“Don’t you have any natural allies? What about the Basques?”
“If any of the separatist groups could have got near him, they would have. We have only one hope.”
“And that is?”
“You.”
José María Gallego sat motionless as evening gave way to night and the features of his study were lost in the darkness. A forgotten name – the name of someone who had done him great harm long ago – had come surging back into the foreground of his thoughts.
Once he had wanted revenge. Then, when the emergence of the global village had at last put revenge within his grasp, he had no longer craved it. Now the hunger was with him again. He longed to feel his tomentor tremble under the blade, to watch in satisfaction as he tried to force a scream past the wadding in his mouth.
He groped in the dark for his computer keyboard, and as his fingers brushed over the touchpad the screen came to life. He reread the email from San Sebastián police HQ. It was in code, of course—not encrypted because that might have aroused suspicion, but couched in non-incriminating language: ‘An informant reports that the historic terror suspect about whom you enquired is revisiting an old haunt in the mountains. Suspect is in the company of known associates. Caution advised.’
Gallego knew all too well the implications of those last two words. The sender knew how much the minister wanted to lay hands on this particular suspect and knew better than to withhold relevant information. But he suspected a trap and was tacitly suggesting that the Minister should hold back. And for the last three hours, Gallego had been debating precisely that question with himself: on one hand, the thirst for revenge; on the other, self-preservation.
Gallego decided to sleep on it. In the event he did not sleep well, but by morning he had come to a decision.
Jack Burlton sat in the back of yet another specially adapted Mercedes Viano as it powered along the motorway. He tried intermittently to read, but his eyelids kept drooping and he came to a conclusion that sleeping was probably the most useful thing he could do for the next hour or so.
He still had no idea why he had agreed to be a pawn in this half-baked game of chess with the devil. He did not see how the plan could possibly succeed, and did not entirely trust Miguel’s assurances that he was just a decoy rather than the actual bait. A conjuror’s misdirection, that was the way the detective had described it. Even so, there was no certainty that the detective understood the sheer power that their adversary wielded: the power to gain cooperation through fear, to manipulate the media, the police, now even the courts, to serve his interests.
A bell was tolling in the tower overlooking Alzaibar, the daringly styled monastic complex perched on a crag in the Cantabrian Range. It was only 9 a.m., but that was mid-morning in the life of the monastery. Those visitors who knew the daily routine thought it strange that monks were streaming into the chapel and not emerging, and some cautiously edged towards their cars.
Just one older brother still struggled clumsily across the cobbled plaza with a great basket on wheels stuffed with dirty laundry. Meanwhile, watchful individuals from External Affairs patrolled the perimeter and the public areas. The older ones, those who had been there since the dark days of the Franco regime, knew what the bell and the drill meant: an unwelcome visit was in the offing. It was hard to believe that such a thing could be happening again after all these years, but many of them had heard stories about the new Minister of Justice. Some of them wondered if the bad old days were on their way back.
The monotonous chiming of the bell stopped as suddenly as it had begun. For a few minutes all was calm. Then the older brother who had been struggling with the laundry basket – a quiet, reserved, grey-haired man known as Brother Ángel – heard a sound that in these parts was rare and menacing: the fast, rhythmic chopping noise of an approaching helicopter. He manoeuvred his basket into the shade of the cloisters, stepped back out onto the main plaza and shielded his eyes against the morning sun.
Low on the eastern horizon, almost lost in the glare, was the unmistakeable head-on profile of a large helicopter. It loomed ever closer as he watched, coming in to hover almost directly overhead at height of about thirty metres. Then it sank vertically downwards until it sat in the centre of the plaza, it’s engine note sinking and the whirling rotor blades slowing to a halt.
For almost a minute after the engines were silent there was no sign of any movement on board. And around the plaza there was a corresponding lack of reaction as the few remaining visitors watched with idle curiosity. Behind the scenes, however, there was a flurry of activity. And at one edge of the plaza, Brother Ángel slipped back into the cover of the cloisters and waited.
