The Siege

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  “Our lads are giving them hell,” says Lobo.

  His lieutenant shrugs his shoulders coldly. “I just hope they hold out. I’m sick to death of these hurried, last-minute evacuations … old hags with bundles of dirty laundry, screaming kids and women asking where they can have a piss.”

  There is a silence, broken only by the distant thunder of battle. Ricardo Maraña looks up critically at the flag fluttering from the mast—two red stripes, one yellow, bearing the Royal Arms: castle and lions rampant. Meanwhile Pépé Lobo notes that the offshore wind seems to be shifting to a fresh north-northwesterly. This will be a godsend if, as they have been expecting for some time, the order comes from Tarifa to weigh anchor.

  “And I’m sick of this too,” adds Maraña disdainfully. “If I had wanted to serve my country, I’d have joined the Armada, darned my uniforms and ended up with a salary in arrears like everyone else.”

  “You can’t win ’em all,” says Pépé Lobo, smiling.

  A short ragged cough. The kerchief appears again.

  “True.”

  Lobo points the telescope toward the town walls; between the eddies of dust, he can make out the diminutive figures of men engaged in fierce fighting, fending off the French for as long as possible. Half an hour ago, a naval lieutenant—arriving on a boat from the city with a package of official dispatches to be shipped to Cádiz—reported that the French had noticed the breach last night and, considering it auspicious, mounted a 9 a.m. assault from the trenches they had excavated along the ravine in the preceding days. According to the naval lieutenant, four enemy battalions of grenadiers and chasseurs marched in serried ranks, but finding themselves up to their knees in mud, as a result of the recent rains, and under constant fire from the defenders, the assault was quickly thrown into confusion and by the time they reached the town walls it had lost much of its momentum. An hour and a half later, little has changed: the French are still attempting to scale the walls and the defenders are holding them back without artillery—the anchored ships cannot shell the area around the breach—only rifles and bayonets.

  The crew of the Culebra discuss the morning’s events, pointing out the plumes of smoke that indicate heavy fighting. Perched on the gunwale, leaning against a shroud line, wielding a second telescope, Brasero the bo’sun tells them what he can see. Pépé Lobo leaves them in peace. He knows that every man aboard shares the opinion of the first officer. For the most part these men are smugglers and the sort of port rabble who sign a roster or a police confession with a cross. Lobo recruited them in the sleazy taverns along the Calle de los Negros, the Calle de Sopranis and El Boquete; most of them on the run, trying to evade enforced conscription. Not one of these forty-eight men—including the first officer and the ship’s clerk—signed up with the Culebra with the intention of spending their time under military command, giving up the free life of a corsair, the thrill and the spoils of the chase in exchange for a meager wage from the Royal Armada, of which they know they might never see a peso. Their most recent campaign had put at least 250 pesos in every man’s pocket—three times as much in Pépé Lobo’s—with seven vessels already declared fair captures, and six more still before the Prize Court, to say nothing of the 150 reales a month every sailor got from the moment he signed up. This is why, though he has not said so, the captain completely understands why his men are, like himself, heartily sickened by the twenty-two days they have wasted as a mailboat under naval command—ferrying soldiers and dispatches from place to place, far from their hunting waters; forced to serve as auxiliaries to a Navy which, like the Royal Customs, they would ordinarily avoid like the plague—since there is hardly a man aboard whose conscience is clear, or whose neck is safe from the rope.

  “Signal on the tower,” calls Ricardo Maraña.

  Pépé Lobo shifts the telescope toward the lighthouse on the island where the flags have just been hoisted. “That’s us,” he says. “Tell the men to get ready.”

  Maraña steps away from the taffrail and heads back toward the crew.

  “Silence on deck! Prepare for action!”

  More flags. Lobo can read them without the need for his telescope: one white and red, followed by a blue pennant. He has no need to consult the secret signal book he keeps in a drawer of the binnacle above the companionway. This one is easy: Set sail immediately.

  “Let’s go, Lieutenant.”

