The Siege

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  “I can’t guarantee the accuracy … I can tell you in strict confidence that I have spent months trying to hit the Customs House where the Regency meet. But nothing.”

  “It is the area that interests me. Anywhere around this spot.” It is now the policeman who leans over the map.

  “For a while I wondered if you weren’t some sort of a madman,” Desfosseux says. “But I made some inquiries after I received your letter … I know who you are and what you do.”

  The policeman says nothing but simply stares at him, the smoldering cigar between his teeth.

  “In any case,” says Desfosseux, “why should I help you?”

  “Because no man, be he French or Spanish, likes to see young girls murdered.”

  It is a fair answer, the captain has to admit. Even Lieutenant Bertoldi would agree with such a statement. But he does not want to go further on to this terrain. The wolfish fang he glimpsed a moment before dispelled any illusions he might have. The man in front of him is not a humanitarian, merely a policeman.

  “We are at war, monsieur,” he says, distancing himself. “People die every day in their hundreds, in their thousands. In fact, it is my job as an artilleryman in the Imperial Army to kill as many inhabitants of the city as I can … and that includes you, and these girls.”

  The policeman smiles. Fine, the expression says; no more tugging at the heartstrings.

  “Very well, I get the point,” he says abruptly. “You know you should help me. I can see it in your face.”

  Now it is Desfosseux’s turn to laugh. “I’ve changed my mind. You really are a madman.”

  “No. I am simply fighting my own war.”

  He says this with a shrug of his shoulders and a gruff, unexpected candor that makes Desfosseux think. He can understand what the policeman said perfectly. Everyone has his own parabolas and trajectories to deal with.

  “What about my man?”

  The policeman looks at him, confused. “Which man?”

  “The one you arrested.”

  The Spaniard’s expression softens. He has understood, but he does not seem surprised by this turn of the conversation. It is almost as though he has been expecting it.

  “Do you really care?”

  “Yes. I want him to live.”

  “Then he shall live”—a cryptic smile—“I promise you.”

  “I want you to send him back to us.”

  The policeman tilts his head as if considering the matter.

  “I can try, but that is all,” he says finally. “But that, too, I promise you: I shall try.”

  “Give me your word.”

  The comisario looks at him with surprise.

  “My word is not worth a damn, monsieur le capitaine. But if it is within my power, I will send him to you.”

  “So, what is your plan?”

  “I plan to set a trap.” The wolfish canine tooth glitters again. “And bait it, if I can.”

  THE SUN SHIMMERS on the water, its dazzle illuminating the white city within the dark girdle of its walls, as though all the light held captive by the blanket of low cloud is spilling from the heavens. Dazzled by the sudden glare, Pépé Lobo squints, bringing his hat forward and pressing it down so it is not swept away by the wind. He is standing beneath the shroud lines on the starboard bow, and he has a letter in his hands.

  “What the hell are you planning to do?” asks Ricardo Maraña.

  They are speaking privately, in low voices. Hence Maraña’s rather familiar tone. The first mate of the Culebra is leaning on the gunwale next to the captain. The cutter is anchored a short distance from the jetty, prow facing into the strong south-southeasterly wind, with the boom pointed toward Puntales and the far end of the bay.

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  Maraña skeptically tilts his head to one side. He clearly does not approve. “It is lunacy,” he says. “We sail tomorrow morning.”

  Pépé Lobo looks at the letter again: neatly folded in four, sealed with wax, the handwriting elegant and clear. Three lines and a signature: Lorenzo Virués de Tresaco. It was brought out to him half an hour ago by two army officers who arrived in a boat rented from the jetty—they sat tensely, stiffly formal in their white gloves and frockcoats (somewhat damp from the spray), swords between their legs, while the boatman rowed against the wind and asked permission to hitch on to the chainplate. The officers—a lieutenant in the Engineers and a captain in the Irish Regiment—elected not to come aboard, merely passing up the dispatch and leaving without waiting for a response.

  “How soon do you have to reply?” Maraña asks.

  “Before noon. The meeting is set for tonight.”

  He gives the letter to the first officer, who reads it in silence then hands it back.

