by Chris Knopf
“Thirty plus forty?”
“In the years before the Inquirer gig, he graduated from the Sorbonne, then kicked around a bunch of odd jobs and did a stint in Franco’s Guardia Civil, which at the time was busy choking off the last of the resistance from the civil war.”
“He’s gotta be a million years old,” I said.
“Ninety-eight. He has perspective.”
“And we can talk to him?”
“Tomorrow at eight P.M. He said to bring Calvados. The quality of his commentary is apparently pegged to the vintage of the brandy, so you might think about selling some assets.”
“What’s our cover?” I asked.
“You’re writing a book. Seemed to work okay last time.”
“What are you doing?”
“Taking a sabbatical from my psychotherapy business. Why mess with a winning formula.”
BEFORE GOING to bed, I checked the video feed from Spottsworthy Mews. At first I thought there was a glitch in the software, or an error in the log, since no activity had been registered for a few days. I called up the menu of thumbnails, listed chronologically, and started clicking through.
Not surprisingly, no one went in or out of the safe house. Our randy neighbors, on the other hand, knocked on our door every afternoon around cocktail hour, at least on one occasion with bottles in hand. I felt vaguely bad for them. It must be bloody difficult to drum up like-minded corespondents so conveniently close to home.
Other people moved in and out of security camera range, doors opened and closed—sometimes in great haste, goods and packages were signed for, hugs were followed by invitations, long conversations were held in the courtyard, a crew of blokes in white jumpsuits did maintenance work on the common area lighting, the guy boinking the housewife at number six made a nearly daily appearance (I committed myself once and for all to getting this information over to the McPhersons) and that was about it.
Until the facade of the safe house blew out into the courtyard.
Once the dust settled, the image showed people pouring out of their homes, a few stopping to stare at the flames raging out into the night air. Then the Fire Brigade appeared, pulling hoses through the courtyard, and blasting water into the ruined townhouse. Blue lights flickered from the smaller cop cars that could squeeze their way into the mews; bobbies, looking straight-backed and confident in caps and helmets and chartreuse slickers, hustled people back from the steamy, flame-lit chaos.
This all lasted until the feed suddenly winked out, likely because of the proximity of the junction box and router to the blistering heat of the fire.
It didn’t matter. I got the point.
PROFESSOR PRECIADO-COTTO lived in the Salamanca district a block off Serrano Street in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Madrid. His place was on the top floor of his apartment building, affording a generous view of the surrounding area, which included the American embassy.
As requested, we arrived at eight in the evening with a $300 bottle of Calvados. One of the security people at the front desk called up to him, and then the other escorted us to the apartment. He waited until Preciado-Cotto opened the door and we exchanged introductions. Then he left us and we were allowed in.
The furniture was massive and ornate, in a variety of natural wood tones. The rugs were Persian and several floor vases—big enough to bathe in—were focal points. A grand piano dominated part of the sitting area, the remaining space occupied by overstuffed couches and chairs. Bookcases made of a woven reed-like material took up what wall space wasn’t covered by art. At least two of the works were Picassos. I also identified a Chagall and a Kandinsky, which exhausted my knowledge of twentieth-century art. Large windows let in the bright lights of the city.
Preciado-Cotto himself was a bit less than five feet tall, with a straight back, bald head and fleshy face that seemed to make up a quarter of his body mass. He wore an embroidered smoking jacket over a silky white shirt, sharply pressed slacks and slip-on shoes, also embroidered with blue and gold medallions. His handshake was bone dry, but firm.
He took the Calvados and nodded appreciatively as he read the label. “You knew I was joking,” he said, in lightly accented English. “But maybe I’m glad if you didn’t.”
“It’s our pleasure,” said Natsumi, as we followed him out to the sitting area. He stopped at a dry bar and retrieved three brandy glasses, into which he poured without hesitation generous helpings of the golden brown liquid. We sat, or rather were absorbed into the fluffy couch.
“We appreciate your willingness to speak with us, profesor,” said Natsumi.
“Emeritus at this point,” he said. “Though they still drag me into the classroom now and again to guest lecture. I don’t mind. You can’t just write all day.”
“If my research is correct, you’ve written nearly a hundred books,” said Natsumi.
“Eighty-one. And over a thousand academic papers, newspaper and magazine articles and monographs.”
“Hard to imagine,” she said. “This is my first book.”
“For some, writing is a disease. My father never understood.” Seventy-eight years of professional accomplishment and a parent’s disapproval is still the first thing that comes to mind. “Mostly I blame Hemingway,” he added.
“You’re not the first to find him an inspiration,” I said.
Preciado-Cotto sniffed. “Not that. My father let him stay at our country house for a week just before Ebro, the battle that broke the back of Los Republicanos. I’m sorry, I know he is a famous American writer, but what a horse’s ass.”
“Your father was an arms merchant, supporting the Republicans,” said Natsumi. “And yet you joined the Guardia Civil.”
He pointed at her with a long, crooked finger. “If you know that, then you know why.”
“Undercover work.”
He dropped his hand back down on the arm of the chair. “Precisely. You need to go into the belly of the beast if you are going to understand his true nature.”