  Maraña nods and strides across the deck, giving orders while the sudden thunder of bare feet makes the boards shake. Brasero the bo’sun, having clambered from the shrouds, blows his whistle and dispatches men to work the halyards and the capstan whose bar is already in place.

  “Heave around and up!” roars the lieutenant. “Break out the jib!”

  Pépé Lobo steps aside so the Scotsman and the other steersman can take the helm; he glances warily over the taffrail toward the rocks, half hidden by the sea, half a cable length from the stern and the foot of the island. When he looks to prow again, the anchor is at short stay.

  “Port tack,” he orders the helmsmen.

  The cutter’s long bowsprit turns away from the coast and the wind, while the men straddling it loosen the sail ties securing the jib and the foresail. A moment later the first triangular sail is made fast to the forward end of the bowsprit, the slack sheets quickly hauled in and secured. Like a thoroughbred racehorse impatiently champing at the bit, the Culebra bridles a little as the rigging grows taut, ready for the off.

  “Slacken the mainsail sheet! Set the sail!”

  The sailors loosen the main brails and the sail opens out with a creak of wood and canvas, flapping in the fresh north-northwesterly. Lobo quickly glances again at the sunken rocks, which are a little closer now. Then he checks the compass and visually traces the course; he needs to keep the cutter well to starboard of the dangerous shallows at Los Cabezos, four miles west-northwest of here opposite the Peña Tower. The mainsail is almost set and the vast expanse of canvas is beginning to take the wind. The anchor is now being secured to the cathead; the ship lists elegantly to port and cleanly glides away from its mooring.

  “Set the foresail! Trim the sheets!”

  Another stray French cannonball—or perhaps it was fired deliberately, the enemy seeing the cutter getting under way—raises a column of water and spray far off to starboard. Meanwhile, the ships still at anchor continue shelling the enemy on land. With all necessary canvas set around its sole mast, the Culebra now gathers speed, close-hauled, powerfully cleaving the water, which is almost glassy, being in the lee of shore. Hands behind his back, feet well apart to compensate for the heeling of the ship, Pépé Lobo looks back one last time at Tarifa, its north wall still wreathed in a pall of smoke and sparks. He is not sorry to be getting out of here. Not sorry at all.

  “Back to Cádiz,” says Maraña.

  Having finished his work on deck for the moment, the first officer ambles back casually, hands in pockets, to stand next to the captain. Lobo however cannot help but notice the contented note in his first officer’s voice, or the smiles on the faces of a number of crewmen, including Brasero. Perhaps they will be able to spend a day in port, and go ashore. It would be a welcome break after three weeks at sea, with the ground shifting and everybody muttering under their breath. Perhaps the ship’s owners will have managed to persuade the authorities to give the Culebra back its Letter of Marque, and they can finally stop bucketing about like a messenger boy for the Royal Armada.

  “Yes,” Pépé Lobo says, thinking about Lolita Palma. “Back to Cádiz.”

  “THE SILENT STREET”—the very name of the Calle del Silencio seems like a taunt. It is as though the city itself, crouching within its labyrinthine web of streets and alleys, is mocking Rogelio Tizón. This is what the comisario is thinking as, by lantern light, he holds on to his hat and ducks through the gaping hole in the wall of the Castillo de Guardiamarinas, a dark, decrepit stone building that has stood empty for fifteen years. Tizón knows that this is no ordinary place; this is where the old
Cádiz meridian once ran. In earlier times, the square tower that still stands in the south corner housed the Naval Observatory, while the northern part was reserved for the Royal Armada naval academy until both observatory and academy were moved to the Isla de Léon. It was subsequently used as a barracks, then, after a failed attempt to locate the new prison here, it was bought by a private individual only to be later abandoned. Even the homeless refugees looking for somewhere to live avoid these ruins, because of the falling masonry, the crumbling roofs and the poor condition of the beams.

  “Some kids from the Calle del Mesón Nuevo found her,” Cadalso informs him. “Two brothers.”

