She went into Grandpa Arestigui’s study and swivelled the big brass telescope up towards the mountain, peering through the eyepiece at the upper pastures, seeing the faint plume of smoke rising into the mountain air from the old fortress. That was unusual, since the crumbling structure was unsound. None of the villagers went near it. But someone was up there.
The old grandfather clock chimed the hour and Begoña frowned as she saw the time. Nieves had set off at seven that morning, taking a sack of flour to trade at the market in the village. She was over an hour late. But she had been late before, the rhythms of country life were like that. On these lonely paths through the hills there was always the possibility of running across some distant acquaintance or relative and such encounters always required an exchange of news and gossip. Begoña sighed. Perhaps she was just being foolish.
Or perhaps not. It had been a long time since she had experienced such a sense of foreboding. Some called these things premonitions or second sight, others even called it witchcraft. Begoña had no name for them since the feelings came naturally. And what she felt now was that something bad was coming.
She went to the front door and stepped outside. A faint breath of wind stirred the remaining leaves on the trees and she shivered. Something was coming all right, something dark and destructive. If it was a storm, it would be a big one. Begoña Arestigui had lived at Lauburu Farm for thirty-five winters. Had walked through this wood every day of her life. Had even had her first kiss among these gnarled trees. She had never been afraid here. She was afraid now.
SAN SEBASTIÁN 1954, COMISARÍA DE LA POLICÍA ARMADA
Ochoa hurried up the steps into the police station.
‘Buenos días.’ The officer behind the desk had a mouthful of stale roll and spluttered soggy crumbs onto the desk as he greeted the visitor. When he saw the name of Ochoa’s unit on his ID card, he dropped the pleasantries and hurried away in search of his boss, a red-faced sargento.
‘So you’re from the Special Brigade?’ The sargento saluted. ‘A sus órdenes.’
‘Where’s Capitán Viana?’ Ochoa asked.
‘It’s a shame you didn’t come earlier,’ the sargento said. ‘The capitán got a telegram a couple of hours ago. He’s gone to collect a file sent by special courier.’
‘Really? Where from?’
‘The capitán said a courier was delivering the material to the pensión at Oroitz.’
‘Show me his office.’ Ochoa followed the sargento down the hall to a small drab room. ‘You can go now,’ he said. ‘Close the door after you.’ Once the sargento had left the room, he locked the door.
An envelope bearing the crest of the Spanish post office lay on the table. It had been opened with a neat cut along the top of the flap. There was no sign of the telegram and Ochoa rifled through the desk drawers without finding it. Annoyed, he knelt and ran his hands under the narrow gap between desk and floor. His fingers brushed something and he slid it out, his eyes widening as he recognised it. He had one of these in his pocket. The identification card of a member of the Brigada Especial. He opened it and looked at the details below the photograph. It was Viana’s card.
Puzzled, he sat in the capitán’s chair, running through the things he would tell Guzmán when he phoned him. He stretched out his leg and heard a sharp clatter as his boot hit the metal waste-paper bin. Reaching down, he lifted the bin and inspected it. It was empty, apart from a heap of roughly torn scraps of paper. Ochoa upended the pieces of telegram onto the desk and started to rearrange them.
OROITZ 1954, LAUBURU FARM
As she heard footsteps running towards her, Begoña thought about hiding but decided that was ridiculous. Her ancestors had slain Charlemagne’s rearguard, they were not frightened by an autumn breeze. She stood her ground as the noise grew louder.
‘Nieves?’ Begoña stared as her niece came running out of the trees. Her hair was tangled with burrs and pieces of leaves. ‘Por Dios, what happened?’
Nieves fell into her arms and Begoña held her, feeling her slight body pressed against hers, wracked by violent sobs. When Nieves calmed down, Begoña took her back to the house and poured a glass of patxaran.
Nieves drank it, holding Begoña’s hand tight. ‘I saw him, there was blood everywhere.’
‘Saw who? What’s happened?’
‘Patxi Gabilondo. El Lobo shot him after robbing a truck on the old road yesterday.’
Begoña stared at her. ‘Is he badly hurt?’
