I do not expect to find out whether he succeeds. I do not expect, indeed, to survive the battle for Teruel. I have been lucky too long. Now I sense my luck has run out. Perhaps I should say I know it has. I have heard about Colonel Marcelino Delgado on several occasions in this war. He is reputed to be a brutal and merciless opponent. He is among the commanders of the Nationalist forces engaged at Teruel. I have avoided him till now. But no longer. At Teruel, our paths are destined to cross.
Cardozo must have gone to him, not Franco. If Franco had learned of the gold shipment to Russia, he would have denounced it to the world. But no word of it has been heard. And Delgado is still serving in his army, not rotting in a traitor’s grave. Therefore he must have secured Cardozo’s silence, probably by killing him. And therefore he must know that only by finding me can he hope to keep his secret safe and lay hands on the gold that would make him one of the richest men in Spain.
Bilotra’s map rests, as it has since I took it from him, in a waxed wallet in my pack. I will enclose it with this account when I give it to Tristram. It will be the final proof that what I have written is true in every particular.
My chances of escaping alive from the wreckage of the Republic are slim. In many ways, I do not want to. It would be better to die in combat, at Teruel or elsewhere, than face the retribution Franco will visit on those Spaniards who dared to resist him. Should I fall into Delgado’s hands – or the hands of anybody else who knows about the gold and means to wrench the secret of its whereabouts from me – I will not give it up. I will hold my tongue to the end. It will be my victory to die knowing that Tristram will broadcast the truth to the world.
When he does so, I will almost certainly be dead. To anybody who reads this I would address only one plea. My wife Justina knows nothing of what I have written here. She and my darling daughter Isabel are innocent of any blame that attaches to me. They live with Justina’s parents, Alberto and Rosa Polanco, at 78 Passatge de Salbatore in the Gracia district of Barcelona. Do not let them suffer on my account. Give them as much help as it is in your heart to give. Do so for their sake, not mine. I will be dead. When this war is over, only the living will matter. And the truth, of course. The truth always matters. Which is why I have written as I have.
7
CHARLOTTE LAID THE pages to one side and looked across at Isabel Vassoir, who nodded faintly, as if to confirm what she had not yet said. ‘This is why Sam’s been kidnapped, isn’t it? For the gold only your father knew how to locate.’
‘I greatly fear it is, Charlotte.’
‘Which means this man … Delgado … must be responsible.’
‘It would appear so, yes.’
‘He wants the map.’
‘Yes. As my father said, it is the final proof that what he wrote was true.’
‘You have it?’
‘If only it were so simple,’ Madame Vassoir murmured, shaking her head.
‘Surely you won’t hold it back when it can secure my niece’s freedom?’
‘It is not mine to hold back.’
‘What do you mean?’
She unfolded some sheets of paper which she had been clasping in her hand as Charlotte read. ‘This is the letter from Beatrix which accompanied my father’s statement,’ she said. ‘It will explain my difficulty better than I can myself.’ Charlotte took the letter from her and recognized Beatrix’s handwriting at once. ‘It’s undated, as you can see,’ continued Madame Vassoir. ‘But, according to the envelope, it was posted in Gloucester on the twenty-third of June.’
Jackdaw Cottage,
Watchbell Street,
Rye,
East Sussex,
England
My dearest Isabel,
I have arranged for this letter to be sent to you in the event of my death, which I believe may well be imminent.
You have been good enough to respect my wish that our friendship should not become known to my family and I would ask you on your honour not to contact them even when I am dead. A situation has arisen which compels me to do something I should perhaps have done a long time ago, namely to surrender to you a document entrusted by your father to my brother in Spain in 1938. When you have read it, you may appreciate why I have withheld it from you all these years. If not, I beg your forgiveness. I have done what I thought was best.
