by Mathew Carr
In Poblenou he had helped bring the workers out on strike, and encouraged them to build barricades and defend the Republic. At the same time he took care not to be on the barricades himself when the army came into the streets. While his comrades in Poblenou believed that he was fighting in the Raval, the Invincibles believed that he was fighting on the barricades in Poblenou. In this way he had been able to live two equally heroic lives in two different places, while avoiding any situation that might have put his life at risk.
As a result the strike had been almost entirely pleasurable. By day he was Ruben the revolutionary. At night, he and Matilde lay in bed while the churches and monasteries burned and the army and the workers fought each other. The previous night he had amused Matilde by making silhouettes with his hands in the shape of monsters, animals, and reptiles, while the flames danced across the walls. Later he took her to the beach in the middle of the night. They walked together past the barricades and gasworks, and she took her shoes off and walked in the sea while he watched the Church of Sant Pere Pescador burning in the distance.
Even now, as he unlocked the main entrance to her building, he felt a thrill at the thought of her straddling him in the sand, lifting her skirt and easing him into her while the sea lapped against the beach behind them. He put the Beretta away now as he walked up the stairs. He hoped she was still awake, because his balls were beginning to ache once again, but there was no sound from her room. As soon as he opened the door, he saw her lying on the bed in the darkness. At first he thought she was sleeping and he wondered why she had the shutters closed. Suddenly she began to moan and he saw the gag over her mouth and the bonds on her hands and feet. In the same moment he felt the barrel of a gun against the back of his neck and a voice behind him growled hoarsely, “One move and I’ll blow your head off.”
Ruben caught a smell of absinthe as the gunman took the sack and drew the Beretta from his jacket.
“Take these.” The gunman handed him a candle and a box of matches. “Light it.”
Ruben did as he was told. It was only then that he recognized the bearded face of Salvador Santamaría, the old terrorist from the Sons of Whores. Santamaría reached into his sack with the pistol trained at his stomach and held up a silver cross.
“Found God have you?”
“Comrade, these aren’t for me!” said Ruben indignantly. “This is for the cause.”
Santamaría let out a rasping cackle that sounded as though he were being choked. “Of course it is. Let’s go up on the roof, shall we?”
“The roof?” Ruben said nervously.” What do we need to go up there for?”
“Someone wants to see you.” Santamaría gestured with the gun toward the door, as Matilde continued to writhe on the bed.
“You’re going to leave her like that?” said Ruben.
“She’ll be alright.” Santamaría opened the door. “But you won’t be if you don’t do what I say. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
Ruben was beginning to feel seriously afraid for the first time now, as he walked slowly upstairs to the roof. The door was already open, and his fear turned to incredulity at the sight of his mother-in-law, sitting on the edge of the roof, calmly smoking a cheroot. Ruben saw to his alarm that she was holding a noose at the end of a piece of rope that was tied around the chimney stack. Behind her he could see the flames from Sant Pere Pescador, but now they no longer seemed as beautiful as they had the night before.
“Rosa? What’s going on?”
Señora Tosets said nothing, as Santamaría prodded Ruben toward the balustrade. “Sit down,” he ordered.
Ruben sat down next to Rosa Tosets with his back to the street as Santamaría slipped the noose over his ankles and pulled it taut.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“You need to answer some questions, cabron,” his mother-in-law replied as Santamaría began to wrap the slack rope around his own wrist. “And answer them honestly.”
The sweat was pouring down Ruben’s back now and his bowels felt suddenly loose. “I’m married to your daughter!” he protested.
“And yet you allowed my son to be killed like a dog.”
“That’s a lie!”
“Where is Esperanza?” Señora Tosets asked.
“How the fuck should I know?”
Señora Tosets tied a cloth around Ruben’s mouth now, and Santamaría turned Ruben around so that he was kneeling over the balustrade and facing down over the street. Ruben was still howling into the gag when the old terrorist gripped his ankles and tipped him up so that he was hanging over the edge. Below him he could see the streets of Poblenou laid out in their neat blocks, and the lights from the burning buildings, and even as he writhed on the end of the rope with his hands outstretched like a diver, he was ready to tell them whatever they wanted to know.
28
There had been many times in Africa when Lawton had expected to die. Now as he sat kneeling in the copse of trees, he knew that his prospects of survival were not promising, and he calculated what he might do to improve them. He assumed that he was in the Count of Arenales’s estate in Collserola and he briefly considered going back to Barcelona to get help. But Bonnecarrère and Mata were dead and there was no one else in the city who could help him. As things stood, he was completely alone and surrounded by people who had shown again and again that they would kill him in an instant. So far, none of them knew he was there, but that advantage was only likely to last till daylight.
From his hiding place, Lawton could see Klarsfeld talking to three men, one of whom was carrying a lantern, in front of a long two-storey building. To the left of the wagon and the Delaunay-Belleville, he could see what looked like outbuildings, and beyond them a number of smaller structures were scattered around the grounds whose functions were unclear. The estate also contained plenty of bushes and trees, and a low hedge that ran the length of the driveway in front of the house. The wagon pulled around in front of the automobile now and moved slowly down the drive, followed by Klarsfeld and his companions.
