Picking my way carefully along the uneven shoulder with nothing but a sliver of moon to light the way, I kept going for maybe an hour. By that time my neck was stiff and aching from the crash, and the gun barrel was chafing my leg painfully.
Then the worst happened: a car clattered past me, swerved onto the shoulder and skidded to a halt. Just as I turned to head back the way I had come, another vehicle pulled in behind me, bathing me in its headlights. The scene seemed totally unreal, my shadow stretched out ahead of me like an elongated finger pointing at the first car. A man was already standing beside it, one hand shielding his eyes from the glare of the second car’s headlights, the other pointing a gun at me.
A voice from behind shouted, “Put the gun on the ground, or you’ll be dead in five seconds…four seconds…three…”
“OK,” I shouted, “I’m doing it. Give me a moment.” Moving as quickly but as unthreateningly as I could, I eased the pistol out of my trouser pocket. The under-cut sight snagged on the lining for a moment, but then it tore free. Holding the weapon out sideways from my body, I bent my knees and lowered it to the ground.
“Stand up and walk backwards. No, don’t look round. The ground’s level. Just take it slowly and you won’t trip.”
I walked gingerly backwards, my eyes on the car and man in front of me. I realised as I walked that if either man really did open fire he could easily hit the other. I marvelled at their stupidity but wasn’t about to take risks. I kept going very slowly until I felt the car bumper touch one of my legs, and stopped.
“Turn round slowly,” said the voice. I followed the order and saw a tall, thin man standing behind the open car door, apparently using it for cover—although it would have taken more than a car panel to stop a high-velocity bullet. “Come and look in the car,” he continued, and I walked round until I could see over the top of the open door.
In the front passenger seat I was delighted to see Juantxo. He was no longer at death’s door, but he still looked deathly pale and had difficulty speaking. “These are friends, James,” he announced, and left the rest of the conversation to the stranger standing beside me.
“Your friend has received emergency treatment and is out of immediate danger,” explained the stranger, “and that’s mainly thanks to you. But we must get him to hospital right now.”
“You say you’re friends, but what was all that with the guns. You really scared me.”
“You had the only weapon here,” replied the man. “From what your friend said, you could easily have shot at us in a panic. We were just taking care of ourselves and of course our patient.”
“Your patient? Who are you?”
“I’m a doctor. Call me Seve.” Then he pointed at the other man who had just walked up. “That’s my brother-in-law, Miguelito. He usually drives an ambulance, and you can take his car. He’ll ride back with us.”
We shook hands, and Miguelito asked what I would do now. “You don’t have to go after the terrorist,” he said. “In fact your friend in the car doesn’t want you to, but he doesn’t think we’ll be able to stop you. So, go if you wish, but remember this is our unfinished civil war, not yours.”
I said nothing. Miguelito took a slim, black torch out of his pocket and handed it to me. “This was all I had pointed at you,” he said. “Take it. You may find it useful. This too; I don’t suppose you’ve had anything for a while.” He handed me a bottle of water, and fumbling in his coat pocket he produced a rather dry and misshapen length of loaf together with a chorizo sausage. “The key’s in the car,” he added. “We have to be back on duty at the hospital.”
“How did you know?” I asked as the two men turned to get into the second car.
“We promised we wouldn’t tell anybody,” replied the brother-in-law, “but it can’t hurt. The man in the garage. He’s scared stiff, but when he phoned for help he made sure he spoke to Seve here.”
“He said he was ringing the police.”
“Yes, and he did. They’ve already taken poor old Pablo away. They’ll give a little press conference once they’ve worked out who he is, and then they’ll go through the motions of launching a criminal investigation…”
I noticed that Seve had looked sharply at his brother-in-law when the name was mentioned. “Pablo?” I asked. “Who’s Pablo?”
Miguelito seemed to realise that he had said too much, but he shrugged and carried on. “Pablo is your friend’s boss. Or was. But please forget I mentioned his name, even though he’s dead.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Seve cross himself.
“Oh, the chief,” I responded. “I’m sorry he’s dead. How are they going to carry on without him?”
“How are who going to carry on?” countered Miguelito, carefully avoiding Seve’s gaze.
“You know, Juantxo’s gang.”
“What do you mean, his gang? Do you know who it is that you’re talking about?”
“I thought they were separatists. Like ETA, only perhaps a bit less…well, a bit less dangerous.”
“They are separatists,” confirmed Seve, abandoning his efforts to be discreet, “and they are dangerous—for your sake I won’t tell them you suggested otherwise. But,” and here he smiled, “they do try to work within the law—the Higher Law at any rate, the one Franco and his minions constantly trample on. You must forget all this, but you’re dealing with the security service—hence all the secrecy. Pablo was a senior officer, a coronel in fact. But he wasn’t irreplaceable.”
I saw red. “The security service?” I shouted. “You mean after all this I’ve been working with the government?”
Juantxo was gesticulating with one hand, and Seve and I both bent down to see what he wanted. He looked at me. “James, you are so stupid,” he whispered. Then, turning his head towards Seve, he added, “You need to tell him, before he does something silly.”