Nieves lowered her face, her tears falling into the lap of her dark skirt. ‘He’s dead.’
Begoña took a deep breath. ‘I know where the killer is.’
Nieves looked up, her face streaked with tears. ‘How do you know?’
Begoña pressed a hand to her breast. ‘I know,’ she said simply. ‘He’s in the old fortress.’
‘So what shall we do?’ Nieves asked.
Begoña knew there was only one response to the murder of an innocent like Patxi. She went to the fireplace and took down a battered short sword hanging beneath Grandfather Arestigui’s portrait, a sword allegedly pulled from the body of one of Charlemagne’s knights after the massacre at Roncesvalles. She went to the window and raised the blade towards the old fortress. Her voice trembled with the power of the storm and the ice of ancient winters as she invoked the power of the goddess. ‘I curse the man who did this,’ she said, going on to enunciate a list of torments that would befall Patxi’s killer. She finished the incantation and turned back to Nieves. ‘He walks as a dead man now.’
OROITZ 1954, CUARTEL DE LA GUARDIA CIVIL
Capitán Viana parked his car near the cuartel. A woman was walking up towards the village and he called to her, asking for the location of the Pensión Aralar. The woman looked at him, puzzled. She didn’t speak Spanish. He glanced round, hoping to find someone who spoke a Christian tongue. As he did, he saw the name he was looking for on the painted sign hanging above the door of a large house further up the street. Pensión Aralar.
‘Buenos días.’ Viana smiled as Señora Olibari opened the door. He held up his ID. ‘I’ve come to collect a file. I believe it was delivered recently?’
‘That depends who you are, señor,’ Señora Olibari said, keeping the door half-closed.
‘My name’s Guzmán. Comandante Leopoldo Guzmán.’
‘Of course.’ Señora Olibari beamed. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’
She ushered Viana into the living room and offered him a seat in her best armchair. He sat, ill at ease, surrounded by horse brasses and cow bells. ‘Has the gentleman come far?’
‘Far enough.’ Viana had no intention of being questioned by a peasant.
When Señora Olibari made another tentative attempt at conversation, he cut her short. ‘The file, please, señora. I’m in a hurry.’
‘I’ll get it.’ She nodded. ‘If you’d like to use the telephone, señor, you’re very welcome. It’s the only one in the village, apart from the one at the cuartel.’
She bustled down the hall to the small sitting room at the back of the house. Double windows gave a spectacular view of the valley. In the distance, she saw the white smudge of Lauburu Farm where the witches lived. She paused, listening for the sound of her guest moving. When she heard nothing, she went to one of several large paintings on the wall, portraying rustic scenes from Basque life a century earlier. Taking hold of a gloomy depiction of cattle crossing a river with their ruddy-faced drovers, she lifted the painting from its hook, revealing a small safe set into the wall. She entered the combination: 18071936. A number she had chosen with care: the date the Civil War began. But though the war was long over, her work continued.
The safe door swung open on well-greased hinges. Somewhere along the hall she heard a creak. She froze, alert for further sounds of movement, and exhaled quietly, hearing none. This was an old house. It creaked all the time. She took a pair of shears from the safe. In contrast to the ancient farming gear in her living room, these were practically brand ne
w, given to her when the telephone was installed. Quickly, she used them to cut the phone cable. Whoever her visitor was, it had never occurred to him that she would be able to recognise Comandante Guzmán. But then, Guzmán hadn’t known that either.
Her orders for a situation like this were very specific. Reaching into the safe, she took out the file with its typed label: Cdte L. Guzmán. Alto Secreto. She placed the file on a stool and reached back into the safe for the Luger. It had been some time since she had used it, though not so long that she’d forgotten how to kill a man.
She heard a faint metallic sound in the hall. Quickly, she reached for the file, deciding to lock it in the safe before she dealt with her problem visitor. A sudden noise at the door made her look up. Capitán Viana was standing in the doorway. The sound she’d heard had been him fitting the silencer on his pistol.
