SPANISH ROCK

by Lex Lander

  Accepting that my bargaining power was nil, I proceeded to tell him the whole story, and even managed to stick to the truth. Nobody interrupted. One of the gorillas cleared his throat now and again, otherwise my voice, hollow in that underground chamber, had the floor to itself. Even when I had finished, General Irazola did not immediately speak, tapping an index finger on his philtrum, eyes only for the thumb of ash at the tip of his cigar. It was Navarro who broke the silence.

  ‘For this … work you make for the father of Miss Pridham. How much have he pay you?’

  ‘Not a dime.’

  ‘Please?’

  Irazola intervened. ‘He means he was not paid.’ The ash toppled from the cigar onto the table. He shifted his gaze to me. ‘You agreed to look for this girl without payment?’ His tone was incredulous.

  ‘All I said was that I would keep an eye open for her. You understand the expression?’

  ‘Yes. And the distinction,’ he added, just to show how extensive was his knowledge of English semantics. ‘I could believe this if you had not followed … not pursued Miss Pridham from Fuengirola to Cala de Mijas at great speed.’ He paused, then rattled off some Spanish at Navarro. The latter puffed out his cheeks like a glass blower.

  ‘Cientocinquenta kilmetros por hora?’ Navarro hazarded. A hundred and fifty kph. That much even I could savvy.

  ‘Just so.’ Irazola tilted back on his chair, fixed me with a sceptical gaze. ‘A dangerous speed. Just for the purpose of telling her to contact her parents. Miss Pridham is a … free agent, is the correct expression, I think. An adult. Responsible only to herself.’

  ‘It wasn’t a hundred and fifty. She kept to the limit, so did I. I did it for her parents. They’re worried about her, and I promised to look out for her.’ I gave a shrug, or maybe it was a shiver. ‘I had nothing else to do.’

  Irazola dipped his handsome head. A near-smile played across his features.

  ‘You are some kind of playboy? Is that what you would have me believe, Mr Warner?’

  ‘Well …’ I hesitated, unsure of the nature of his relationship with Linda Pridham.

  ‘Go on. You may speak frankly.’

  I blew into my cupped hands. My fingers were numb.

  ‘I was only going to say … I might not have bothered if she was ugly.’

  Feet shuffled behind me. Navarro stared fixedly at some invisible point on the far wall. Had I spoken out of turn? Irazola himself was impassive. Maybe the firm, aggressive jaw had tightened a shade, the hazel eyes narrowed marginally. Or maybe I was imagining these subtle shifts in his composure. I was so cold I scarcely cared any more.

  ‘Mr Warner … I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I am going to believe your pathetic little story.’ He rocked back on two legs of his chair, eyebrows hoisted as if awaiting a gush of gratitude.

  I managed a frozen grin. ‘It may be pathetic but it’s the truth.’

  He wasn’t sure how to take that, but smiled back readily enough.

  ‘You’ve gotten what you want, General,’ I said, flapping smoke from the space between us. ‘Now, how about that explanation?’

  The smile stayed put but became fixed.

  ‘What explanation?’

  ‘The reason why you illegally abducted me because I followed an American girl, a foreigner, who can’t possibly be of any interest to the Spanish military.’

  Behind me, in the quiet that followed, a discreet cough from Navarro. In an apparently fossilised state, he was still studying the wall. Irazola contributed more smoke to the already dense atmosphere. My eyes were beginning to water. I was thirsty. I was cold. I was thoroughly pissed off.

  ‘Comandante,’ he said, his voice soft and level. Navarro stiffened to attention. There followed a stream of Spanish.

  ‘Si, mi general.’ Navarro barked a command and behind me the two guards stamped their feet in perfect harmony, and did a quick-march exit. Navarro pivoted on one foot, stamped the other and went out without a sidelong glance. The door closed leaving me alone with Irazola. He wasn’t armed, so if I was going to make a break, it had to be now or not at all.

  He rose. I massaged some feeling into my chilled forearms and watched him pace. For his age he looked to be in good physical shape: slim of waist, no flab above or below the belt, a solid-looking chest. Slightly shorter than me, say five-ten, but height has never been a prerequisite for military advancement. Look at Napoleon, look at Montgomery.