The wagon pulled up outside one of the outbuildings, and Klarsfeld’s companions began unloading the boxes. Lawton looked back toward the gate, and then ran across the path toward the hedge. He paused behind a tree, and then crawled across a stretch of open ground that sloped down behind him to a small lake or ornamental pond. Still holding the Smith & Wesson, he wriggled across the grass. Once again he heard the dogs barking, before he reached the hedge and lay on his stomach, directly opposite the wagon.
Lawton saw Weygrand standing next to Klarsfeld in the lighted doorway, before the two of them went inside. For the next twenty minutes he lay behind the hedge while the unloading continued. Even out of the city the night was humid and breezeless, and the moon seemed much too bright, and yet he was surprised how cold he felt. He tried not to think about what it might mean, and tried to ignore the numbness in the tips of his fingers. He could hear the sound of boxes being opened now, and a few minutes later the wagon driver and his co-driver mounted the wagon and turned the mules around. They had nearly reached the main gate when Klarsfeld and Weygrand emerged from the building with their companions and shut the door behind them.
For a moment Weygrand seemed to look toward him, and Lawton coiled his finger around the trigger, before he walked away with the others toward the main building. Lawton waited till the lights in the building began to go out, and then walked stiffly toward the outbuilding, standing on his toes to lessen the scrunching of his feet on the gravel. He opened the door and stepped inside. No sooner had he closed the door behind him than he felt the numbness spreading through his fingers and a voice in his head told him to get back outside. But the curiosity was too strong to resist and he lit his cigarette lighter and walked toward the pile of boxes.
Some of the boxes had their lids lying loosely open. One of them was filled with Browning revolvers. Another contained rows of bottles filled with white powder, lying on a bed of straw and muslin. Lawton just had time
to read the label “Natriumcitrat” on one of the bottles when he smelled burning. In the same moment his hands began to tingle and his head began to pulsate, as though his brain was opening and closing like a flower. He dropped to his knees and gripped the edge of the crate, like the gunwale of a storm-tossed ship, and then a great wave seemed to crash over him, pulling him away to a place where no one could save him.
* * *
“Mr. Lawton. We meet again.”
Lawton opened his eyes and stared at the painting of a swordsman on horseback slashing at a sea of turbaned heads on the opposite wall. At first he thought it was a scene from the Indian Mutiny, but as his vision cleared he saw that the swordsmen were wearing knightly armor and had red crosses on their chests, and their enemies looked more like Arabs. He tried to wipe his eyes, but the handcuffs were holding his arms tightly behind a chair, and now he lowered his gaze and saw Dr. Franz Weygrand sitting directly opposite him with his arms folded on the table. Lawton stared blearily back at the pop eyes and waxed moustache and the sig-rune flash on his ringed index finger.
He looked around the room and saw the Count of Arenales sitting to Weygrand’s left, with his silver hair combed back across his forehead and a long thin pipe protruding from his lips like a bee’s proboscis. Arenales still had the pale sallow texture of a man who did not see much sunlight, and his watery eyes were slightly bloodshot, but he no longer looked frightened. At the far end of the table, Klarsfeld sat sipping a small glass of brandy or liqueur while his other hand rested lightly on the handle of a 1900 Parabellum. There was no sign of Mata’s revolver, and Lawton realized that the bullets were missing from his jacket pockets.
“So Zorka was right,” Weygrand said. “You are in need of healing. Did you know the Greeks believed the falling sickness was sacred? A gift from the Gods that enabled men to see visions. Do you see visions, Mr. Lawton?”
“Right now I only see a filthy gang of murderers.”
“And I see a man whose time is up,” said Klarsfeld. “Who was with you at the docks?”
From Klarsfeld’s photographs, Lawton had assumed that he was in his mid-fifties, but his face was smooth and surprisingly unlined. His dueling scar was just visible above the well-trimmed beard, and his pale blue eyes were cold and pitiless. Lawton’s head was throbbing now and he felt as if his skull had been scooped out by a hot spoon, as he silently cursed the disease that had placed him in the hands of such men.
“Was there someone with me?” Lawton said.
Klarsfeld smiled faintly. “Believe me, I don’t have to ask politely.”
“And I don’t have to tell you anything. But I might make an exception if you answer my questions.”
“Such as?” said Weygrand.
“Such as why you and your crazy band of monks have been murdering innocent people and draining their blood.”
Weygrand looked at him pityingly. “Murder is such an emotive and judgmental term. Isn’t war murder? Yet who condemns that? And innocence is in the end a matter of perspective. An ant is innocent. But how many of us step on them without a second thought? We merely terminated the lives of people whose existence had no more significance or importance than any insect. In death, we gave them more value than they ever had in life.”
“Value to who?”
“War is coming, Mr. Lawton,” Weygrand replied. “It will be a war like no other. Millions of young men will die. Some will be killed on the battlefield. But many more will bleed to death when the battles are over, because we have not known how to perform blood transfusions effectively—until now.” Weygrand paused as Arenales looked at him in alarm. “It’s alright, Count. It’s not as if Mr. Lawton is going anywhere. Here in Barcelona, we have successfully performed blood transfusions using glucose and sodium citrate as anticoagulants to prevent clotting. We have succeeded in storing blood, for up to five days in a refrigerated unit. We have even managed to transport blood from one place to another, using ice as a refrigerant. We—”
“So that explains the water in the apartment.”
