Malice

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  The rest of the media—stung once again by a Stupenagel scoop—was only too happy to run with the “official” version of events and snipe at their competitor. Their stories implied that Stupenagel was embellishing her story to pump up her role in the action. Several papers printed editorials lambasting her for “irresponsible and the ‘me-first’ journalism…that sullies the good name of our profession.”

  Stupenagel did have one defender. Senator Tom McCullum was quoted as saying that the intensity of the criticism following the publication of Stupenagel’s story “probably is a good barometer of the veracity of her reports.” He then announced that he wanted to expand his call for a congressional inquiry into the “debacle at St. Patrick’s Cathedral” to include the bombing of the Black Sea Café and the attack on the Staten Island Ferry.

  Stupenagel had just laughed off the criticism as “professional jealousy and political butt-covering.” Then, in a reversal of their usual roles, she had sworn Marlene and Butch to “off-the-record” secrecy before she would reveal the entire story, including identifying Ivgeny Karchovski and David Grale as the leaders of the so-called antiterrorism squad.

  When she was finished, Karp had started in on her but Stupenagel shut him down. “I didn’t want him to go, either,” she said. “But he insisted out of concern for me. It’s his life, Butch, and like it or not—and I’m not entirely sure how it happened—we seem to have found a connection. He didn’t do anything illegal, nor was this in the DAO’s jurisdiction. We kept his name out of it, and no one else knows he was there. So lay off.”

  A few days later, Marlene returned to Idaho to continue preparations for the trial. Butch wouldn’t be coming for another couple of weeks, but she wasn’t alone. Detective Clay Fulton had insisted on accompanying her. She suspected that her husband had asked him to keep an eye on her, but Fulton made it sound like it was his idea and that he needed a vacation away from Manhattan.

  When she asked how it was that a New York City detective could justify working on a civil case in Idaho, he explained that like his boss, he was taking a leave of absence. He, too, was still rehabilitating from leg wounds after being shot by Andrew Kane during the sociopath’s bloody escape a year earlier. “Besides, Helen’s never seen that part of the country,” he said of his wife, “and she has a notion to try skiing at Sun Valley when the trial is over.”

  Ostensibly, Fulton was working on the O’Toole case, but after talking it over with Marlene and Butch, he’d also volunteered to nose around a little regarding the disappearance of Maria Santacristina. “Just in case there’s something to this theory that they’re connected,” he said.

  As it turned out, Fulton had once again proved why he was one of New York’s finest. In fact, Marlene had driven to Sawtooth from O’Toole’s house that night to meet with Eugenio Santacristina because of what Fulton had recently learned.

  The fresh layer of snow squeaked beneath Marlene’s boots as she walked from the SUV she’d rented to the Basque Cultural Center in Sawtooth. All she’d told Santacristina was that she had some news that might interest him. He’d asked no more questions, but suggested that they meet at the cultural center so that she could see a real Basque festival. “And no one will bother us there.”

  A few lonely flakes still filtered down, but otherwise it was a clear February night in the mountains, with stars so brilliant that they shimmered like bits of crystal against the ebony backdrop.

  Stomping the snow off her feet, she entered the center just as a dance was beginning in the main hall. A wide circle of men and women held hands, twirling, stomping, and laughing as they moved counterclockwise to the music. The women were dressed in loose white blouses with dark vests and long, full red skirts that blossomed like giant roses as they swung their hips and kicked their legs. The men wore red berets, white shirts, and white pants accented by a red sash.

  In the center of the circle, young men took turns performing wild, acrobatic leaps and spins to shouts of admiration from those in the circle, as well as from the spectators. The energy and music reminded Marlene of gypsies, or some wild mountain tribe whose customs and origins were lost in the depths of time. She spotted Eugenio Santacristina standing across the hall with a group of similarly dressed men and waved when one of the men touched his shoulder and pointed to her.

  Now Santacristina circled the dancers and took both of her hands in his. “It is good to see you,” he said, kissing her lightly on both cheeks before turning back to the dancers. “It’s called a romeria, a traditional Basque dance. The energetic ones in the center are the dantzaris. We are a dancing people; my Maria loved to dance, as did her mother. In fact, I fell in love with Elena the first time I saw her dancing.”

  Marlene looked up at Santacristina as he watched the dancers. His mouth was turned up in a smile, but the amber eyes were sad and lonely. And why not, she thought, he’s lost the two people in the world he loved the most, both of them far too young.

  When the song ended and the dancers took a break, Santacristina gently touched her arm and led her back to a room off the main hall. On the way, they passed a table around which men were smoking cigars and playing cards. They were tough-looking men, young and old alike, and dipped their heads when they saw Santacristina.

  Closing the door of the room, Santacristina turned to her and said, “So, you have some news?”

  “I do,” she replied. Several days earlier, Fulton had been digging into Huttington’s background at her request to “see if there are any reports of domestic violence toward his wife or other troubles at home.”

