He was distracted by movement on the first floor. A burly, swarthy man had just stepped out from one of the suites and was standing at the rail of the first floor balcony, waiting for whoever was about to walk out of the suite. A second later General Molivio emerged, joining the bodyguard and lighting up a cigarette, his gaze sweeping around the atrium and down towards the lobby where August sat.
August kept his face forward, deeply conscious of the general’s presence. The Spaniard seemed suspended before him, now burned into his brain. August would have recognised Molivio anywhere. He looked older but it was unmistakably him; those same deceptively gentle brown eyes, the handsome Spanish face, a little jowly now, but still with the demeanour of intelligence that had so deceived August and many others after him.
August was paralysed, convinced Molivio must have recognised him, but to his amazement the general merely turned away from the courtyard, his back resting on the rail, oblivious to the fact that a man he’d nearly tortured to death was sitting just below him. August shut his eyes, the very sight of the general sweeping his senses back into those four days of terror: the stench of his own urine and vomit, the whirl of a drill under the rhythmic whooshing of a ceiling fan, the terrible humiliation of having to beg, and then the bizarre circumstances of his own rescue, his total disbelief at the sight of Jimmy van Peters standing at his cell door. Forcing himself back into the ambience of the lobby, August looked back up, watching as the general finished his cigarette, then checked his watch, as if waiting for someone.
On the first floor another man stepped out of another hotel room door further down from where Molivio was lounging. As he approached the general his face came into focus. Tyson was taller than he’d looked in the photograph Jacob had shown August, and broader. Under the dark-blue suit he looked dangerously muscular, groomed for special operations; August recognised the body stance – a kind of prickly alertness that was never turned off. But to August’s surprise, Tyson was very different from the man who had shot at him in Hamburg. That man had been taller, heavier – someone working with Tyson, CIA perhaps? Or had that actually been MI6?
Damien Tyson joined General Molivio at the rail and the two men shook hands. August watched, fixated in horror – it was deeply disturbing, this collision of his past with his present, his nemesis with his pursuer. He had the unnerving sensation of having being lured into the moment – as if it had been fate. He could barely breathe. A waiter came over and asked if he’d like another cocktail. August, exhaling, clicked back into his façade and ordered another gimlet as confidently as he could manage. As soon as the waiter was gone he focused on the conversation floating down from above. The two men were speaking in Spanish, Tyson’s voice higher, less expressive, broken by Molivio’s more guttural tenor. August could hear snippets: something about the night before, Molivio boasting about something, Tyson replying with a joke about good American hospitality. Finally, Tyson asked Molivio a question and they both started towards the elevator. After a minute they emerged from the elevator and walked right past August, who was now concealing his face in his newspaper.
After they passed he watched them leave through the glass rotating doors to be picked up by a limousine with the UN flag attached to its hood. August left a healthy tip for the waiter and followed.
Molivio studied the American sitting in the limousine beside him. Tyson seemed uncharacteristically nervous. He was jerking his leg up and down impatiently and he kept glancing behind out of the rear windscreen. Misunderstanding his anxiety, the general leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder. Tyson swung around, a little startled.
‘My friend, the UN is a mere formality. However they respond, our governments have agreed, no?’
‘Absolutely, the deal is sealed.’
‘Then why so agitated? This is not like you, Tyson. Have you had an unpleasant premonition?’ The general sounded genuinely concerned, but Tyson knew him better than that. Have we been deceived in some way? he wondered, as an alarm bell rang somewhere in Tyson’s subconscious. ‘Someone has marked out my grave,’ Tyson answered, in Spanish, using a proverb he knew Molivio would understand. The general laughed; another man might think he was ridiculing Tyson.
‘Come now, Damien, men like you and I fly in the face of such trivia. We search out death like others look for sex.’
But Tyson barely heard him. He’d just seen a man exiting the hotel who looked hauntingly familiar.
The council chamber of the UN building was a square auditorium built to accommodate around five hundred people. Compared with the giant assembly hall, it was intimate, and now, filled to capacity, the atmosphere was one of tense expectation. August found himself a seat in the public gallery above the auditorium. He’d entered the building using the pass he’d stolen from his father’s office. The guard at the door had waved him in after examining the pass and he’d guessed his father hadn’t yet noticed its disappearance.
As August made his way into the chamber he glanced around. The delegates of the UN countries all sat on a large podium that faced the hall, with microphones for each main member, nametags sitting before them on the curved desk: The Soviet Union, England, China, France, the United States … Recognising his father, August ducked down behind the person sitting in the row in front of him. Clarence Winthrop was busy talking to another delegate, oblivious to anyone in the public gallery, much to August’s relief.