OROITZ 1954, TORRES PABELLÓN DE CAZA
Guzmán looked in astonishment at the chaos of papers on the walls around him. Almost every available surface had something pinned or glued to it. Papers of all sizes, from large posters to the small pages of notebooks. Some handwritten in various-coloured inks, some typed. Pen and ink drawings, etchings, several small watercolours. Many depicted the ikurriña, the prohibited Basque flag. Among the items in the bizarre montage around him he saw a newspaper cutting from ABC dated 9 March 1951 announcing the death of the glorious and celebrated Lieutenant General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano. Above the picture someone had scrawled Drunken murderer in red ink. A fair assessment, though one that would put the writer in jail nonetheless.
Guzmán shook his head, admiring Jiménez’s cunning. The man had worked for Torres, posing as a loyal employee, while at the same time, down here, he was scrawling these messages of hate and treachery. And planning the general’s murder. It was not just Jiménez’s treachery that infuriated him: it was that Magdalena had trusted him.
He continued his examination of the walls. More sketches: cars being machine-gunned, blown up, guardia civiles being shot down by men and women in Basque berets. Next to the drawings was a series of small photographs. He moved closer to examine them, his smile fading as he saw the first.
OROITZ 1954, CUARTEL DE LA GUARDIA CIVIL
Viana went down the track to the barracks. As he approached, an old man came out from behind the building and started up the path towards him. Dressed in rough sheepskins, his rope-soled sandals tied with long laces wound round his calves, the man looked like the shepherds in Señora Olibari’s paintings.
‘Buenas días,’ Viana grunted.
‘Muy buenas,’ the old man said, politely. ‘Is the señor going to the cuartel?’
‘That’s none of your business,’ Viana snapped.
‘No offence to the gentleman,’ the old man said, ‘but something terrible has happened. The garrison were all killed yesterday, trying to stop a robbery by that bandit El Lobo. The entire village is in a state of shock.’
Viana glowered at him. ‘That’s why I’m here, you old fool. I’m a police officer, so stop wasting my time, I want to use the telephone.’
‘Naturally, sir.’ The shepherd swept off his cap with a servile gesture and watched as Viana continued down the path towards the building.
Viana walked fast, annoyed by the shepherd’s unwelcome familiarity. These inbreds needed to be taught a lesson. They had clearly forgotten the last one.
Behind him, the old man let out a whistle, high and discordant like the sound of a madman’s flute. Viana spun round, wondering if the unkempt peasant was mocking him, but the old man was slowly making his way up the track to the village. Viana snorted. The old man wasn’t a problem, though it was always best to be cautious here. He was sick of this region. Once this job was completed, there would be a new challenge waiting, as there always was. Another new identity to acquire once the original owner had been disposed of. Just as he’d done with the late Capitán Viana. The thought of it made him smile. There was no point in killing people if you didn’t enjoy it.
Something else amused him. By now, Guzmán was probably starting to realise he wasn’t going to see the file Gutiérrez had sent him. It might take a while longer before he realised he was finished. And with any luck Viana might be the one to finish the comandante. He reached the cuartel and hammered on the door. There was no response and he went inside.
OROITZ 1954, TORRES PABELLÓN DE CAZA
Black and white images. Some framed, others pinned or glued to the wall. The cover of a local newspaper, El Diario Vasco, dated Saturday, 27 June 1936. The headline was far from exciting: Local Sports Day a Great Success, Say Organisers. It must have been, since most of the page was taken up with a photograph of the event. It was a familiar sight after his trip to St Jean: the huge stones for the weightlifters, the logs with axes buried in them, ready for the wood-chopping contest. Further away, tents, tables and chairs, women with parasols. A local fiesta, with the war only three weeks away. And in the foreground, smiling, eyes narrowed against the brilliant sun, a posed group of children and an adult. He recognised one face immediately.
