SPANISH ROCK

by Lex Lander

  ‘You mean you’re going to abandon us just because Michael has fallen in love with your girl?’ Peter took hold of my sleeve again, tugging at it in his agitation.

  ‘Put yourself in his place,’ El Jefe said, calm and unflappable, a disinterested observer.

  ‘What do they mean, Warner?’ Linda demanded. ‘What’s all this talk about abandoning them?’

  I couldn’t bring myself to speak to her.

  ‘But you helped us,’ Peter fumed, then, in an appeal to Vella: ‘He helped us.’ Ironic that he of all people, who once tried to kill me, should now try to enlist me.

  ‘Never,’ I denied. ‘I never helped you. I work for money, not causes.’

  ‘Not so,’ Vella said, stirred at last to respond. ‘In the beginning, yes, but not now. You didn’t come here today for money. You came because you can differentiate between right and wrong. You came to keep faith – don’t deny it.’

  I backed away, towards the door. All of them watching me: Linda ashen, Peter flushed with anger. Vella and El Jefe stoic, emotions under control.

  ‘You’re a fighter at heart,’ El Jefe said mildly.

  ‘I’m a spy, not a gunslinger.’ I was seeking excuses, lying to them and to myself.

  ‘Warner – don’t go.’ This from Linda. I closed my ears, closed my heart, closed my conscience.

  I left them there. Left them to fight their battle without me. I was done with it all: with Gibraltar, with GIBESTÁ, with Vella and his raggle-taggle militia, and with Linda, the girl I didn’t quite love but had certainly trusted. Let Irazola’s divisions roll over them. Let them hoist their red and yellow standard on the Rock’s highest point. Let them plunge Spain into rule by dictatorship. Let them even hook up with Russia and take control of the Strait of Gibraltar and with it the Mediterranean.

  As I descended the stairs a thought hit me with the force of a heavyweight punch. What had I said up there? I’m a spy, not a gunslinger. But that wasn’t true, was it? If anything, I was more gunslinger than spy. And as gunslinger maybe I had a lot more to contribute than Vella’s militia. A man with a particular gun and a particular set of skills is in a position to achieve things beyond the scope and competence of a makeshift army, no matter how many strong.

  * * * * *

  I dined at the Caleta though it was eating for eating’s sake. No reflection on the standard of the cuisine but the fish resembled cotton wool and the vegetables all tasted alike. Even the wine – a Chablis Premier Cru, glinting gold-green – might have been some cheap tourist muck.

  As I finished off the bottle, I surveyed the dining room. The other diners were mostly visitors to the Rock. If they knew what I knew the exodus would be instantaneous. Not that rushing to the airport would save them; tomorrow’s flight to the UK was destined to be the last for many a day. But had I climbed on a table and warned them with a megaphone they would take me for a madman. Shriek with hilarity probably, as if I were a comedy act.

  In the evening this, the eastern side of the Rock would always be in shadow, winter and summer alike. Now, as I sat there with my forebodings, the darkening sea took on a sombre aspect, the turgid swell sinister and menacing as some fearsome creature was lurking in its depths, waiting to be unleashed. Eve-of-war tristesse? Perhaps others before me, in August 1914 and August 1939, possessed of similar foreknowledge of conflict, had been overcome with such heaviness of heart as now afflicted me.

  As well as mental anguish I was suffering physically. The hospital’s painkillers were wearing off. My head was pounding, and the burns on my leg throbbed with ever more intensity. Even when a stunner of a girl, alone and on the face of it unspoken for, was shown to a table opposite I viewed her with as much passion as a policeman surveying passing traffic.

  A liqueur bucked me up enough to indulge in some idle speculation on Richard Kirkland, and whether he had recovered from that kick to the skull. His phoney ID was blown. He was finished as the Prime Minister’s aide, finished in Britain, period.

  What would London be making of his and my disappearance? Another black mark for Warner, of that you could be sure. And if war did break out, what would be the fate of my still unsold bar in Malaga? To conclude the sale meant returning to Spain – and a Spain under the boot of Presidente Generalissimo Julio Irazola was a place to be avoided. The only saving grace was that if my venture into the hospitality trade did go down the pan, it wouldn’t leave me penniless.

