For five minutes or more, Jack watched the two men talk. It was hardly very dramatic, with little of the gesticulating that is a key part of most Spanish conversation. Then, without warning, Martí turned away and walked up the hill to the plaza. Two minutes later, Jack heard an engine start up and a squeal of tyres as a car pulled away. The tall man had turned round and began to walk back towards them.
“Hey, well done,” enthused Jack. “What on earth did you say to him?”
“I need to speak to Gallego alone,” was Julio’s only reply.
Jack shrugged his shoulders and stepped to one side. Julio took the handles of the wheelchair and trundled Gallego across the grass. Stopping on the smooth pathway, he turned the chair so that its occupant was facing down the slope. Then he bent and whispered something in the old man’s ear, and for the first time Gallego’s body language showed signs of alarm. Julio leaned forward and spoke again. Then without warning he took his hands away from the wheelchair, which immediately began to roll forward on the smooth surface. Moment by moment it gathered pace as the occupant yelled out in fury and desperation. He belatedly fumbled for the brake lever, but it was too late.
The chair veered slightly, putting first one wheel then the other onto the grass, but it was well engineered and coped admirably with the uneven surface. By the time it struck the parapet it must have been travelling at over thirty kilometres per hour, and Gallego was screaming hoarsely. There was an audible crunch as his immobile knees struck the wall perpendicularly and transmitted all the kinetic energy up his thighs to the pelvis. A split second later his upper body was thrown violently forward. The extended arms cleared the top of the parapet, and with a second crunch – this time of shattered ribs – he came to rest slumped across it.
Julio watched dispassionately as a shiny alloy wheel, suspended slightly clear of the ground, span down to a halt. As Jack began walking down to the site of the impact, Julio was striding up towards the plaza. They paused for a moment, not making eye contact.
“To answer your question, I offered the Incredible Hulk a vision of what the Legion could be without the dead weight of its former leadership,” he said quietly. “He’s an ambitious and capable man. Ugly politics, but not the worst of them by a long shot.”
“You mean you just let him go? After all they’ve done?”
“As I said, he’s not the worst of them. And with the size of the power vacuum Gallego is leaving, there’ll be as many claimants are there are members. I imagine he has a life expectancy of about a week. I don’t want you talking about any of this, to me or anybody else.”
As Jack reached the bottom of the slope, Gallego was trying to scream but there was not enough air in his lungs. The Englishman crouched down and picked up the little backup pistol, which had been shaken loose from its cut-out in the seat cushion.
“Kill me,” the broken man managed to whisper.
Jack walked round until he was in Gallego’s line of sight, then extended his arm and pointed the gun at his forehead. “The girl in Valencia,” he whispered. “The truth.” There was no answer at first, but then for a moment the broken man’s eyes danced, and a trickle of saliva appeared at the corner of his mouth.
It was enough. Jack uncocked the pistol and slipped it into his pocket. “I knew you were lying,” he said, “and a bullet’s too good for you. I don’t think you’ve got long, but I hope you see tomorrow’s headlines before you die.”
Gallego had a question, unspoken but written clearly enough in his eyes.
“Antonio built up a file,” Jack explained. “A great big catalogue of torture and killing. Dates, places and details, together with as much evidence of your movements as he could dig up. I’ve seen it and it’s absolutely damning. He left it on a computer disk. I’ve sent copies to all the national daily newspapers and RTE.”
Gallego was a strong man, and his upper body was honed from reliance on it. He exerted every ounce of his remaining strength in an attempt to drag himself over the parapet. He almost made it, but the damaged tendons and ligaments let him down.
As Jack walked slowly up the incline, he heard the whine of the chopper starting up, and by the time he reached the top of the path it was already in the air. Many of the monks had emerged from hiding, and were busy moving bodies or looking for signs of life. They backed away as the Englishman drew near. One of them called out to him in a voice that contained both compassion and alarm: “Can we help you? You have nothing to fear.”
