Galíndez grunted as the policeman landed heavily on top of her, knocking the Glock from her hand as she struggled beneath him, her enraged shouts telling him who she was and where the shooters were. As she lashed out, other hands grabbed her ankles and wrists, pinning her down as her desperate cries competed with the final cadences of gunfire.
MADRID 2010, PENSIÓN PARAÍSO, CALLE DEL CARMEN
Señor Espartero was coming down the stairs when the shooting started. He saw Sancho, on the edge of the chair, struggling to get to his feet. ‘You shouldn’t strain yourself.’
‘If I don’t, we’re going to be dead very soon.’ Sancho looked at the two oilcloth bags in Señor Espartero’s hands. ‘What have you got there?”
‘Señor Guzmán left these here a long time ago. I don’t know if they’ll still work.’
‘Just tell me what the fuck they are, will you?’
‘I believe they call them Uzis,’ Espartero said, tipping the contents of the bags onto the table.
Sancho grabbed one of the machine pistols and wielded it in his big fist. ‘Here, give me the other one.’ He readied the weapon and handed it back to Espartero. ‘We’ll stand a better chance on the stairs,’ he said, resting a hand on Espartero’s head as he got to his feet.
With a good deal of grunting and a significant loss of blood, Sancho managed to get halfway up the stairs before he was forced to sit. ‘This will do,’ he said, toying with the Uzi. ‘You’d better get out the back way while you still can.’
Señor Espartero sat down next to him. ‘There is no back way, alas.’
‘What about a fire exit?’
‘This place was built in another era. Health and safety concerns were thought effeminate back then.’
‘Then you’re stuck with me, amigo,’ Sancho said. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘Actually, a similar event led to my ownership of this pensión. Perhaps someone else will take it over, Señorita Galíndez, maybe.’
‘Yeah, she could haunt it,’ Sancho muttered. ‘Listen, here’s the plan. As they come into reception, they won’t see us up here, so start firing at once. We’ll take them by surprise.’
‘That’s your plan?’
‘Only one I’ve got, amigo, sorry.’ Sancho pointed the Uzi’s snub barrel at the entrance as he heard shouting. Boots clattered on the steps and something hard struck the outside door, tearing it from its hinges. Sancho took a deep breath and aimed the Uzi at the doorway. ‘They don’t stand a chance,’ he said. He was laughing.
MADRID, OCTOBER 2010, PENSIÓN PARAÍSO, CALLE DEL CARMEN
Pressed to the cobbles beneath several burly policemen, Galíndez realised her struggles were hopeless and stopped resisting. Finally satisfied she was no threat, the police allowed her to get up. She went straight over to confront the police commander and demanded an explanation.
‘So none of you are from Witness Protection?’ she asked, when he’d finished.
‘We don’t know anything about witness protection, as I keep telling you, Galíndez. We’re from Counter-Terrorism. We were told there were suspects in the pensión. We assumed it was them who opened fire on your colleague’s car.’
‘The shooters were on the balcony next door,’ Galíndez shouted. ‘My witness was in the pensión for his own protection. You never gave him a chance. You had no right to do that. No right.’ She repeated the words, as if that could undo what had just happened.
‘We lost three men in there,’ the commander snapped. ‘If they were so innocent, how come they had machine pistols?’
Galíndez realised she was going to get nowhere for the time being and turned away. ‘Izzy? I want to go over to the car and see Capitán Fuentes. Say goodbye. I owe him that. Will you come with me?’
As they walked up the cobbled street, they stopped as white-suited forensics officers came out through the shattered door of the Pensión Paraíso, carrying the stretchers. Galíndez raised her fist to her mouth as the first stretcher went past, carried by four men: Sancho’s bulk had proved too much for two. The second corpse was a child-sized outline beneath the sheet.
Isabel brushed a tear away as they watched the stretchers being loaded into the ambulance. ‘That little man was so polite.’
The guardia forensics team had arrived and the Fuentes car was already covered in numbered markers, identifying where the bullets had struck. Most of the team knew Galíndez. All knew Capitán Fuentes. As she approached the bullet-riddled car, they stepped away, giving her space to say goodbye.