  * * * * *

  The nasal tones of Keith Jupp were the audio double of Ringo Starr. He was Liverpool-born and proud of it to the point of decorating the living room walls of his house with 45rpm singles of all the Beatles’ hits start to finish. Pride of place, in a silver frame, was the rare and valuable 78rpm pressing of the group’s version, recorded when they were still the Quarrymen, of the Crickets’ “That’ll be the Day” hit. One of only fifty in circulation.

  After the usual enquiries about health we got down to business.

  ‘I want a sniper’s rifle, the best you can lay your hands on at short notice.’

  ‘Not a problem, not a problem. You want to take out a person or a tank?’

  He wasn’t being entirely flippant about the tank. The Barrett M96, best sniper rifle in the world, shoots a 0.5in cartridge and has a range not far short of a mile. Originally it was designed as an “anti-materiel” weapon.

  ‘A mere human. Range up to fifteen hundred metres, say.’

  ‘Delivery where?’

  ‘Gibraltar.’

  ‘Gibraltar! You don’t want much, do you, mate? Crossing borders is expensive. I’ll have to deliver by boat.’

  ‘No, you won’t. We’ll use mine. Bring it to La Línea, and we’ll do the transfer there. ‘

  Terms were discussed and agreed. He would drive overnight from his home in the town of Berga, in the mountains north of Barcelona, and expected to be in La Línea by mid-day tomorrow. If he was on time that would leave just seventeen hours before Irazola’s tanks were due to cross the border.

  * * * * *

  At the border it was business as usual. The Brits weren’t interested in me. Even on the Spanish side I was waved through on a casual flourish of my British passport. The laissez-faire attitude had me suspecting the border police had been instructed to let me in for the express purpose of picking me up down the road. But no, I drove to the Alcaidesa Marina, a stone’s throw from the border, and nobody paid me heed. Seamist, being one of the larger craft, was moored at a berth close to the harbour entrance. I parked the Aston twenty metres from it, and was on board a few minutes after mid-day.

  The Levanter was blowing steadily from the east, agitating the sea, making it chuckle against the dark blue hull. The decks and superstructure were under a sheen of beige dust carried by the wind from the Sahara. The Rock loomed over the port from its best-known aspect, the sheer north face, in shadow even with the sun at its zenith.

  Keith had called my cell to warn me he would be late. ‘No more than an hour.’ I used that hour to hose the away the dust and restore the boat to gleaming. It was a few minutes before one o’clock when his black Audi SUV chugged down the service road and drew in next to the Aston. He dismounted, did a quick sweep of the immediate surroundings for potential hostiles. The box he hauled from the Audi’s cargo space was too short for the full length of the rifle I had ordered, meaning he had dismembered it.

  We shook hands, I plied him with a bottle of Bavasienne Blond, my preferred beer. He was partial to it.

  ‘All I came for,’ he grinned, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and burping his approval. He was about fifty, of medium height, with the kind of full lips that women inject with botox to achieve. Shoots of grey were making inroads into his lank brown hair, and while he had always been thickset of build he could now fairly be described as paunchy.

  For form’s sake I told him he was ‘looking prosperous’.

  Never a man to delude himself, he retorted ‘You mean I’m getting fat.’

  We laughed in harm
ony, then got down to business.

  The gun was a Finnish-made Sako TRG42. Among the best snipers’ rifles in the world. The sort of gun you couldn’t miss with. It was the black and green version, made partly of aluminum, with folding stock and cheek pad for users’ greater comfort. He had broken it down into seven pieces, and demonstrated how to reassemble them in less than two minutes, so that it looked like what it was – a lethal weapon. I practiced taking it apart and putting it back together, and by the third cycle was almost able to match his speed.

  ‘You’ll do,’ he grunted.

  The kit included two five-round magazines, both loaded, a carton of twenty-five cartridges, less the ten in the magazines, a Sako custom bipod, and a scope sight.

  The cartridges were .338 calibre Lapua magnums, known as Dangerous Game Solid. Seemed appropriate. Game didn’t come much more dangerous than General Julio Irazola.

