The Dead: Vengeance of Memory

by Mark Oldfield

  Lourdes took a right turn at the Gran Via, towards the Metro. Guzmán abandoned any pretence at civility and began to run, pushing aside anyone in his way. He could guess what the two men ahead had in mind. Somewhere along the road, before Lourdes reached the Metro station, a car would pull up at the kerb, she would be bundled in and they would drive off at speed, leaving onlookers bemused, probably thinking the men were the police – if they thought anything at all.

  But Guzmán also had a plan: get up close and drop the men with head shots before they made their move. In the ensuing panic he would get Lourdes into the Metro, jump on a train and take things from there.

  Close now, he saw the men’s arms swinging, as if out for a brisk walk. Cheap, unstructured suits made of absurdly soft material. Things he despised. That would make it even easier to pull the trigger on them. He reached into his raincoat for the Browning. Felt the familiar adrenalin rush that preceded killing. That he expected. The men’s next move he did not. As he bore down on them, drawing the pistol, the lights changed and the two men hurried across the road through the stalled traffic and went off down Calle de la Abada.

  Suspecting a trick, Guzmán spun round, just in time to see Lourdes go down the steps into the Metro. There was no sign she was being followed. He took a deep breath. Perhaps the men’s interest had merely been in watching her arse as she walked ahead of them. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed her at all. He was being paranoid.

  He stopped for a moment and returned the pistol to his pocket. The rain was getting heavier and he turned up the collar of his coat as he returned to the hotel, feeling the adrenalin ebb from his body. He was slipping: the two men had been only a moment away from death. This close to the election, with the city braced for acts of violence aimed at disrupting the democratic process, it would have been difficult even for him to explain why he’d shot them.

  Back in his hotel room, he lifted the mattress to take out the leather bag containing the code equipment. He took the bag over to a small table near the balcony and arranged the material on it before fetching the brown cardboard file from its hiding place under the wardrobe. There was one other thing he needed before he began work and that was the bottle of Carlos Primero in the drawer of the nightstand.

  He filled a glass and then sat, staring at the file malevolently as he sipped his brandy. Almost eighteen years had passed since this operation and in all that time the events logged in this dusty red file with its faded label had never been disclosed to him. A file like so many others he’d seen over the years: a few pages of flat, dispassionate prose setting out the details of a particular operation. A bland account with no reference to blood or screaming, the harsh crackle of gunfire or the sibilant whine of bullets. He stared at the file, hesitating to open it.

  Brigada Especial: Top Secret

  (Restricted Access)

  Report on the incident at Llanto del Moro, Alicante

  September 25th 1965

  Classification: Top Secret [Permanent]

  There was nothing this file could tell him that he did not already know. He’d been there, for Christ’s sake. It made no sense to delve into the memory of what happened: at best, it would annoy him. And at worst? He had no idea what that might be.

  A gust of wind sent rain rattling against the window. Far off, a church bell tolled the hour. He took a cigarette from the packet and lit it, staring at the file again. It was time to know the truth, whatever that was. It was not a question that had exercised him much before.

  He opened the report and looked down at the jumble of letters and figures on the first page. It was a military code from one of the many branches of the security services. He smiled, remembering how the Nazis had complained about the Spanish inefficiency of having so many competing intelligence agencies. They never really understood that Franco’s security services trusted no one, not even their own colleagues. If you had spies, you needed more spies to spy on them. That was obvious to the Spanish: it was why they’d invented the Inquisition.

  No matter what code had been used, Guzmán was confident he could decrypt it. The necessary tools were all here. It was just a matter of selecting the right tool for the job. Like golf, he’d said once to Admiral Carrero Blanco, by way of a joke. Not that the admiral had laughed, the Jesuit bastard.

  He took a last swig of brandy and then set to work deciphering the report. After that, he heard nothing but the scratching of his pen.