I looked expectantly at the doctor. He looked back and smiled: “The security service of Eusko Jaurlaritza.” I must have looked blank at this, so he translated for me: “The Basque Government. Do you think it just packed its bags and dissolved itself when Franco annexed us to Spain? With our country under occupation, our rightful government has gone into exile. But it’s not idle.”
I tried to ask questions, but now it was Miguelito who interrupted me: “If you’re going, you need to go now. I don’t know what you can possibly do, but there’s a full can of petrol and a box of matches in the boot, and the gun on the ground over there if you think you could use it. Now go. I won’t say vaya con Dios, because unlike Seve I’ve seen too much to believe in a God any longer. But if I’m wrong and there is one, may he forgive me and help you.”
Turning to go, I was delayed for a few seconds more by Juantxo, who was flapping his hand to attract my attention. I bent over one last time to hear what he had to say: “He won’t say it, but I will. Ve con Dios.” I grasped his shoulder, perhaps more firmly than I should have done given the nature of his injuries, then turned and left.
I picked up the pistol on the way over to his car, and I did think I could use it. On a 25-yard range I could hit small coin nine times out of ten or better. Whether I could hit a more distant target with an unfamiliar weapon, perhaps under incoming fire, remained to be seen. As for the ethics of shooting a living person, I don’t think I expected to get that far.
CHAPTER 16
I drove southwards in Miguelito’s Citroen 2CV, chewing ravenously on the fatty, spicy chorizo. I was utterly on my own now, a sheltered middle-class student chasing a trained killer many years my senior. That sounds ridiculous now, even to me. But it wasn’t courage or even a desire for justice that now drove me on, as much as tunnel vision—a single-minded determination that veiled every alternative future. Every now and then I stopped to check the map that Miguelito had sketched for me, but my eyes were tiring rapidly. Before long, I had the confusing sense that I was stationary while the trees, fences and occasional buildings were moving past me.
All the compelling beauty of Alzaibar
was cloaked in darkness, but as I walked the last few hundred metres in silence my night vision recovered enough to confirm that Adolfo had been here. The first piece of evidence was a crookedly parked SEAT with the passenger door half open, its driver slumped forward in his seat surrounded by the chief’s blood and his own. Then, as I entered the monastery itself, I stumbled across a robed figure lying face-down in a dark pool of liquid.
Fighting the temptation to run back to the car and drive away, I continued as quietly as I could to the tall, tapering bell-tower that overlooks the complex. The plaza at its base was deserted, but as I used Miguelito’s torch to explore the arched cloisters along one side I discovered two more inert figures. My stomach rose and filled my mouth with the taste of bile and chorizo as I saw that one of them had the back of his head blown open. The other was bleeding from the abdomen and didn’t try to move, but was able to talk.
“I’ll get help as quickly as possible,” I whispered.
“No, no police!” he protested hoarsely. “He’s one of them.”
“I know,” I answered. “No police. But you need a doctor.”
“Yes, yes, soon enough. But not now. The Lendakari is more important. He’s going to die if you don’t do something.”
“I don’t understand. Who’s going to die?”
“The Lendakari. Oh God, you’re just a boy. The President.”
“The President?” I queried, dumbfounded. “What on earth is he doing here? And why does Adolfo want to kill him? I thought he was one of Franco’s biggest supporters.”
“Not Franco,” protested the monk, actually rolling his eyes. “Our president. The Basque president.”
I remembered now, seeing the Basque president-in-exile on TV a year or more previously: a thin-faced, dry looking man with a beaky nose and glasses; an academic and a respected literary figure in his own right; a man who had first-hand experience of political oppression and wanted freedom rather than revenge. A good man, and I remembered his name.
“Señor Leizaola? I’ve heard of him, but doesn’t he live in France?”
“Yes, but he’s here now, in secret. The madman knows he’s here, and has gone looking for him.”
I hated leaving the wounded man, but he was right. If Leizaola was here, his safety was the first priority. If he died there’d be mass uprisings throughout the region, the armed forces would be sent in to restore order, and there’d be a bloodbath. But where should I look? Even in daylight it would take hours to search the complex thoroughly. It was pitch dark, and I had minutes rather than hours. It might be too late already. And once again I felt responsible for what was happening.
If I went hunting around the sprawling complex for Adolfo, I’d never find him in time. The alternative was for him to come looking for me. That would distract him from whatever he was doing and draw him out into more open terrain. But what kind of distraction would be dramatic enough to draw him away from his self-assigned mission?
I jogged back down towards the old Citroën, and when I passed a bicycle leaning against a concrete bollard, I took it to save time. The car felt pleasingly warm as I climbed in – the nights were getting chilly – and I vividly remember how relieved I felt at being reunited with Adolfo’s gun. Now that the bigger picture had emerged, and the need for quietness and agility had passed, I wanted it with me. Heaven knew four bullets weren’t going to get me very far, but now that I knew the stakes involved I had little compunction about using them.
