Twist

by Harkaitz Cano

  Agirre Sesma did not take it well: “They’re not doing it for us, but for them,” he explained to Lazkano. “They don’t want to give us enough time to prepare the case.” What they don’t want, at any rate, is for government delegate Javier Fontecha, Agirre Sesma’s old acquaintance, to be splattered by any of it.

  Vargas pointed the finger directly at Lieutenant Colonel Rodrigo Mesa.

  “They look pitiful, we can’t leave them like that: make them disappear.”

  It didn’t escape anyone’s notice that, back then, Rodrigo Mesa maintained a close relationship with Javier Fontecha. Several men under the lieutenant colonel’s command were impeached, there were indications that new evidence pointed to Portugal, to Italian arms traffickers. The matter became more complex by the minute, and time was not on their side.

  Lazkano found the door to the Toad’s office open; a light was on at the end of the corridor filled with books, and he could hear a litany of voices at the end of the tunnel – the Toad, no doubt. Diego got frightened, thinking that the attorney had started talking to himself. Aranzadi case law books opened here and there, scattered documents, an increasingly intense musty smell, and, together with all that, something new: a fragrance that disguised the smell of sweat and Diego found familiar. To his surprise, Cristina was with the Toad, bent over a laptop computer, dog-eared law books, notebooks, and press cuttings, with her generous breasts swaying in a perfectly measured way under a low-cut red sweater, directly visible from Diego’s privileged vantage point.

  “Lazkano, I didn’t expect you today…Sit, sit down here. We were about to finish…”

  “I don’t want to disturb you…”

  “C’mon, we’re almost done. Come and join us for dinner afterward! We just need to go through a few details.”

  “I didn’t know that Cristina also…”

  “It was my intention to hire an assistant, but since she studied law…Although, you know, by the second year she abandoned her father and her father’s vocation.”

  “Aita, please.”

  “I gave her the role of defense attorney: we’re rehearsing the trial step-by-step.”

  “So you’re his assistant…”

  “Who else could work the extra hours? If he’s going to exploit someone, he might just as well keep it in the family.”

  The way they do with some girls, dark circles around her eyes imbued fresh-faced Cristina with the right dose of torment, taming her excessively youthful looks, changing a face that would otherwise be too childish, too soft, too devoid of personality. She smiled at Lazkano meaningfully, with her eyes the color of rum. She bent forward even more, placing herself farther from her father’s eye line, her breasts and the brooch on her sweater in fuller view of Lazkano’s eyes. That horse without a rider. A savage desire to tear her skirt off and throw himself at her overwhelmed him then. Something a civilized man would never do, passions be damned, abysses be damned.

  “Rodrigo Mesa’s confession, which he gave during the preliminary investigations, is unsigned. As far as he’s concerned, the lack of a signature here is our biggest weakness.”

  “That’s no problem: the judicial secretary publicly attested to Vargas’s declarations. The confession is coherent and it coincides with what the other witnesses said, as well as with what Rodrigo Mesa said in his first declaration.”

  “It happens often: someone confesses something and then they retract. It was to be expected from people like Rodrigo Mesa and Vargas.”

  “This time they won’t be able to retract so easily. Next question, Ms. Defense Attorney?”

  “They’ll request that the recordings be dismissed. ‘Invalidity of secret recordings,’ according to a March 3, 1996, sentence by the Supreme Court.”

  “Read it to me, please.”

  “‘It is this court’s decision to invalidate a recording of a group of four people carried out by one of them without the acquiescence of the rest.’”

  “Yes, I remember that sentence. I don’t see such a problem there: the court rejected the recording not so much because it was an attempt on the intimacy or the secrecy of the communications, since such a thing doesn’t exist, but because…”

  “A conversation obtained through such means is unacceptable in the midst of an ongoing criminal process, since it has no value as a confession by any of the participants, because it is provoked and not spontaneous, and therefore it lacks the guarantees established in our constitutional values.”