  He was still working as he heard the deep notes of the church bell toll four. He stared bleary-eyed at the file lying in a corona of light from the lamp, its pages now annotated with angry scribbles and vexed comments. And next to it, a few pages in his broad impatient handwriting, reconstructing the original contents of the report. Checked and rechecked several times now. Even so, he felt a great temptation to start again, focus on details he might have missed, nuances he might have overlooked. But there was no point. No matter how many times he read this report, the deciphered version always came out the same. The problem was nothing to do with translation. It was far greater than that.

  Because now, he knew everything. And all of it was bad. He reached for the Carlos Primero and poured a hefty measure. Somewhere down the corridor a door opened and he stiffened, suddenly alert. As a precaution, he drew the Browning and put it on the table.

  All his life, he had stuck to Franco’s unassailable principle. Trust no one. That way, everyone was suspect. And yet despite that ingrained belief, he’d arrived back in Madrid believing that things had changed enough to make such perennial mistrust unnecessary. That had been stupid. It was the logic of a dead man.

  He lit a cigarette, taking in the implications of it all. He’d been wrong. That was not something he would normally admit to, even to himself. But now he knew the truth, something had to be done, something that would provide a seismic response the equal of what he had just discovered. Something to repay the lies and deceit that had blurred his memory with false thoughts for eighteen years. But his memory was clear now and it would have its revenge for this deception. That had always been his way.

  He rummaged in his pocket for a scrap of paper and dialled the number on it.

  The sarge’s son was as outraged as might be expected at four fifteen in the morning.

  ‘I’ve got a job for you,’ Guzmán said. ‘Have you got your tools?’

  A menacing snigger. ‘They’re in my van. Who do you want me to kill?’

  ‘No one. It’s just a little job but you need to do it now, while it’s dark.’

  ‘Hang on, I’ll get a pencil.’ A sudden agitated scuffle. The sound of things being thrown around the room. ‘OK, boss, fire away.’

  ‘I want you to go to the comisaría on Calle Robles,’ Guzmán said. ‘So listen carefully, because I want this done right.’

  CHAPTER 26

  MADRID, UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE

  ‘I can’t sit about doing nothing for another three hours,’ Isabel groaned. ‘I’m going upstairs to do a bit of work. It’ll pass the time.’

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Galíndez asked.

  Isabel shrugged. ‘The outside doors are locked. I think we’re safe in here.’

  After Isabel had gone, Galíndez stayed at her desk, listening to the dull noises from the pipes in the ceiling, thinking about the haul of files waiting in Guzmán’s old comisaría. There were some who said it was time to forget the past but Galíndez wasn’t one of them. She thought again about the scar down her side, about being tortured by Franco’s favourite assassin, years after the caudillo and his regime were supposed to have passed into history. How could she forget the past when it posed such an immediate threat?

  It was time to even the score, strike back against those remnants of the dictatorship, the Centinelas, a group who long ago learned that power could be exercised from behind the scenes as well as by the use of the iron hand. Steering not rowing. A process of subtle control, pulling strings, carefully reminding those who benefited from their patronage that
debts must always be paid in full, that as long as such debts were honoured there was no need for violence. But when there was, the Centinelas returned to their old ways with the deadly reminder of the bomb and the bullet or the faked accidents. Things they deployed to silence the most problematic individuals, those who posed an intolerable challenge to their power. People like her.

  But there were others as well, like Capitán Fuentes and his family. She had no idea what Fuentes had done to offend the Centinelas but she was certain the family had been killed on their orders. She had a chill recollection of sitting in her black cowl in the refectory of the monastery, listening to the man on the podium: You pay with your dead: the Centinelas’ punishment for treachery, killing not just the traitor but three generations of the family. She’d been wrong, she realised, when she suggested to Isabel that Capitán Fuentes and his family were killed to draw attention from the murder of Sancho and Espartero. It was more likely Fuentes had done something the Centinelas thought worthy of their most drastic punishment.