I laid the gun back down on the floor of the car, and I went round to the back to make some important preparations. Pulling my shirt out of my waistband, I tore off a wide strip of fabric, uncapped the five-litre can of petrol, and stuffed the piece of cotton firmly into the neck making sure it was well soaked in fuel. I checked that a cigarette lighter I‘d been carrying in my pocket ever since Granada was working, and wedged the makeshift petrol bomb behind the front seat to prevent it from falling over. I wasn’t sure how well it would work, but I already had an idea as to how I’d use it.
Finally I got back into the driver’s seat, revved the engine as aggressively as possible and let the clutch up with a jolt. The wheels span for a moment, making a sound that must have been audible for hundreds of metres through the still night air. Then with a bunny-hop or two the tyres gained traction, dragging me up the hill with the engine roaring in bottom gear and advertising my presence to anyone in the convent who was still alive.
Three minutes later I was parked by the tower. A steep embankment nearby, clad with dense scrubby growth, marked the outer limit of the monastery grounds. Leaping from the car with the engine still running, I retrieved the can of petrol from behind the front seat, lit the soaking cotton wick, and quickly hurled the can into the mass of woody growth. A luminous trail of flame followed it through the air, but when it landed I thought for a moment that the fire had been blown out. Then a flicker of flame was visible, and I wisely took several steps backwards and shielded my eyes.
For a moment as the pressure built up inside the can a jet of flame two or three metres long ripped out of the neck. Then the seam blew open. It made a report that reverberated around the hills and released a blast of heat that singed my hair and eyebrows. The car was still rocking from the concussion as I slid in. Revving the engine, I drove it round the right-hand side of the main building and left it parked with the key in the ignition. From there, a footpath sloped down across a neat lawn towards a parapet marking the opposite edge of the grounds. Taking Adolfo’s pistol, I walked back to the corner of the building around which a flickering, orange glare was coming.
Peering round the corner, I could see that my handiwork had exceeded my wildest expectations. The fire had spread quickly up the bank and the courtyard was lit up like day. But the day in question was the Day of Judgement. Dense clouds of acrid smoke from the moist, living vegetation reduced visibility to a few metres, while the richly coloured, convulsing flames under-lit the great curved prow of the main complex and filled the intervening space with restless shadows. There was no way that anyone could be unaware of what was going on.
The disadvantage of such a success was that my voice would not be heard more than a few dozen metres away. I had created a bright and noisy distraction, but the opportunity for a direct verbal challenge had most definitely passed. I had got Adolfo’s attention, but how would I draw him off his pursuit of the President? What could I do that would be audible above the noise of the conflagration, and would have a chance of upsetting his priorities?
There was only one answer. I raised his pistol into the air and fired twice. That only left me with two rounds, but the thin cracks would carry much further than the steady background noise from the fire raging a few metres away. And I guessed that it was a sound very special to the killer. Like a mother’s ear for her baby crying in the night, I thought he would hear it through all the background tumult, perhaps even in his sleep. Whatever weapon he had taken off Juantxo would be of a larger calibre and capable of doing more damage at close range. But in the light of what I’d learned about Adolfo’s past, I suspected that this particular weapon served him as a symbol of virility. He was going to want it back, and with hindsight I think that my use of it threw down the gauntlet more effectively than any words in any language.
Without warning, a piece of stonework flew off the corner of the building. As it did so, an angry hornet buzzed past me at impossible speed. An appreciable moment later, the sound of a gunshot from way across the plaza hit my eardrums. It was a deeper, rounder sound than the one I had made, and resembled the kind of report I was familiar with from my range-shooting days. The accuracy had been terrifying for a pistol over that kind of range. In panic, I leapt over a nearby ornamental wall, finding to my shock that there was a longer drop on the far side than I’d expected.
I was lucky that the ground beyond the low wall shelved down so shallowly at that point, as only a few metres further along the drop could have been fatal. Even so, it took me several moments to get my wind b
ack. And as I crouched in the cold darkness below the reach of the fire I’d started, it dawned on me that the incoming bullet couldn’t have come from a handgun. A sense of defeat came close to overwhelming me at that point. ‘When a man with a rifle meets a man with a pistol, the man with the rifle will win.’ Everybody who’s ever seen A Fistful of Dollars knows that. I’d got Adolfo’s attention. But he had got a rifle.
The pistol I’d been carrying seemed undamaged as I picked it up off the rough grass where it had fallen, and I found that just a few metres to my left the slope of the land brought it closer to the top of the low wall over which I’d jumped. It left me with no more than a metre and a half to scale. Cautiously, I raised myself almost to standing position and peered over the top. Instantly another bullet smacked into the far side of the wall just below the top, making me shrink back down behind it. The shot was quickly followed by Adolfo’s deep voice booming above the continuing sound of the fire: “Kaixo, my little friend James. I would like my gun back undamaged. It has great sentimental value to me and is no use to you at all. If you come over here and hand it to me right now, you can get back in your borrowed 2CV and head home.”
I considered this offer for a moment, and it was very attractive. But I knew for certain that Adolfo would kill me if he had the chance and make it slow if he had the time. Then there was the question of the Basque president, Señor Leizaola, and the hundreds perhaps thousands of his friendly, hospitable, proud, stubborn compatriots who would die if he did. I was about to shout out a reply, but realised that he’d be unlikely to hear.
THE ENGLISH WITNESS Page 20