He sat down, making sure he had a clear view. The rest of the hall was filled with delegates from smaller nations and various representatives. Momentarily distracted by the massive murals decorating the three walls, August glanced up at the ceiling and recognised with a shock the great Spanish painter Josep Maria Sert’s work. The chamber’s interior was decorated with dramatic monochrome murals – five muscular colossuses reached over to clasp hands in the centre of the ceiling, representing the solidity of nations, while opposite the podium a huge battle scene stretched over three panels. The left panel was a marching army – ‘The Victors’ – of a group of uniformed muscular men, who looked suspiciously fascistic to August’s eyes. On the right panel was a raggedy group of soldiers entitled ‘The Vanquished’, five struggling naked men, who appeared to be fighting over a fallen flagpole, reduced to a grim line of bodies collapsed over battlements, some of them still grasping rifles. August couldn’t help noticing that these men were more motley clad, as if they were once an army of peasants, of revolutionary insurgents. It was a militia he knew well and it was obvious where the Spanish painter had got his inspiration; an ironic juxtaposition to the debate that was just about to begin.
Malcolm Hully slipped through the panelled door that led into the auditorium. In front of him stretched the seated rows of spectators and various delegates. Jutting over him was the press balcony. Where was August, if he was here? Malcolm scanned the crowd, looking for a man of appropriately the right height and weight, then he realised there were a number of men who fitted that description. He would just have to be more vigilant, he decided. Gesture would be the give-away – far harder to change the way one moves, especially caught off-guard. Just then Malcolm sighted de Pestre standing at the opposite exit door. He gave a slight nod. Together they began a synchronised walk along the opposing aisles, glancing up and down the rows as they moved towards the podium.
Malcolm looked up at the dramatic mural on the back wall. The muscularity of both armies had a lyrical simplicity – it was definitely Spain. Lorca’s lines came back to him:
Pero tu vendras
Con la lengua quemada por la lluvia de sal.
But you will come
With your tongue burned by the salt rain.
Malcolm paused mid-step, suddenly convinced he knew what Lorca’s lines represented – code for a drop point. Somewhere in Spain, some inside information August had for the KGB on the pact – something that could lead to a sabotage. It had to be. Sensing some catastrophe was about to unfurl, Malcolm spun wildly around as he tried to take in the whole auditorium. Several of
the audience members indicated that he should sit down, but he ignored them. He moved swiftly towards de Pestre.
Above in the gallery August scrutinised the delegates below and caught sight of Tyson and Molivio. They were sitting two rows from the front, alongside what looked like two other representatives from Spain. They were less than thirty feet away, well within view, August observed, while also making a note of the proximity of the two exits nearby. In the centre of the podium the chairman leaned forward to make an announcement.
‘The next item on the agenda concerns the United States’s proposal to broker a pact with General Franco for the right to place military bases on Spanish soil, and what action the UN should make if such a pact were signed, given the trade embargos imposed on Franco’s regime. We await a final comment from the US representative Senator Winthrop on the subject.’ His amplified voice crackled across the auditorium, echoed by interpreters in French, German and Japanese, like aural ghosts rippling through the hall. August watched with fascinated horror as Tyson and Molivio moved forward in their seats as his father stood to take the microphone.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, after much debate, the government of my country has decided that it is vitally important …’
August noticed a blonde wearing glasses and a headscarf in the row in front of him, only a few seats away. She appeared strangely agitated and somehow familiar.
‘… that we, the US, prioritise the security of our nation and of Western Europe itself over local politics. We have therefore decided …’
Now the blonde appeared to be looking for something in her handbag. August tensed. Something was wrong, very wrong. His father’s voice boomed over his own frenetic thoughts.
‘… that the US will be signing a defence pact with General Franco.’
Pandemonium broke out in the hall at the senator’s announcement and the rest of his statement was drowned out by gasps of disapproval, some applause and some catcalls.
Below August, Tyson and Molivio had got to their feet. In the same instant he realised that the woman was Izarra. All sound fell away as he watched her lift her revolver from her handbag and aim it directly at Tyson’s head. He leaped forward, throwing himself over the seats in front of him, and tackled her to the aisle floor. Chaos broke out around them.
‘Izarra, it’s me!’ he managed to tell her, holding down her thrashing body. She stopped struggling. ‘Say nothing!’ Hauling her roughly to her feet, and with one hand clamped around her wrist, he held his security pass high.
‘I have her! Security! Let me pass!’ Pushing Izarra ahead and behaving as if he were high rank, he manoeuvred them through the security staff who had also wrestled their way over audience members and chairs to reach them. It was an audacious sham, and already August could see the men looking at each other in confusion.
‘US security, let us pass!’ he added, in French and German, for emphasis, then bundled Izarra towards the nearest exit.
The lobby of the council chamber was empty; everyone was still inside reacting to the defiance of the US. Noticing a door built into the wall, August hurried Izarra towards it then pushed her through. It was a small service office, filled with spare seating and curtains. August pulled off her wig and headscarf.
‘Give me your coat,’ he ordered.