“Very good, Mr. Lawton. Do you understand how significant this is? Our discoveries will change medical history. And they will also change the course of the war. Countless wounded soldiers will now survive. Our soldiers obviously—this is not a humanitarian enterprise. This is the great scientific work that we have been engaged in! All carried out in this little corner of Europe—entirely in secret.”
“Scientists don’t normally bite people and rip their throats out,” Lawton said.
Weygrand shrugged. “In studying battlefield trauma and shock, it was necessary to inflict some trauma on our subjects. The count’s dogs were very effective in this regard.”
“Then why leave the bodies in public? Why draw attention to yourselves?”
“Good question.” Weygrand turned to Klarsfeld. “Perhaps the baron can explain it?”
“We did keep them secret,” Klarsfeld said. “Till Cortéz was washed ashore.”
“You mean there were others?” Lawton asked.
“Of course there were others,” replied Weygrand. “And there will be more. Until our work is complete.”
“They were nothing people,” Klarsfeld went on. “Beggars, whores, and idiots. Anarchists. Vagabonds who no one knew nor cared out. Obviously the count didn’t want such people buried in his estate, and who can blame him? So we took them out to sea and weighed them down. It worked very well, until the little anarchist floated back up, all the way to the swimming club. When we saw the hysteria in the local press—all this talk of vampires and monsters—the count came up with a very clever idea.”
Arenales chuckled and sucked on his pipe. “Based on my reading of Poe and Stevenson,” he said. “The newspapers—and the rabble—wanted monsters. So we gave them one.”
“The count also has friends in the Spanish officer corps,” Klarsfeld explained. “They think the king’s household is too eager to please the English. They would like to have a larger piece of Morocco, and so do we.”
“They are patriots,” Arenales said. “They’ve had enough of the Reds and the separatist swine. They are tired of seeing the Church and army insulted, and our children corrupted by degenerates like Ferrer. They believe—as I do—that this country needs to be guided by a strong hand.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Have you seen what’s happened in Barcelona these last few days?” Arenales asked. “The attacks on our soldiers? The mobs burning churches and committing sacrilege? Our monster is partly responsible. He helped turn the masses against the church. Vampire. Ape-man. Werewolf. Everyone sees the monster they want to see, and they always hold someone else responsible. It works the same way in politics as it does in life.”
“So you wanted churches to be burned in order to defend the Church?” asked Lawton incredulously.
Arenales shrugged. “Churches can always be rebuilt. The important thing is the long-term result: a patriotic dictatorship that is willing and able to finally cleanse the nation of its enemies. A Spain that takes its place among the Great Powers once again—on the side of Germany. This is what God intends.”
“We haven’t quite reached that point yet,” Klarsfeld said. “But we’re getting there. The Brownings will help, once we distribute them to the right people today.”
“Ugarte?” Lawton asked.
Weygrand shook his head. “Ugarte merely provides us with subjects. According to our specifications and requirements. We have other channels—in the army, the Church, even in the Radical Party. All of them will be able to find uses for these weapons.”
Lawton was still struggling to take this in. “And the German government sanctions these… abominations?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Weygrand replied. “These aren’t experiments that any government can support officially—not yet, anyway. But we have received discreet assistance from sympathetic individuals in the military, some of whom are aware in broad terms of what we’re doing. Such as tonight’s shipment.”
“Ah, now that would be Captain Georges Bonnecarrère from the French secret service Your operation isn’t as secret as you thought. And when Bonnecarrère’s colleagues get here, it’ll be even less so.”
Arenales looked anxious once again, but Weygrand shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “If they knew where you were, they’d already be here.”
“We’ll see,” Lawton replied. “But I have another question. What did Foulkes have to do with this? Why did you have him killed?”
“An excellent question,” Weygrand said. “And I think the answer will surprise you.”
* * *
Klarsfeld got up to open the door, and a moment later his driver came into the room accompanied by two hard-faced young men in white shirts, cloth caps, and black trousers, and the black servant Lawton had seen outside Arenales’s palace, who still looked as though he had stepped out of an old eighteenth-century print. One of them had a pistol in his belt and the other had a shotgun hanging over his shoulder. Klarsfeld nodded at Lawton, and the two of them hoisted him upright and marched him out into the hallway.
Arenales went upstairs, while Klarsfeld, Weygrand, the driver, and the two guards led Lawton outside. The sun was just coming up now, and the first hints of pink and purple were beginning to appear above the wall of pine trees that surrounded the estate as they stepped out onto the gravel drive. Lawton heard a cock crowing, and various birds were hooting, cooing, and chirruping all around the grounds that reminded him of the birds he had heard in Africa. He looked around at the tall palms and exotic trees, the bushes with their red flowers and pink cones, the pink flamingos standing in the lake amid the low layer of mist that hovered over the water, and the black servants carrying water from a well to the main house.