My brother sent the document to me with the last letter he wrote prior to his death in Tarragona in March 1938. The Civil War was still in progress when I received it and I had no way of knowing whether your father was alive or dead. That is why I first wrote to your mother in Barcelona. Given the turbulent condition of Spain at the time, I deemed it prudent to say nothing to her of the document or what it contained. By offering to help her in any way I could, I hoped to honour whatever promises my brother may have made to your father, promises which his untimely death prevented him from carrying out himself.
By the time your mother’s letter reached me from the refugee camp in France nearly a year later, I had made Frank Griffith’s acquaintance and learned how your father had given himself up to save Frank during the retreat from Teruel. The bravery of his conduct seems still greater when one knows what he had to fear from Colonel Delgado. You are entitled to feel very proud of him.
I did not tell Frank about the document, then or later. Nor did I tell your mother. Why? Because, it seemed to me, they both needed to put their experiences in Spain behind them. If they had discovered what your father’s fate almost certainly was, they would have wanted to avenge him, to track down Delgado, to expose the scandal of the stolen gold. They would not have succeeded, of course. Franco’s iron rule would have seen to that. But they might well have wasted their lives in the attempt. And I was not prepared to be responsible for them doing so.
I have learned, in the course of a long life, that good done stealthily is more durable than charity performed conspicuously. I am regarded by most of those who think they know me – including my family – as a hard-bitten and somewhat reclusive individual. The reality is quite otherwise. I have a small circle of close friends – of whom you are one – whose lives I believe I can justifiably claim to have enriched over the years. One of the things I have helped all of them to do is to throw off the shackles of the past, to enjoy the present by contemplating only the future. In the process, I have collected their discarded histories and served, as it were, as their dispassionate caretaker. But even caretakers must step aside in the end. Now it is time for my collection to be dismantled and for some of its contents to be returned to their rightful owners.
Perhaps I should have told your mother the truth. Not in 1939, of course. I mean later, when she would have been able to view it in a calm and considered light. But equivocation is a vice to which I am no more immune than the next person. The longer I delayed, the harder, I knew, it would be to explain why I had delayed at all. And she seemed so happy, so proud of the career you and Henri were making for yourselves. There was Frank to think of as well. Even now, I am not sure how he will react to such revelations. Is Colonel Delgado dead? I do not know. But I greatly fear Frank might deem it his duty to find out.
Delay, moreover, is a pernicious habit. It tightens its hold as one grows older. No doubt I would have continued to succumb to it, but for certain unforeseen consequences of my own past which are now making themselves felt and which mean this document can no longer be safely left in my possession. The time has come to pass it into your hands.
I have satisfied my curiosity by checking the details of your father’s account as best I can. They are entirely consistent with such records as survive. The usual estimate of the quantity of gold shipped to Russia in October 1936 is 1.6 billion pesetas, mostly in coin – Louis d’or, sovereigns, dollars and gold pesetas. Bilotra’s exaggeration of the total is perhaps not surprising, but the correct figure remains a staggering one. The total number of boxes involved was approximately 8,000, although there were discrepancies between the Spanish and Russian counts. Stalin never gave any of i
t back, of course, so such discrepancies, if Franco ever studied them, must have seemed attributable to Russian duplicity. You and I know there may be another reason.
This is where I must utter a word of warning and explain a precaution I feel obliged to take. The stolen gold has never been missed. It is therefore akin to used banknotes in that it represents untraceable wealth. And wealth, in this case, on a colossal scale. So far as I am able to compute, 150 boxes represent between seven and eight tons of gold. At today’s prices, this quantity of gold coin would be worth something like forty million pounds. Can we believe such a cache still lies hidden in the mountains north-west of Cartagena? It seems we must. But do we need to? I am not so sure.
Your father said Bilotra’s map was the final proof of his words. He was right. It is the only key that can open a door I have held shut for nearly fifty years. I hesitate to let it go. It is right you should read your father’s story in his own words. But I am reluctant to accompany it with what may be a danger as well as a curse. Is Delgado still alive? Or Cardozo? If either of them is, they might kill to lay their hands on this old and crinkled sheet of paper. It is a risk I cannot afford to take. It is a burden I will not let you bear. I cannot keep it, but I cannot give it up. Therefore I will destroy the map. Have your father’s fine and splendid words to cherish for ever, Isabel. Leave me to seal his secret. I remain your ever loving friend,
Beatrix.
