The Dark Place
A historical suspense thriller
Damian Vargas
Contents
Monsters
Prologue: A Man Called ‘Anders’
1. Arrangements
2. The owl
3. All Saints’ Day
4. The call
5. Into darkness
6. Lessons
7. The survivor
8. Know thy enemy
9. Outsiders
10. The travel writer
11. The castle builder
12. The patriot
13. Connections
14. The beaches
15. The arrival
16. Take note
17. The altercation
18. Eye to eye
19. Resolute
20. The man in madrid
21. The wake
22. The saviour
23. Methods
24. The evil
25. Privilege
26. Pillow talk
27. The worst of them
28. Demands
29. A proposal
30. The inglés
31. Evidence
32. The widow
33. Revelations
34. Old dog, old tricks
35. Young wolves
36. ¡No pasarán!
37. Who are you?
38. The hole truth
39. Secrets
40. Word play
41. Sababa
42. Family history
43. Out of shadows
44. On a mission
45. The descent of man
46. A blast from the past
47. Hit & run
48. Representative democracy
49. Liquidate everything
50. Unhappy guests
51. Ghosts
52. Dark deeds
53. The horror
54. Footsteps
55. We, monsters.
56. The killer
57. The reunion
58. Its true nature
59. The escape
60. Still hope
61. An end of innocence
62. Arrangements
63. At peace
64. The rabbit hole
Thank you
Also by Damian Vargas
About the Author
Social media
Acknowledgments
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you”.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146
Prologue: A Man Called ‘Anders’
I still recall the encounter most vividly.
I was up in the hills, sitting on a dusty step outside the refugio, eating a sandwich. The sun was beating down on my exposed skin. I was forced to shield my face with my hand to make eye contact with the septuagenarian with his long white hair in a ponytail; the man who I shall refer to as “Anders”.
I can no longer recall quite how we got onto the subject of German war criminals who once lived in Spain, hiding from justice. However, what he told me has remained with me ever since; how a community of senior Nazis once lived in Malaga province, protected by the Franco regime.
A quick internet search will provide plenty of articles about escaped German war criminals who once lived in Spain - Otto Skorzeny and Leon Degrelle being just two - but what Anders told me sounded much more significant.
He had been a resident in Malaga province since arriving in Spain in the early 1960s.
‘I made a lot of money in the travel and tourism industry,’ he said, ‘and I now own several properties. Although I have no heirs to inherit them.’
A young man when he first came to the country, he had built a lucrative career as the European economies recovered in the post-war years, and as their tourist industries flourished. His niche had been to service the desires of the wealthy and powerful and he could, he said, ‘tell of a thousand scandals involving movie stars, musicians, footballers, businesspeople and corrupt politicians.’
However, the most interesting stories of all, he told me, involved a secretive community of German nationals who lived in an area inland from Fuengirola that the locals know as La Mesita Blanca. ‘You won’t find that name on any map,’ he said. ‘But it is a place high in the hills, about thirty kilometres inland, and was once full of Germans who escaped the Allies at the end of the war.’
This seemed beyond incredible at first, but it piqued my curiosity, and I think he could tell. I have held an avid interest in the Second World War since I was a young boy; ever since my grandfather first showed me his collections of wartime trinkets and told me a little about some of his escapades. I was unable to resist pushing Anders for more information.
He spoke of pale-skinned men and women in their fifties and sixties, with unsmiling faces and suspicious eyes. Men and women who would treat with contempt the Spanish workers who toiled in their gardens, who cleaned their houses, and who attended to the pools, but who were polite to Anders. ‘This was most likely,’ he surmised, ‘because of my blonde hair and blue eyes.’
I remember the searching gaze in those eyes and the short, one-sided twitch of his face as he delivered those words. I felt certain that it spoke of regrets long-since suppressed.
‘Most of the men lived alone. A few with their families. They each owned their own properties at the secluded end of the valley. Some had businesses. One bred horses. Several had wineries. And there was at least one import/export company. They would congregate in a big tavern that one of their number built in the 1950s. The building is still there today, but now it is quite different. Now it is like any other restaurant in any other Spanish village. Back in those days, it was like a Bavarian hunting lodge. The Spanish from the surrounding areas used to refer to the village as “Little Munich”.’
The Germans who lived there were, he explained, ‘Most protective of their privacy,’ and with good reason, it seemed.