‘I was so close! I was close, why did you stop me!’ She fought back. Ignoring her, he yanked the coat from her shoulders.
‘Take off your jacket and smooth down your hair.’
‘No, I don’t care if I’m caught!’
‘Just do it!’ Sullenly, she smoothed her hair and neatened her skirt. Without the blonde wig and coat, she was unrecognisable. August took off his own glasses.
‘Okay, we walk out of here as calmly and casually as possible. If anyone stops us, I do the talking, do you understand?’
‘August, I —’
‘Do you understand?’
Izarra nodded mutely. August opened the service door by a crack and gazed into the lobby. Four security guards were running through the lobby towards the council chamber itself – leaving the lobby empty.
‘Go!’ He ushered Izarra out and they both walked quickly out, then sauntered through the lobby of the assembly hall and out into the reception area. Ten minutes later they were out on the avenue de la Paix itself.
August stared out of the barred window at the narrow alley below. It was now late afternoon, but the lane was empty, except for a lone roadsweeper methodically pushing a broom from one end. He pulled down the blind, unwilling to take any risks. He faced Izarra, who was sitting on a high chair, staring out over the cheap coverlet that was flung over the iron single bed. A calendar of skiing resorts – two years out of date – hung on a bare hook on the wall, the only decoration apart from a bible and an old radio on a dresser beside the bed.
‘What were you thinking? You would have been killed, shot on the spot, for what?’ Furious with her, and the trance-like passivity she had fallen into since they’d returned to her hideout – a cheap migrant hostel in Les Pâquis – August paced the tiny room, the old floorboards creaking beneath him. He stopped then bent down so that she couldn’t avoid eye contact.
‘Izarra, do you understand me? I could have lost you.’ He lowered his voice, trying to reach into those black expressionless eyes.
Abruptly, they flared up and she sprung out of the chair. ‘You don’t understand! None of this is important! You and I are not important. All that is important is avenging my sister! The betrayal of my people.’ Her furious words burst out of her, as she reverted to Euskara. She grabbed his shoulder and shook him. ‘You destroyed the one chance I had! Maybe the only chance!’ Her whole body was shaking with fury.
‘Izarra, we get Tyson my way.’
‘Your way! Your way is bourgeois, the way of a coward!’
He pushed her away. ‘How can you say that? I fought for your independence! I watched my comrades die around me!’ His words emerged with far more bitterness than he intended, and Izarra flinched at his anger. But it seemed to jolt her back into some kind of rationality. Reaching out, she rested her hand briefly over his.
‘I’m sorry. That was unfair, but you have to understand I would have martyred myself for Andere, we all would have. She was more than just my sister. We were betrayed, profoundly betrayed, and now this … this deal with the devil. We will never get rid of Franco now.’ She finished, broken and near tears.
August struggled to reply; there was too much truth to her statement. She took his silence as acquiescence.
‘Do you really think that even if we did have Tyson arrested for war crimes, he would get an unbiased trial? He is government, the US will protect him. How many Germans got away with war crimes? Most of the Nazis were tried by the judges of their own regime!’
‘It’s different now, in the Hague —’
‘Nothing changes, August, you know that. ¡Nada!’ She collapsed against his body, spent. ‘If we don’t get Tyson now, my sister will have died in vain.’
‘Izarra, I promise you, on my life, we will see Damien Tyson stand as a war criminal.’ He looked at her, the exhaustion, shock and anger making her both vulnerable and powerful, her flushed face noble and suddenly beautiful. Without thinking, he pulled her to him, their tongues clashing, probing, finding solace in overwhelming desire, his hands encompassing her as her fingers reached for him and they fell onto the bed, August half-expecting another battle of wills, another struggle for dominance, but instead finding her ready to engulf him, ready for the anger, the sex, the desire and the fear. They made love like soldiers expecting to die in the morning.
Afterwards they lay there in a curling silence that stretched with each tick of the clock in the corner, the afternoon shadows creeping across the floorboards. August, wide awake, stayed wrapped around her, not wanting to break the respite of this anonymity, two lovers luxuriating in the sanctuary of each other’s warmth, unencumbered by history or politics or even the sheer weight of experience, the scent of their
lovemaking enveloping him in a poignant intimacy. And he found himself wishing they were simple people with simple lives and a simple love, then fell asleep.
An hour later he woke to the sound of a low murmuring. Izarra stood naked by the open window, a breeze wrapping the thin chiffon curtain around her like an undulating cloud. In one hand she held a torn piece of cloth, in the other his lighter, as she chanted in Euskara. He watched, not sure whether he was still asleep or awake. As she chanted she lifted the lighter up and held the cloth in the flame, then, after pulling back the curtain, allowed the wind to carry the flaming ember away.
‘May his limbs be carried to the four corners of the world,’ she said, August understanding only some of the words.
A distant police siren startled her. She swung around and saw that he was watching her.
The Map Page 50