‘She destroyed the map?’ asked Charlotte incredulously, as she handed back the letter.
Isabel Vassoir’s gaze met hers. ‘So we must assume. Beatrix said she intended to, did she not? And she always meant what she said.’
‘But … without it …’
‘You cannot give the kidnappers everything they want. Exactly.’
‘They’ll never believe it. They’ll think we’re trying to trick them.’
‘They may do, yes.’ Madame Vassoir looked down at Beatrix’s letter. ‘I am sorry, Charlotte. When I first read this, and recovered from the shock, I was glad Beatrix had destroyed the map. It removed temptation from my path – the temptation to expose an old scandal, I mean, not to chase after buried treasure. It meant I did not have to decide what to do. It told me as much as I wanted to know – and no more. It was both fitting and final.’ She sighed. ‘But now …’
‘The map was the key to Sam’s freedom as well as your father’s past,’ murmured Charlotte. ‘And Beatrix threw it away.’
8
‘WHAT ARE YOU going to do, Charlotte?’
It was the following morning in Suresnes. Charlotte had stayed overnight with the Vassoirs and now, as she prepared to leave, Madame Vassoir put to her a question she had already put to herself many times – without finding an answer.
‘It is your decision, of course. You must take my father’s statement, both the original and the translation. Take Beatrix’s letter as well. Use them with my blessing to free your niece. I only hope they will be sufficient. But, without the map, I am not sure they will be.’
‘Neither am I,’ Charlotte replied. ‘You asked what I’m going to do and the truth is I don’t know. If I had the map, I’d be tempted to contact the kidnappers without informing the police. It would be the best way to achieve Sam’s safe release. But I don’t have it and I can’t get it.’
‘Then you will go to the police?’
‘In the hope that the Spanish authorities can trace Delgado – or Cardozo – before the expiry of the deadline?’ Charlotte nodded. ‘It seems the best thing to do.’
‘But you have doubts. I can see them in your face.’
‘Yes. I have doubts.’ Charlotte rose and walked to the window. Outside, a grey morning of infinite stillness seemed to be waiting for her decision. Nothing moved, save a pigeon stirring faintly on its perch beneath the mansarded roof of the house opposite. She knew she should set off at once if she was to be back in England by mid-afternoon. But uncertainty dragged at her heels as it dragged at her thoughts. There had to be a way to disentangle Samantha – and everybody else – from the trailing tentacles of fifty years ago. But, if there was, she could not see it.
‘I wish I could advise you,’ said Madame Vassoir, joining her by the window. ‘But I cannot. I do not know enough to judge what it is best to do.’ She sighed. ‘If only there was somebody who did.’
‘Yes,’ said Charlotte. ‘If only.’
Six hours later, Charlotte was driving west out of Dover, a large buff envelope containing Vicente Ortiz’s statement and Beatrix’s letter resting on the passenger seat beside her. She was driving fast through the irksomely thick traffic of a Friday afternoon, as if some destination were urgently fixed in her mind, as if doubt had long since given place to haste. But it was not so. Newbury, to tell Chief Inspector Golding everything she knew; or Bourne End, to let Ursula decide what should be done; or Tunbridge Wells, to brood a little longer upon her dilemma: even she could not guess which, in the end, she would choose.
When Derek Fairfax arrived home late that afternoon, tired and depressed, he had no intention of lingering. Indeed, he would have driven straight to the George and Dragon but for a suspicion that he might drink so much when he arrived that it would be prudent to dispose of his car first. To his astonishment, given how few visitors he generally received, there was a vehicle parked in front of his garage at Farriers. To his even greater astonishment, it was Charlotte Ladram’s Peugeot.