  There were no such reports. But while he was at the police department, he’d asked to see the police reports regarding any crimes around the time of Maria’s disappearance. What he was looking for were such things as a rash of burglaries, or reports of a serial rapist—something that might indicate that perhaps Maria had surprised a burglar or been targeted by a sex offender. Again, the line of inquiry had come up negative, but he had discovered one unexpected bit of news.

  “Two days after Maria disappeared, Huttington called the police to report that his Cadillac had been stolen,” Marlene now told Santacristina. “He claimed he’d left the keys in the ignition and the car parked outside of his garage.”

  When Marlene called and told the same story to her husband, he’d pointed out that a possible scenario was that Maria took the car to embarrass her lover. “She might have thought that he would have had to reveal his affair with her. Then she runs into a bad guy who carjacks the Cadillac and takes her someplace to kill her.”

  It was a valid point, but Marlene could tell that Butch didn’t believe it. He was just being his usual thorough self and trying to keep her mind open to all the possibilities. It was one of his strengths as a prosecutor.

  “The majority of stolen cars eventually get found and identified by the vehicle identification number, even if they’ve been stripped down for parts,” Marlene told Santacristina. “However, there’s been a national BOLO for the Cadillac since it was reported missing, and there’s been nothing. Same thing with the national crime computer concerning Maria; no one has applied for a job using her Social Security number, used her credit cards—or applied for others—no one has been pulled over for a traffic infraction or showed up at a hospital fitting her description or matching her fingerprints. It’s the lack of anything at all that indicates to me, and Detective Fulton, that the missing car and your missing daughter are connected.”

  As she talked, Santacristina had walked over to the window, where snowflakes were fluttering against the pane like moths trying to reach the light inside. “Maria would not take his car, not even to embarrass him,” he said. “She did not run away and leave me and her friends, and her cat, to wonder what had happened.” He tapped on the window. “She is still out there somewhere, waiting for me to find her and lay her to rest next to her mother.”

  Even though Santacristina had his back to her, Marlene knew he was crying again. Her eyes were filled with tears
also when she walked up and placed a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll find her, Eugenio. Somehow, we’ll bring her home to you.”

  Santacristina hung his head and then turned to her. “Marlene, I have to tell you something, something about my past. It is a hard thing, but you need to know before you continue helping me.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything, Eugenio,” Marlene interrupted. “I have far too many skeletons in my closet for me to be passing judgment on anybody else. I think I understand the character of the man you are.”

  But Santacristina clapped his hands on Marlene’s shoulders, guided her to a chair, and made her sit. “You are a true friend,” he said. “But I need to get this off my chest, or I cannot allow you to go any further.”

  Marlene started to protest but saw the look on his face and closed her mouth. “I’m listening,” she said.

  “Good. To start, my name is not Eugenio Santacristina,” he began. “My name is Jose Luis Arregi Katarain, and I am not who I pretend to be—a simple shepherd with an immigration problem, although that is what Barnhill believes. The real reason why I avoid stirring up too much attention, even with my beloved daughter missing, is that I am wanted by the government of Spain and have been for more than twenty years.”

  As a young man, he’d joined a Basque separatist organization known as the ETA. “For Euskadi ta Askatasuna, which means ‘Basque Fatherland and Liberty.’ I don’t know how much you know of our history, but culturally and linguistically we are not Spanish, though we have always lived in the mountains between Spain and France.”

  Basques had dreamed for a long time of an autonomous country of their own and hoped they might get it when they fought on the side of the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War prior to the outbreak of World War Two. The enemy was the fascist forces led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco, and the Basques felt that right was on their side. However, the Basques and the Republic went down in flames when Hitler’s Nazi Germany came to the aid of Franco, using his enemies’ cities for trial runs of the Nazis’ technologically superior weaponry.

  After World War Two, Franco, who when he saw the way the tide was turning had declared Spain to be neutral, was kept in power by the governments of the United States and western Europe. They appreciated his strong anticommunist sentiments and were willing to overlook his early alliance with Nazi Germany.

  For his part, Franco never forgave the Basques for opposing him and suppressed, often violently, any public expressions of Basque culture or nationalism, including outlawing the display of the Basque flag. “We were forbidden to speak our language in public or teach it to our children in our schools. Our children had to be baptized with Spanish names only. Those who protested were arrested and disappeared into the dungeons of Franco’s secret police, and often never seen again.”

  The ETA had been created in 1959 by young student activists as a discussion group seeking ways to promote Basque traditions despite the oppression. But the discussion groups soon evolved into a Basque nationalist movement; then when Spanish forces reacted violently, it became an armed rebellion.

  “My father was a professor at the university in Navarre, a Basque state,” Santacristina said. “He was convinced that with a reasoned, pacifist approach, the world would see that the Basques deserved a homeland of their own. He wrote many papers and was featured in prominent magazines. But one night, men wearing masks and uniforms kicked down the door of our house and took my father away.”

  As he spoke, Santacristina/Katarain had returned to the window, where he now etched a name in the frost on the pane: Luis. “His body was found the next day; he’d been shot in the mouth and left in an olive grove. The Spanish government, of course, denied any involvement. They blamed it on the ETA, saying that his peaceful nationalist views were anathema to more violent revolutionary aspirations, so his own people had killed him. But the men who kicked in our door were speaking Spanish, not Euskara. We knew better.”