  “Was the insult really so serious? It didn’t look so from where I was sitting.”

  Lobo shrugs fatalistically. “I called him a coward in front of all those people.”

  Maraña gives the thinnest of frozen smiles. “Well,” he says, “it’s your problem. You don’t have to go.”

  The two sailors stand in silence, listening to the wind howl in the shroud lines overhead, as they stare at the jetty and the city beyond. Around the cutter pass sails of every kind: square sails, lateen sails, lug sails. Boats and small crafts move across the rippling water, weaving between the tall merchant ships, while the English and Spanish frigates and corvettes ride at anchor farther away, safely out of range of the French artillery, grouped around two 74-gun British warships, their sails furled and topsails lowered.

  “The timing is bad,” Maraña says suddenly. “We are about to put out again, after all those wasted weeks … These men all depend on you.”

  He turns and gestures to the deck. Brasero the bo’sun and the rest of the crew are tarring the rigging and caulking the spaces between the boards, after which the deck will be scrubbed and polished with holystone. Pépé Lobo looks at their sweaty, weather-beaten faces, little different from the faces one might see through the bars of the Royal Jail—indeed, some of their number came straight from there. The tattooed bodies and unmistakable features of seafaring lowlife. In the past forty-eight hours, the crew has lost two men: one was stabbed yesterday during a brawl on the Calle Sopranis, and the other is in the hospital with the French pox.

  “You’ll have me in tears, with your talk of all our brave men … You’ll break my heart.”

  Maraña laughs heartily now, only to stop suddenly, seized by a wet, hacking cough. He leans over the side and spits into the sea.

  “If anything should go wrong,” says Lobo, “you can easily take my place aboard.”

  Still catching his breath, the lieutenant takes a kerchief from his sleeve and wipes his mouth.

  “Don’t make me angry,” he says, his voice still hoarse. “I like things the way they are.”

  There is a blast, some two miles off the port bow. Almost immediately, a cannonball fired from the Cabezuela ten seconds earlier splits the air above the Culebra’s mast, heading for the city. The men on deck look up, following the path of the shell, which lands on the far side of the wall with no noise and causing no apparent damage. Disappointed, the crew go back to their chores.

  “I think I shall go,” says Lobo. “You will be my second.”

  Maraña nods as though this were part of his job. “We need a third man,” he says.

  “Hogwash. You’ll be more than enough.”

  Another blast from the Cabezuela; another shell rips through the air, causing everyone to look up. This one, too, seems to cause little damage.

  “The place they are proposing is not bad,” says Maraña evenly. “The reef by Santa Catalina will be deserted at low water. That will give you enough time and space to settle the matter.”

  “And since it lies outside the walls, we need not feel constrained by the ordinances of the city … We can claim to be acting within the law.”

  Maraña tilts his head, vaguely admiring. “Well then. I’ve studied our lit
tle soldier from Aragon. He clearly bears you ill will”—he looks at Lobo coolly—“since Gibraltar, I suppose.”

  “I am the one who bears him ill will.”

  Still looking out toward the sea and the city, Lobo notices that his first officer is staring at him intently. When he turns to face him, Maraña looks away.

  “Personally, I would use a pistol,” suggests Maraña. “It is cleaner and quicker.”

  His words are interrupted by another coughing fit. This time his kerchief is stained with spots of blood. He folds it carefully and stuffs it back into his sleeve.

  “Listen, Captain, you still have a few things to do aboard this ship. Responsibilities and so forth. Whereas …” He pauses for a moment, lost in thought. As though he has forgotten what he was about to say. “Whereas I’m running out of cards. I’ve nothing to lose.”

  He leans over the gunwale, gaunt and ashen, as if straining for the fresh air his damaged lungs so clearly lack. His elegant, close-fitting black frockcoat, with its fine cloth and long tails, accentuates the distinguished image he projects of the prodigal son of a good family who has washed up here by chance. As he looks at the Little Marquis, it occurs to Lobo that Maraña turned twenty-one two months ago and will not live to see twenty-two—that he is doing everything in his power to prevent it.

  “I am a crack shot with a pistol, sir. Better than you.”

