“Seriously, I did consider not coming back—perhaps even dropping out of university altogether and getting a job. One of the things that kept me on track was the betrayal my family would feel; I knew the kind of sacrifices they’d made to put me there. But I was getting to the real point when you interrupted me. I think the main reason was psychological. Nowadays, with so many kids doing a gap year, the signs of cultural confusion are more widely recognised. ‘Going native’, we used to call it. I don’t suppose that’s politically correct enough for today.”
“Choque cultural inverso,” responded the detective. “Whatever that translates to in English. The kind of alienation you experience in a hostile foreign culture, but in your home country. Returning exiles get it, and sometimes gap year students. You wouldn’t believe the stuff a poor cop has to read these days.”
“That makes a kind of sense, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Back then I was totally in the dark. All I knew was that I belonged here rather than there. And I guess that confused sense of belonging explains some of the reckless choices I made in the weeks ahead.”
“I gather you went on the run.”
“I’ll get to all that, but can we take a break. It’s been a bad day for me, and I know it has for you. I’m so sorry about Alonso.”
Miguel’s face went distant. “I’m absolutely gutted. He could be difficult—he was an old-fashioned hard man who felt a kind of culture shock at modern life. But he was an outstanding cop and a man of great integrity. He was with me for years. And sorry in advance, but that makes me all the more determined to sweat you for any information that might help us break this case open.”
“Well, I need a break,” said Jack sharply. “And if you’ll excuse me saying, I think there are other matters with a higher priority. I could have got myself wiped out tonight, and I want to know how the Legion knew where we were. There was no phone or radio contact and we were in the middle of nowhere. And if they could get to us there, how do we know they can’t get to us here?”
Miguel looked embarrassed. “The enquiry has already started, and it didn’t take long to come to an interim conclusion. I’m afraid we’ve been complacent. We have a logistical department that manages facilities like the one we were staying at. Few of them are in constant use, and when one is needed there’s a certain amount of work involved. Power has to be switched on, provisions delivered and so on. In the case of a proper witness protection address, that stuff’s all secure. And that’s where we’d have taken you if there’d been time. But we went to the only place in the area that was available at short notice. It should have been safe enough. I don’t think anybody figured the bad guys would have such a hard-on for you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about Alonso, and sorry you were exposed to danger. I’m glad you got out safely.”
“Thanks for that. And thanks to you again, Julio, for getting me out.”
“Pleased to be of service to you both,” answered the tall, thin man with a hint of a smile.
“The thing is,” asked Jack, “can we be sure we’re safe here?”
“As safe as anywhere can be,” answered Miguel. “This actually is a witness protection house. I have to tell you, it took some negotiating because right now we don’t have a case to prosecute. And until you come up with something substantive we won’t have one. Someone is directing these bastards, and that someone really is out to get you. We have to crack that connection. It’s our only lead in a murder case and a major breach of law and order.”
Julio leaned forward at this point, patiently waiting for a nod from the detective before he spoke. “I have a question, Jack. You used the word ‘legion’ to refer to whoever is harassing us. It’s an odd term to use, and in your case I can’t just write it off as bad Spanish. Have you had dealings with them before, by any chance?”
He looked at Jack, but Jack was now gazing into space. “Oh, my God,” he responded at length. “I didn’t even notice what I’d said. Look, I’ll be honest with you. I’ve told you about the flashbacks I get—random words or sensory impressions that surface without warning, a lot of it stuff that I’ve managed to avoid thinking about for years. Well, there’s other stuff in my head: stuff that I’ve drawn a veil over for so long, I don’t know half of what’s there. But yes, I remember now: they were the Legion. The Legion something. Something to do with the Nazis.”
Jack got up to leave the room, but then froze suddenly. Condor. The word flashed into his mind, provoking a physical reaction clearly visible to the others. He was shivering now, but he managed one last contribution before excusing himself and hurrying out. “That was it: the Legión Condor. The Condor Legion.”
CHAPTER 6
Sometimes he impressed even himself. He had a remarkable gift for getting to where he wanted to be. It helped that his conscience had been cauterised by the events he had lived through. It made it easier still knowing that he was a soldier fighting for a cause. Between them, his scarred psyche and his political vision gave him the justification for doing whatever he deemed necessary. Many people, colleagues and others, had learned the hard way not to cross him; only a few, fortunately, had failed to learn the lesson quickly enough.
He knew that his greatest gift was networking. He had learned at an early age to cultivate friends—by which he meant people he could use. These relationships started in a friendly enough way; people found him a very useful man to know, at least until the time came for payback and they realised that he was not a man to whom one said ‘no’.
Along with the skill of cultivating contacts came the gift of harvesting them: knowing who could do what, and sensing their vulnerabilities. He had reached a level of seniority in the feared CSP that sheltered him from most official interference, but his real power came from the influence he had with people outside his direct chain of command. He could call on any one of several dozen men who knew better than to ask questions. Some were tied to him by bribery or blackmail; those associated with the Legion owed him their obedience due to his rank; others were just terrified of him.
