SPANISH ROCK

by Lex Lander

  Then Luis was pushing past me, eyes fixed on his father; eyes that were blind, burning with a terrible intensity.

  ‘Now I will expose him for what he is!’

  ‘Luis!’ Elena caught his sleeve. ‘Luis, no! This is not the time.’

  He didn’t even check in his advance. ‘Irazola!’ he shouted, as if to a stranger rather than his procreator. Irazola was still moving forward at the head of his party, head bobbing as he talked to a fellow officer. Others were turning, as yet only curious, towards the source of the cry.

  ‘Irazola … traidor!’ Luis’ voice rose to a howl that instantly stilled all conversation. He quickened his step, his finger pointing accusingly at his father.

  ‘Luis!’ Irazola, startled but unafraid. ‘What are you doing here?’

  A young officer flanking Irazola detached from the group and ripped open the flap of his holster, his other hand raised in a warding-off motion. His gun glinted as he pulled it free. Luis was not for intimidating. It could have been an action replay of the incident on the hillside overlooking Irazola’s military encampment. From somewhere inside his clothing, like a magician plucking a rabbit from a hat, Luis produced an automatic of the same pattern that had served him so well before. Behind me a woman screamed. I started towards Luis, not sure what I hoped to achieve, only conscious of a desire to prevent another massacre.

  The officer’s gun was levelled. Irazola saw it at last.

  ‘Wait!’ he roared and the officer hesitated, fatally as it turned out. Luis fired, a rapid spewing of bullets, cutting the officer down and others behind him. Panic broke out. Most of the group threw themselves flat. People elsewhere on the plaza were running, everywhere and anywhere. I saw Irazola go down, then I was down too, bowled over by someone in full flight. Shoes trampled on me, including a stiletto heel that crunched agonisingly into the base of my spine. More shots rang, the flat thud of Luis’ heavy automatic alternating with the crack of a lighter cartridge. Blood splattered on my pants leg, hot even through the cloth. Automatic fire now took over from single shots, probably the two sentries. It was like being in the middle of a battlefield.

  The gunfire ceased, not a gradual petering out but an abrupt termination. The hush that came after was filled with moans and weak cries for help: ‘Socorro! Socorro!’ More distinctly, someone called: ‘Un medico – rapido!’

  I lifted myself cautiously off my belly, cast around for Elena. She was on her knees behind me, her expression stunned.

  ‘Are you hit?’ I got up and went to her, helped her to her feet. She leaned weakly against me.

  ‘I am all right. Where is Luis?’

  Luis was on his back, the automatic detached from his open hand. He was looking into the sun – looking without seeing. For Luis there would be no more sun. The line of red holes evenly spaced across the front of his white shirt looked like the buttons of a clown’s costume. Too many holes for him to have survived. Elena let out a sobbing gulp and fell across him, calling his name, shaking him. I didn’t try to restrain her.

  The carnage was extensive. Blood splattered the paving stones on the pathway and there were dark patches on the grass. At least half-a-dozen forms lay still. Irazola was not one of them, sitting up, nursing a bloodied arm, tended by a crouching uniformed aide. The two sentries stood slightly apart from the fallen group, guns held out as if they expected the dead to rise up and attack them. I couldn’t see Petrov. Hopefully Luis had disposed of that piece of filth.

  Then Irazola, staggering upright, caught sight of me. His face was pale under the tan, the sleeve of his tunic saturated with blood. He shook off the concerned ministrations of his aide to stumble over fallen bodies towards me.

  ‘So.’ Just the one word. It spoke volumes. He glanced down at Elena, sprawled across her brother’s corpse, sobbing. No emotion afflicted the severe, manly features, neither pity nor remorse.

  ‘He was a fool,’ he said, half to himself. ‘A fool and a dreamer.’

  He could have added psycho to the descriptive.

  Elena lifted her head. To my surprise there were no tears, only an emptiness that slowly transformed to hate as she and her father locked stares the way duelling stags lock antlers.

  ‘You did this,’ she accused, her voice thick with desolation.