‘But what were all these Germans doing in Spain?’ I asked him.
Anders looked at me with a quizzical eye and the faintest hint of a smile. ‘They had been hunted after the war had ended. But they were protected here. In those days, the approaches to the far end of the valley were guarded by Spanish soldiers. Nobody could go beyond the old pueblo without permission. There were barriers across the only paved road into the village. A stone watchtower sat on the hill above - a three-story building designed to resemble a water tower, but in which there were only men with binoculars and rifles.’
‘And these people, these “war criminals”,’ I continued. ‘Are you saying that they lived in complete freedom, without fear of consequence from their past? For how long? And why in that place?’
Anders spoke of a secure compound that sat on a plateau at the far end of the valley where the surrounding cliffs met to form a narrow ravine; a place he had only glimpsed himself, but where - some said - SS men had attended for rest and recuperation during the war years. It had been a veritable holiday resort for the worst of Hitler’s most loyal servants.
I was astounded and, I must confess, more than a little sceptical. ‘And this “compound”,’ I said. ‘Does it still exist? If I drove there now, would I find it?’
He gave me a philosophical smile and shrugged. ‘The old ho
use might still be there but of the rest of the structures, not much remains, I would wager. By the time of the dictator’s death, in 1975, most of the Germans were gone. There was an incident, you see.’
‘An incident?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, in 1970, and involving an Englishman. He had bought a property to renovate and lived there for a short while. I only met him once. A woman who was once dear to me worked for him for a summer. It was how I met her.’
‘And how did this man’s presence affect things?’
Anders scratched at his grey stubble. ‘Some unfortunate events occurred, and the authorities became involved. It all changed after that.’
‘You’re not being very specific.’
He shrugged. ‘I never knew exactly what transpired. My friend was also a very secretive person and she took that knowledge to her grave. But the people that lived there realised that their time in Spain had come to an end. Most of them fled within a year. They travelled to Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. I organised the travel for quite a few of them. Some moved out East.’
‘You helped them?’ I asked, aghast. Until that moment, I had somehow failed to connect the old man’s declared profession with the incredible tales of which he was recounting.
He shrugged. ‘Of course. It was most profitable. Why not? If I didn’t, somebody else would have.’
‘But these people were war criminals, presumably with the blood of many people on their hands. They were monsters. Did that not trouble you?’
My change of demeanour had unnerved him, and I realised that our conversation was concluding. He took a short swig from his dented metal flask, screwed the cap back on, and pushed it into his backpack.
‘It was not my place to judge them, or to ask questions,’ he told me as he fastened his bag and rose to his feet. ‘I have seventy-three years in these bones, my friend,’ he said. ‘And I realised long ago that a man can either allow himself to become bogged down in the mud of other people’s footsteps, or he can seek a path untrod. I chose the latter, and I have no regrets about that. What those men and women in that place felt in their hearts, I cannot know. It is for a higher being than I to examine those souls.’ He shook my hand, bid me farewell, and turned to walk away.
‘How do I find this place?’ I asked.
He had expected the question. He replied without pausing. ‘Take the main road from Fuengirola inland toward Coín. After about twenty kilometres, as you approach the valley that cuts between the dark hills, head west. Keep stopping to ask for directions to La Mesita Blanca. When people stop answering, then you will know you’re close.’
He nodded at me, as if knowing precisely what he had just set in motion, then strode away.
It took several minutes before ‘Anders’ had disappeared amongst the pine and cork trees a few hundred yards below me. I did not take my eyes off him the entire time, but it was not the old Scandinavian that I saw. My mind was already somewhere else; a place high in dark hills, to dangerous times long past, and to a place full of old men with secrets that cast long shadows.
Damian Vargas
July 2021
1
Arrangements
Southern England.
Autumn, 1969.
It was raining in London.
It had been doing so for several days now, on and off. It wasn’t what anyone would term as being “heavy”, but rather that peculiarly British type of precipitation that does little to fill reservoirs but much to dampen the spirit. Filtering the world into a spectrum of grey. Focussing people’s attention only upon the few yards of pavement before them. The Brits have an apt name for it.
Drizzle.
