—But, that man...
—Circumstantial —he arrogant exclaimed—. It is simple and pure chance!
—He was in Águilas, in my hotel! —Jonás was hysterical—. After I find him in the same train that I’m travelling on, and the last straw was yesterday, he was having breakfast less than one hundred meters from my home.
—As I’ve said before, circumstantial.
—That guy had a gun!
—He could be policeman —his smile grew bigger— Or a detective. The fact is that not for finding him in two different places, and that this guy carries a pipe you have become the center of the international conspiracy.
—Sometimes my friend you can be a perfect asshole —snapped up Jonás very annoyed.
I’m sorry. What I’m trying to say is that he can be a tourist —he simplified—. Merely as you, he was visiting the city; he was staying in the same hotel as you, but he lives in Madrid.
—It has sense— he nodded—. But it is so...weird.
—Your fucking ass! —he said putting up his arms—. Tell me, if a man appears like me appears to you three times in a day, won’t I be strange to you?
—I would be scared —he admitted.
—Well there you have —he accommodated on the bed, with the huge legs folded—. Besides my colleague, you don’t have anything that a ruthless killer wants to take away from you, sincerely. Is true that those books have some value as you say, but not enough to send Jason Bourne to kill you.
—You’re right my friend —he admitted—. It’s only that all this issue is starting to give me the creeps. This have no sense. Why did my grandfather wanted to hide those folders and the famous abandoned print?
—Because he was now a little gaga? You must contemplate that option too.
Jonás nodded crestfallen with the idea that his grandfather would have ended up melting the fuses.
—Once again, you’re right.
—Oh, music for my ears.
—As the hotel is already paid and the mini bar is opened, I’m going to stay here tonight and review those folders —he searched for his friend’s approval—. And I leave all this at once.
—Ufff mini bar and journalist’s postwar archives —he rubbed his hands—, I cannot think in anything better for a cold Christmas’ day; I’ll stay with you.
—Colleague, seriously...
—Shut up, do you have a spare pajama?
Jonás looked at him upside down and then he looked himself. They both laughed.
—And how was lunch at Mar’s parents’ house?
Jonás rolled his eyes.
—Don’t even mention it.
****
The cut of the suit was impeccable, showing its great quality and his Italian origin. His demeanor suggested exquisite manners, tanned in good schools and expensive institutions. His smile, permanently serene inspired confidence, and the tune of his voice, measured and mellifluous invited to cordiality.
He walked through the last meters of the endless decorated corridor with the sober neo-classical style, in which only resonated the wooden heels of his English Barker Black shoes of five hundred euros; he knocked at the door gently. After a brief pause, he entered without waiting for an invitation and sat in one of the 350 seats that the congress had. He listened to the ones that exposed and the ones that refuted and he relaxed. That was his life, he was born to be in that place and he moved in those circles like a fish to water. He knew how to act, as in the last term, offer the perfect solution. He had learned by his own experience that there are no better collaborators than those that are desperate, and he moved in that context, between the desperate that searched for a solution at any price. He waited, and minutes after he received the call that he was been waiting for. He did draw a smile and pick up the phone, cupping the hand so nobody could hear from where that information came and for what some will sell their souls.
****
Well, what a shit! —Juandi exclaimed jumping off the bed—. So much fuss for this?
He picked up a document and he wielded it up in the air, as waiting as if from between its pages a treasure map would fall.
—Here there are no more than documents about an old political party that does not even exist anymore.
Jonás stood up and snatched him the document. He read it again, but he couldn’t understand what it meant. Attached to the document there was a letter that he had read almost five times, and that both he and his friend had found it insufficient and enigmatic.
—What is clear is that my grandfather wasn’t in his best time —Jonás expressed sadly—. Especially in his last years.
—He was lunatic! —he raised his hands palms up as an apology—. Excuse me, but this man was a tad bit paranoid and has managed to transmit you his hysteria.
—You might be right colleague —Jonás admitted, and he left the document on the bed and picked up a note again—. But we must take in account that my grandfather had to exile abroad because Franco’s political social police harassed him, something must be in those folders.
—At that time they called an exalted to everyone who walked with hand drawn leaflets and that didn’t praise the regime.
The young man had to admit that his friend was right. That was nothing more than a string of ravings from an idealist that had nothing to do but with Spain’s history, plain and simple.
—Read again that about the Tiempos Libres —he proposed—. The same we get something that has escaped from us.
Juandi rolled his eyes and read the document’s headline. He left it in the middle, bored. Jonás took out again from the envelope his grandpa’s letters and read them aloud.
—Definitely my grandfather was not very good —he threw a letter on top of the bed, next to the title deed of the printing office.
—That is for sure, but well, you know what you must do.
—Yes, ask Mar to forgive me, enjoy Christmas and forget that my grandfather was off-his-rocker crazy.