“So we have a name at last,” declared Miguel in a soft voice when Jack had reappeared and helped himself to a large glass of brandy. “The original Condor Legion was the Luftwaffe division that Hitler assigned to Franco during our civil war—the one that was used in the carpet-bombing of Gernika. But the fact that these people adopted a name with those connotations tells us something about them. Julio, get on to HQ and see if they can dig anything up.”
“Forgive me,” countered Jack. “If these men are the Legion that I encountered, the posse of rabid home-grown terrorists that ran black operations for the Franco regime, then you won’t know whom to trust within your own ranks. For all I know you could be one of them yourself. And another thing: how can you expect to run an investigation cooped up here in a place that’s to all intents and purposes off the map?”
There was silence in the room for almost a minute, an uncomfortable silence. Then Miguel spoke in a low voice, his eyes averted from both Jack and his own colleague. “I can’t,” he admitted. “And you’re one step ahead of me, Jack. My next question to you was going to be the difficult one. The one I’m embarrassed to ask. The one I’ve been ordered not to accept a ‘no’ to.”
A glance at Jack revealed that he was once again gazing blankly into space. And when he spoke, there was a weariness in his voice that had not been there before. “Oh my God, let me guess. You’ve been told to use me—probably as the bait in a rat trap. And let me hazard another guess: you know that your line of command has been compromised, and you’ve got no more idea who can be trusted than I have.”
“You’re a shrewd judge of situations, Jack,” replied the detective, staring at the table lamp beside him. “And if you really want to refuse, I’ll let you give us the slip. It won’t do my career any good, but there’s no reason you should care about that.“
“And what’s the catch if I do back out? There has to be one.”
“The problem from your viewpoint would be this:
if you go, there’s no more we can do for you. You’ll be on your own, and I don’t think that getting to the border and across it will be as easy as you think, even now that routine passport checks are a thing of the past. And with apologies for the moral blackmail that’s coming, we so need a break in this case. I’m sure you realise that your friend’s murder is one tiny corner of a very big and very nasty picture. Still, I expect you need time to think. Do you want to go to your room?”
“I’ve got a family, you know,” said Jack quietly. “A wife and kids and grandchildren. They’d be worried sick if they knew what was going on, and that’s without them knowing a fraction of what I went through here as a kid. Yes, I do need time to think. But I’m just as happy sitting here as going off by myself. Do you mind if I put the television on?”
“Go ahead,” agreed Miguel. “And Julio, will you make some tea?”
Inevitably the TV picture came up in the middle of a commercial break, but by chance the next programme was a regional current affairs slot. “What does the comeback of right-wing big hitter José María Gallego mean for the Basque Country?” intoned a melodramatic voice over the opening credits. “Will he advance the fight against domestic terrorism, or will he fan the flames? We investigate.”
“Good man,” muttered Julio from across the room. “One of us,” he explained, catching Jack’s eye. “First, a Basque or at least half-Basque who may command some respect in this part of the country. Second, a hard man who’ll hopefully shift the balance of power away from the law-breakers and back towards the law-makers.” Jack turned to look at Miguel, and could read that he was less enthusiastic about his new chief executive.
They watched the programme for almost half an hour before Jack lunged for the remote and switched it off. His face was white. “I can’t stand any more,” he spluttered. “It’s your country, not mine, but this bastard’s going to take you back to the bad old days: secret courts, imprisonment without due process, trampling on civil rights. Anyway, I’ve thought. This is your country, not mine, and I have my own life and family to think of. I ruined what should have been the best years of my life getting dragged into other people’s politics, and I’d be mad to do it again. If you could drive me to the border crossing that would be great. Failing that, anywhere with a railway station will do. I’ll take my chances.”
“Fair enough,” replied Miguel gloomily. “I can’t expect any more than that. As soon as intelligence confirms that it’s safe to leave here, we’ll take you up to Irún. But until then, please carry on with your story. And you need to cut to the chase; isn’t that what they say in movies? Because I doubt if we’ll be here for more than another few hours.“
JAMES
I was back in San Sebastián by the third week of July, only to find that in the space of barely two weeks much had changed for the worse. The college had closed for the summer, depriving our little expatriate clique of any focus beyond the occasional bar-crawl. Many of the British contingent had already gone off sight-seeing, while most of our local friends were away on family holidays or doing seasonal work. And the weather had become humid and oppressive; the roll of thunder was part of the soundtrack to every day, constantly threatening the violent storms for which the Bay of Biscay is infamous.
But these were minor grievances compared to one tremendous blessing: I no longer seemed to be under surveillance. At first I kept my eyes open for danger signs, but as the days went by the whole issue began to fade from my consciousness. Armed with a peace of mind that I’d forgotten was possible, I began to settle back into the life of the city. After all the tensions I’d lived through earlier in the summer, and the bitter disappointment of my fortnight back in England, I finally felt that I belonged somewhere once again.
