JACK
“Troubled times,” commented Miguel in a sympathetic tone of voice. “For you and for her, by the sound of it.”
“Yes, she was in a bad way,” admitted Jack. “It was only later that I found out just how bad.”
“And did you get her full name?” asked Julio with his pen hovering.
“Yes and no. As with Gato, I didn’t know her name at the time, and I’ve been trying hard to keep things in chronological order. But I did work out later who she was. And if you’re going to cut me loose tomorrow it’s only fair that you set the agenda. I believe her name was Remedios Echeverría. But she can’t help you with your enquiries. She’s been dead for forty years.”
“Are you really going to jump forward now and give me what I need? The salient facts? The people and places?”
“With respect,” answered Jack cagily, “that’s not what I just offered. It’s not something I can offer. As I’ve tried to explain, I’m reconstructing things as I go along. I have isolated flashbacks all the time, but I’ve never tried to join up any of the dots. And here’s the worst thing: I have a pretty good idea of how badly damaged I am, and I don’t think the stuff in the flashbacks is bad enough to account for it. My big fear is that there’s other stuff, stuff that will blow my head apart if it ever comes to the surface. And that fear is fighting against the part of me that wants to help you.”
“So what have we been doing here,” asked Miguel, “up to the point where I said you could go?” His voice was bleak as he continued. “And for all the endless narrative you’ve given us, what chance have we ever had of getting to the truth about Antonio’s death?”
“What we’ve been doing has been putting things into order—making sense of what I can remember. And in the process, new details are coming thick and fast that I’d completely forgotten. I wish I’d done something like this decades ago. But I realise that there isn’t time for me to carry on the way I have been doing. And what that means, I’m afraid, is that the story ends here. I can give you the few names and landmarks that I’ve been holding back because they belong later in the story. And I’ll answer any questions to the best of my ability, but that’s it.”
There was a long silence after Jack’s tirade. The two officers glanced back and forth, one moment peering at the Englishman as though they might have misheard him, the next moment locking eyes as if each expected the other to intervene.
He was summoned from his reverie by a nervous tap on the office door, and he looked up to see María Dolores step into the room. He was gratified to see that she was nervous. She was from a different section, but he had her well trained. As the girl backed towards the door, he smiled in a way that reminded her how lucky she was to be working on a different floor. Then he looked down at the memo she had placed in front of him.
It was a notification from the passport control office at Bilbao. A known terrorist sympathiser, of British nationality, had just re-entered the country only two weeks after leaving it. He looked at the dateline and scowled – the information was weeks old – but it needed following up. He fished a telephoto shot of the young man out of a pile of papers on his desk and reached for the telephone.
His skin felt clammy. There was thunder on the way.
PART 2
CHAPTER 7
At precisely 5.30 a.m., Jack Burlton was watching from a ground floor window as the steel gates of the safe house swung open and a dark Mercedes Viano pulled onto the drive. The heavy people-carrier with its deeply tinted glass offered him some reassurance, but he had not slept well and felt uneasy about the day ahead. Partly the unease was to do with a troubled conscience; he could not get over the feeling that he was running away from justice and from his own past. But the knowledge that his decision to back out might involve risks of its own was an additional burden.
The departure was a hurried affair. Julio rode in front with the driver, a thickset and balding ethnic Basque in an ill-fitting chauffeur’s uniform. Jack sat behind the driver, with Miguel on his right. He was glad they were with him, but even more relieved that they did not seem in the mood for conversation.
The vehicle’s unforgiving suspension on a poor road surface quickly churned up Jack’s empty stomach. He wished he had accepted the offer of breakfast, however little he had felt like eating. And the winding road downhill from the gated community added to his discomfort—not so much from the motion of the car but because now, in daylight, the landscape brought back fleeting but bitter impressions of an ordeal undergone long before. Carbolic soap. Petrol. Smoke.
Eventually the ground levelled out and they joined the Tolosa road—a gently winding highway through wooded hills that placed San Sebastián within a few minutes’ driving time. Jack knew the road layout well: a motorway ran along the northern edge of the country just inland from the coast, connecting the city with the French border to the east and Bilbao to the west. In contrast, decent connecting roads to the interior were few and far between, but Jack guessed that they would pick up the motorway where it bypassed the city’s southern edge. They ought to be in the border town of Irún within little over half an hour.
Jack was thus alarmed when the driver flicked the wheel to the left without warning, slewed across the opposite carriageway and headed up a narrow lane between two run-down industrial sites. He turned his head sharply towards Miguel and saw that the detective too was taken aback; indeed he had reached under his jacket and drawn the bulky 9mm pistol that made him look so badly dressed. Julio, travelling in the front passenger seat, was also on the alert and peering sideways at the driver with suspicion in his eyes.
The driver was aware of the tension his actions had created. “Relax,” he said, “but don’t get too comfortable because I think we’re being followed. That is, we were being followed. I can’t see if they’ve turned up this way. But we’ll know any second because we’re about to hit a straight section about five hundred metres long.”