Galíndez had seen a lot of dead people in her short career. Each time, she’d always managed to detach herself from the person she was dealing with. She’d learned to close down, focusing on them only as a potential source of information. In this job, you had to maintain a sense of detachment, keep your distance. They’d told her that when she first started. And she had.
There was no chance of doing that now.
Capitán Fuentes was slumped over the steering wheel, his clipped steel-grey hair splashed with blood. His left hand was pushed deep into his jacket pocket, Galíndez noticed. Probably he’d been reaching for his personal sidearm when he was killed. Gently, she lifted his hand from the pocket. Something slipped from his fingers onto the leather seat and she saw a glint of gold. His wedding ring. She picked it up and put the ring in her pocket. She would give it to the undertaker in due course. It was the least she could do.
At his side, Mercedes had taken the full force of the automatic fire and Galíndez could only bear to look at her for a moment. She turned and went to the rear door, looked in, carefully avoiding touching the vehicle, guided by her training, though no training could have prepared her for this.
The two girls were lying on the back seat. The upholstery had been ripped apart by the furious gunfire and torn wadding and springs protruded through the shredded leather. Clari had been coming up to her fifth birthday. She’d been looking forward to starting a new school. And Inés, thirteen years old, her teen years just beginning.
Mendez had just arrived as Galíndez rejoined Isabel. For a moment Mendez stood, pale-faced, staring at Capitán Fuentes’ shattered car. A bewildered expression, as if looking for words that had been lost for ever. Galíndez went towards her and they embraced. After a moment, Mendez pulled away. ‘What were the Fuentes family doing here, Ana?’
Galíndez shook her head in despair. ‘I keep wishing I’d told Inés that I forgave her.’
‘These things happen when they happen. None of us have a crystal ball.’ Mendez squeezed her arm. ‘You and Isabel should go home. I’ll talk to our forensic guys and start the search for whoever did this.’
The forensics team had waited quietly for the women to pay their respects. But there was work to be done now, and slowly they returned to the car to resume their work.
Galíndez and Isabel walked in silence down Calle del Carmen.
‘I’ve had an idea,’ Galíndez said as they reached the car. ‘I’m going to give Sancho’s memory stick to Judge Delgado. He’s someone we can trust.’
Isabel gave her a dubious look. ‘He’s famous for his anti-corruption work, that’s for sure. But he was also the subject of malpractice hearings a few months back. Something about money laundering, I think.’
‘But he could generate publicity about the Centinelas in ways we couldn’t. It’s worth a try, surely?’
‘Do it then.’ Isabel opened the car door. ‘I’ll drive, you look exhausted.’
Wearily, Galíndez slumped into the passenger seat, turning her head to watch the buildings of central Madrid pass by in a haze. She reached into her pocket and took out Capitan Fuentes’ wedding ring. The light glittered off the gold band as she held it in the palm of her hand, her thoughts coalescing into questions. Trite questions at first, slowly becoming more defined, though much more puzzling.
And what puzzled her most was the memory of Capitán Fuentes slumped against the steering wheel of his car, killed as he reached into his pocket for the ring now on her palm.
The daylight was almost gone, but each time the car passed a street light, for a fleeting moment she saw again the engraving of a two-headed serpent on the ring.
ALICANTE, 25 OCTOBER 1965, LLANTO DEL MORO
Within twenty minutes, the men in suits had rounded up the villagers and herded them into the church hall at gunpoint. They sat on hard wood chairs, the men mopping their faces with handkerchiefs, the women waving fans. At the doors, men stood guard with machine pistols. As the last villagers arrived, they brought troubling news: roadblocks were being set up at each end of the village. No one could enter or leave.
Carrero Blanco stood at the front of the hall, looking out over the captive audience. Imperiously, he raised his hand, signalling for quiet.
‘Something terrible has happened to your children,’ Carrero Blanco said, his voice devoid of sympathy or concern. ‘This is Comandante Guzmán of the Brigada Especial. He’s going to explain to you exactly what’s happened.’