  The year was 1971. “The same year I joined the ETA,” he said, “which was portrayed by the government-controlled media as terrorists, responsible for bombings and assassinations.”

  “Were you?” Marlene asked.

  The man she had known as Eugenio Santacristina shrugged. “One man’s terrorist is another man’s patriot. I will say that unlike the Franco government, which made war on women and children and university professors who dared to write papers, our targets in those days were the army, government officials, and the national police, which unlike the FBI in this country was a paramilitary organization that carried out attacks on civilians.”

  Katarain pointed to the scar at his hairline. “I received this because I was clinging to my father’s leg, begging them not to take him. But certainly the violence went both ways. It was an undeclared war—the ETA against Spain and its fascist dictator.”

  The war heated up when a dozen Basque independentistas were executed by a government-sponsored death squad. In retaliation, the ETA had assassinated Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, who was Franco’s heir apparent and the man behind the secret war against the Basques.

  “Ironically, when Franco died a short time later, he had no one to replace him as dictator,” Katarain said. “So he handed back the government to the monarchy, which in turn created a democracy in Spain. It was so ironic. There we were, trying to win our freedom from what we considered a foreign power, much as you Americans did from the British, and we handed freedom to the Spanish people, who despised us.”

  The advent of democracy did nothing for the Basque cause. By the 1980s, the war was becoming more vicious, especially with the creation of Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberacion, or “Antiterrorist Liberation Groups, also called GAL.” The group was sponsored and protected by the Spanish government as a supposedly counterterrorist organization.

  “They were capitalizing on concerns in the United States and western Europe with the growth of terrorism,” Katarain said. “By lumping us in with Islamic extremists, and even the IRA, they were actually encouraged to carry out a program of assassinations, kidnappings, torture, and murder against suspected ETA members. Many of their victims did not belong to the organization, but it was enough just to be suspected.”

  Katarain sighed and traced a heart on the pane next to Luis. “By this time, I was in my thirties and tired of all the bloodshed. I wanted a life and the cause of Basque freedom seemed as remote as ever. But then the GAL arrested my younger brother and his pregnant wife, who were betrayed by a coward. He told the death squads that they could be used to get to me.”

  Bowing his head, Katarain continued. “I was supposed to get the message that if I gave myself to the GAL, they would be freed. I would have done it, but I was hiding in the mountains and did not hear about the offer until it was too late. When we found them in the same field where my father’s body had been dumped, they were dead—tortured first and then nearly decapitated with piano wire.”

  Katarain buried his face in his hands and groaned as if reliving the discovery of the bodies of his brother and sister-in-law. “They called us terrorists,” he said, “because we wanted to speak our own language and enjoy our culture and have our own country. Of course, when it is the government committing the crimes, it is not terrorism, it is ‘national security.’”

  Katarain found the traitor who had betrayed him and strapped him into a vest bomb filled with nails and dynamite. “I sent him to the local police station where the GAL was holding their meeting.”

  “Why would he agree to go?” Marlene asked.

  “Because I had a gun pressed up against the forehead of his five-year-old son,” Katarain replied bitterly. “I told him that if he did not go, I would shoot the boy and leave him in the same field where they left my brother and his wife.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Marlene said. “You would never harm a child.”

  “We will never know, Marlene,” he replied. “You do not know the anger and the hatred that burned inside of me, but I did not have to find
out if I was capable of such a thing. It was enough that the betrayer believed my threat and walked into the police station and detonated the bomb. I returned the boy to his mother and left again for the mountains.”

  It had not taken long for the Spanish national police to figure out who had put the traitor up to the bombing, and the price was increased for the capture of Jose Luis Arregi Katarain. But friends helped him escape in 1985 to the United States, where he made his way to Idaho to lose himself in the largest Basque community outside of their homeland.

  “I became a shepherd, and as I walked through the beautiful mountains that reminded me so much of home, gradually my anger began to subside,” Katarain said. “Then came the day when I saw Elena dancing a romeria and fell in love. And when Maria was born, I was sure that I was done with all violence. But now…now that she’s been murdered by a man who used her like a whore and cast her aside, I burn with hatred and anger again. I could easily kill him.”

  Katarain’s shoulders slumped. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Do you mind?”

  Marlene shook her head. “No, in fact I’ll take one myself if you have a spare.”

  Shaking a cigarette out of the pack for Marlene, he lit it for her, then lit one for himself. “So now you have heard my story and understand why I am reluctant to press the authorities about Huttington and my daughter,” he said. “But it’s not because I’m a coward. If I thought that it would help find my Maria, I would do it. But all it would accomplish is my extradition to Spain and no justice for my angel.”

  Katarain stopped talking and inhaled deeply off the cigarette. He looked up at Marlene, ready to accept whatever accusation he thought he would find in her eyes. “I would not blame you if you walk away from this now and turn me in to the authorities. But I ask one thing and that is you wait until I have brought Maria home to her mother.”