—Macho, you are the most flavorless guy that I have ever met —he replied—. Just like an egg without salt. What we are going to do is to go on a trip.
—What are you saying? come on take your medicine.
—Shut up! —Juandi went to bed and put away the papers in the box— We are going to Mula, we’ll see that ruin that your grandfather left, we make his last will and we fit a good friends’ meal to know Murcia’s gastronomy.
—You are crazier than my grandfather —Jonás snapped—. We are not going to burn nothing!
—At night —he joked, humorously dancing— We are going to set the night on fire. And don’t talk anymore!
****
As Christmas lights continued shining in the Gran Via’s multitude of shopfronts, he came near one of those shops that hadn’t opened yet and looked at the shopfront, indifferent. He adjusted his coat’s covers (very expensive but inappropriate for cold) and walked again trough the promenade pretending to look the old petit Palais’ architecture. When he heard some bars’ sound, a broad smile spread over his face. He approached blowing his hands and greeted the beautiful teenager that had already placed herself on the counter.
—Good morning gentleman —she hummed—. What do you want?
He gave her one of his candid smiles and threw a repertoire of looks. Those essayed manners had earned him many compensations in life.
—Well, I’ll wish one of those, and another of those, that are looking me with good eyes. —he said pointing to glassed donuts—. Because, I can’t choose you isn’t it?
The girl put an enameled hand on the lips and giggled embarrassed.
—We start with the donuts, and then we’ll see —she suggestive exclaimed—. Something to drink, a smoothie maybe?
—Better give me a Coke —he pointed—. The big ones, please.
He came back to the hotel’s door and patiently waited until his objective decided to come out, hiding in one of the promenade’s bench.
Chapter 14
When the train l
eft Atocha, Juandi jumped in the seat as he was a school boy on an excursion. In more than one occasion, he had mocked his friend when he had surprised him patting excited, but it hadn’t bother the giant in the least.
—Is it that you have not left Madrid in your life? —Jonás adduced—. You look like a kid.
—And with much honor! —Juandi smiled with enthusiasm—. Who knows, with our luck we will find the Holy Grail in that print office, or a map for a Nazi treasure, or better, a plate to make money...
—Or a great amount of powder and pigeon’s shit —Jonás said, that although he didn’t want to harbor false hopes in that, he was catching his friend’s enthusiasm—. Or better, a long Christmas’ week filling my grandfather’s not payed tax forms.
—If there is pigeon’s shit it means that there are pigeons, no? —Juandi said—. So, one of them could carry a note tied to the leg that...
Jonás hit his arm and both exploded in peals of laughter.
—You are not going to spoil this moment —confessed shortly after the giant—. I care very little that in that print office there is nothing more than dust, that your grandfather lost his head and all those folders that contain nothing else than crazy things, or that pigeon shits on my head, for that supposes a pause.
—What do you mean? —Jonás asked.
—Dude, I needed to leave Madrid —he composed himself with a vague gesture —That is driving me mad.
—I don’t understand you Juandi, I believed that you were better than ever.
—And so it was— his friend looked straight at him, and Jonás could see anguish —Jonás, I’m surpassed. Things in the Interventor are functioning, but Raquel now wants me to leave the camera and to dedicate to more “substantial” things in her own words.
—But that’s good news! it is time that you stop running in the streets after the famous of the moment.
—Yes, I suppose —he lowered his head—. I love her, but I don’t think that we are carrying this properly. I needed a break, that is all, so although in that print office we don’t find nothing more than rat shit, anyway it’s going to look like manna from heaven.
—I understand it colleague.
—The worst that can happen is that we enjoy rural tourism a couple of days, like two normal friends. Besides, it’s a long time since you and I don’t catch a good one as God commands —his face lit up—. So...
—Yes, and then you ask for an iced Nestea.
They burst again in laughter.
****
Mula’s bus station was barely a stop with three platforms and a small bar. After descending in El Carmen de Murcia, they had to take two buses to get to the town, that was 35 kilometers from the capital. In the bar they asked where they could make a lodging reservation, and the waiter indicated them that there only existed one hotel in all the town, and that they would not have difficulties in taking a room.
When they had registered and left all their stuff, they asked at the reception for a map. They assured them that they didn’t had to take a taxi, because it was a very beautiful town and it could be walked entirely in less than fifteen minutes. They made a mark in the street where the old print office was, and they decided to make some tourism.
—This is great! —Juandi exclaimed watching amazed the castle that crowned the mountain—. Rural tourism!