Guzmán had taken off his jacket. Since that revealed the Browning hanging under his left arm in its shoulder holster, the villagers watched him with some trepidation.
‘At about eleven this morning, we got a phone call saying your school bus and the children in it had been taken hostage.’ He waited until the noise died down a little. ‘The man who has them hostage is a wanted terrorist, Umberto Santorini, though he’s usually referred to as “the Italian”. He was involved in the hijacking of an Italian plane recently. He has an accomplice with him, a Palestinian, Leila Ahmed. She was responsible for a number of murders in Israel and the killing of an American in Crete last year.’
‘But what does he want with our children, señor?’ a man called from the back.
‘An exchange,’ Guzmán said. ‘Fifty million dollars and the release of four ETA terrorists.’
CHAPTER 21
MADRID, OCTOBER 1982, PENSIÓN PARAÍSO, CALLE DEL CARMEN
The pensión was as silent and lifeless as its former owners as Guzmán packed his clothes into a suitcase. Señor Espartero had done a good job during the night, there were no signs of death now, and no sign of the former occupants. Guzmán had not asked where they would be buried. It made no difference to the dead where they lay.
He stopped at the reception desk and tore the page with the details of Señor Ramirez from the register. From behind the glass bead curtain, he heard Señor Espartero snoring. He let the dwarf sleep. Espartero had all the old man’s documents and the pensión was his now. Until he lost it in a card game with other dwarfs, no doubt. But that was none of Guzmán’s business. He put his keys on the desk and left without looking back.
On the way to the plaza, he stopped at a phone box and called guardia civil HQ. The receptionist put him through to General Ortiz at once.
‘I need to see you, General,’ Guzmán said, ‘urgently.’
‘That sounds serious, Leo. Come over in an hour or so, I’ll be free then.’
Guzmán took a walk, brooding about what had to happen next before someone else decided that for him.
His first option was clear: leave town before the Centinelas discovered the code he’d sold them was missing its key components. But running had never appealed to him, probably because of all the people he’d tracked down over the years. People could run, but if someone wanted to find them badly enough, they would. Death respected no boundaries.
His other option was to carry on helping Gutiérrez with his plan to discredit the Centinelas. There were other, more complex, possibilities, but for now that would have to do. It’s a bad plan that cannot be changed, some Roman once said. Guzmán had always borne that in mind, despite his opinion of Italian military competence. But despite Gutiérrez’s plan, Guzmán still had an agenda of his own, a violent agenda, one that would slake his need for revenge. Even so, he had to be careful. Daniela would not have wanted the kind of retribution he was thinking of. On the other hand, Daniela was dead. But out of respect to her, he decided to refine the plan and, as he turned into Calle de las Navas de Tolosa, he suddenly realised exactly how that plan could be refined.
He paused and peered into the window of the old print shop on the corner. The grimy window was filled with reams of paper, faded by the afternoon sun. In front of the paper, a jumbled display of ancient fountain pens and bottles of ink, a vast collection of outdated printing accessories that were probably obsolete forty years ago.
As he opened the door, he heard a bell ring in the back of the shop, the same bell that had been there before the war. It had not worked properly then either.
He stood at the counter, peering past large rolls of paper and boxes containing printer’s ink, towards the small workshop in the back. After a moment or two, he heard heavy footsteps as a man came out of the darkened workshop, a thickset old man with white hair, rubbing his ink-stained hands on his leather apron. His eyes widened as he saw Guzmán.
‘Comandante? Jesus, I thought you were dead.’
‘Likewise.’ Guzmán smiled as they shook hands. ‘How’s business, Geronimo?’
The old man shrugged. ‘Not like the old days, Comandante.’
‘You’ve stopped printing fake banknotes, have you?’
‘I wouldn’t say stopped, exactly.’ Geronimo shot him a suspicious look. ‘Is this an official visit?’
Guzmán shook his head. ‘Business. If you’re still up for it, of course?’
‘Business is business,’ Geronimo said. ‘What is it you want?’
Guzmán took a handwritten list from his pocket and put it on the counter. ‘All of these documents. I want them to look authentic. No cutting corners.’