“The tall man,” said Jack breathlessly. “Which way did he go?”
“The black suit? Over that way, towards the infirmary.”
“Look, is there a car I can borrow? I haven’t done anything wrong, and I need to get away from here.”
“Yes, you should leave,” replied the monk with impressive calm under the circumstances. “The police are on their way, and if you don’t go quickly you’ll find the road barricaded at the bottom. You can take our shopping car from behind the bell tower. Just lock the key inside when you’ve finished with it. And if you have a chance to let us know where you left it, so much the better.”
Pausing only to stammer his thanks, Jack turned to cross the plaza to the bell tower. But at that moment a black Viano identical to the one in which had been a prisoner came out from behind the tower and sped towards him. He flinched and turned to run, but he was too late. The car pulled alongside him and the driver’s window slid down to reveal the smiling face of Julio. “Your carriage awaits, Sire,” he announced. “I’ve got to take you back to HQ to give a statement. If you get in the back, you can stretch out for an hour or so.”
“No, thank you,” answered Jack with some feeling. “Nothing personal, but I’ve had enough of travelling in a fish tank.”
“Yes, I can understand that,” answered Julio cheerily. Reassured, Jack walked round the car, opened the front passenger door and climbed in. Julio set off, and barely a minute later they were driving fast through the main gate. Twenty minutes later, as they rounded a rocky spur that had hid the road ahead from view, they came to a police roadblock.
Back up at the monastery, the monk to whom Jack had spoken saw the tall and rather intimidating figure of Brother Ángel bearing down on him. “An Englishman was here,” shouted Ángel when he was still several metres away. “I need to find him.”
“I don’t know where he is now,” answered the monk in a slow, patient voice. “But I know where he went. He was driven off in a big, black car by a tall man in a black suit. I imagine they went down the hill.”
“How long?” hissed Ángel with urgency in his voice and manner.
“Not long. Between five and ten minutes. But don’t worry; they’ll probably get stopped at the foot of the pass.”
Ángel waited to hear no more. He sprinted back across the plaza in the direction of the bell tower and was lost to view. It was not until five minutes later that the group of monks saw him re-emerge. Clad from head to foot in black leather and polycarbonate, he was riding a streamlined black motorcycle with a long brown leather case slung diagonally across his back. The engine bellowed, the front wheel lifted momentarily from the ground, and then he was accelerating towards the main gate.
The Viano approached the checkpoint slowly. It was a hastily erected affair: a line of concrete blocks and sandbags designed to funnel traffic from either direction into a single-width channel in the middle of the carriageway. At the mid-point of the channel was a steel hurdle on casters. It would never have stopped a moving vehicle, but armed police stood on duty as a deterrent to anyone tempted to smash their way through.
Julio did nothing rash. He simply drew to a halt at the barrier, lowered the window and showed the policeman on duty a document that Jack could not quite make out. A brief conversation ensued, then with a squeal of rusty steel the makeshift gate was dragged open. Julio accelerated gently away, but as soon as they were out of sight of the patrolmen he put his foot down.
“How did you manage that?” asked Jack, who had expect
ed trouble.
“I simply showed them my police ID and told them the truth, that I’m taking you to HQ in San Sebastián to make a statement.”
Jack nodded at this explanation, and sat quietly. He had an overpowering urge to telephone his family, but the battery in his mobile phone had been flat for days. Noting that Julio was indeed headed for the coast, he began to relax and eventually drifted off to sleep.
Ángel saw the roadblock as he rounded the last bend and swore under his breath. Then to his relief he saw that the barrier was standing open. He did not have long; an officer was taking hold of the steel hurdle, presumably to close it. He gunned the engine, the front wheel lifted higher this time, and he flew down the remaining metres. The officer was aware of him now and was racing to drag the barrier back into place. He nearly managed it, but the bike was travelling too fast. For a moment Ángel feared that his handlebar would make contact with the concrete to his right and be pulled out of his hands. But then he was through. He just had time to take in the fact that there was another officer talking into a radio mike beside a parked police car, and again he swore. Then the scene was behind him. He hunched down over the fuel tank to keep wind drag to a minimum and accelerated up the road towards the coast. He fancied he could already hear the sound of sirens over the rush of wind round his helmet and the roar of the engine beneath him.