“Doesn’t prove anything,” challenged Julio, whose body language suggested that he would rather have been driving himself.
“We’ll see,” responded the driver evenly. “This road doesn’t go anywhere. After the straight it takes a sharp left-hand bend and rejoins the main road below the turn-off we just took. Nobody’s going to come this way for the sake of it.”
At that moment the road straightened out and could be seen disappearing into the distance between serried ranks of conifers. The driver kept one eye on the mirror and all three passengers twisted round to watch the road behind them. Seconds later, a low-slung black Audi coupé rounded the bend. It was clearly gaining on them, and they knew that the bulky people-carrier had no chance of outrunning it.
“We can’t outrun them,” observed the driver unnecessarily, “but there’s no way they can get past us. I can run them off the road easily if they try.”
“Good man,” said Miguel. Then without warning the three passengers, still twisted round in their seats, were thrown roughly sideways as the driver hauled the Viano into a tight left-hand bend. A moment later three things happened almost in the same instant: the driver’s side window went opaque, the air in the car was filled with a foul pink mist, and the vehicle lurched towards the edge of the road.
By lunging sideways and grabbing the wheel, Julio managed to keep the Viano on the road. And with the dead driver’s foot still resting lightly on the accelerator the vehicle retained some forward momentum. It was barely under control, however, and the chances of keeping the Audi from overtaking were slender. Miguel undid his seatbelt and laboriously heaved his bulk round until he was hunched on his knees facing the rear. Then, drawing his service weapon and stabbing at the power window button, he leaned out through the opening and got off two shots in the general direction of the black car. The only effect was that their pursuers pulled up closer. There was a flash from the region of its nearside door pillar, and the next moment the Viano’s rear windscreen had grown a giant spider’s web.
Jack could stand it no
longer. Undoing his own belt and twisting round more quickly than Miguel had been able to, he reached his hand out towards the detective. “Quickly, give me the gun,” he shouted.
Miguel hesitated. “Police weapon,” he said curtly. “It would be a crime to relinquish it, even to a Spanish national.”
“For God’s sake, we’re going to die in a minute,” shouted the Englishman. “You’ve got to let me have it.”
“Do it, Chief,” shouted Julio as he wrestled with the steering wheel.
There was a moment’s further hesitation before Miguel took the heavy pistol by the barrel and handed it to Jack butt-first. “Careful, safety’s off,” he warned.
“I can see that,” said Jack calmly. And with that he braced his arms across the backrest in between the head restraints. He lowered his head and paused for a moment to check his breathing.
“Hey, you’ll…” warned Miguel. But Jack shouted over him, “Steady now”.
Then the confined space was filled with a deafening blast from the gun. A section of the damaged rear windscreen vanished, and Jack fired two more shots through the hole in quick succession.
The effect was dramatic. The Audi’s windscreen starred and its engine note rose to a howl. Thrusting forward, it virtually disappeared below their line of sight before striking the Viano sharply in the rear. At that moment, Jack adjusted his aim and fired another 9mm Parabellum round clean through the padded metal panelling below the glass.
The passenger in the Audi saw their own windscreen crystallise before his eyes and the driver slump in his seat. He heard the engine note rise and felt the car surge forwards as the man’s right leg twitched uncontrollably. As it struck the rear of the Viano, he drew his right arm back in through the window and dropped the gun in his lap. Then, as he snatched at the parking brake, he saw a chink of bright, clear light appear in front of him. Instantly there was a sickening blow to the side of his face, and his mouth filled with warm liquid. In blind desperation he tugged on the brake lever.
Jack and Miguel watched as the rear end of the Audi slewed from side to side. Then Julio pushed on the wheel of the Mercedes to drag it round a right-hand kink in the road, and the Audi went straight on. Leaving the metalled surface, it hit a low embankment at the side of the road, flew over a drainage ditch and came to a dead halt against a stand of mature trees beyond. Julio knocked the drive selector into neutral. Freed from its load, the engine began to race as he edged the vehicle into the vegetation growing along the side of the road and allowed it to coast to a halt.
The engine note sank to a murmur as Julio reached across and tugged the dead driver’s leg clear of the accelerator, flicked the transmission selector into park, and leapt out into the ditch that he had so narrowly missed. Scrambling out behind the vehicle, he jogged back to where the Audi had left the road, his gun held in a double grip and pointing straight ahead of him. He veered off among the trees, and a few moments later Jack heard one quick double shot followed by another. Shortly afterwards Julio reappeared, breathing heavily and his face a little pale. “Half revenge, half mercy,” he muttered before pulling the driver’s body out of the Viano and dragging it into the trees. “We’ll come back for him,” he promised, “but it would be embarrassing if we were stopped in his company.”
Finally, Julio used the butt of his weapon to smash out the remaining shards of glass from the driver’s window and the rear windscreen. “A missing window attracts less attention than a bullet hole,” he explained before climbing into the driving seat and fastening the blood-stained seatbelt. He restarted the engine and put the selector into drive, but before driving off he turned and made eye contact with Jack. “Very good work,” he said. “I’d love to know where you learned to shoot like that. But – and this is really important – if there are any questions you’re going to have to let us take the credit. Otherwise you could end up on a charge of unlawful killing, and that wouldn’t help anybody.”