Without warning the side door of the helicopter slid open, and one by one a dozen armed men in battledress jumped down onto the cobbles. Brother Ángel peered out from the shadows. He recognised the squad leader, a enormous blond-haired body-builder with a massive chest and bulging arms and thighs, but he looked in vain for any distinguishing marks on the battledress. Within seconds, the entire squad was lined up beside the helicopter. Reaching into the pile of laundry he had been pushing, Brother Ángel drew out a stubby machine pistol and clicked off the safety catch before laying the weapon back down on the unwashed clothing.
Jorge Hernández Cuervo guided the specially modified Viano smoothly off the coastal motorway and headed south into the Cantabrian Mountains. He peered at the grey-haired passenger in the rear seat via the interior mirror. As he did so, the passenger put down the English paperback he had been reading and looked out at the landscape for the first time since leaving the city. Hernández guessed that any time now he would notice that that things were not proceeding as expected. Then the relaxed demeanour would quickly be replaced by a rising tide of panic, and the modifications to the vehicle would come into their own.
Sure enough, the passenger leaned forward and extended an arm to open the reinforced glass screen that guaranteed political or business clients their privacy. The driver reflexively flicked a glance down at the non-standard neon embedded in the console to check that secure mode had been engaged, then returned his eyes to the road. The steel bulkhead below the screen faintly transmitted the sound of repeated clicks as the Englishman worked away at the switch, but the driver gave no indication that he had noticed.
Predictably, the next thing Hernández heard was a brisk tapping of knuckles on the screen just behind his head. He patiently ignored the sound for several kilometres. Then he reached forward, unclipped a microphone from the dashboard, and in heavily accented English delivered the announcement he had rehearsed so carefully: “Please sit back in your seat and refasten your safety belt, Mr. Burlton. I am not authorised to make unscheduled stops, and your compartment is sealed for your protection.”
With that, the driver saw the passenger lunging left and right in turn as he tried the window buttons followed by the door handles, but the security mode had been engaged and it was to no avail. Finally the passenger started banging on the screen. There was no way he could have broken his way through without a sledgehammer, but it was an annoyance and one that the driver was equipped to deal with. He snatched the steering wheel briefly from side to side then momentarily applied his foot to the brake pedal. The sudden change in momentum was enough to send the Englishman tumbling from side to side across the seat before throwing him forward and bringing his forehead and cheek bone into sharp contact with the screen.
Hernández watched in the mirror as the passenger levered himself back into the seat and refastened the safety belt. He was certain there would be further histrionics later – as soon, in fact, as it became clear where the vehicle was heading – but for the time being a touch of diplomacy made for a quieter drive.
The scene was silent in the way that only a coniferous forest glade can be. The soft carpet of brown needles and the bushy branches – coming down to the ground in places – swallowed the soft incidental sounds made by wildlife so that only the scarcely perceptible hush of th
e breeze in the treetops remained.
As the air began to warm up, another sound fought to make itself audible in the oppressive silence: the steady drone of an engine running at just over idling speed, punctuated by the occasional snap of a dry branch under the vehicle’s tyres. A sharp-eared listener might have heard an additional heavier sound: the sporadic thump of clenched fists against leather and glass.
As the vehicle entered the lonely glade, the sound of its engine abruptly died away. The thumping from inside was now more clearly audible over the steady tick of cooling metal. The precise German engineering emitted only the tiniest metallic click as the driver’s door came open, and a lean, sinewy man climbed out. In one hand he held an automatic pistol fitted with a bulky silencer; with the other he wrenched the sliding rear door open and gestured the passenger out.
At first the man inside stayed put, and any witnesses would have heard him pleading desperately for mercy with a slight foreign accent. The driver swiftly reached inside and dragged at him by the collar. The victim started to move but something was holding him in place. The driver struck him once, twice, three times in the side of the face, being careful not to spill blood inside the car. The passenger scrabbled at the seat-belt release, and there was a subdued click as it came free. Once again the driver hauled, and this time the passenger flew out of the door to land in a heap on the carpet of old pine needles.
