The Dark Place: A historical suspense thriller set in the murky world of fugitive war criminals, vengeful Nazi hunters and spies

by Damian Vargas

  But it was too late.

  The officers were shouting now, then crying. Hands to the mouths. Dropping to their knees.

  As the younger men recoiled from the open hatch, Garcia turned away, cold. Empty. He had nothing to offer them, nothing to give. Nothing that would help. This would be the trauma they would take to the end of their days. Garcia already had all the nightmares he could ever take.

  He trudged away, staring through the olive trees, through the citrus trees, past Harry Blackman’s villa. In the distance, the valley floor, the lake, the lights flickering from the pueblo of La Mesita Blanca on the opposite flank of the valley.

  This valley of black.

  This dark place.

  62

  Arrangements

  La Mesita Blanca.

  November 2nd, 1970.

  ‘All this must be kept quiet.’ Guy Weiland stood, hands behind his back, staring up above the terraces of olives, to the concrete structure thirty feet higher up.

  The more senior of the two secret policemen stood facing him, his gaze sweeping across the valley. ‘We are in agreement about that.’

  Weiland lifted his stare upwards, to the trees that crested the crags of the black cliffs. ‘The Israelis?’

  ‘They got away.’

  ‘And Krügel?’

  ‘He did not make it. These hills are too treacherous for a man as old and frail as he. They were stupid to have attempted that.’

  ‘They killed him?’ said Weiland.

  ‘A heart attack, most probably.’

  ‘His body?’

  ‘It will be cremated. There is a service tomorrow. It will be quiet, discreet.’ The secret policeman placed a cigarillo between his lips, lit it.

  ‘Very good.’ Weiland dropped his gaze to meet that of the Spaniard, then turned towards the end of the valley, to the woodland around the old compound, the private community of villas to the south of it. ‘It will take some time to relocate them all.’

  The secret policeman exhaled, the smoke blue. Drifting upwards in the chill air. ‘Has the British Government not considered a more…permanent solution?’

  ‘It was discussed. It was deemed impractical.’

  ‘Yes, I guess so. These people have developed powerful connections. It is a pity that our governments did not anticipate this.’

  ‘Quite.’

  The Spaniard nodded. ‘Well, Madrid will agree to a timescale of two months. No more.’

  ‘Two months is not much time to find a friendly government who will take these people in. I think six months—’

  ‘The president is not best pleased that the British government chose to place a spy in our country,’ said the Spaniard. ‘Or do you deny that Miss Johansson was working for you?’

  ‘There was concern that one of our nationals was here with undesirable intent. My government prefers to resolve such problems quietly.’

  The Spaniard laughed, directed his hand towards the concrete water tank in a slow, sweeping movement. ‘The British government thinks this matter was resolved quietly?’

  Weiland cleared his throat. ‘Things did not go to plan, I think we can agree on that—’

  ‘There are also questions about your account of what happened here today. How Blackman and the girl escaped, how you came to be locked up, and how Señor Navarro and a police officer were killed.’ The Spaniard peered at Weiland, a knowing look in his eye. ‘However, our president is keen that this matter does not become a source of differences between our two nations. So long as it is resolved quickly and quietly. Do we understand each other, Mr Weiland?’

  Weiland held the man’s gaze for a moment, then nodded. ‘I think two months should be sufficient.’

  The second secret policeman had made his way down from the old water tank, shoes squelching on the wet earth. He held up a clear plastic bag which contained several sheets of white paper. ‘The boy’s sketches?’

  ‘Destroy them.’

  His colleague nodded, started towards the villa.

  ‘What about Blackman and the girl?’ asked the secret policeman.

  Weiland peered up to the horizon, to the dark cumulonimbus clouds gathering to the west, towards Gibraltar. ‘Arrangements have already been made.’

  ‘Good.’

  Weiland peered at the Spaniard. The man already knew what he was about to ask. Weiland could see it in his eyes. ‘About the Inspector. He told me that he was due to retire this week. After thirty years. Such a shame for things to end this way.’

  The secret policeman held his stare. ‘It is indeed, most regrettable.’

  ‘Can we be sure he won’t talk?’

  The Spaniard looked away. ‘I have every confidence that this will be the case.’

  There. It is done.

  ‘That is good,’ said Weiland.

  ‘There is one aspect that still puzzles me,’ said the Spaniard. ‘Why was this man Blackman so determined to go after von Ziegler and his son?’ The man’s thin lips curled ever so slightly, and his eyes narrowed. His suspicions betrayed.

  ‘A close friend of his was killed in England last year. A Scotsman called Gus Ferguson. He and Blackman served together in the war. Ferguson had been snooping around in the area last year, asking questions, taking photographs of the German community.’

  ‘And Blackman believed von Ziegler had this man killed to silence him?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘And was that the case?’

  Weiland fought the urge to avert his eyes, to look away. To signal an official lie. He knew that the situation dictated yet another untruth disguised with absurd nuance, but somehow, he could not bring himself to say it.