  “Bingo! But in our case it is not a provoked confession, but a recording in which the accused explains why he’s changed his decision and, therefore, the judge will have to take it into account, whether he likes it or not. It’s part of the process, or, rather, of an attempt to harm it. As a result, it’s completely pertinent to the trial, to the extent that it’s a test of the quality of the process itself.”

  “You seem very certain.”

  “Not really, not so certain…We’ll have to look for decisions that support that thesis. They exist, but my memory is not what it used to be, Cris. Look it up, preferably by tomorrow.”

  Although he doesn’t understand half of it, Diego witnesses it as if it were a tennis match. Pure delight. For a moment, that hard-fought tie-break manages to keep his mind away from the hesitant horse in Cristina’s cleavage.

  “We also have to take into account the quality of the recording, which is really bad. That’s not something that’s going to play in our favor to be honest…”

  The Toad puffs up momentarily:

  “You are mistaken again, precisely, Ms. Defense Attorney: they’ll argue that the recording is a fake; but if it were a fake, the forgers would have taken the trouble of making a good-quality forgery, don’t you think? Why forge something if the heart of the conversation is going to be barely understood, ladies and gentlemen of the jury? Besides, the recorded conversation is full of casual remarks that have nothing to do with the case. Hypothetically, it’s possible to forge a recording such as this one, but you’d need a good collection of scriptwriters and an even better group of actors…And with regards to Vargas, if we know anything about him – and if you don’t believe me, check the library of profiles they’ve drawn up for him – it’s that he’s a man without imagination. We’ll force the psychologist who’ll come over the first day to measure his mental abilities to ask him a question that makes that point clear. Take note: trick question to reveal Vargas’s lack of imagination. Have you written it down? God, my stomach is rumbling. Can we go and have dinner now?”

  “We still have to take up Rodrigo Mesa’s declaration.”

  Cristina was playing five sets. Deuce. All her serves landed.

  “When he declared, at the time of the initial investigation, he could hardly remember what he’d done on the night between October 15 and 16. In the previous trial, however, five years later, he recounted every single detail of what he did that night…the names of the cafés he went to, the family alibis…isn’t that sudden resurrection of his memory a bit suspicious?”

  “Not necessarily, alabatxo: what’s my motto?”

  “Let’s submerge ourselves in subjectivity?”

  “It’s not enough to say it: let’s put it into practice. Let’s dive into it. Why did he keep quiet the first time? To protect someone, because he was hiding something. If he feigned amnesia the first time, the second time he lied barefacedly. Based on that change, we’ll invalidate both declarations and demand a third, let’s see what he says this time. Besides, at least one of the two accused maintains that he met up with them…”

  “Pérez Gomera. Hernández, the other policeman on duty, says he doesn’t remember anything from that night.”

  “Hernández is the gay guy, the one whose life they made impossible?”

  “The very same.”

  “The media have punished him too much. We have to play Vargas’s cards…we have to lean on him: his testimony is the most detailed and, therefore, the most potent. Vargas must be our main point of support.”r />
  “But he’s an unstable person. He’s been locked up in psychiatric hospitals twice. The first time, five weeks, and the second, two months. The defense attorney will play the mental-health card and cast doubt on his declarations.”

  “Vargas has been in psychiatric hospitals?” Lazkano intervenes.

  “The second time was in a military hospital too. God knows what they did to him there.”

  “He’s still sick. And not only mentally. He’s quite old. They say he has lung cancer.”

  “He was in the military hospital when he retracted: he declared that they never held Soto and Zeberio in El Cerro…”

  “But he’d said the opposite earlier…Besides, Lazkano himself can confirm that they were in El Cerro, can’t he?”

  Diego swallows hard. He remembers Fabian and Fabian. The Boger swing. That window. How he fell, pathetically, on the ferns. The policemen’s laughter. “Who cares, let’s leave it as is, with a b.” He nods, and stares into Cristina’s eyes for a bit longer than is prudent.