  ‘He did it to himself,’ Irazola replied, not without justification. ‘These are his just desserts.’

  ‘How can you say this? He is your son!’

  ‘Not by blood, as well you know. In any case, by this act he lost the right to be considered as my son.’ He swung on his heel and with his good hand beckoned the aide and the two sentries. They came at a lope, eager to please.

  ‘Escort my daughter and this … gentleman to a safe place,’ he ordered.

  That his concern with our well-being was purely euphemistic became apparent when the sentries covered us with their sub-machine guns.

  Elena put up a scrap but was easily overpowered by the aide and one of the sentries. I, seeing no point in resistance, went quietly, hustled through the gathering crowd of gawkers who, taking us for the instigators of the slaughter, spat and catcalled and jostled us.

  We were bundled into an Army Land Rover, the sentries accompanying us. Two more soldiers, newly arrived, got in the separate driving compartment and we took off fast. Elena sat slumped, a resigned expression on her face. As we pulled out of the parking lot a trio of ambulances came howling down the highway exit ramp, lights flashing dementedly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Elena, about Luis,’ I said, speaking English in the expectation that our guards would have limited command of the language.

  ‘It is not your fault,’ she sniffed, head bowed. ‘It was his destiny.’

  Destiny or not, I was the catalyst. No loss to the world at large, Luis was Elena’s only family as well as her twin. They had been close, as twins are supposed to be. This realisation prompted me to hug her to me, to give such comfort as was within my power. Her body shuddered as it conformed to mine. She wept a little after that, yet soundlessly, and for the rest of our ride the creak of the van and the occasional thump of its tyres on some rough patch of pavement were the only sounds.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Our initial destination was an airfield, just outside Madrid, where we were locked up in separate cells for several hours. I was fed, watered, and I assumed Elena received the same treatment. No thumbscrews. I was told nothing.

  Late in the afternoon an army officer whom I recognised as the General’s adjutant, my old acquaintance Comandante Navarro, came for me with a detachment of troopers.

  ‘No questions,’ he rapped when I tried to quiz him. Elena was brought out. She dredged up a weak smile for me, then we were escorted out past curious air force personnel to an executive-type turboprop aircraft with military markings. Inside the narrow fuselage we were kept apart.

  We flew in a southerly direction as far as I could judge, for there was no sun, merely a lighter patch of sky over the horizon to our right. The flight lasted less than an hour and as we began our descent I glimpsed the sea through the windows on the opposite side of the cabin. It was late afternoon and runway landing lights had already been switched on below. The FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign blinked and in a matter of minutes we were touching down.

  Another Land Rover, the long-wheelbase model. Elena and I sat facing each other from the bench seats, guards on either side. It was too dark now to distinguish any feature of the surrounding countryside. Presently I gave up the attempt and catnapped instead. The road surface was poor, occasionally atrocious, but I must have dozed because the next thing I remembered was my shoulder being shaken. We were there, wherever there was.

  I climbed down from the Land Rover and nearly laughed out loud. We had been brought to the General’s headquarters-cum-residence. I had come full circle. They even took me down to the same cell. Elena was hauled away in another direction. So far, she was getting the same treatment as me, Irazola’s daughter or no, though I couldn’t believe we would sha
re the same fate.

  It was no warmer in my little cell than it had been when last I occupied it. On this occasion though I was dressed to cope with it. Lacking other diversions, I nodded off.

  They didn’t come for me until the small hours. Two soldiers plus the sadly still-alive Petrov.

  Plus Richard Kirkland.

  * * * * *

  The interrogation room had been decorated since my previous visit, probably to hide bloodstains. It smelled of paint and the flaking patch by the light rose was no more.

  ‘How does it feel now?’ Petrov sneered from behind a screen of foul-smelling cigarette smoke. I was back in the interrogee’s chair, he leaning against the wall. The two soldiers were behind me.

  ‘Looking at you,’ I said with a bravado I didn’t feel, ‘I feel slightly sick.’

  ‘Soon you will feel sicker.’ His lips were swollen, I noticed. They would help hide the new gap in his teeth. His reshaped mouth had given him a lisp.