  The Spaniard searched the Englishman’s face, understood. ‘Ah. So, it was not the German who had this man Ferguson killed.’

  ‘Like I said,’ said Weiland, ‘I made arrangements.’

  63

  At peace

  The police station, La Mesita Blanca.

  November 3rd, 1970.

  Jesus Garcia had been wearing the same clothes for three days now. There had been no contact with any of the new faces that occupied the police station, other than the two men from La Secreta and the replacement desk sergeant who had brought Garcia his meals and emptied his bucket twice daily.

  The Inspector had not minded; it had given him plenty of time for reflection, although he could not shake the habit of seeking for his notebook to record his thoughts. He had no doubt that it now sat in an evidence box in his former office, which the secret service men had taken over to use as their own.

  The new desk sergeant had given him food and water, blankets to fend off the sharp, late autumnal chill.

  They had interrogated him in the chair in which so many others had faced him across that table over so many years. The ‘chair of the guilty’. They had interrogated him intently, those secret policemen in their dark suits, with their untelling eyes and pale faces. But, he reflected, they had been surprisingly restrained in their techniques. He had been grateful for that.

  They had told him that Filipe de Burgos, the commissioner general of police in Andalusia, was now no longer the commissioner general of police in Andalusia, and that officers Ramos, Gomez and Alonso had been “transferred elsewhere”. Garcia held no doubts that De Burgos would see out the remainder of his days on a fat government pension. He hoped, however, that his three young colleagues would be given an opportunity to serve their country wherever ‘elsewhere’ was. Garcia had told the secret policemen that his former colleagues should take no blame for what had happened in La Mesita Blanca. The men from Madrid agreed with Garcia’s sentiment on that point, they had said, but the Inspector was to be under no illusion, however, who their bosses had decreed was to be held responsible for the fiasco that had occurred here, in his pueblo. They knew about the tape recordings, but not where the tape had gone. They knew about the deal Garcia had made with Blackman, to make von Ziegler confess - the German, a guest of the president himself. Garcia, the policeman who
was supposed to have protected him, but under whose watch he had been killed.

  ‘There is no illusion,’ he had told them.

  They had left him soon after that, the new desk sergeant taking him back to his cell. The same small cold room with two steel frame beds and thin mattresses in which the Englishman had been held. On All Saints’ Day. Garcia chuckled out loud. The circle of life, indeed. How unpredictable it can be. How curious. How cruel.

  They had confiscated his watch, his belt, his shoelaces, his wallet and his reading glasses, but had allowed him to retain the black-and-white photograph of his Rosa Maria. He had found it a great comfort to have her with him in those cold, lonely hours. For that, he had been extremely grateful and had thereafter striven to be extra-helpful for his interrogators. He had observed them as they had observed him. He had been impressed with their diligence, the patience and candour. He did not think of them as bad men. He hoped that they thought likewise of him. What were each of them, after all, but servants of their country, fulfilling the roles that were theirs to fulfil, playing with the cards that life had dealt them?

  He held the image, squinted at his dear Rosa. His vision might have been failing him, but it mattered not; he knew this picture better than any other. She, leaning against a stone wall overlooking the lakes at Peñarrubia, during a brief, late summer break in 1963. That look on her face; somewhere between a seductive smile and a patient admonishment.

  1963, a fine year. But the year after his wife had been diagnosed with that disease of the bones, and which has taken her from him just months later. He never said the name of the disease. Never even thought it, that evil that had robbed him of the only good thing in his life.

  He awoke to the sound of the key turning in the steel door. The light penetrating into the room through the small window high up on the wall told him it was morning. Early. He rubbed at his eyes, peered up. The desk sergeant retreating, making no eye contact. The men from La Secreta standing, wearing hats and outdoor coats, different faces. They said nothing, but their postures and their eyes signalled why they were here for him this one last time.

  Secrets that must be kept.

  He nodded, pushed himself up. A searing stab of pain at the base of his spine. He rubbed at the vertebrae that had tortured him for several years now, groaned. Cursed. The pain was worse than ever now.

  One of the secret policemen came forward, helped him to his feet. Their eyes meeting for the slightest of moments, as the man handed the Inspector his glasses.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Garcia, ambled forward, then paused, glanced behind him. The image of Rosa Maria lay on the small bed.

  The secret policeman stooped to collect it for him, held it out.

  Garcia looked at his wife’s face one last time, shook his head. ‘No. This is not a journey we will make together’. The man glanced towards his colleague who was standing at the door and shrugged, then placed the image back down onto the bed.

  It was an area of the forest that Garcia knew well. The dark granite slabs visible through the occasional break in the tree cover. The floor of brown pine needles, layers upon layers; each rotting under the carpet of the seasons that followed them, on a long voyage from what they had been to what they would become. Back to the earth.

  Like all things.