  But Agirre Sesma didn’t notice that look filled with innuendo and desire.

  “Okay, let’s see, yes: he justified his declaration before the investigating judge attributing it ‘to feelings borne out of his situation, the loneliness and sense of abandonment felt by being imprisoned, and to the manipulation the judge exerted on him…’ But you’re still not paying attention, let’s submerge ourselves in subjectivity: why did he feel alone and abandoned? Because he had carried out his part and Rodrigo Mesa hadn’t, that’s why Vargas felt alone and abandoned! Because they had betrayed him. If he had nothing to hide, if he hadn’t done anything, or if he’d done what he did of his own volition, he wouldn’t have felt in any way abandoned…don’t you think?”

  “I think you’re falling short. We’ll have to see what the judge thinks.”

  “What do you think, Lazkano?”

  “I was thinking of Rodrigo Mesa…According to his statement, he’d never been to El Cerro, but here we can read that the first time they took him to El Cerro’s palace he moved around there like he owned the place: without anyone’s guidance, he found the rooms mentioned in the summary, the freight elevator, the gas stove…he found everything in a jiffy.”

  “You’re right, Lazkano: his impulses, that need to show self-control, which is such a military trait, on the other hand, betrayed him…Beautiful paradox, don’t you think? Even a child would have realized that it wasn’t the first time he visited El Cerro.”

  “According to his statement, it was because he is a specialist in building structures. That he found everything through pure logic, in other words.”

  “He didn’t even try to pretend. That shows he was involved…”

  “It’s getting late. The call to Cadena Ser radio in Cartagena…should we leave that for tomorrow?”

  Now it was the Toad who wouldn’t give up:

  “Let’s finish this: refresh my memory, what was it about?”

  “It was February 20, 1984.”

  “Four months later, then.”

  “Yes.”

  “It doesn’t really seem feasible that they’d keep Soto and Zeberio kidnapped in El Cerro for four months.”

  “No, it’s not logical. Too dangerous, too long a time. Besides, this isn’t Argentina, those clowns weren’t prepared to torture anyone for a month…they didn’t have the required infrastructure.”

  This isn’t Argentina. This isn’t Chile. Soto and Zeberio’s voices again: crazy, brother.

  “Apologies, Lazkano…I didn’t mean to diminish the time of your arrest.”

  Cristina lifted her eyes from the pile of reports: she’s surprised now. Is Lazkano earning points?

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Go on, Cristina.”

  “But, on the other hand, it’s illogical that after taking such precautions to hide the corpses, when only four months had passed, they claimed the murders and revealed the exact place where they were buried, don’t you think?”

  “There’s also the call to the newspaper Egin on October 25.”

  “A call from the Batallón Vasco Español, claiming that the bodies were on the road to Oursbelille, near Tarbes. But it wasn’t true.”

  “It was a smoke screen.”

  “A very controlled blast of smoke in any case: too controlled. Whoever made that claim didn’t know where the corpses were buried. Look at the map: Tarbes is northeast of Angelu, and the bodies appeared in the southwest, not to the north and not to the east, but the very opposite in both directions.”

  “What do you mean, that it was too calculated a mistake?”

  “Yes, and another thing too: not all the men involved are going to be sitting in the defendant’s chair.”

  “The ex-government delegate Fontecha, for example.”

  “And anyone above him.”

  “We knew that from the beginning.”

  “Fontecha’s been accused.”

  “But not of the murders.”

  “On verra…Will you be able to live with that, Diego?”

  What does he want him to say? Cristina notices Lazkano’s nervousness, and retakes the conversation.

  “I still don’t understand the reason for their claim…revealing the secret, was it a matter of collective arrogance? Or did someone take it upon himself to do it, without saying anything to his superiors?”

  “Do you think that the call to Cartagena in January 1984 is something an individual did on his own? In an outburst? Without saying anything to anyone?”

  “I’m thinking about Hernández…”

  “Because he’s gay? You’re prejudiced, aita.”