She was waiting for him, sitting in the car with the window wound down and chamber music playing on the radio. She looked even wearier than he felt, hair awry and eyes heavily shadowed. She did not smile as he approached, merely looked up and met his gaze with a strange expression of frankness and despondency.
‘Charlotte! I never … What is it?’
‘Can we talk, Derek? I need your advice.’
* * *
An hour later, they set off together for Wales. Charlotte’s argument was that Frank Griffith was uniquely well qualified to decide what to do. He had fought in Spain and come to understand the country and its people. He had known Vicente Ortiz and heard him speak of Colonel Delgado. He had been Tristram’s friend – and Beatrix’s as well. In that sense, he had a right to decide.
Derek had not opposed the argument, even though he did not subscribe to it. He sensed Charlotte needed some final word with Frank before she could surrender what she had discovered to those whose responsibility it was to rescue her niece. By the same time tomorrow, he imagined they would have placed the whole problem in the hands of the police. He would be glad when they had, though he was glad also of this unexpected chance to salvage their friendship. That, so far as he was concerned, was the only benefit their journey to Wales was likely to bring, the only new beginning it was likely to represent.
9
THE FIRE WAS burning low at Hendre Gorfelen, but Frank Griffith seemed not to notice. Charlotte studied his lined and narrow face as he read, the hollowness of his eye sockets and the prominence of his cheek bones exaggerated by the flickering shadows of the fading flames. Beside her, exhausted by the long drive from Kent, Derek sat asleep in his chair, his chin sunk upon his chest. But Charlotte felt as if she would never sleep again. Her anticipation of Frank’s response to his dead friend’s tale kept her senses alert, her thoughts at a jangling pitch. To her it was a fragment of a past she could not hope to understand. But to this old man it was a whisper from yesterday. The gnarled fingers clutching the pages had once squeezed the trigger of a rifle trained on the enemy at Teruel. The eyes peering at the posthumous words had once gazed at their author as he walked to his death in the hills of Aragon. But only now had they touched the truth and glimpsed its meaning.
Charlotte looked up at the clock and was surprised to see midnight had come and gone, though she could not recall hearing it strike. It was Saturday the third of October and already, she knew, she should have acted decisively upon her discovery. But instead … She looked back at Frank and started with surprise, for he was gazing across at her, the pages folde
d in his hands. He had finished.
‘Why did you bring this to me?’ he asked, in a voice scarcely raised above a murmur.
‘Because Vicente was your friend. He died for you. You had a right to—’
‘A right?’ His face creased as if in pain. He closed his eyes for several seconds, then said: ‘Beatrix knew me too well. Perhaps she knew all of us too well. Her decision was the correct one. It would have been better for Vicente’s story to remain untold. But for your brother …’
‘It would have done. I realize that. Maurice was a fool. He had no idea what he was meddling in. But none of us did, did we? Except Beatrix.’
‘Except Beatrix,’ Frank echoed, sliding her letter to Isabel Vassoir from beneath the other sheets of paper and glancing down at it. ‘I loved her, you know.’
‘Yes. I think I do know.’
‘But she didn’t love me. Cared for me, of course, liked me, helped me. But her affections were too … too universal … for what I wanted. Besides, love implies trust. And she had too many secrets to keep. Too many by far.’
‘Frank, about my niece—’
‘You believe this is why she was kidnapped?’ He tapped the pages with his forefinger.
‘Don’t you?’
He thought for a moment, frowning in concentration, then replied. ‘Yes. It has to be.’
‘Delgado?’
‘Maybe. If he’s still alive. Or somebody who inherited his knowledge. Or came by it. Clearly, they only found out recently that Beatrix had been keeping what they wanted all these years. Maurice must have attracted their attention in some way. Otherwise—’
‘Does it matter how they found out? The point is they did.’
‘It may matter. It may not.’ He stared at her. ‘What are you going to do, Charlotte?’ It was the same question Isabel Vassoir had asked – in exactly the same words.
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