  Irazola dropped the remains of his cigar on the floor, ground it to powder with the heel of an elegant riding boot.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, turning to look at me, hands behind his back, ‘you do merit some sort of explanation.’

  ‘At least.’

  He ignored that.

  ‘Can I rely upon your absolute discretion?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said unhesitatingly. ‘If that’s what it takes.’

  ‘Very well.’ He threw his shoulders back as if to brace himself. ‘Miss Pridham is my mistress.’

  * * * * *

  There was no Señora Irazola. She was gone these fifteen years. Sensationally beautiful, I was told, she had dumped her general – then a mere half-colonel – leaving their two children in his care, to take up with a flamenco dancer. A year later the dancer turned nasty and knifed her to death.

  Irazola related this poignant little tale over the dessert – some sort of fruit pie, syrupy, on a thin crumbly pastry that truly did melt on the tongue. I had never been much of a devotee of Spanish cooking but this evening’s spread had me revising my opinion.

  ‘You never married again?’ I asked.

  ‘We wouldn’t let him,’ his daughter, Elena, said in English that was the equal of her father’s.

  Irazola rumbled under his breath.

  ‘How’s that?’ I asked Elena.

  ‘Luis and I were seven when Mama went,’ Elena explained. ‘Not quite old enough to understand why. We thought it was because Papa had been cruel to her. We often heard them screaming at each other when we were in bed – our house was not so grand in those days. For a time after she left, Papa wasn’t interested in ladies. When he finally brought one home we played a trick on her …’ She snickered behind her hand.

  ‘It was so funny,’ her brother, Luis, chimed in. ‘We made a mixture of oil and soot and fixed it on the door so it would fall on her when she came in …’

  ‘Only Papa came in first …’ Elena chuckled.

  ‘Of course we were severely punished …’

  ‘But that didn’t matter because we succeeded the second time …’

  ‘And she never came again.’

  General Irazola glowered indulgently at the memory.

  Elena was still chuckling. ‘Then there was the night we put a dead rat in the soup tureen.’

  Luis shared her merriment. ‘And fleas in the bed of that horrible woman from Cadiz – the one with the hairy mole on her nose. I never understood why you liked her so much, Papa. She had the face of a pig.’

  ‘A very ugly pig,’ Elena emphasised.

  Irazola grunted. ‘She was rich, and in those days we were poor, well, fairly poor. The pay of a coronel-teniente did not go far, not with you two gobbling up so much of it.’

  I sipped neutrally at my champagne and stayed on the sidelines of this family banter. It was odd, but running through it I sensed a thread of enmity. It was as if the repartee was staged, a cover-up for some deep mutual dislike. Most likely it was no more than my imagination working overtime.

  The Irazola children were twins, in their early twenties, I gauged. Not much physical likeness except about the eyes and the skin colouring, though having said that, all Spaniards of my acquaintance are sallow complexioned. One feature Elena and Luis had in common was their striking good looks. If anything, Luis, was the more perfect – slim, athletic, with regular features that toned with the physique. He had the air of a cut-throat razor: touch him in the wrong place and you’d open up your skin. Elena was of average height with a tendency to
buxomness that was exaggerated by a tiny waist. Her legs, I had earlier noted, were long and well-shaped and topped by a compact pair of buttocks. Her face was a smidgen too round for classic beauty, even redeemed by hooded brown eyes and a soft, expressive mouth, which in turn was marred by the smudge of a moustache. She wore a fringe, straight and over-long and was constantly flicking it aside.

  She caught me out in my scrutiny and stopped in mid-sentence. A flush spread over her face, unnoticed by father and brother, who had taken up where Elena left off, with an account of the downfall of yet another of the General’s hapless paramours. I smiled at her noncommittally, which flustered her even more, so that she looked away.

  ‘You haven’t yet told us who Mr Warner is, Papa,’ she said, stammering a little in her discomfiture, as a breach opened up in the reminiscing. ‘I mean, we know he’s English, wishing to buy a property in Fuengirola, but that’s all. How did you meet? Are you doing some business together?’ She gave me a long look that was meant, I guessed, to be intriguing. She just didn’t have the panache to pull it off. So as not to disappoint her I did my best to look intrigued.