  “Maybe it was personal revenge, an accusation from someone with an interest in fishing in troubled waters, in getting someone high up arrested and rise in the ranks in the process.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “We’ll never know: but think, not all dogs are obedient lap-dogs.”

  “Maybe you’re right: it’s possible that one of the collaborator civil guards in Cartagena would take credit for the kidnap and murder, to let it be known that the GAL hadn’t disappeared, that, moreover, their actions would get harsher. In any case, the objective of that phone call was a clear sign of insubordination.”

  Among the brambles, reddish soil, and the remainder of a line that was once white. The once-white line met with another line to create a ninety-degree angle. The net and two metal posts that supported it have disappeared, but it’s not difficult to guess that there was a tennis court there once, a long time ago. It’s not to easy to establish, however, the way in and out of the court, because the pathways are completely overgrown at each of the cardinal points.

  “Yes, this is the place.”

  The Toad puts an arm over his shoulders in a fatherly gesture.

  “Do you want to go on?”

  Lazkano nods, but that very real flashback into his past has affected him more than he thought it would.

  He knows the place. El Cerro. They wouldn’t set him free without having him listen to Soto and Zeberio’s screams first.

  “Do you recognize your friends’ screams?”

  They set him free, after humiliating him with the pretend suicide, after his confession. And being free would become unbearable.

  “It smells exactly the same…”

  After all that happened he got the hell out. His parents lent him money to go away, first to Paris and then to Lille. Before that, he visited Rue Moulinaou. He said goodbye to his friends from Angelu and confirmed their suspicions about Soto and Zeberio’s disappearance. The fact that he didn’t join the protests, demonstrations, or lobbying groups made people in the organization suspicious, but Lazkano had seen enough to know that he’d make his own way far from any organized structure. “Don’t count on me.” They called him a coward, a traitor. He already carried chibato on his back.

  He still loved Ana, but after disappearing the way he did, he didn’t even dare call her. He remembered her every day. And every
day he remembered her in a different way, because remembering her differently was the way he had of holding on to her.

  He spent three years in Lille. He attended university in the mornings and worked as a waiter in the evenings. He began to go out with a girl half seriously, but broke up when she started talking about returning to Ireland – she was from Donegal. He didn’t want to have anything to do with places with ongoing armed struggles. Later, he started learning Russian: the girl from Kursk, Lena. A possible love. Lena’s abandonment. She took a part of his past with her, and left him, in exchange, the ability to speak Russian quite decently. Diego came out the winner. Every now and then he worked for import-export businesses from Moscow and Kiev with offices in France.

  The list of things that caused a knot in his throat that he couldn’t find a way to undo didn’t grow too much in those years: Faulkner, the Doors, Victor Jara. Some promises: never to kill another ant, never to get a driver’s license. An identity: a patchwork of people he once knew. A hidden vocation: being a writer, which he’d keep alive in memory of Soto.

  “You died for me, you’ll live through me.”

  “This is it then, this is where they held you.” The Toad sighs. “And Soto and Zeberio too. You’re going to have to testify.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “It’ll be tough. They’ll play hard. They’ll have no compassion. They’ll air all your dirty laundry. They’ll investigate you inside and out. You and everyone around you.”

  “I don’t give a fuck. I have nothing to hide.”

  “They’ll say that you’re an opportunist, that you’re crazy, a terrorist, God knows what else. They’ll ask why didn’t you denounce them twenty years ago, that’ll be one of their main arguments…how do you think we should explain that?”

  “They found Soto and Zeberio buried in quicklime…and I didn’t want to end up like that. Wouldn’t you say that’s quite a solid argument?”

  Lazkano couldn’t stop thinking about it: that Soto and Zeberio teamed up because he couldn’t drive. And that even if it was through torture – this fact didn’t console Lazkano – it was he who’d given them up. It should have been him instead of Soto. That’s where his obsession of worrying about Soto more than Zeberio came from; that, or maybe because he felt he and Soto were closer in personality.