  He heard birdsong. A blackbird serenading a prospective mate, perhaps? The distant machine gun knocking of a woodpecker. Everywhere, creaking trees, furtive rustles, the swooshing of leaves in the cool morning breeze. Twigs snapping under their footsteps.

  Somewhere over to this right, less than a hundred metres from them, the sound of energised water cascading from its high source down onto slippery, black rocks. The gorge, its fogged air wet like a morning shower. A rich sanctuary of curious shadows in which all manner of flora and fauna flourished.

  The cold morning mist drifting between the trunks of trees like drunken apparitions. Hapless souls lost in a woodland purgatory.

  As they approached the fresh pit under a group of juvenile pines, the Inspector chuckled, looking at the smart leather shoes that both secret policemen were wearing, now sullied with a layer of woodland grime. Such an inappropriate selection of footwear for a task such as this, he thought. Shoes for the city, for Madrid. Not for a place such as this.

  He paused near the fresh pit in the ground, filled his lungs with the cool, damp air, eyed his escorts. ‘I don’t suppose either of you happen to have a cigarillo?’

  The man on the left, the more junior of the two, glanced at his colleague seeking instruction. The second man glanced at Garcia, then nodded at his colleague, who produced a carton of Aguila de Oro cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket. He took one of the white sticks, lifted it to his lips and thumbed at the metal lighter, and lit the cigarillo, before passing it to the Inspector.

  Garcia peered at it for a moment while turning to face the hole in the ground, savouring the thought of the pleasure before the pleasure itself. He lifted it to his lips, between thumb and forefinger, closed his eyes and inhaled.

  The smoke filled his lungs, tickling his throat on its passage down. He held it there, eyes closed. His heart beating in his ears. The nicotine delivering a rapid, delicious dizziness.

  Birds conversed in the trees above, witnesses to the moment.

  He shut out the muffled crunch of the footsteps behind him. The sounds of a buckle being released, then heavy machined metal being drawn from tight leather.

  He exhaled as slowly as he could, neck arched back, face to the heavens. Lifted the cigarillo to his mouth again and drew in more of the sweet smoke. Smooth, lingering.

  The click of a mechanism being cocked. The faintest sound of the man’s arms lifting in unison, the folds of his coat rustling against one another. The sharp intake of the man’s breath, the controlled release that followed as he readied himself.

  Garcia pictured his Rosa Maria, opened his eyes.

  A white gull drifting high above. The backdrop a solid azure but for the wisps of white and sparkles of dust dancing in the sun beams.

  I’m coming, my love. I’m coming.

  THE END

  64

  The rabbit hole

  “At the foot of a completely hidden natural valley in Andalusia, this was a hideaway for Nazis fleeing the allies. Many say it still is. There is a very large fence around this lake with its large house and dogs. The water really is that colour {a putrid green}. No-one is Spanish. No-one is friendly. The Mercedes are all black.”

  Reproduced with kind permission by Nicola Campbell.

  36.60918001265874, -4.7417585364847215

  Thank you

  It means the world to me that you read this book.

  Since I was a child I have entertained myself by constructing stories. I do it on planes and trains, in cars, on beaches, in dull meetings and, frequently, to get to sleep. Making up stories has always been enjoyable for me. That is why I write.

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  Also by Damian Vargas

  Six Hard Days In Andalusia

  An Action Thriller

  A former MI6 senior field officer, now a private contractor to the underworld, heads to Spain to investigate the gangland slaying of an important client, only to discover the dead man was the father who abandoned her as a young child.

  When an old-time British villain and his crew meet their end in a bloody shoot-out on the Costa del Sol, it's of little concern to most. After all, gan
gsters get killed. It's what happens in their line of work. Allegiances change. Men die. It's the way of things. However, when Mary Lawson a.k.a. 'The Accountant', a former MI6 agent turned independent contractor to the mob, is instructed by her shady bosses to investigate, things quickly get a lot more complicated. Hardened by her years in British military intelligence and ruthlessly professional, the woman who is no stranger to death and suffering, sets out to find who is responsible. However, on the 'Costa del Crime' with its regular influx of millions of tourists, a history of political corruption, and a diverse and thriving criminal underworld, nothing is ever simple.

  Six Hard Days in Andalusia is the first of Damian Vargas's 'Costa del Crime' action thrillers. Vargas constructs an enthralling and intricate plot, weaves in a cast of unique characters, and then places them in wonderfully visualised, real-world locations in southern Spain.

  Some highlights from recent reader reviews...

  - "Rollicking good fun with surprising depth".

  - "It’s incredibly well-plotted and quite extraordinary for a 1st book".

  - "This is a great novel, that moves quickly, surprises, entertains and is equally violent, humorous and tragic".

  - "Fans of Carl Hiaasen will find a lot to love here".

  - "Violent yet amusing, exciting with a warm heart".

  - "As close to unputdownable as real life allows".

  - "Perfect holiday reading".