  Irazola spooned up the last morsel of tart and held it suspended, a spoon’s length short of his mouth. ‘Mr Warner and I met as a result of a misunderstanding.’ Then, facing me, ‘For the treatment you received at the hands of my men, I apologise most sincerely. I hope it will not prevent us from establishing, ah … cordial relations.’ He glanced at me, an unspoken enquiry pulling his eyebrows up at the edges.

  ‘On the contrary,’ I said in my smoothest, most sycophantic manner. ‘I hope we’ll meet again some sunny day.’

  These words of smarm came not from a forgiving nature but out of self-interest. You never knew when you might need friends in exalted places. As an SIS operative in my twenties, I had schooled myself to avoid antagonising power wielders out of pique. My success rate was lower than I would have liked.

  Neither of the twins attempted to draw Irazola out further on the subject of their guest, and the talk slid into a debate on the Catalonian independence movement and its chances of breaking away from the rest of Spain. Every once in a while, I caught Elena, and less often, Luis, directing a look almost of hostility at their father whenever his attention was elsewhere. It was puzzling.

  A female servant came to clear away the dishes and serve coffee and liqueurs. I contributed desultorily to the debate, which was carried out in English out of courtesy to me. As it began to dry up, Irazola suddenly said, ‘Play something for us, Elena.’

  Elena nodded, looking pleased. She wandered over to a far corner of the room where a grand piano stood, partially obscured by a screen. On the curved side of the case the words, picked out in gold, Steinway and Son.

  Elena sat on the bench. The music rack was empty so I figured she was good enough to do without.

  A short pause to compose herself then she launched into a piece that I didn’t recognise at once. A few bars along it hit me. It was the Funeral March, but in a faster tempo than intended by Chopin. General Irazola was frowning, perhaps at her choice of music. She didn’t notice. Her back was to him and she was absorbed in the piece, her body swaying in time, her fingers flowing over the keys like poured oil, the light of the chandelier skipping over highlights in her raven hair.

  The clock with the octagonal dial set into an immense rococo dresser opposite me struck eleven-thirty. I was tired. There was nothing to keep me here, now that the General and I had ‘established cordial relations’. The BMW had been collected and was parked outside the main entrance. If they had discovered the secret compartment with its lethal occupant, I guessed I would have known before now. I ran the linen napkin over my lips.

  Elena wound up the March with its simplified and, in my opinion, too-abrupt coda, and crossed the room amid appreciative applause from we three males.

  She curtseyed with a flourish and resumed her seat.

  ‘I am a bit out of practice,’ she said modestly.

  ‘Nonsense, my dear,’ Irazola demurred. ‘But next time you play the March please stick to lento. In largo it is too frivolous.’

  I tendered my congratulations to Elena on her piano playing, omitting her father’s qualifier. To Irazola I said, ‘General, I must ask you to excuse me. It’s a long drive to Fuengirola.’

  He stared, as if I had let go a loud and noxious fart. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mr Warner. What kind of host would I be to turn out a guest at this hour of the night? The least we can do is offer you a room for tonight.’ He raised a peremptory hand, as if to forestall my objections, though I had none. A soft bed a mere staircase away had the ring of something close to paradise.

  ‘Of course you must stay,’ Luis said, his smile quick and warm. He had an attractive personality that went well with his appearance.

  Elena just looked at me with smouldering eyes. There was a lot of pent-up passion stored away there, waiting for the right combination to release it. Not that, with her looks, she should be short of applicants for her favours. Maybe she fancied a bit of Anglo-Saxon stud as a change from the Latin variety. I pretended not to notice.

  * * * * *

  I was sliding into a cocoon of crisp white linen when I remembered I hadn’t visited the bathroom. The need was not pressing but to ignore it was to risk being forced out from between my warm sheets in the small hours, to trek down fifty metres of corridor to the elderly and unheated bathroom I had used earlier.