The driver kicked the crumpled figure to his feet, herded him a few metres away into a thicket of trees, and forced him to his knees. Then, for the first time in several weeks, the forest reverberated with a clearly audible noise, for even with a silencer fitted a firearm produces a considerable report. The first shot, delivered to the upper back, shattered the victim’s heart. But before the dying man could topple forward, a second shot was placed in the back of his neck from point blank range. Then, as he lay hunched over with his head twisted at a grotesque angle, a third bullet was discharged into his temple. Satisfied at last, the driver returned to the dark Mercedes and calmly drove away.
CHAPTER 18
Brother Ángel hovered in the cloisters, the machine pistol within easy reach. At the moment he did not have a target, and there was no point in breaking his cover until he could strike a decisive blow. Meanwhile, there was no further movement in the immediate vicinity of the helicopter. The squad of paramilitaries remained in formation a few feet beyond the radius of the rotor, and the pilot sat motionless in his seat.
At length, the sound of an engine was audible. It grew in volume until a black Mercedes Viano came into view. The vehicle slowed for the speed ramps on the monastery drive, then headed straight across the plaza until it was within 30 metres of the helicopter. There it pulled smartly to a stop, its engine fell silent and the driver’s door opened. A hulking figure climbed out and closed his door behind him. Then he went to the rear door and opened it. A moment later a stocky, grey-haired man was hauled out into the sunlight. From his vantage point at the back of the cloisters, Brother Ángel saw the action and had to stifle a sharp intake of breath as he recognised the passenger.
He had no time to dwell on this development, however, because something was happening at the helicopter. Half the squad fell out from the line-up and positioned themselves in a semi-circle around the helicopter door. They faced outwards, their assortment of short and long-range weapons at the ready. Then a hoist was extended above the open doorway. Suspended from it was an elaborate electric wheelchair. In the wheelchair was a distinguished man who appeared to be in his late seventies or early eighties. The face was symmetrical and dignified—the sort of face people would trust. But it was a cruel, hard face—one that had both experienced and inflicted suffering.
Brother Ángel’s own face set hard at the sight, and his hand moved towards the machine pistol, but he knew that the range was too long for accurate shooting with the kind of weapon compact enough to conceal in a pile of clothes. And he had not expected the Legion to show in such numbers. Most of the man’s body was shielded. At that distance, and against a dozen armed men, a chance shot would be suicidal as well as ineffective.
Once the wheelchair had been lowered to the ground and disengaged from the hoist, the remaining Legionnaires fell out and filled in behind it as it rolled forward. By the time it was passing the tips of the rotor blades, the armed men had formed a phalanx completely surrounding it. An officer stood to one side, supervising the manoeuvre. The formation kept moving until it was within a few metres of the people-carrier, where it stopped. Two men in the front of the phalanx stepped smartly sideways, leaving a gap through which the passenger from the car was unceremoniously pushed. He stumbled and sprawled headlong on front of the wheelchair as the gap closed behind him.
The man in the wheelchair looked down condescendingly at the figure prone on the ground before him. “Kaixo, my little friend James,” he croaked. “It has been a long time since our last meeting. And I seem to remember that we have some unfinished business to attend to. Whether we take up where we left off rather depends on you. Come, get up. Walk with me.”
As Jack pulled himself to his feet, his pulse racing and his heart in his mouth, he heard the reassuring voice and looked into the warm, smiling eyes of a consummate politician. And he knew that but for a miracle he was doomed.
Miguel put down the telephone and sat back in his chair. His face was white, and the hand that had gripped the handset was shaking. He had suspected from the start of this case that his career would be in ruins by the end of it, but now he recognised that his self-respect was mortally wounded as well. He was not sure how he would live with the memory of the orders he had recently issued and the report he had just received—let alone the blowback from an operational disaster on this scale.