  ‘Something happen to your mouth?’ I said, idiotically goading him. His face contorted. He stepped forward but Kirkland, a passive audience until now, restrained him.

  ‘Later, Petrov,’ he said. ‘If you must.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me more?’ I said to him. ‘Or shall I guess?’

  Kirkland jangled coins in his pocket. ‘Guess.’

  ‘All right. I don’t like you all that much, Kirkland, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt: Petrov is really one of us and General Irazola is in secret collusion with the British Government, and we’re really all good guys, working together to bring about a peaceful solution to the Gibraltar problem. How am I doing?’

  ‘If you like it, you stick to it.’

  Kirkland was grinning. Petrov, too, though his was more wolfish, more anticipatory. Petrov had special plans for me.

  ‘On the other hand,’ I said, ‘maybe the only good guy is me and the rest of you are up to your hairlines in this invasion. Though quite why you would need to invade when sovereignty is going to be ceded to Spain anyway, is beyond me.’

  ‘Ah,’ Kirkland said, eyes creased in amusement, ‘there, as Hamlet had it, is the rub.’

  ‘Your rub, not mine. If my second guess is anywhere near right, it makes you, Kirkland, guilty of treason.’

  ‘Don’t be so innocent, Warner. I don’t work for Britain. I’m not even British, I’m South African, and my wife, it might interest you to know, is Julio Irazola’s sister.’

  I let the shock-horror subside before saying feebly, ‘Well, aren’t you the dark horse?’

  ‘You should know all about dark horses. The rôle you’ve been playing these past weeks is no different from mine. We just work for different sides.’

  It was fair enough comment.

  ‘So who are you working for? The Spanish or the Russians?’ I shot a meaningful look at Petrov.

  ‘If I might be permitted …’ The voice came from the door.

  ‘Hello, General,’ I said, turning to face him. ‘I’m flattered. I didn’t expect a personal visit, what with you mobilising for an invasion and all.’

  ‘I can always make time for my friends.’

  ‘Yeah, you already said. We should have been on the same side.’

  ‘And I was serious.’ He dismissed the two guards and came before me, right arm in a snow white sling, not otherwise the worse for yesterday’s bloodbath. He was in full combat kit, complete with boots and holstered pistol at his waist.

  ‘Strange, don’t you think,’ he said to me, ‘that our relationship should begin and end in the same room?’

  ‘Significant, not strange.’

  ‘Have you told him?’ he asked Kirkland. The latter shook his head.

  ‘I thought you would like that privilege, General, since you expressed a wish to see him before you leave.’

  Irazola smiled approval and said to me, ‘It is a mark of my respect for your talents and resource that I have come to enlighten you in person. But as a prelude to my explanation I should tell you that the Madrid talks have been cancelled by the British. The excuse they give is security issues, after my stepson went berserk at the University. Happily, the cancellation has no impact on my plans. Cancelling is almost as satisfactory as failing to reach agreement. It is enough to justify our act.’ He smoothed his hair down with his free hand. ‘You have suspected for some time, have you not, Warner, that we are going to invade Gibraltar? Ever since you were informed of it by my late unlamented stepson and ungrateful daughter – whose punishment incidentally I have not yet decided on.’

  ‘You realise the risk you will run if you go ahead with this farce. You’ll end up at war with Britain.’

  ‘You are forgetting something. Thanks to my brother-in-law, Ricardo – the man you know as Richard Kirkland – we can launch our attack on Gibraltar with impunity. No military response can be expected from your Government.’

  So Kirkland was the mysterious Ricardo. I treated him to a contemptuous stare. It wasn’t enough to make him immediately announce that he was switching sides.

  ‘That still doesn’t explain why. If you know that much you also know you’ll be given sovereignty anyway. You don’t need to invade.’

  Irazola clasped hands behind his back, a small frown puckering his forehead.

  ‘If I were acting on the orders of our new Prime Minister, the good, honest, sincere Pedro Sanchez, I would agree with you. But that is not the case.’