They ate without a hurry in an inn near the town hall square, and after they followed an old man’s indications. The print office was less than five minutes from there —according to him—, although it had been closed for years. Juandi was enthusiastic about anything and insisted in taking the long way to get there, that descended by a steep slope that went from a church that was in the square, up to a beautiful gazebo full of roses and palm hearts that finished in a giant reformed convent. In the small square —that had maintained the original architecture from the XII century—, it was situated in an anachronistic booth very similar to a beach kiosk, and where Juandi begged to sit down for a coffee. Lees than twenty meters, going out of the gazebo and crossing the narrow avenue, there was a ruined building with the appearance of a petit Palais forgotten by time, and in which dozens of pigeons that searched for their food in the little square they have made it their home. Gawking at the contrast offered by the abandoned property in comparison to the other adjoining blocks, they got to the door. A sign, that in one moment of history had had all its letters, hanged half tilted and covered with solidified dust. You could still read:
“V CTORIA P INT O FI E”
DU LICA OR AND
Jonás breathed a sigh and searched the key that his grandfather had left in the box. Undoubtfully that was going to be a disappointment.
Chapter 15
Antonio José Ulloa called again to the telephone, but he found again with the operator message and it said that that number was out of service. He left the editorial office, that in that moment was immersed in a vortex of activity due to the to the special number that was being prepared for new year, and he asked a taxi. When he arrived into the address, que paid the taxi driver saying him a single word, and he went to the building in double time. He ranged insistently the doorbell of the electric intercom without having an answer, so he took a bunch of keys and went in.
The dwelling was ordered, although a mustiness that was floating in the atmosphere was unpleasant to him. He rummaged in the drawers without bothering about the mess, and the he went directly to the numerous shelve that dominated the sitting room. He made a grimace of displeasure when he read the books’ titles, and he let them fall on the ground without contemplations after he checked between the pages. Desperately, he went to the phone, an antediluvian apparatus that registered the messages and recorded the conversations. He detested the taste and the style of that house. He reviewed the messages and checked that there weren’t outcoming calls, but there were a lot of messages in the answering machine. He listened to them one by one, until he found what he was searching for. They all were from the same person, except one. He erased al the reproach messages, and he wrote down word by word the last one in a very tiny notebook that it fitted in the palm of his hand. He erased the latter too. He abandoned the building and without bothering to put the things in its place, he took again a taxi. When he was on his way back to the editorial office, he took again his mobile and dialed a speed dial number.
—I know where you are —they said when they answered—. Take a note.
****
The scissor bars looked as if they had years seemed to have been no opened for years, but when Jonás took the three padlocks and gave an energetic push, they opened without any difficulty. It didn’t escape to neither of the two the detail that through the interior rails of the bars there were traces of recent grease, and the dust coat hardened by the rain that was outside didn’t was at the inside rollers that opened the door. It seemed that it was not that long that his grandfather had been there as it indicated its external appearance.
—I shit on the golds’ cup! —Juandi exclaimed—. What the hell is this?
Jonás shut the door behind him and left the padlocks in a little counter, that in another time it had been used as a reception. During some minutes both friends didn’t move even one millimeter, looking with their mouths opened the show that they had before their eyes, until Juandi started to run anxiously from one side to another, touching and inspecting the first thing that he founded. As he released something and picked up another thing, he gave uttered screams of amazement that resonated in the building’s high roofs.
Behind of what it seemed the entrance you accessed through a corridor up to a big room where you found in one of the further corners several machines of the size of small vehicles. Jonás could distinguish something that looked like a scanner and a movie processor beside to some printing plates, very similar to an industrial chest used to froze. Several pad printers were aligned against the wall, to de right of something that Jonás identified as a sewing collection, guillotines and binding machines of a monstrou
s size. In another corner, a white bed sheet covered what should be machines, but he couldn’t distinguish for sure what they could be from his position. The rest of the huge room was covered almost in its totality by imposing towers of piles of magazines, newspapers and books of all sizes. Juandi continued his travel between the mountains of catalogs and newspapers as a child in a knickknacks shop.
—Colleague— he shouted —. Here you can find millions of newspapers and antique magazines!
Jonás looked that in one of the laterals there was a small room with a sign that prayed “STUDY” impressed on a tin plaque. He went to one of the mechanisms —something that had to be a very old model— with an elevation train, stapled and sewn crumpled up in front. By which he understood, those instruments were used to manufacture magazines and brochures. He reviewed a pair of those colossal giant chunks and yelling he called his friend, that appeared before him with a smile that could have competed with the logotype of a famous grocery brand.
—Dude, we’ve found Ali Baba’s treasure cave! —he vociferated enthusiastically.
—Juandi, what do you look here? —he asked pointing at a laminator.
—Well I don’t know, a machine to manufacture dinosaurs —he answered.
—Exactly —Jonás passed a finger over one of the strips and he showed it to his companion— Although that these frames have more years than you and me, they still are perfectly greased and don’t have a slightest particle of dust.
—Your grandfather might have come frequently to take care of them —he deduced—. I imagine that he should have been very fond of this printing office, due to the circumstances that he left it to you.
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