With that, he pressed down hard on the accelerator. The wheels span for a moment, and then the Mercedes surged forward. Within two minutes they were back on the main road and travelling towards San Sebastián at 80kph with the wind buffeting at the missing windows. Five minutes later, Jack turned to look at Miguel who was slumped listlessly in his seat with the safety belt still undone. He waited until the detective noticed his stare and turned to face him, then dropped his bombshell: “I’ve changed my mind.”
Miguel instructed Julio to turn back south, and to keep the speed down so that they could talk more comfortably over the wind and road noise.
“You know something of where the story is heading,” began Jack. “Yesterday’s session wasn’t a complete waste of time. But you didn’t get much more than a broad itinerary and a few names. Now I’m staying, it’s going to make a lot more sense if I fill in the connecting story. And in the process I know that fresh details will come out. For a start, the questions you asked yesterday got me thinking about Father Ignacio. I remember he had a fairly elaborate theory about what was going on.”
“Will it add anything worthwhile to what we already know?” asked Miguel bluntly.
“I think so. As a young activist, and latterly as a priest, he knew a lot of the key players. He told me Gato had been living on borrowed time for years. In the months leading up to his death he’d become a virtual recluse, employing Txako as his eyes, ears and feet around the city. Of course, once Txako went off the rails with his half-baked bank job, Gato was left in limbo. And it was only a matter of time before his past caught up with him.”
“I’ve been assuming that what started the ball rolling was your little adventure with Txako, but it sounds as if the ball was ready to roll all by itself.”
“Correct, I think. Gato was getting cabin fever. Carlos, who you’ve probably worked out was his son, was being groomed to fill Txako’s shoes and didn’t have the right stuff. It was because of me that it happened when it did, but it would have come about before long whether I’d been there or not.”
“Then logically, there was nothing directly connecting Gato’s death with Txako’s earlier escape. Which means that whoever was responsible for Gato’s death, in all likelihood it was they who put you under surveillance in the weeks afterwards.”
“I don’t quite see your logic, but it’s hard to argue with the conclusion. And according to Ignacio it had to have been the security services who were involved, because the criminal police wouldn’t have had the resources for that long a stakeout.”
“But there was that sudden switch of tactics,” commented Julio as he drove. “Things progressed from mere observation to abduction. What triggered that?”
“I never found out for sure. But whatever the reason, the game plan was completely different from that point onwards. Once they’d tried to pick me up and been given the slip, it was inevitable that they’d try again. And worst of all, from my point of view at least, another run for home was out of the question. If they were that keen to pick me up, they’d certainly be watching the border crossing less than a twenty kilometres up the road. We felt that the only option was to lose myself in the Spanish interior for a while and hope the heat died down.”
“Why didn’t you just go to a British consulate?”
“We talked about that, but there were two problems. First, I’d have had to get to one, and that was a predictable move. And more seriously, Anglo-Spanish relations were going through a difficult patch: there was Franco’s refusal to extradite wanted criminals, and above all the festering dispute over Gibraltar. We weren’t sure an isolated consulate would risk stirring up more bad feeling. In any case, it didn’t occur to us that I could be enough of a public enemy to justify a nationwide hunt. And so the plan was for me to travel south for a while before heading across to one of the busy tourist checkpoints on the Mediterranean coast.”
“You wouldn’t have been able to stay in paying accommodation, or the authorities would have had your name first thing the following morning.”
“Again
, yes and no. We agreed that I’d sleep rough until I was well clear of the city, but Ignacio told me of places I’d be able to get food and shelter. One of those places was the massive Catholic shrine at Lóyola, which I reached on the third day out. In the event that was a let-down. I was assuming they’d put me up for a night or two, but in the event the priest whose name I’d been given was petrified. He let me have an old bicycle and some food, but he couldn’t wait to see the back of me. And that put me in a difficult…”
“So now there are two subversive priests in the picture,” interrupted Julio in a low voice, barely audible over the road noise and the steady pulse of wind through the broken windows.
“Three, if you count Father Goyo, who set up my rendezvous with Gato. And there’ll be more by the time the story’s finished,” replied Jack with a smirk. “But seriously, all through my travels – with that one exception at Lóyola – I met simple, hardworking priests prepared to risk everything to side with the underdog against the crushing power of the state. I’ve little patience with Catholic dogma, but their people impressed me.”
“So where did you head next?” asked Miguel impatiently, his pen hovering unsteadily over Julio’s notepad as the Viano bounced along the uneven surface.
“Before we come to that, there was an incident along the route. It reveals…”
“Will it actually help my investigation?”
“It will help me keep the story moving forward. And it shows the Legion’s reach. And their methods.”
“The Legion? I thought this was about the security services.”
THE ENGLISH WITNESS Page 9