  ‘They’ll give you the best range,’ Jupp said.

  His statements were always made poker-faced, as if he were rating the performance of a car tyre or a power drill. Although we never discussed the purpose of the weapons he supplied, he accepted that the intended target was human. Accepted it and didn’t flinch from it. You don’t supply illegal guns for a living if you have issues with their lethal intent.

  The scope was a Leupold Mk 6, $2000-worth of optics, suitable for use in low-light conditions. The specification included a recticle magnifier with range estimation facility. If I couldn’t hit a target with this beauty I was in the wrong game.

  ‘I set it up for one thousand metres, like you said,’ Jupp informed me. ‘It’ll be good for a one-inch grouping a hundred metres either side of that range.’

  ‘Good man.’ I tested the weight. The use of aluminum in the stock made it lighter than many rifles of its size, but at six kilos it was no featherweight.

  ‘Is that right, you won’t be able to test it?’ he asked, lighting a long unfiltered cigarette.

  ‘Nowhere in Gib is out of earshot, and I can’t stay in Spain.’ I gripped his shoulder, squeezed. ‘I guess I’ll have to trust you.’ The grip represented a warning as well as confidence in his skills. In other words, I was content to accept his word on the accuracy and sight settings of the weapon. But if he had steered me wrong I would not be forgiving.

  ‘You should,’ he said, in deadly earnest. Trust was his stock-in-trade. Without it, he would be out of business.

  No money changed hands. That part of the transaction would be by internet transfer from a numbered account to a numbered account. Anonymous, fast, secure.

  ‘If you can hang on to it afterwards, I’ll take it back at a twenty per cent discount,’ he said over our parting handshake.

  It was rare for me to be able to return a weapon. The offer was appreciated though.

  A minute later he was manoeuvring out of the parking bay and setting out on his return drive to Barcelona. The next stage of my operation was to transport myself and the gun back to Gibraltar, where I had already booked mooring space at the Mid-Harbour Marina, through a contact at the Yacht Club introduced by Harry, the Caleta front desk manager. It cost me mega-euros, but I wasn’t in a position to quibble.

  Abandoning the Aston gave me a twinge or two. If all went well, I would recover it after the fuss had died down. If not … Well, the stakes were a whole lot bigger than a set of wheels, even exalted ones.

  For so short a distance I left the sails stowed, and used the engine. Several guys were fishing off the end of the mole. They watched me putter past; I flipped a hand and they responded in kind. Boats came and went here throughout the day, every day. I was nothing remarkable.

  As a precaution against being under surveillance I sailed due south, beyond the Gibraltar town waterfront until the buildings hid me from La Línea, then doubled back to enter the harbour from the south. Even if Irazola’s agents weren’t letting me out of their sight, I was out of their reach for as long as Gib remained in British hands.

  It was Linda who answered Vella’s cell phone, another twist of the knife in the wound of my injured vanity.

  ‘Let me speak to Vella,’ I said, without announcing myself.

  ‘Who … oh, it’s you, Warner. Listen –’

  ‘Put him on,’ I snapped at her.

  Her ‘Oh!’ made me feel like a louse, but she didn’t react in kind and the next voice I heard was Vella’s.

  ‘André? What’s up?’

  ‘You don’t need to assemble your troops. It’s all going to be taken care of.’

  An audible gasp, then ‘Are you serious? The Brits are going to help us after all?’

  A gust of wind stirred up a dust devil on the building site where a block of luxury apartments was to be constructed. Emblematic of Gibraltar’s booming prosperity.

  ‘No, that’s not going to happen. But there’ll be no invasion. Trust me on this.’

  In the silence that came after I could hear him breathing, could sense the uncertainty.

  ‘I wouldn’t mislead you on something so important,’ I insisted. ‘Just go about your lives, you and Eduardo and Peter and the rest of Gibraltar. There’ll be no invasion.’

  ‘All right.’ Reluctantly, heavily. ‘We’ll lie low. You had just better be right.’