  Mystified, I said, ‘Whose orders are you acting on then? Vladimir Putin’s, I suppose.’

  Petrov gave a little cackle. Even Kirkland, or whatever his real name was, did an exaggerated eye roll, maybe in despair at my naivety.

  ‘For a man of your supposed intellect I am disappointed by your lack of understanding,’ Irazola said. ‘I am nobody’s lackey, my friend. It is I who am directing the invasion. The Russians, whose interests Petrov represents, are providing financial support and such other support as will be required when I establish my government. No more than that.’

  ‘Your government?’ I stared stupidly at him.

  His slow headshake was the kind that means ‘I give up.’

  The dawning came so slowly it was painful, as if hidden behind a screen of fog, thinning only gradually but the process accelerating until a sunburst of comprehension blasted through the murk and I could see clearly what I had failed to see: that Irazola was going to stage a military coup d’état on his own account. He was going to overthrow the Spanish Government and set himself up as the new General Franco!

  And all along I – and others – had supposed that the invasion was Spanish Government-inspired, that Irazola was merely the chosen tool. As I got used to the idea, questions began to formulate in my mind. For instance, why invade Gibraltar at all? Was it to divert attention away from the real object? Or were the coup and the invasion linked?

  Then I saw it. It unfolded before me in all its fiendish brilliance, like coming to the last page of a detective novel with an unintelligible plot.

  Irazola glanced at Kirkland and Petrov. ‘Now he has it. It is written on his face.’

  ‘Give the Spanish people Gibraltar and you won’t even need to fight for Spain,’ I said. It was masterly. For an instant so fleeting it hardly registered I wished I were part of it.

  ‘The invasion was originally scheduled for the first of June,’ Irazola explained, ‘by which time it was foreseen that the talks would have reached a stalemate, as they always have in the past. When I learned of your Government’s new stance on sovereignty it became necessary to drastically revise the timing for the invasion. Obviously I could not afford for the sovereignty decision to be made public.’

  So much for the breathing space that Vella and I had counted on.

  ‘So when do you move?’

  ‘In approximately …’ Irazola raised his slim gold wristwatch to eye level, ‘… fifty-eight hours from now, that is at 0500 hours on the 10th of May.’

  Not long enough for the Brits to come to the rescue even if
they were so minded.

  ‘We expect to overcome all resistance, such as there is, by noon. There is nothing you can do to stop us. Even if you picked up the telephone this very moment and called your own Prime Minister and even if he believed you and reversed his policy of non-intervention, we cannot be stopped.’

  Today was 7th May and it was Thursday. My mind did the maths, fast forwarding to the 10th. Sunday. Day of rest. The day when the system of government and law and order is at low ebb. Military, police, emergency services, all at only half-strength.

  ‘The King,’ I said, a last vain appeal. ‘Felipe. He’ll never install you as Head of Government.’

  The mirth was long and loud and unanimous. Irazola reached over the table and patted my shoulder.

  ‘When Petrov has finished, er … amusing himself with you, he will leave for Madrid. Two days from now the King of Spain and his family will be on their way into exile under guard and the Prime Minister under arrest. By Saturday there will be no more King of Spain, there will be only me, only Generalissimo Julio Irazola, Presidente!’

  With his clenched fist he pummelled his chest. The room seemed to shrink and he to swell in stature, adopting already the mantle of Dictator and ruler of Spain and conqueror of the British.

  ‘You’ll never pull it off,’ I said, without conviction. ‘You’re no Franco.’

  ‘This is true, alas. Franco was unique. But through me he will again rule over Spain.’

  ‘Through you?’ It sounded to me as though he was suffering from a dose of megalomania.

  ‘Yes, my friend. Through me.’ He walked to the door, swung round as he opened it. ‘You see, Francisco Franco, though he never acknowledged it, was my father.’

  * * * * *

  My mind was so stuffed with Irazola’s multiple revelations that the bleakness of my own future was briefly relegated to second place. Only when the door closed behind Irazola, and Petrov peeled his back off the wall to amble over did I start to worry about what lay in store for me.