  Until now, Tizón had hoped it might be a mistake, a random coincidence that would not alter the equilibrium of things. But as he steps into the old parade ground, with Cadalso lighting his way through the mounds of rubble, that hope vanishes. At the far end of the courtyard, next to the portcullis at the foot of the keep, walled up with stones and planks, the flickering flame of a lantern casts an arc of light on the ground. And lying facedown in that semicircle is the body of a young woman, her back flayed to shreds with a whip.

  “A pox on God and his whore of a mother!”

  The brutal blasphemy shocks Cadalso, who is far from being a pious man. The deputy clearly does not like what he sees on the comisario’s face. When Tizón turns to look at him, Cadalso has gone pale.

  “Who knows about this?”

  “The kids … and their parents, of course.”

  “Anyone else?”

  Cadalso nods toward a pair of dark, cloaked figures standing guard over the body, just beyond the circle of light.

  “The corporal and a nightwatchman. The boys reported it to them.”

  “Make it clear that if anyone breathes a word about this, I’ll rip their eyes out and stuff them up their ass—understood?”

  “Yes, señor.”

  A brief pause. Ominous. The cane swings gently. “That includes you, Cadalso.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “On the contrary, I do worry … and you should worry too, if you know what’s good for you.”

  Tizón struggles to compose himself, to remain calm, not to surrender to the panic convulsing his insides. He is five paces from the body. The corporal and the nightwatchman step forward and salute him. They have checked everything, the corporal tells Tizón, leaning on his pike. As far as they know, there is no one hiding in the building. And none of the neighbors—aside from the two boys—noticed anything suspicious. The girl is very young, no older than fifteen. They believe they have identified her as a maid working in the Posada de la Academia, a local boardinghouse, but given the extent of her injuries and the lack of light they cannot be sure. They estimate she must have been murdered shortly after sunset, because the boys were playing in the courtyard during the afternoon and saw nothing.

  “What were they doing back here after dark?”

  “They live nearby—only fifty paces away. After dinner, their dog escaped from the house and they went looking for it. Since they often play here, they thought the dog might have come here … When they stumbled on the body, they told their father and he alerted us.”

  “Do you know the father?”

  “A cobbler. A decent man, by all accounts.”

  Tizón dismissed them with a nod. “Go and stand guard by the main entrance,” he tells them. “Don’t let anyone in: no neighbors, no busybodies, not even King Fernando himself. Is that clear? Go on, then.” He takes a deep breath, thinks for a moment; he slips his fingers into his jacket pocket then hands Cadalso a gold half onza, telling him to go to the cobbler’s house and give it to him, after making the situation clear. For his cooperation, and for any inconvenience.

  “Tell him if he keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t obstruct the investigation, he’ll get the other half in a couple of days.”

  Cadalso and the nightwatchman melt into the darkness. Once he is alone, the comisario circles the body of the girl, remaining outside the ring of light cast by the lantern. He is careful to consider every possibility, every clue before he moves closer. All the while he is grappling with two, parallel feelings: bitter indignation at the difficult position in which this new murder—to call it “unexpected” would be excessive, he admits with perverse honesty—puts him with his superiors, and a profound fury that shakes him to the core, faced with this evidence of his miscalculation and failure. The certainty of his own defeat at the hands of the malign, the cruel, the obscene forces of this city, which he is beginning to despise with his very soul.

  There can be no doubt, he realizes as he approaches the body. He picks up the lantern by its wire handle and holds it high, illuminating the scene. No one could imitate these wounds, even if he tried. The hands tied behind the back, the mouth gagged, the back bare, crisscrossed with deep gashes that reveal a labyrinth of clotted blood and exposed bone. And the distinctive smell of butchered flesh, the stench of the slaughterhouse Tizón knows so well and which he realizes he will never be able to blot out from his memory. The girl is not wearing shoes and the comisario looks around for them, to no avail. He finds only a flannel mantilla, tossed next to the hole in the wall. The shoes are probably still out on the street where the killer grabbed her before dragging her in here. She could have been knocked out by a blow, or she may have been conscious and struggling to the end. The gag and the fact that her hands are tied points to the latter, although they may simply have been additional precautions on the part of the murderer, in case the whiplashes brought her round. He hopes that this is how it was, that the girl was unconscious the whole time. Fifteen years old, he confirms, kneeling down and bringing the lantern closer so he can study her face, the glassy half-open eyes gazing into the nothingness of death. Whipped without mercy, like an animal, until she died.