It was mid-morning. The commuter traffic had already died down. Children were at school, and there was a disproportionately female make-up to the pedestrian population who meandered up and down the pavement along the suburban high street. Twenty and thirty-something mothers pushing prams, navigating around sixty and seventy-something grandmothers who struggled to haul fully laden shopping trollies. Men, past retirement age or jobless, strolling - seemingly without purpose, before furtively ducking into a pub or the bookmaker’s.
A middle-aged man, stocky, with curly ginger hair and a boxer’s nose, appeared in the doorway of a travel agency. He wore a green wax jacket, the kind that outward bound-types and former military men wore when on countryside excursions. He peered up at the sky, yanked his coat collar up, then stepped out into the rain, and strode towards the pedestrian crossing.
Another man stood on the opposite side of the street, under the shadow of a concrete porch. He wore a long drab trench coat, a grey fedora hat and polished black shoes. He sucked on a final, rushed drag from his cigarette, flung it to the floor, then looked up the street and lifted one hand into the air as if hailing a taxi.
The man in the wax jacket pressed the button on the traffic light and stood waiting patiently for the lights to turn red.
Fifty yards away, a black saloon angled itself out from behind the two stationary cars in front of it as the traffic lights turned amber. Its engine throbbed at an elevated level of revolutions, the driver holding the clutch in.
Ready.
The lights turned to red.
The man in the wax jacket stepped onto the tarmac. He failed to register the squeal of tires as the black saloon lurched forward, crossed the white central dividing lines and headed into the wrong side of the road.
Seconds passed before the man on the crossing turned his head, suddenly alert to the approaching car, but not yet comprehending its intent. He looked straight at it, then to the woman who was pushing a child’s buggy, about to start crossing the road opposite him. He raised both his hands in front of him, shouted a warning at her.
She froze, saw the speeding car that he was pointing at, then yanked her child back to the safety of the pavement. Just in time.
The man on the crossing stood no chance.
The saloon ploughed forward. Taking his legs from under him. Propelling his helpless body upwards. His shoulder slammed into the bonnet, his head into the windscreen with a sickening crunch - cracking the glass and spraying a red mist into the air. The car continued, still accelerating, as the broken body flew over its roof, seemingly weightless, rising ten feet in the air before falling back to the hard, wet road surface. Still. Lifeless. Blood pooling from under the red hair.
The saloon sped away, careering between oncoming vehicles, before disappearing from view down a side street.
Time stopped as onlookers struggled to process the scene before them.
A woman. Screaming.
A policeman appeared, sprinting towards the crossing, one hand holding his helmet to his head. He stopped, peered at the lifeless body, pointed at a young man who had just stepped out of a nearby shop, wearing a striped apron. A butcher’s apprentice. The policeman, his index finger extended out like the snout of a gun-dog. ‘Call 999. Now!’
The man in the apron retreated back into the shop to do as instructed.
Women with prams averted their eyes and steered their small charges away from the appalling vista.
An older man with an umbrella approached the policeman who was now crouching over the body. ‘Is he dead?’
The policeman nodded.
‘That car must have been doin’ fifty at least,’ said the man.
‘Did you see the registration number?’ said the policeman.
The man with the umbrella shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. It happened so fast.’
The figure in the trench coat and hat watched the scene for a minute, then walked away towards a red telephone box. He yanked the door open, inserted a single coin and dialled the central London number that he had been made to memorise.
A male voice answered after one ring. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s done,’ said the man in the telephone box, then placed the receiver down. He pushed the door open, and stepped back out into the rain.
A police car was approaching, closely followed by an ambulanc
e, their sirens competing for attention. Their blue lights piercing through the cold air, briefly painting a bright blue onto the grey, suburban gloom.
He turned his face away from the onrushing vehicles as they passed by, thrust his hands into his coat pockets, and strode away up the street.
He took no pleasure in what he had just done.
But orders were orders.
2
The owl
La Mesita Blanca, Andalusia, Spain.
October 31st, 1970.
One day earlier.
Captain Jesus Garcia of the Guardia Civil, Spain’s militarised police force, sat at a table on the veranda of the Augustiner tavern, sipping at his espresso, watching the world go by. It was, he decided, a thoroughly pleasant autumn day.
It was approaching one o’clock in the afternoon. The establishment was beginning to fill up with locals seeking out a pre-siesta lunch, but, as usual, the tables nearest him remained unoccupied.
The Dark Place: A historical suspense thriller set in the murky world of fugitive war criminals, vengeful Nazi hunters and spies Page 1