He looked away and added, “Three years was all I could stand. Do you know Philadelphia?” He asked out of the blue, a clear signal that the subject needed to change.
“I went to graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania,” I said, hoping they had a master’s program in psychotherapy.
He was pleased by this. “I went there often to meet with my American editors. And to study hoagies and the Philadelphia Phillies. Connie Mack stadium. And the undergraduates of Bryn Mawr College.”
“What happened to your father after the war?” Natsumi asked.
“He didn’t like leaving Philadelphia, but took it well. He and my mother took a boat from Bilbao and landed in France. They made it to Geneva and eventually flew to Mexico City. He had to abandon his fortune, but not his business. That was all up here.” He pointed to his head.
“And you stayed.”
“Why do you want to write about all this?” he asked Natsumi.
“Because not enough has been written,” she said.
He smiled. “So, my eighty books are not enough?”
Apparently won over, he spent the next two hours delivering a survey course on the history of the Guardia Civil, fueled by the expensive Calvados, which seemed to have no impact on Preciado-Cotto’s clarity of thought or expression. Natsumi took careful notes and I stacked up the books he gave her as further reading on each area covered, not all written by him.
Throughout he dodged any effort, however subtle, to draw the story back to his own history with the notorious Franco-era version of the Guardia. On the other hand, he clearly enjoyed reminiscing over his time as a journalist, including one more encounter with Ernest Hemingway.
“It was sometime in the late fifties. He saw my byline on a reprinted article in the Herald Tribune and wrote me when he was passing through Madrid. We had drinks. Me a few, him more than a single person, even one as big as Papa, should be able to consume. We talked about our projects, and I could see him deflating when I described my
daily production. For me, writing was breathing. A constant necessity. But I think for him it was very hard, especially by then, when he was so diminished by injury and drink and bad behavior. I thought, what a world we have here, the winner of the Nobel Prize in literature feeling defeated by a journeyman reporter.”
Natsumi artfully indulged these finer, more romantic sidetracks without allowing the central story to drift out of view. She steadily, invisibly brought him back.
“After Franco, the Guardia returned to favor?” she asked.
His head sagged forward for a moment, making me think we’d finally tired him out, but it turned out he was simply framing his thoughts. “That’s a matter of debate and interpretation. For some, the Guardia of the iron fist made for a better, safer society. You know they tried to take over parliament when the body of the Generalissimo finally decided to follow his brain. Our king saved us. After that, times changed, and things changed, especially when the Guardia had a new enemy to fight.”
We must have looked at him blankly.
With a hint of disgust he said, “ETA. Euskadi Ta Askatasuna.”
“Basque terrorists?” I asked.
He nodded. “The filthy underground wars of modernity,” he said. “All done under cover of moral darkness, shielded by innocents. Almost makes you long for big land armies and bombing raids.”
As Natsumi gently guided him along this track, his speech gained momentum, as if the relative proximity of the last few decades energized the narrative.
“It didn’t begin this way,” he said. “ETA started as a bunch of academics, passionate debaters and pamphleteers, but nothing violent until that boy was killed, the guardia who stopped two of the ETA leaders trying to enter the country from France. One of the ETA people was chased down and killed, but the other escaped. That was the spark that lit decades of ugliness.”
He talked about assassinations, and retaliations, on both sides. Bombings, kidnappings and bank robberies by ETA, disappearances and torture purportedly by the guardias. All in all, both filthy and entirely underground.
“I’ve only just started my research,” said Natsumi, when Preciado-Cotto reached a logical break in the story, “but I have a few names that have emerged. Do you mind if I ask you about them?”
He had no objection, so she brought up several people I’d never heard of, and a few I had through my own research. Then she asked, referring to her notes, “Did you ever meet Miguel and Sylvia Zarandona?”
His grip on the armrests of his chair tightened slightly. A tell, I thought to myself.
“They were socialists, certainly. But who wasn’t in those days? Unless you were Francoist. I never understood why they left. Such beautiful people. I loved Sylvia. As a colleague,” he added, looking at both of us to be sure we understood his meaning.
“I know they were exiled to Chile, though a few years after Allende died they seemed to have disappeared,” she said.
He shrugged.
“I don’t know. I was long retired when they left the country. We didn’t correspond.”
For the first time, I had an intimation that our welcome was beginning to fade. It seemed like a good time to kill the rest of the Calvados. A good strategy, as his mood seemed to right itself as the bottle emptied into his glass. Natsumi helped things along by returning the discussion to his reporting days, asking how he managed to transition from journalism into academia.
“My father finally had his way,” he said. “His last act was to die and leave me his second fortune, safely tucked inside a conservative portfolio at a securities firm in New York. I didn’t need to work, but I couldn’t stop reading and writing, and I was ready for something different.”
We heard about his return to school, his PhD and steady advancement up the academic ladder. Along the way, Natsumi managed to nudge him back into his study of the Guardia Civil.
“Everyone needs a life work,” he said. “I swore the day I left the service that I would loyally chronicle the evils done in their name, understanding that not all guardias have been evil. Not by any stretch. Everyone has their heroes and villains. There is no black nor white.”