Magdalena smiled at the camera, aged maybe nine or ten, Guzmán guessed. She was holding a scroll tied with a ribbon, pressing it to her chest. She wore Basque costume, a white blouse and black waistcoat, a dark skirt and white knee-socks with the laces of her alpargatas bound around her calves. Next to her was a smartly dressed man in white with a sash knotted round his waist. He seemed vaguely familiar. Seeing him like this, clean-shaven, his hair combed and oiled, made him difficult to recognise, since whenever Guzmán had seen him, Mikel Aingeru had been dressed in stinking sheepskins. He read the caption beneath the photograph:
1936 Festival Of Basque Culture a Great Success!
The Annual Festival of Basque Culture has once more been pronounced a huge success. As always, the festival was organised by Mikel Aingeru, the local schoolteacher and renowned scholar of Basque Culture. He is seen here with his sons Jesús (13), Iker (15) and Xavier (17). With them is the winner of the under-twelve prize for the best poem in Basque, Señorita Magdalena Torres (9), daughter of General Torres, that loyal servant and faithful military protector of the Republic.
Guzmán smiled at the description of Magdalena’s father. The man had been as loyal as a snake, changing sides without a second thought.
Mikel Aingeru and two of his boys were dressed in white, red sashes tied round their waists. Good-looking lads. But what puzzled Guzmán was the young boy standing behind them, holding an axe, ready for the wood-chopping contest. He didn’t resemble his brothers – his face was broader and he lacked their easy smiles. It was his height and bulk that gave it away. That and the large scar on the side of his head. It was Jesús Barandiaran, the wood-chopper, and from his expression he wasn’t a part of the happy family gathering.
Guzmán sat brooding amid the rustling papers around him. All these Basques seemed to know one another or were related in some way. Not for the first time, he reminded himself this was not Madrid. He looked again at the photograph, feeling his skin prickle as he saw two young women on one side of the picture, almost out of shot. Clearly sisters, though it was the older of the two that held his attention. The room grew quiet as he stared at her.
It was Nieves Arestigui. Or rather someone who bore a resemblance to her. Someone made from the same flesh: her mother, Arantxa. Chilled, he stared at her dark beauty. Even in this sepia photo she stood out, just as she had when she’d worked in the whorehouse. By her side, Begoña seemed plain, diminished by her sister’s compelling looks.
The phone rang in the office above and Guzmán ran to answer it. It was Ochoa.
‘Did you get Viana?’ Guzmán asked, straight to the point.
‘No,’ said Ochoa. ‘He’s gone to collect a file Gutiérrez sent you by special courier.’ He paused, listening to Guzmán’s stream of obscenities for a moment before he interrupted. ‘There’s some good news, jefe.’
‘I doubt that.’ Guzmán scowled into the mouthpiece.
‘He tor
e up the telegram. I found the pieces and rearranged them.’
‘Good work,’ Guzmán said, grudgingly. ‘So where’s he going?’
‘That’s the good news, he’s headed for Oroitz,’ Ochoa said. ‘The document was sent to an agent called Skylark at the Pensión Aralar.’
‘Fuck me, Señora Olibari’s an agent? I’ll get over there before he can collect it.’
‘There’s something else, jefe. He left his ID card in the office.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Corporal, he might not have worn his dress uniform either. We’re the Secret Police, after all. Does it matter?’
‘What does Viana look like, sir?’
‘Tall, thinning dark hair, miserable face and a crappy little pencil moustache. Why? Do you want me to draw you a picture?’
‘So he hasn’t got thick blond hair like the photo on his ID?’ Ochoa looked again at the card, and read from it, ‘“Colour of eyes, blue”.’
‘I’d fucking know if...’ Guzmán stopped. He remembered the body being dragged from the dirty water of the harbour into a boat. The cries of the crowd watching from the quayside as they saw the dead man’s staring blue eyes, his shock of pale hair laced with seaweed.
‘Viana’s dead,’ he barked. ‘They’ve replaced him with someone else.’ His face darkened with anger. ‘No fucking wonder we haven’t heard from Gutiérrez. Viana hasn’t been passing on our messages.’ He slammed his hand down onto the desk. ‘You said he’s on his way to Oroitz? I’ll get over there and find out who he really is.’
‘Another thing, jefe,’ Ochoa said, ‘I gave Señorita Torres your message. She said she’d meet you at Lauburu Farm around seven. And something else.’ His voice grew serious. ‘Someone’s reported finding the bank truck and the dead guardia to the local policía.’
The Exile Page 41