I drank cola. Tómas drank wine and, while I picked at my food, he ate with a hearty appetite, first a big salad and then merluza a la vasca – hake in a subtly seasoned sauce with vegetables. We chatted about one thing and another, but avoided the incident. We had exhausted the subject on the telephone a long time ago. Even though he was a bachelor, he understood my bereavement. He had suffered many losses himself during his life underground, but he had made the right choice when he laid down his weapons and started afresh. I knew that he despised the new generation of ETA activists, but being a Basque through and through, he could never bring himself to condemn or denounce them. He thought their politics and methods were wrong. But they were fellow countrymen first and terrorists second. And I knew that although he was no longer active, he still had his connections and sources. He could be trusted. I knew there had been discussion of the possibility of him becoming an unofficial, secret mediator between the old socialist government and ETA, to try to work out a solution. He had put out feelers and made contacts. First, imprisoned members of ETA would be moved from Andalusia and other distant places to prisons in the Basque Country, in return for a cease-fire. The next step would be to work out a conclusive peace agreement, with the possibility of a partial amnesty. But the new, right-wing government would not negotiate with terrorists under any circumstances. The violence had flared up again, the eternal, evil spiral of violence. Now, however, it seemed as if there was change in Northern Ireland, Tómas said, and this could possibly help to resolve the situation. He didn’t harbour any great hope, but if the Irish could find a way, why not the Basques?
We had reached coffee before I asked, “Tómas. Was it them? Was it a terrible mistake?”
Tómas plucked at his napkin while I smoked. Like so many, he had long since given up smoking, but had taken up fiddling with things instead.
“It wasn’t them, Peter,” he said. “It wasn’t them. I’m not saying they wouldn’t have done it, but it wasn’t them. They didn’t know the traitor was living in that building.”
“Who then?”
“I don’t know. I don’t understand it. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Then why haven’t they disclaimed responsibility? Said it wasn’t them?”
He looked away and drank from his café solo even though there were only dregs left in the bottom of the tiny cup. Then he spoke quietly, but with anger in his voice, an anger that I sensed was directed at himself.
“To create fear is at the very core of terrorism. They get a fear-inducing element handed to them on a plate, free of charge. Why shouldn’t they make use of it? A traitor was eliminated. Others will hesitate, because they’ve shown that the avenging arm is long. We didn’t spread terror back in Franco’s time. We went for military personnel, members of the oppressive police network, the regime’s top people. We were soldiers in a dirty war. But we were soldiers, not murderers of innocent civilians.”
I had never heard him take issue with the morals of his successors. There was truth in what he said. ETA had begun using violence – what they called the armed struggle – back in 1968, when he had been just a teenager. Like cowboys escaping across the Rio Grande, they had taken refuge in France after carrying out their actions. And France, like other European countries, had considered them freedom fighters struggling in a just cause – seeking to overthrow the fascist Franco dictatorship.
“I need to make some sense of it. I need to know,” I said.
“I understand. But maybe the authorities are behind it. Maybe it was an attempt to get rid of the photographs of the Minister. Maybe it was simple revenge. They’ve done it before, during the dirty war. And that was a socialist government! Have you thought how opportune it is for the Spanish to say that it was ETA? It’s rather convenient, the way ETA’s become active again. Maybe ETA’s just a smoke screen. What do they call it in English – a red herring?”
Under the Social Democrat government the authorities had sent death squads to both the French and Spanish Basque Country to liquidate alleged ETA members. Brutally execute them without trial. Violence breeds violence. The issue was being dealt with by the courts now, but so far all efforts to discover which members of the governments of the 1980s had known about the death squads had been in vain.
“I want to hear them say it,” I said. “That it wasn’t them.”
He sat thinking.
“It’s very risky, Peter. Risky for me, for you, for them. They’re being pressed from all sides. They’re divided, anxious, edgy, aggressive.”
“I want to hear them say it.”
He sat for a while. Then he made a decision and left. I stayed and ordered another coffee and paid the bill. He came back 20 minutes later. I didn’t know where he had phoned from or what he had been doing, and I wouldn’t dream of asking.