By then it was after two in the morning, and even the bountiful reserves of Preciado-Cotto seemed to flag. After many thank you’s, formal bows and gracious hopes for success with our project, we headed toward the door. That was when Natsumi acted as if she’d suddenly remembered to ask one more thing.
“Profesor,” she said, again looking down at her notes, “in all your studies, have you ever come across an organization called Los Vengadores del Guardia? Or the VG?”
This time a blind man could pick up the tell. He gripped her forearm, not to steady himself, but to give strength to his words.
“After Franco, not all guardias bent to the new order. It is always like this. Some thought the king would restore the monarchy to its former absolute splendor, and when he did the opposite, considered him a betrayer. For them, democracy was blasphemy. Socialism an abomination. Since Franco died they are diminished, but still endure. I believe certain forms of evil are immortal. I said there was no black or white, but that isn’t true. Some things are pure black. I have no proof that Los Vengadores even exists, so I must avoid their mention in my writings. But, for some reason, the very name gives me a chill. Me, an old man inured to the fear of death.”
Natsumi nodded solemnly, and without further comment, turned to leave. But Preciado-Cotto gripped her arm again.
“I don’t want you to think I feel nothing for Miguel and Sylvia Zarandona. I do, deeply. But you don’t understand how many brilliant, treasured lives have been taken from the Spanish-speaking peoples of the world. In the face of so much darkness, what else can a person do but bear witness, and pray he can sleep through all the cries of the lost?”
CHAPTER 9
The fire at the apartment house on Calle Dulcinea del Toboso only took an hour to consume all six apartments before collapsing into the shops on the first floor. Luckily, the ancient stone and brick main walls provided an adequate fire stop, so the buildings to either side were spared.
As were all the residents, according to the news report in the online version of El País. A Señor Chao reported that he was roused from bed by a neighbor pounding on his door, and he in turn, seeing smoke fill the hallway, got everyone else out in time.
I’d just finished the story when my smartphone chirped at me. I looked at the text message on the screen: “Rodrigo would like you to go to hell. I’ve been asked to arrange transport.”
NATSUMI AND I had breakfast in that morning. A platter of meats, wheat toast, melons and eggs. As close as we could get to an American meal. Comfort food.
“Now what,” she asked, blowing across the top of her freshly poured coffee.
“We go to the next set of coordinates.”
“They’ll be waiting for us.”
“I know.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“Not yet. This might be impossible,” I added, after a pause.
“It might.”
“Maybe we should give it up and go to ground. While we still can.”
“Maybe we should.”
“What do you think?” I asked.
“It’s up to you.”
“I thought we had that discussion. You deserve a vote.”
“I vote to do what you want to do. You can never resent me for interfering with your impulses.”
“What if my greatest impulse is to keep you safe?” I asked.
“It isn’t. That doesn’t mean you don’t love me. I love you, too. This is what we have.”
“This is why Westerners think you Easterners are so impossible to understand.”
“Vice versa, buddy. Listen, what you’re dealing with here is a war inside your own brain. You want to keep me safe, but you want to chase this rabbit, this unresolved question about Florencia, even more. It’s eating you alive. Why, why, why, that little voice keeps screaming. It’s the worst thing that could happen to you
. A puzzle you can’t crack, an enigma beyond interpretation. But I know that about you, better than you know it yourself. I’ve watched you, I’ve lived with your crazy determination. That’s okay. Just stop trying to rescue me from yourself. It’s too late. I want to be here. It’s what I want to do.”
I’d never heard Natsumi raise her voice, but she had other ways of adding weight to her words. I sighed and gave up the fight.
“We switch tactics,” I said.
“Okay.”
TO ME, a major data center that’s been around for a while is like a vast, ancient ruin, wherein the fundamental structure is filled with tangled debris, crumbling walls and overgrowth. A fantastical painting of a 10,000-year-old city, beautiful yet decadent, equal parts order and chaos, and nearly infinite in scale. Nodes of gleaming contemporary design contained by primitive stone walls and supported by massive antediluvian foundations.
I don’t consider myself a hacker, though I understand the allure, the addictive nature of the pursuit. Though many do it solely for the money, and others to vandalize and wreak destruction for political reasons, or for its own sake, I’d be among those drawn to the challenge of cracking the code, penetrating the defenses, worming my way into private places arrogantly assumed to be safe and secure.
In my days as a researcher, the temptation to cut corners, or sneak in backdoors using illegal apps readily available to those who know where to look, was a daily thing. I just didn’t do it. Partly as a matter of ethics, partly because if I started, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop.
I did often find myself drifting into grey areas, essentially wandering into files and databases that were left carelessly unsecured, or accessible through an unmonitored portal. I didn’t break any locks, I just tried the doorknob, and if the door opened, I strolled on through.
Most of these skills and knowledge had been acquired during a long and involved assignment helping an insurance carrier design identity theft coverage. My job was to work with the underwriters and actuaries to define exposures. I did this by assessing the tactics of the identity thieves themselves. In addition to becoming expert in stealing people’s identities, I spent a lot of time with computer security people who gave me great insight into the vulnerabilities and breach points of even the most robust defense systems.