“Wake up, Jack.” Julio took one hand off the steering wheel and used it to shake the Englishman by the shoulder. “Come on, wake up. We’ve got company.”
Jack grudgingly raised his head from his chest and looked across at the driver. “What do you mean, company?”
“We’re being followed—-a motorbike. He’s staying well back and trying hard to look innocent. What’s going on, Jack? Got any other enemies you haven’t told us, I mean me, about?”
Jack’s brow furrowed in thought, but he remained silent. “I’ve no idea who it could be. Is anyone still in the game?”
“Good question,” answered Julio. “Not the cops, at least not the good cops. And not the Legion either—as of today they’ll be tied up with internal pissing contests. That leaves either the bad cops or national security. And we mustn’t forget the Basques; they don’t like outsiders coming in hot.”
“Who do you think, Julio?”
“No idea. Do you want to find out?”
“Not in the slightest.”
They had just rounded a sharp bend. Without warning Julio stamped on the brakes and wrenched on the wheel. The ungainly vehicle shot up an unmade forestry track, juddering and bounding on the unsuitable surface. The driver pulled on the wheel again, yanked on the handbrake and swung the Viano sideways behind a tangled stand of scrubby trees. “Whoops, there goes my insurance bonus,” he muttered, and a second later they heard the roar of the motorcycle out on the road. Julio deftly reversed out of the hiding place and bumped back down the track. In a few moments they were on the highway, heading back the way they had come.
“Are we going all the way back to Alzaibar?” asked Jack.
“Definitely not,” answered Julio with a grin. “But there have been one or two side roads. We’ll have to be quick; if that rider’s worth his salt he’ll soon see that he’s lost us. Then he’ll turn round and see the trail of dirt we left on the road. And he can outpace us easily on a winding road like this. We need to get off it as soon as we can.”
Ángel gradually picked up speed as he sought to regain contact with his quarry, but quickly realised that he had been given the slip. It was the work of a few seconds to turn the bike round and check the mileage reading, and after seven kilometres he came upon the spray of dirt and pine needles where the Viano had exited from the forestry track. He did some quick mental arithmetic. At the speed the vehicle would be travelling now it must have a lead of about twelve kilometres, and in the time it was going to take Ángel to catch up it could cover another forty or more.
The next question Ángel asked himself was where they would go. They would not want to stay on a winding road that gave him such a speed advantage. They would look for a side turning, and there was a cluster of settlements down by the river they had crossed some forty minutes ago.
Ángel thought they would reach the populated area before he could catch up with them. And they would follow the signs to a town or village offering concealment and a possible change of vehicle. But they would not pick the first turning; that would be too obvious. There were no guarantees, but Ángel was happy to play the odds. He would take the second turning, and if that did not yield results he would try something else.
CHAPTER 20
Julio pulled the Viano off the road and tucked it behind a dilapidated apartment block that was studded with satellite dishes and festooned with drying laundry. He and Jack slid wearily out of the vehicle. The Englishman took several seconds to straighten up, but his mind was still sharp. “OK,” he said. “We need a different car, and we need to look different.”
“I don’t know what sort of world you live in, Jack,” answered Julio. “Stuffing a cushion up your shirt is one thing, but commandeering a vehicle is a different game altogether. The details could be circulating on the police band in minutes.”
“Well, we’re sitting ducks here. Can’t you contact your HQ for support?”
“Not on an open radio or phone line. Not without shouting ‘here we are’. Incidentally, I hope your mobile’s dead or that could give our position away.”
“No worries. The battery’s as flat as a tortilla. But we need a car and a makeover.”