  “Go to hell, Maraña.”

  “At this point, I don’t care if I’m playing with fives or aces,” the first mate says with habitual hauteur. “It would be better than dying in some tavern, spitting blood.”

  Pépé Lobo raises his hand. He does not like the turn the conversation has taken. “Forget about it. This individual is my concern.”

  “I have a taste for certain things, as you know.” The lieutenant’s lips curl into an ambiguous, slightly cruel smile. “I like to live life on the edge.”

  “Not at my expense. If you’re in such a hurry to die, throw yourself overboard with cannonballs stuffed in your pockets.”

  Maraña does not answer, as though he is seriously weighing the advantages of this suggestion. “It’s the señora,” he says finally. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it.”

  It is a statement rather than a question. The two men stand for a moment in silence, gazing out at the city, spread before them like a vast ship; depending on the light and the water, it sometimes seems to float, and sometimes seems stranded on the black outcrop of rocks. Eventually, Maraña takes out a cigar and puts it in his mouth.

  “Very well. I hope you kill the bastard. For the nuisance he has caused.”

  THE ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE of the Royal Armada is in a two-story building on the main street of the Isla de Léon. For half an hour now Felipe Mojarra—wearing a dark jacket, a kerchief on his head, a knife in his belt and a pair of rope sandals—has been waiting in the narrow corridor on the ground floor with some twenty other people: sailors in uniform, peasants, elderly men, and women dressed in black carrying children in their arms. There is a fog of tobacco smoke, and a murmur of conversation, all of which revolves around the same thing: unpaid pensions and overdue salaries. A marine in a short blue jacket with yellow belting across the chest stands guard in front of the Office of Payments and Arbitration, leaning against a wall filthy with damp and handprints. After some time, a clerk pops his head around the door.

  “Next.”

  Everyone turns to Mojarra, who makes his way through the crowd and steps into the office with a polite “buenos días,” which goes unanswered. He knows the building well from his previous visits: the corridor, the office and those who work here. Behind a small desk strewn with paperwork and surrounded by filing cabinets—on one of which there is half a loaf of bread and an empty wine bottle—a sub-lieutenant is working, aided by a clerk. The salter stands in front of the desk. He knows both men—the sub-lieutenant is always the same one, the clerks work in shifts—but he also recognizes that, to them, he is merely one more face among the dozens they see every day.

  “Mojarra, Felipe … I’ve come to find out where things stand with the reward for the capture of the gunboat.”

  “Date?”

  Mojarra gives the relevant details. He remains standing, since no one offers him the chair that languishes in a corner: it has been put there deliberately, to make sure that those who enter do not sit on it. While the clerk looks through the filing cabinets, the sub-lieutenant returns to the papers on his desk. After a moment, the clerk sets down a large ledger and a wallet of handwritten documents.

  “Mojarra, you said?”

  “That’s right. It should also be recorded under the names Francisco Panizo and Bartolomé Cárdenas, now deceased.”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  The clerk, standing next to the officer, points to a line in the ledger. Having read it, the sub-lieutenant opens the wallet and searches through the documents until he finds the right one.

  “Ah, here it is. Request for a reward payment for the capture of a French gunboat at Santa Cruz mill … Case pending.”

  “What did you say?”

  The sub-lieutenant shrugs his shoulders without looking up. He has protruding eyes, his hair is thinning, and he needs a shave. He looks exhausted. The carelessly unbuttoned collar of his blue jacket reveals a shirt that looks less than clean.

  “I said the matter is pending,” he says listlessly. “It has not yet been dealt with by the relevant authorities.”

  “But the piece of paper here …”

  A brief, disdainful glance—that of a busy civil servant.

  “Do you know how to read?”

  “Not very well … No.”

  The officer taps the document with a paperknife.

  “This is a copy of the original report: the request filed by you and your companions, which has not yet been approved. It requires a signature from the captain general, then one from the administrator, and finally one from the Treasurer of the Navy.”

  “But they should already be there, I think.”

  “Your claim hasn’t been rejected: you should count yourself lucky.”

  “It has been a long time.”

