attention – especially from the likes of us.’

The sarge found the remnants of a box of wax
cerillas
and managed to strike one into flame.

Peralta breathed in the strong smoke gratefully. ‘I think there are two possibilities,
Sargento
. The first is as you say, someone cut their supply with something to make it go further and they accidentally overdid it. The other possibility is that they did it deliberately.’

‘They’d be bad bastards if they did that,
Teniente.
But why do that?’

Peralta took a drag on his cigarette in what he hoped was an enigmatic pause. ‘Think about it. There’s only one real competitor for the Dominicans in Madrid.’

The sarge grunted. ‘Valverde. But the general sells most of his supplies through
farmacias
to legal addicts. If these stiffs we’ve been bringing in are legals, that’d mean that Valverde’s supplies had been got at.’

‘What better way to discredit the competition,
Sargento
? If people don’t feel safe with legal sources of drugs, they’ll turn to other outlets.’

‘Like those Caribbean greasers,’ the sarge said.

‘Exactly. Which means that Valverde will need to take action to protect his business.’

‘And that will mean the
comandante
will get his way,’ the sarge leered, exposing more of his devastated teeth, ‘which is always a good thing, for us, as well as him.’

‘I’ll speak to him about this as soon as he’s finished with the
almirante,’
Peralta said. ‘I imagine he’ll be interested to hear our conclusions.’

The sarge started to walk towards the mess. ‘I shouldn’t get too excited,
Teniente.’

‘Why’s that,
Sargento?’

The sarge turned and looked mockingly at him. ‘Because I had this conversation with him about an hour ago, sir, and he reached the same conclusion then.’

Guzmán stood stiffly to attention as Carrero Blanco shouted abuse at him. It was becoming quite a dressing down.

‘Guzmán, what the hell’s going on? Over forty-five people dead. The
Caudillo
’s incandescent. We’ve had to double the number of censors to keep this out of the foreign press.’

‘With respect,
mi Almirante,
this is a situation we could not have anticipated.’

The admiral continued his tirade. ‘You won’t be anticipating anything soon, Guzmán, because you’ll be out on your ear with no job and no pension. We didn’t give you the job you have just to amuse you,
entiende
? We simply can’t have something like this happen. Especially now. The
Caudillo
gives a major speech in two days and he wants to welcome the Americans to the new Spain. The new Spain, Guzmán, one where there are no corpses in the streets. Certainly not forty-odd of them.’

Guzmán felt the urge to punch Carrero Blanco senseless. But he needed to keep control.
Sometimes you have to eat shit. But you should never get used to the taste of it.

The admiral calmed down a little. ‘So what the fuck happened, Guzmán? Do we know?’

‘We do,
Almirante.
These people were all addicts, poisoned by contaminated drugs.’

‘Poisoned?’

‘Definitely, though we don’t know if it was deliberate or not yet.’

Carrero stared at him. ‘We know who controls the supply of drugs in this city,
Comandante.
General Valverde. You surely don’t think he’d poison his own customers?’

‘I doubt it,
mi almirante.
There are more likely suspects. The Dominicans. We know they’re involved in the drugs trade.’

‘Cuidado,
Guzmán,’ Carrero said. ‘Take great care before you do anything we – meaning you – would regret. We don’t want to upset the
Yanquis.
We need these bloody Americans, Guzmán. If we don’t get them to part with some money, the country will be bankrupt within the year. I’ll tell you now, the
Caudillo
has already instructed the trade negotiators how to deal with these
Yanquis:
agree to anything, let them walk all over you and then take their money. Is there anything there you don’t understand?’ His expression indicated it was a rhetorical question.

‘Yes.’ Guzmán never liked rhetoric.

‘What?’ The admiral sighed.

‘I don’t understand why we have to let a bunch of Caribbean criminals parade around the capital flaunting the law. The
Yanquis
could sort out the trade agreement without them. They’re criminals and I’m certain they’ve had a hand in this heroin business. Say the word and I’ll round them up.’

Carrero stared at him hard. ‘Listen, Guzmán. You wouldn’t be where you are without keeping on top of things like this. Your instinct for the job is a great asset. But just as important, you’ve avoided doing anything that would annoy the
Caudillo
. Others have had his trust besides you – the difference being they forgot if you cross him, there’s rarely a second chance. You sit near the fire or you’re out in the cold. Simple as that.’

And you can teach my grandmother to suck eggs,
Guzmán thought. ‘I must stress these Dominicans have already engaged in criminal acts, they’re suspects in a murder case involving one of our informers and—’

‘Enough.’ Carrero Blanco waved a leather-gloved hand. ‘They may well be criminals, Guzmán. The world’s full of criminals – look at the army or the Church and Christ Almighty, don’t even start me off about politicians.
Fijate coño,
a few dead junkies don’t matter, do they? How many did we shoot in the
Guerra Civil
? The fucking streets were full of dead. We didn’t care then and we don’t care now. Junkies take that filth, ruin their lives and lose their immortal souls: they’re scum. Good riddance. But the
norteamericanos
don’t want to see people lying dead in the streets of Madrid. Not while they’re here, anyway. They prefer such things to occur out of sight. Find out who sold these drugs. If it’s the Dominicans, arrest them quietly and discreetly
after the fucking trade talks are over, not before. When we tell you to.
You do understand what I just said, don’t you,
Comandante
?’

‘I understand perfectly,
mi Almirante.’

Carrero frowned. ‘I hope so, Guzmán. Because if the
Yanquis
think we aren’t in control of our own capital, they might think twice about trading with us. And if that happens, you’ll be the one who’s blamed.’

‘And if the poisoned drugs were linked to General Valverde’s businesses?’

‘A good question,’ Carrero said. ‘A couple of months ago I’d have said it would damage his standing, even hasten his retirement. But his influence with the
Caudillo
has grown lately. He’s been working with a number of economists and businessmen developing strategies for economic growth.’

‘And the
Caudillo
takes him seriously?’ Guzmán scoffed.

‘Unfortunately yes.’ Carrero frowned. ‘The
Caudillo
believes his ideas could enrich Spain in the years to come.’

‘I see.’ Guzmán was incredulous.
Enrich Spain. Enrich Franco, more like.

‘The instructions remain the same, Guzmán. Keep an eye on him. But try not to infuriate him any more than usual. You never know, the way he’s going, he might end up commanding you one day.’

Guzmán moved ahead of the admiral to open the door.

‘One more thing, Guzmán.’ The admiral gestured imperiously for Guzmán to leave the door closed. He reached into his leather coat and took out a piece of paper. ‘Deal with this individual, will you?’

Guzmán took the paper and looked at the name and address. ‘No one I know.’ He shrugged.

‘That’s not important,’ Carrero Blanco said, with a hint of irritation. ‘What is important is that the
Caudillo
wishes you to deal with him as you’ve dealt with so many enemies of Spain.’