He sat down. He was sweating, as if he had been walking too fast in the afternoon heat, but it could also have been nerves. Even though he was a free, law-abiding citizen, he had to assume that for the rest of his days the intelligence and security services would be keeping an eye on him. He also had to be on guard constantly, in case the other side became suspicious that he was playing a double game, might turn traitor, and by so doing sign his own death warrant. In effect, he lived the agonising, edgy and stressful existence of a double agent, where you could end up frightened of your own shadow.
“There’s a bench. The underground car park next to the Londres, eight o’clock. Carry an evening edition of Diario Vasco,” he said in a quiet, nervous voice.
“Thanks, Tómas,” I said simply. “I’m in your debt.”
“Friends are never in debt to one another,” he said. But I could tell that I had pressed our friendship as far as was humanly possible. Perhaps it had been them after all, and he had a bad conscience. Maybe it was for Maria Luisa’s sake. For Amelia’s. Or for all the years we had known one other, or because he knew that I was working through my grief. We said a slightly cool goodbye with a firm handshake and I watched him disappear round the corner by a shuttered camera shop in the deserted, siesta-time street.
I wandered around the town for a couple of hours. It did me good to walk. The straight, narrow streets in the town centre slowly filled with people after 5 p.m., when the shop shutters were rolled up with a rattle that echoed like the sound of castanets. The promenade by the park was buzzing with people again after the siesta, and the traffic was back to its roaring intensity. I bought a copy of Diario Vasco and, at 7.45 p.m., went and sat on the bench opposite the pedestrian entrance to the car park under the plaza. The town hall was on my right and, on my left, the Hotel Londres where I had stayed several times in my younger days when some newspaper was picking up the bill. I could see the statue of Christ up on Monte Egueldo. The tide had gone out, exposing the yellowish-grey sand below the esplanade. There were people in the water. Young men swam out to a raft anchored in the mussel-shaped bay, from which it took its name. The raft always made me think of Hemingway. Other youngsters had marked out football pitches in the sand and played with a lot of shouting until the sun went down in an orgy of red and darkness stopped play. The beach, which gradually grew narrower and narrower as the tide came back in, emptied.
A young mother pushing a small child in a pram came and sat down next to me. It was a warm and gentle evening and she held out an ice lolly which the child licked in delight. She chattered to the infant in Basque. The child waggled its hands and knocked the little bonnet that had been lying on its tummy out of the pram. I bent down and picked up the bonnet and handed it to the young mother. She smiled, but only with her mouth. Her brown eyes were anxious.
“Thanks. Go down towards the harbour when I’ve left,” she said in Spanish, turning her head and held out the lolly for the delighted child again.
My heart was thumping. She sat calmly and let the child finish eating, but I saw her hands tremble a little as she wiped the infant’s mouth with a paper napkin. Then she got up and pushed the pram towards the crossing by the Hotel Lond
res. I stayed where I was for another five minutes, one tourist among many, and then walked slowly towards the little fishing harbour where blue cutters were moored below the grey stone walls adjoining the town centre. I tried not to look around, but the palms of my hands were sweaty.
There were lots of people strolling down by the harbour. I stood at the quayside and looked out at the blunt-nosed cutters. A young man came up beside me. He looked at me and I followed him, walking a few paces behind. I knew what they were up to when, like all the other people out for an evening walk in San Sebastián, we wandered, apparently aimlessly, around the town centre. Others would be watching to see that no one was following me. We returned to the harbour. Loud rock music was blaring from a bar, which the young man entered. His place was taken by another young man wearing the same kind of outfit, jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, who walked up to me, took a firm hold of my arm and pointed at a white BMW parked by the kerb with its engine running. I got into the back seat and the car drove off smoothly.
There were two men in the car. They were wearing baseball caps and sunglasses, despite the fact that it was dark, and they took care not to turn round. Again we drifted aimlessly with all the other young men in their shiny cars. The modern, motorised version of the Spanish paseo. To see and be seen before dinner. Up and down the boulevards and up in the direction of one of the headlands and back again before driving out to the industrial suburb of Renteria, leaving fashionable San Sebastián behind us. It was replaced by tenement blocks, the flaking walls appearing in the car’s headlights, burnt-out cars along the kerb looking like modernist sculptures. I could see scrawny human shadows hunched between the piles of rubbish and rubble. Junkies and junkie prostitutes on their way out into the dark night. ETA could be safe here too. Not because they loved the fiery young terrorists in Renteria, but because they hated the police and authorities even more.