By the time the abduction attempt took place, I was experimenting with the idea that the whole surveillance scenario had been no more than a figment of my imagination. It was fortunate that Father Ignacio had taken my fears seriously. At his urging I’d walked the streets and alleys for hours planning how I would deal with one kind of threat or another.
All this had faded from the forefront of my mind in the peaceful days following my return from England. Then, walking along the street early one afternoon, I noticed with alarm that the black car was back in its old place. But there was something wrong, and it took me a moment to figure out what was different. The car was facing the opposite way from usual—the way I was walking. And for the first time the driver was not alone; there were two larger men sitting front and rear on the passenger side.
At first, like someone feeling the symptoms of an old illness after a period of remission, I couldn’t accept that their presence was any reason for concern. But as I walked past them I heard the engine start. That was when I fully woke up and began to run through the mental checklist the priest had drilled into me. I began to tick boxes in my mind: change to routine…engine running…street almost deserted…force of numbers…
I was off, running down the alley between two adjacent blocks leading to the parking area. I heard an engine bellowing, quickly followed by the squeal of rubber on tarmac, but the area behind the buildings was choked with parked cars. As I vaulted over a low fence into the grounds of the apartments on the next street, I heard a second squeal of rubber as my pursuers were brought up short.
I carefully checked left and right before emerging onto the next street and slipping into a general store. Ten minutes later, I emerged wearing a white working man’s shirt. Sunglasses and a traditional Basque beret obscured part of my face. A tiny plastic toy inserted in one shoe gave me a consistent limp as I walked along the street, and a little cushion inside my shirt gave me an instant pot-belly. I flinched as I heard an engine revving, but I kept hobbling along and the sounds of pursuit quickly died away.
Although the immediate danger had passed, I needed to get to the safe address in the Old Quarter. I thought the quickest and safest route would be up the Mundaiz peninsula and along the sea front. I began limping in that direction, and I was within metres of the bridge when I saw that there was a car parked just beyond it, almost hidden by a bend in the approach road. At that moment I heard a second car coming up fast from behind, and I knew that my disguise wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Wincing now at the jagged object in my shoe, I hobbled up onto the unfenced track bed and set out across the viaduct. Timing was even closer than I’d realised – there was a train on its way down from the station – and I did the only thing I could to give my pursuers the slip.
Nearly every weekday morning for three months, a group of us had been using that same catwalk as a shortcut to our college behind the sea front. It was predictably Steve who had spotted the maintenance shelf—a narrow ledge surrounding the concrete buttress that supported the viaduct in midstream. The ledge was only four or five feet below the level of the sleepers, and some steel rungs had been provided, but the climb looked slippery and treacherous. On one occasion, in response to a lot of daring and double-daring, we had climbed down to it—scrambling up like lightning a few seconds later at the first hint of vibration in the rails.
Now, without pausing to think about the risks, I hobbled as quickly as I could to the middle of the catwalk and stepped onto a wooden sleeper that was already vibrating under my feet. With no more than seconds to spare before both the car and the oncoming train would sweep into view, I lowered myself between the sleepers and wedged myself into the angle of the ledge.
By the time it began to get dark I was wet and rank from being showered with effluent, shivering with cold and barely able to drag myself back up between the sleepers. When I finally reached the Old Quarter the nightlife was well under way, but I no longer wanted any part of it. A gaunt, black-haired woman. who might still have been in her thirties, opened the door and froze briefly at the sight of an unfamiliar face. Then her expression softened. Introducing herself as Reme, she let me in to the tiny studio flat, put a pan of water on to boil and vacated the living area while I washed.
“Where are the rest of your things?” she asked the following morning, as I sat wrapped in a moth-eaten blanket on the dilapidated couch where I had spent the night. “Someone will have to get them for you.”
“I’d rather go myself,” I replied. “I can’t leave without saying goodbye to my flat-mate and giving my landlady notice.”
“Now listen to me,” she said firmly. “I don’t believe you understand the risks. And all the time you’re here, you’re putting others at risk. How much have you got?”
“Not a lot. Just a suitcase of clothes and a few books.”
“Then if I’m honest, I think you might as well say goodbye to it. You won’t want to be weighed down with it, and you won’t be coming back here. Not ever, if you’ve got any sense.”
Fortunately, she was able to provide me with some underwear and a change of clothes belonging to her absent son, together with a few slices of cold potato omelette and a battered rucksack. Her son was a little taller and slimmer than I was, and at one point I was about to ask her if he’d mind, but she didn’t seem in the mood for further chatter and all that remained was to sit in the dank, musty apartment waiting for darkness to fall.
I stood at the southern edge of the city in the dead of night, tears running down my face as I watched the red taillights disappear into one bore of the Amara tunnel while pallid yellow and white headlights emerged from the other. Then, hitching the modest backpack of food and clothing over my shoulders, I scrambled down the bank onto the carriageway, earning a blast on the horn from a driver speeding out of the tunnel. Then, grimacing at the realisation that was I was about to do was reckless and possibly suicidal, I pressed myself against the curved sidewall of the tunnel and marched into the darkness under the hill.
THE ENGLISH WITNESS Page 8