“You got any ideas?”
“I once read that the art of a good disguise is subtlety. You need to understand the brain’s recognition process, and alter things just enough that somebody will think, ‘That looks a bit like so-and-so but it’s not really him’. It saved my life forty years ago.”
“Clever, but how.”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Our biggest problem is the car. Once he recognises that, he’ll take a closer look at the people inside. But if he finds it ditched he’ll check out every vehicle he passes.”
“OK, so we don’t want him to find the Viano dumped. And we can actually carry on using it if there’s a way to make him ignore it.”
“Exactly. But we need to change our appearance as well. He may still peer inside.”
“Good thinking,” replied Julio. “That’s what I’d do instinctively if I saw a similar car to one I was hunting. So, what do we do to the car? We can switch number plates easily enough. And what about a re-spray?”
“Too big a job. But how about this: a lot of these people-carriers are used by car-hire firms for airport transfers and the like. Let’s hunt around. In a town this size there has to be a signwriting firm. And hopefully an outfitters.”
Ángel had no doubt that his quarry was headed back into San Sebastián, and after a fruitless trawl round a series of drab villages he decided to press on towards the city. He was burning up the final stretch before hitting the coastal motorway when he rounded a bend and saw the black Viano ahead of him. Pushing the motorcycle still harder, he quickly closed the gap between them.
Then came disappointment. The model was identical, but the view through the back windscreen was obscured by bold white lettering: AERO-TAXI followed by a phone number. He was suspicious at first. He pulled alongside the vehicle, matched speed with it and glanced in at the windows only to have his disappointment confirmed. In the front sat a dour-faced chauffeur in a green jacket, white shirt, black tie and peaked cap. In the rear, on the same side of the vehicle, sat a horse-faced elderly lady in a black mourning dress. The upper half of her face was obscured by a heavy lace veil, and beside her on the seat lay an ornate floral wreath. He was about to take another glance at the driver, when the front window slid smoothly down and a gloved hand extended a rigid middle finger at him. Furious, Ángel opened the throttle and pulled ahead.
Jack felt a burst of elation as the motorcycle and its noise receded into the distance. He was not
entirely comfortable in the enclosed rear compartment, having recently been imprisoned in an identical vehicle, but the seat was comfortable and he was tired. In any event, they would soon be joining the motorway, and he calculated that they should be in San Sebastián in less than half an hour. With the crisis the Legion was now facing, he trusted that he and Julio would have a quiet run across town to the police HQ.
In due course Julio turned off the motorway into the Amara district, and for the first few minutes he seemed on track. Then it dawned on Jack that instead of taking a cross street they were heading straight up towards the sea front. For another minute or two he found this unremarkable, and simply took in the half-familiar sights of the city he had once known so well. Then it occurred to him that Julio had been quite uncommunicative since they had completed the makeover, and for the first time a faint warning bell rang in his mind.
Reaching forward, he tapped on the glass screen. There was no response. He tapped again harder, and still the driver failed to acknowledge his presence. Then paranoia hit him with full force. As they stopped at a traffic light, he ripped off his hat and veil, undid the seat belt, slid across to the nearside seat and banged on the window. A young family on the pavement saw the strange person in the back of the limo thumping and gesticulating. For a moment they looked mildly alarmed, but then their faces broke into smiles and they waved back.
Jack considered getting out the compact pistol he was still carrying in his pocket, but thought better of it. He had never checked how many rounds were left in the magazine, and he feared that a round from such a short-barrelled weapon might simply ricochet around the compartment. Inexorably the car made its way up onto the seafront and turned left. It followed the curve of the Concha beach, and then commenced the slow winding climb up Monte Igeldo.
By now, Jack could guess where they were heading. He had no idea why that was Julio’s chosen destination, but his suspicions were confirmed when the driver finally turned into the car park behind the Hotel, coasted down to the deserted lower end and switched off the engine.
THE ENGLISH WITNESS Page 25