  ‘You trusted me before, trust me now,’ I said curtly, and killed the call.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The range from the first embrasure in the Great Siege Tunnels to the border post on Spain’s side was just under eleven hundred metres as the bullet flies. From here I had the same outlook as the gunners of 1783 who had warded off another siege by the Spanish. My firepower was weaker but my range greater and my accuracy twenty times better. I couldn’t expect to hold off an army; but I could cut off the brain, the figurehead, the inspiration, and leave the body directionless.

  It was 4.30am. when I took up my position. The cab driver who conveyed me as far as the Moorish Castle, about a half kilometre from the entrance to the tunnels, was openly curious, even to the point of asking me what I was doing here when the castle was locked up and the ticket office not open for hours.

  ‘It’s a practical joke,’ I told him. ‘You’ll read about it in the papers tomorrow.’

  It was enough to allay any suspicions he might have harboured. He would read about me in the papers, I could guarantee that. He might even recognise my contribution to peace and the salvation of his homeland.

  The false dawn was away across the still waters of the Mediterranean. No birds cheeped, not that many lived this high up the Rock, there being few trees to perch on. Breaking in was easy. I shot the lock with the VP70 Ribble had donated. A silencer would have been useful but it’s surprising how the noise of a pistol shot dissipates in the open air.

  Inside the tunnel the lighting was off, so I used my flashlight. I had the tunnel to myself, if you didn’t count the effigies of gunners and engineers from three centuries ago. If they’d been real they would have approved, that much was certain.

  The first chamber was occupied by an artillery piece and two troopers, one in blue with sergeant’s stripes, the other red and kilted. Being made from wood or alabaster, they took no interest in me as I straddled the metal fence that enclosed the chamber. Even so, it was their home, and I hailed them with a friendly ‘Good morning’ plus apologies for the intrusion.

  By the light of a flashlight I joined up the pieces of the rifle – barrelled receiver, bolt, trigger unit, fore-end, base rail, steel-aluminum-polyurethane folding stock. Then the appendages – sight, bipod, loaded magazine, every .338 round examined for defects. Making sure the safety lever inside the trigger guard was on by gripping it between finger and thumb and thumb and tweaking it backwards.

  As zero hour drew near I was ready with the gun propped on the lower lip of the embrasure, the border post in my sight. Missing was unthinkable. My aim would be true, the gun was an impeccably engineered piece of equipment and my confidence in it absolute. The embrasure, roughly semi-circular, was barred to discourage p
eople who thought they could fly. Between the bars there was plenty of space for me to insert the barrel. I decided the bipod was unnecessary. Resting the fore-end of the gun on the bottom rim of the embrasure would give me adequate stability.

  The false dawn became true as the hour finger of my watch moved towards five and the minute hand towards twelve. Down at the border all was calm and as normal. A small van, headlights still on, was pulling up there and a Spanish guard left his office to inspect the vehicle; the driver alighted to open the rear doors.

  I swigged from the bottle of Evian water, one of a pack of three I had brought, along with some fruit and a bar of chocolate. The waiting game was part of the kill. I wasn’t impatient, or on edge, or in a hurry to get it over with. This was routine stuff to me.

  Thirty minutes later puzzlement was creeping in, displacing the equanimity. Dawn was well and truly here, the tip of the sun’s disc diffusing a pink aura over the horizon, tinting the sea. More cars, some pedestrians were traversing the border, mostly Spanish workers employed in Gib. Just a morning like any other morning.

  By 6.00am. I was pacing the floor, physically and mentally. Puzzlement had been superseded by perplexity. Military manoeuvres worked to strict timetables. Not only that, but the later an attack, the less the chance of achieving surprise.

  The sun was slanting through the embrasure, lighting up my two uniformed co-habitants. I alternated pacing with checking out the border for tanks and thousands of Spanish infantrymen. If the invasion had been called off, so much the better. It saved me from the job of taking out General Irazola. Only problem was, I didn’t believe it had been called off.

  It was 8.25 and I was preparing to leave before the tunnels opened to the public, when an explanation hit me. Irazola had hoped to kill me when he authorised the shooting down of the helicopter. But he couldn’t be sure he had succeeded. If he had undercover agents stationed in Gib, which was highly likely, they would have reported my survival. And if I survived, I would have relayed his invasion plans to the Governor.