  She sighed, twisting a lock of her hair as if somehow it would release the truth. But no matter how much thought she gave it, she kept returning to the same suspects. Besides Galíndez, only Mendez had known Sancho was holed up in the pensión. And since Mendez had worked with Capitán Fuentes for years, it was possible she also knew he was a Centinela. Or worse, maybe she was one as well. That made her even more of a threat because Mendez knew the layout and the workings of HQ intimately. God, she was on first-name terms with practically everyone in the building.

  And there was one person Mendez knew better than any: the girl who’d studied martial arts at a dojo in Lavapiés so kids at school would stop bullying her. The girl whose father died a hero in a terrorist blast: Ana María Galíndez.

  She let go of the lock of hair, tired by her circular thoughts. It was time to take a break, take her mind off things for a while. She went out into the corridor.

  From a door further along, she heard singing. A moment later, Madame D’Nour emerged from an office, pulling a large plastic sack, her hair tied up in a multicoloured scarf.

  ‘Muy buenas, Madame D’Nour. That’s another lovely song.’

  The cleaner gave her a brilliant smile. ‘It’s a song about a girl who loves someone and doesn’t know how to tell them, Mademoiselle Ana.’

  Galíndez gave her a shy smile, thinking of Isabel. That was what she would do, she decided: go and tell Isabel how she felt.

  *

  Madame D’Nour pushed open the door to Galíndez’s office, still singing. There was not much to do today, she could see. The coffee mugs were lined up by the sink, all washed. That was Mademoiselle Isabel’s doing, she guessed. Mademoiselle Ana might be pretty, but she needed to learn how to tidy up if she ever hoped to keep a man. She saw their desks: Isabel’s was arranged neatly, her pens placed side by side; Galíndez’s was strewn with notes, broken pencils and pieces of orange peel. With a sigh, Madame D’Nour set to work, tidying and dusting, singing loudly as she worked. So loud that at first she didn’t hear the door open. As she turned, she saw the figure in the doorway, outlined against the light of the setting sun.

  ‘You scared me, sister,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’

  *

  Galíndez had just reached the top of the stairs when she heard the cry. She turned and went back down the stairs. As she neared her office, she saw Madame D’Nour’s plastic sack lying on the floor, surrounded by waste paper. The door was open though the lights were off. Her broom lay on the floor just inside the darkened office.

  Tentatively, Galíndez stood in the doorway. Though the room was in darkness, there was still enough light to see Madame D’Nour’s body lying behind the door, the floor glinting with her blood. Galíndez knelt and checked in vain for a pulse.

  From the deep shadow that obscured the detail of the office, she heard a slow, tentative footstep. Instinctively, she reached for the Glock and felt only her empty holster, suddenly remembering that Isabel had moved the pistol.

  Galíndez turned and started to run. She took the stairs two at a time, focused only on warning Isabel. As she reached the floor above, the overhead lights went out, plunging the long corridor into darkness. That left at least seventy metres between her and the office where Isabel was working.

  Behind her, she heard footsteps on the stairs and she ran faster, shouting as she ran: ‘Isabel, they’re here, get out of the building. Open the emergency doors and run. Fuck’s sake, Izzy, get out now.’

  She ran, gasping for air, her canvas bag bouncing against her side. At the end of the corridor, she saw Isabel come out of her office, silhouetted against the dull light from the windows.

  Galíndez shouted again, her voice harsh and unfamiliar, the words coalescing into one long sentence fused by fear: ‘Izzy, open the fucking doors, get to the car, for God’s sake, run.’

  A metallic crash as Isabel kicked the handle of the emergency exit, the dusk light spilling in as the doors flew open. Isabel running out through the exit. Above the sound of her tortured breathing, Isabel’s words came back to her. I can’t work with a bloody big pistol lying about. I’ll put it in your bag.