  “There’s no point telling me.” The officer lifts the knife and, with a gruff, weary gesture, indicates the door. “It’s not as if it’s my money.”

  Considering the matter closed, he looks down at his papers. Then, noticing that Mojarra has not moved, he looks up again.

  “As I told you—”

  He breaks off when he sees the expression on Mojarra’s face, the hard features of a man weathered by the sun and winds of the salt marshes. His eyes move to the man’s hands, the thumbs hooked into his belt, either side of the knife.

  “Listen to me, señor.” The salter’s tone has not changed. “My brother-in-law died because of that French gunboat … I have been fighting on the Isla de Léon since the war started.”

  He says no more, but stands, staring at the officer. His calm is merely a front. One more insolent remark, he is thinking, and as God is my witness I might well do for you, and sign my own death warrant. The sub-lieutenant, who seems to read his mind, glances quickly toward the door and the Navy guard on the other side. He changes tack.

  “This is just how these things happen; they take time … The Armada is short of funds, and this award is a lot of money …”

  His tone is different—strained and conciliatory, softer, more wary. These are uncertain times, what with the Constitution being decided; you never know who you might run into some dark night in the street. Standing next to him holding the documents, the clerk watches the scene play out wordlessly. Mojarra thinks he can see a secret satisfaction in the way the man is eyeing his superior.

  “We are poor people,” the salter protests.

  The sub-lieutenant shrugs helplessly. Now, at least, he is sincere—or attempting to appear so. “Do you get paid, my friend?”

  Mojarra nods uncertainly. “Sometimes. And we get a little food for the pot.” />
  “Then you’re lucky. Especially about the food. Because those people out in the hallway are poor, too. They cannot fight, they cannot work, so they do not even have what you have … Take a good look at them as you leave: old sailors left destitute because they cannot get their pensions, invalids, widows and orphans who receive no help whatsoever, salaries that have not been paid for twenty-nine months now. Every day I see people come through that door who are worse off than you … What do you expect me to do?”

  Without answering, Mojarra turns to leave. Then he stops for a moment in the doorway.

  “To treat us with a little humanity,” he says hoarsely. “To show us a little respect.”

  ON THE REEF left exposed by low tide, 500 varas beyond Santa Catalina Castle near La Caleta, a lantern set on the uneven, shelled limestone illuminates two men, who stand, fifteen paces from one another, at opposite extremes of the circle of light. Neither wears a hat or coat. Traditionally, they should be in shirtsleeves or bare-chested—too much fabric increases the risk from shrapnel and infections if a bullet should hit home—but it is two o’clock in the morning and bitterly cold. Too little clothing might cause a man’s hand to shake as he aims, to say nothing of the fact that the slightest shiver might be misinterpreted by the witnesses: off to one side, silent and grave, stand four men muffled up in topcoats and capes, intermittently picked out in the glare from the lighthouse at San Sebastián. Of the two men facing each other, one wears a blue uniform waistcoat, close-fitting breeches in the same color and military boots, the other is dressed in black. Even the scarf masking the collar of his shirt is black. Pépé Lobo has decided to follow the expert advice of Ricardo Maraña: bright colors merely make it easier for an opponent. As you well know, Captain. In profile, and in black, you offer a more difficult target for a bullet.

  Standing perfectly still, the corsair tries to calm his nerves as he waits for the signal. He breathes slowly, clearing his mind—forcing himself to focus only on the man facing him. His right hand hanging by his side, he presses a long-barreled flintlock pistol—ideally suited to the task at hand—against his thigh. Its twin is in the hand of his opponent; Pépé Lobo cannot make him out clearly, since, like the corsair himself, he is standing on the edge of the circle, ghostly in the lamplight, halfway between light and shadow. The duelists will be able to see more clearly when the signal is given and they walk toward each other, toward the lantern. The rules agreed by the seconds are simple: a single shot, with each man free to choose the moment to open fire as they advance toward each other. From afar, he who fires first has the advantage, but risks missing his target at such a distance. At close range it is easier to aim, but he who hesitates too long before squeezing the trigger may find himself with a bullet in the chest. It is like playing blackjack: if you go bust you lose, but you also lose if you fail to make the points.