  So I wrapped Luis’ spare bathrobe around my naked body, and peeked out. My room was close to the head of the stairs. Here at first-floor level all was quiet; only the faintest mutter of voices below hinted at continuing table talk in the dining room. I was stepping out onto the narrow strip of red and gold scrolled carpet that ran the length of the corridor when a telephone rang down below, at the foot of the stairs. I trekked on towards the bathroom. When I was about halfway there the ringing stopped.

  ‘Quién habla?’ I heard someone say faintly.

  The toilet had a noisy flush that followed me back down the corridor and not until I came up to my door did I hear General Irazola delivering a blistering harangue in Spanish. Though most of the words meant nothing to me the tenor was unmistakeable. As I crossed the threshold he switched abruptly to English and, without thinking, I slowed to eavesdrop. My espionage breeding has been known to get the better of my good manners.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ were Irazola’s first words in my native tongue. ‘You made me angry and I curse better in my own language. I will say it for you in plain English: I cannot begin preparations for moving my troops until the date for the talks has been fixed. It is not even certain yet that either the Spanish Government or the British will agree to talks. If they do not, we must think again. In any case, de Cadalso has the Prime Minister’s ear, he will keep me fully informed. It is the King who will be the stumbling block.’ A short break for his caller to have his say, then, ‘What do you think?’

  I edged towards the balcony. Irazola’s tan-coloured crown came into view above the landing floor. He had his back to me. He was silent, head nodding, as the other party rambled at length.

  ‘Gibraltar is not the priority it once was, my good Ricardo. The King and many in the Government consider it irrelevant. They are too wrapped up in the problems of the European Union, terrorism, immigration and water shortages. However, do not be despondent. I have de Cadalso’s personal assurance that he and Querol will raise the matter at the next sitting and force the issue.’

  More nodding while the ‘good Ricardo’ discoursed anew.

  ‘Promises have been made,’ Irazola said, with a touch of irritation. ‘You know this.’

  A second or two later, a snort from Irazola.

  ‘You know very well to whom. To Lavrov for one. I meet with him in St Petersburg on Saturday. He is not a patient man and Vladimir the Great even less so. They demand …’

  I never got to hear about the demands of Lavrov, whoever he might be, and the even-less-impatient Vladimir (could this
conceivably be Putin?) because Luis emerged from the dining room at that point, called out ‘Buenos noches, Papa,’ and began to ascend the stairs at a run.

  From inside my room, my back pressed against the door and my heart bumping, I heard him walk down the corridor whistling. I allowed him a full sixty seconds before opening the door a crack. The ping of a telephone receiver being replaced reached me, followed by the general’s brisk tread on the tiled hall floor. I had learned as much as there was to be learned.

  The sheets had chilled thanks to my prolonged absence. I lay between them, shivering a little, wondering why I had listened in on my host’s private conversation. I had no cause to spy on him.

  Wondered too, who was Ricardo and what he and possibly the Russians had to do with de Cadalso who had the Prime Minister’s ear, and Gibraltar. My dormant MI6 instincts were awake and baying for enlightenment.

  I fell asleep, none the wiser.

  * * * * *

  ‘A small favour, General,’ I said next morning as I took my leave on the doorstep.

  ‘If I possibly can.’

  ‘Ask Linda … Miss Pridham, to make contact with her parents. Let them know she’s okay. Send an email or something. I could do it, but it would come better from her.’

  ‘It does not seem a lot to ask.’ He was less formally dressed this morning in a beige short-sleeved shirt that clung to every bulge and hollow of his impressive torso, and matching pants with a crease that was painful in its precision. Not a wrinkle in sight. A contrast to my freshly-laundered and mended but decidedly battle-scarred vacation garb.

  We shook hands. He had a mean grip. Luis came forward. His grip was a fraction easier on the knuckles though by no means soft, while Elena left her hand in mine just long enough to reinforce last night’s unstated messages.

  ‘We’ll see you again, I hope,’ she murmured.

  ‘I’ll look forward to it.’ That was as much encouragement as I dared give her in front of her old man.

  General Irazola said, ‘I almost forgot – leave me the number of your movil, will you, Mr Warner.’