‘You know me, Comandante. I never cut corners. Do you want them in your name?’
‘Of course not,’ Guzmán snorted. ‘The name and details are on the back of that list.’
Geronimo turned the list over with a podgy finger and gave a low whistle as he read the name. ‘I know who this is.’
‘You also know how to keep your mouth shut, as I remember,’ Guzmán said, counting several banknotes onto the counter. ‘You’ll get the rest on delivery. Can you get them done by eleven tonight?’
Geronimo raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s a tall order, Comandante. I’ll need special paper and ink for this job.’
‘Know what? I’m willing to bet you’ve got them all in the back.’
The old man held up his hands. ‘I’ve always been up for a challenge.’
‘That’s why you never went to jail,’ Guzmán said, heading for the door. ‘I’ll send someone round to collect the order this evening.’
The dissonant clank of the bell reverberated above his head as he went out into the street, suddenly optimistic. Not everything had changed in this city.
MADRID, OCTOBER 1982, GUARDIA CIVIL HEADQUARTERS
Guzmán took a seat in the general’s office and waited as Ortiz opened his drinks cabinet and poured them brandy.
‘First of the day’s always the best, eh, Leo?’ Ortiz beamed as he slumped into his leather chair and put his feet on the desk. ‘So, how’s the file collection going?’
Guzmán leaned forward to take a cigar from the box the general offered. ‘Excellent,’ he sighed, exhaling a mouthful of fragrant smoke. ‘Gutiérrez is finding a safe place for the documents. Once we’ve moved them there, that’s my job done.’
‘That should be enough to fuck the Centinelas up.’ Ortiz nodded. ‘All we need then is for the Socialists to get elected. Once they get the files, they can do the rest.’
‘Let’s hope so.’ Guzmán took another swallow of brandy. ‘I’ve got a favour to ask.’
‘Name it, Leo.’
Guzmán reached into his jacket and took out a plastic tobacco pouch filled with papers. ‘I’d like you to keep this safe for me.’
Ortiz frowned. ‘Sounds like you’re expecting trouble.’
‘I always expect trouble. It’s best to be prepared.’
‘True enough.’ The general took the packet from him and put it into the breast pocket of his u
niform jacket. ‘I’ll put it in my safe. Just let me know when you want it back.’
‘Thanks.’ Guzmán glanced at the time. ‘I’d better go, I’m seeing Gutiérrez later.’
Before he could get up, General Ortiz raised a hand. ‘I’ve been thinking. If this plan to use the files against the Centinelas comes off—’
‘Which it will.’
‘If it does, that will leave Gutiérrez as the most powerful man in the city.’ He raised his glass to his lips and took a long swallow of brandy. ‘Or you, of course.’
‘Not me,’ said Guzmán. ‘I’m through with all of this.’ He drained his glass with an appreciative grunt. ‘I’m off.’
‘You should get yourself a wife, Leo. Someone to take care of you.’
‘I’ve always taken care of myself,’ Guzmán said, pulling on his coat.
‘Even so, cooking, cleaning, sewing – you need a woman to do those things. There must be someone who fits the bill?’
There were several, Guzmán recalled. Unfortunately, all were dead. All but one, of course, and she was taken. ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
‘Before you go,’ Ortiz said, ‘how’s my son been doing on this operation?’
Guzmán stuffed his hands into his pockets, suddenly uncomfortable. ‘None of those lads are very experienced. But most of them have made an effort.’
‘But not Ramiro?’
‘I don’t think his heart’s in it.’
‘Not got the balls, you mean?’
‘It’s not a career he would have chosen if you weren’t his father. Put it that way.’
General Ortiz’s face was like thunder. ‘He doesn’t have a choice. Christ, when I joined the Legion as a young officer, my father told me not to come back without a bullet wound or he’d thrash me.’
‘Things were different back then.’
‘Don’t start on about change again, or I’ll think you’ve gone soft.’ Ortiz gave Guzmán a hard look. ‘Was it you who blacked Galíndez’s eye?’
‘My corporal. He had a fall-out with him about some magazines.’
The Dead: Vengeance of Memory Page 30