  Without slowing, Galíndez shoved her hand into the canvas bag, scrabbling through the contents as she ran: phone, lipstick, a packet of tights. And then her hand closed on the Glock.

  Twenty metres to go. The ragged sound of her pursuer’s breath behind her as she turned, firing blind without seeing her target, illuminating the corridor with the sudden white flash, hearing a cry of pain as the attacker reeled back into the darkness.

  Galíndez charged through the emergency doors, almost losing her balance on the smooth stone ramp. Ahead, she saw Isabel, her long legs pumping as she sprinted towards the line of garbage bins that hid their car. Sudden moments of clumsy panic as they scrambled inside. Galíndez gunned the engine and the tyres squealed as she accelerated away from the faculty building.

  For a fleeting moment, she saw a figure standing in the emergency exit, someone dressed in black, the detail lost in shadow. Then she turned her eyes back to the road, looking for the turn off to Vallecas. It was a journey she had made before. On that occasion she nearly died. She had never expected to return.

  ALICANTE, 25 OCTOBER 1965, LLANTO DEL MORO

  The village was never a noisy place, but now, as the sun went down, it was silent.

  The doors of the church hall were open to let in the sea breeze. Inside, Villanueva heard sporadic weeping and a few voices raised in protest at this enforced confinement. Since armed guards surrounded the building, the protests did not last long. A while later, the local priest was brought in to offer spiritual assistance. Villanueva doubted that would be of much use. The last time the priest had offered assistance to a large group of people had been in the war, when the members of the village’s Communist party were shot before being thrown into the dried-up well on the edge of town. Where they still lay, he recalled.

  As he passed his comisaría, he heard raised voices coming from the rear of the building. After a furtive glance to see if anyone was watching, he slipped down the side of the comisaría to stand beneath the open window of his office.

  ‘Guzmán can’t go up there alone,’ Carrero Blanco said. ‘It’s suicide. I can’t believe you’re even contemplating such a thing.’

  ‘Men like Guzmán are dispensable. If he pulls it off, he’s a hero, if he dies in the attempt, we give him a medal.’ Gutiérrez lowered his voice. ‘For God’s sake, no one is going to save those children from that madman and the harpy he’s got with him. We need to end the situation and then make sure the censors keep press coverage to an absolute minimum. At least the tragedy will prompt Franco to consider implementing the new security service I proposed.’

  ‘Frankly, you disgust me,’ Carrero Blanco said. ‘You want to let Guzmán and eighteen children die to further your own career?’

  ‘I might be in charge of the new unit, but you’d have overall command. It would enhance your pres
tige immensely.’

  ‘I’ve already given you my answer,’ Carrero Blanco said. ‘Fetch Guzmán, at once.’

  ‘That’s not possible,’ Gutiérrez said. ‘He set off half an hour ago. He’s taken the case of fake banknotes with him.’

  Villanueva did not wait to hear Carrero Blanco’s reply.

  As he passed the priest’s house, the door was open. Quietly, he slipped inside. The telephone was on a small table inside the door, alongside a crucifix sporting a particularly agonised Christ. Villanueva dialled his brother’s number. One of the chambermaids answered and he heard the chatter from the dining room for a few moments before his brother came to the phone.

  Their conversation over, Villanueva made his way out of the village, following paths he’d known since childhood as he headed for the sloping track leading up to the headland.

  CHAPTER 27

  MADRID, OCTOBER 1982, CALLE DE RONCESVALLES, MADRID

  Dawn was still some way off as Guzmán left the hotel. After hours of sitting hunched over his code, the cold morning air was refreshing. Somewhere in the darkness, he heard revellers enjoying what remained of their night out. Probably they were staying up until the polls opened so they could vote before returning home to sleep off the night’s excess. He hadn’t even considered voting. There were more pressing things to worry about now, the most pressing of which was how to survive the day in a city where any number of people wanted him dead.

  Ahead, he saw the lights of a bar and went in for a brandy.