  Getting to his feet, the comisario looks up into the inky sky above the castle. Dark stretches of cloud hide the moon and much of the sky, but a handful of stars burn with an icy glimmer that seems to register the coldness of the night air. Rogelio Tizón brings a cigar to his lips but does not light it; instead he stands for a moment, staring at the heavens. Then he walks back to the gap in the wall, lighting his way with the lantern, which he hands back to the corporal and the nightwatchman.

  “I want someone to find that poor wretch’s shoes. They won’t be far away.”

  The corporal blinks, confused. “Shoes, Señor Comisario?”

  “Yes, God damn you. Shoes. I’m not speaking Chinese! Now get moving …”

  He steps out into the Calle del Silencio and looks both ways before heading right. In the yellow glow of the municipal streetlight burning opposite the Mesón Nuevo, at the far end of the Calle de los Blancos, he can just make out the ruined archway in the north wall of the Castillo de Guardiamarinas, leading to the Calle San Juan de Dios. Tizón walks under the arch and peers into the shadows. In the distance, to the left, are the streetlights of the Plaza del Ayuntamiento. He presses his hat down and pulls up his collar against the damp sea air—the Atlantic is only a few steps away at the other end of the street.

  The comisario stands motionless for a moment, then retreats into the shelter of the archway; he strikes a match and prepares to light the cigar still dangling from his lips. Suddenly, as he cups his hand around the flame, he thinks better of it and snuffs out the match. Because what he is looking for, if it truly exists, will require a keen sense of smell and every other sense on the alert. So he slips the cigar back into the case and walks slowly along the Calle del Silencio, watchful as a hunter, stalking out sensations and sounds that crouch in the dark hollows of the city. He does not know exactly what he is looking for. An emptiness, perhaps. Or a smell. Perhaps a breath of wind, or the sudden absence of it.

  He is trying to calculate where and when the next bomb will fall.

  * * *

  * Wormer—a tool used to clean a cannon.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Past the open door and the white marble step with the sig
n engraved in black reading Café del Correo, to one side of the twin arches leading into the columned courtyard, Comisario Tizón and Professor Barrull have just finished their second game of chess. The rumor of war hanging over the squares of the chessboard gradually fades: a king still stands in the back row—the policeman was playing white—mercilessly pinned by a knight and a queen. A few squares forward, two pawns stare each other down, each blocking the other’s path. Tizón is licking his wounds, but the subject of the conversation shifts to a different chessboard.

  “Five hours later the bomb fell, Professor, right on the corner of the Calle del Silencio, by the Guardiamarinas archway … thirty feet, as the crow flies, from the courtyard where the girl’s body was found.”

  Hipólito Barrull is listening attentively, cleaning his spectacles with a kerchief. They are sitting at their usual table, Tizón leaning his chair back against the wall, legs stretched out under the table. Two bowls of coffee and two glasses of water sit among the captured chess pieces.

  “This bomb did fall,” says the comisario, “as did the one at Divina Pastora. But not the time before. On the Calle del Laurel, a girl was murdered but no bomb fell, either before or after. That changes things. It changes the rules.”

  “I don’t see why,” the professor says. “Perhaps it just means that even the murderer is fallible … That his method, or whatever you want to call it, is not perfect.”

  “But the places …” Tizón breaks off, unsure. Barrull looks at him attentively. “There’s something about the places …” the comisario says after a brief hesitation. “I’ve noticed it. There’s something different about the atmosphere.”

  Barrull nods thoughtfully. After the massacre he has just enacted on the chessboard, his equine face has regained its normal courteous expression. He no longer looks like the ruthless opponent who, barely five minutes ago, was mocking and insulting Tizón—damn your eyes, Comisario, I’ll rip out your liver, and so forth—as he marshaled his pieces with homicidal fury.