He had once been a good policeman, he knew that. He had achieved more than anyone could have expected had they observed his start in life: the cramped, sweltering apartment; the obsessive-compulsive father whose violent outbursts had left the entire family with scars both physical and emotional; the interfering billionaire grandfather with the wandering hands; the little brother who hadn’t made it to adulthood; the mother who had disappeared from his life one day, never to be seen again.
Miguel thought again about his father. The old man had never stopped making demands, and whether by bullying or manipulation he had never lost the art of getting his own way. His unrelenting determination and obsessive attention to detail had made him a fearsome adversary. The huge family fortune he had come by when his wife’s ruined body was found had given him the means to indulge his whims. His skill as a researcher and manipulator, his acumen as a dealer in mercenaries and weaponry – not to mention the cadre of battle-hardened veterans with which he could now afford to surround himself – had made him hated and feared throughout Europe and northern Africa. The detective had no idea where his father was actually living now, and provided it was a long way from San Sebastián he did not much care. He detested him more than anyone else in the world. But in Miguel’s family, when Father spoke, you obeyed.
Poor Jack Burlton. Miguel had genuinely liked him. Now, as a result of his treachery, the Englishman was likely to die without ever knowing how thoroughly he had been used: how two of Miguel’s superiors had been coerced by Father into giving the detective free rein on this so-called investigation; how a threat, supposedly from the Legion, had been staged with the help of Father’s hired guns.
The purpose of the subterfuge had been to keep Jack isolated from Gallego’s stooges at police HQ while he was milked for information—primarily on Gallego himself. And now that the Englishman’s memories had been milked dry, he was expendable. But what a splendid lightning rod he had turned out to be. His mere presence in the city had been enough to draw fire from Gallego’s private army, the real Condor Legion. Their show of force on the day of his arrival, and their persistent harassment in the following days, had utterly eclipsed Miguel’s own modest set piece.
Now the Englishman’s final role would be to draw
Gallego himself out into the open. Miguel secretly hoped that Jack might survive the encounter, but he knew all about Father’s tidiness compulsion. And as for the military intelligence agent with whom he had been saddled on the orders of someone high up in government, the detective had no such compunction. Impressive? Definitely. But their orders were to co-investigate the death of Antonio García López, and Miguel had reasons for keeping that particular hand of cards very close to his chest. Fortunately, as the decoy in the first Viano, Julio had even less chance of survival than Jack himself.
In the balance, then, Miguel could not complain about the way things had panned out. All the same, this was a wretched business, and it was with a heavy heart that he reached into the pedestal cupboard beneath his desk and took out a bottle of Soberano. Pouring a hefty measure of the fiery liquid into an unwashed glass that was already sitting on his desk, he tilted the chair back and put his feet on the desk. As the room slowly went dark around him, he assembled his thoughts and attempted to draw up a damage limitation plan.
“Don’t be nervous, James,” said the familiar, soothing, reassuring voice. “Not yet, anyway.” The smile was still on his lips. The eyes, in contrast, were no longer warm but cold and taunting. “Not with all these monks around, wherever they’re hiding. Of course, what happens later when there are no witnesses is in your own hands. What’s the matter, struck dumb, are we? Aren’t you pleased to see me again after all this time? We established quite a bond, you and I, back in the day.”
Jack allowed him to keep talking, to revel in the moment. He knew that a time would come when silence would only bring him a world of pain, but for the moment he felt that anything he said might provoke a spiteful retaliation. He could not forget the cruel injuries he had personally inflicted on his captor in sabotaging his seatbelt all those years ago. And he had been instrumental in getting the paramilitary leader shot in the small of the back with his prized handgun. It suddenly struck Jack with a shock that Gallego – the former Adolfo – had been confined to a wheelchair throughout the forty years since. Oh God, what manner of revenge must be lying in wait?
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