The BMW turned off into a wasteland. Two big rats ran alongside a derelict building which had once been another squalid tenement block, housing the Andalusian workers who had come here during Franco’s time to participate in the Spanish economic miracle. In the glow of the headlights, I could see a gas cooker and a rusty fridge lying in one corner. The nearest streetlights had long since been smashed.
“Out, Lime!” said the driver.
I got out, and the BMW slid away. My heart was hammering. I could hear cars on the nearby motorway interchange that sliced through the neighbourhood like a luminous scar. I had the feeling that there was someone inside the ruin, but without the light from the BMW’s headlights, everything was in total darkness. Adrenalin was pumping through my body, and I took a couple of deep breaths, clenched my fists and slipped into combat stance. Ready for action, as I had learnt at the karate institute in Madrid.
But they didn’t come from the derelict building. Another car pulled in and stopped a few metres from me, so I turned and stood with my back to the ruin. It was a black Seat and two men got out from the back, while the driver stayed in the car. The engine was running and the headlights dazzled me, but that was the whole idea. They stood next to the car, so they could get in again quickly. I stood in the glare of the lights, but I could see their silhouettes. They were sturdy young men, wearing jeans and dark windcheaters. They had turned up the collars and pulled their caps down over their foreheads.
“We haven’t got long, Peter Lime,” said one of them.
“Why did you murder my family?” I said hoarsely and took a step forward. My mouth and throat were dry.
“Don’t move, Lime,” said the same man.
“Why?” I said.
“It wasn’t us. We understand that you want to hear it from us. You’re hearing it now. I swear on Euskadi’s soil and by the blood of the martyrs, we had nothing to do with it. We didn’t even know the traitorous whore had been housed in that building. It wasn’t us.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have a second’s doubt that they were who they appeared to be. They exuded danger and desperation, and the possibility that Tómas might have conned me was completely out of the question. It was obviously important for them to have it put on record that they weren’t responsible. They wanted to tell me – perhaps because they owed Tómas a favour.
“I am grateful for the information,” I said tonelessly.
One of them got back into the car, but the other one stayed where he was.
“If you find out who was behind it, then perhaps we can help you to take the revenge you apparently want,” he said.
“Why should you help me?”
“Because you once helped one of ours.”
“That was many years ago.”
“We never forget, Peter Lime. Remember that. We never forget.”
He got into the car and, before he had even slammed the door, the driver released the clutch and accelerated round the corner, churning up a shower of grit and sand. I couldn’t see a thing in the total darkness. I was gripped by fear and broke into a gasping run out of the wasteland, down a side street and onto a main road. I don’t think anyone was following me, but anxiety drove me to keep running until I reached a well-lit road. I stood catching my breath. San Sebastián’s golden sheen lay before me and I walked calmly now, looking over my shoulder for a taxi with a green light that would drive me back to my motorbike.
It was where I had parked it, outside the Hotel Londres. I drove home slowly. I was exhausted and my mind was filled with conflicting thoughts and emotions. It was the answer I had been expecting, but perhaps I had hoped they would claim responsibility so that I would have had a convenient target at which to direct my anger.
The house was in dark and quiet. There was a faint smell of smoke from the bonfire. I didn’t look at it as I took out the key to the front door. I let myself in. He must have gone to wait in the alcove just inside the door as soon as he heard the motorbike, because he struck me squarely on the neck with a cosh. Everything exploded in a shower of fragmented light.
9
When I came to again, I was sitting on one of the narrow-backed kitchen chairs. They had moved it out onto the floor against the low wall leading into the kitchen and tied my hands tight behind my back. My neck hurt, but not unbearably. My assailant knew the effect of his cosh. He had struck neither too hard nor too soft, just the right touch to knock me out without fracturing my skull. They were professionals and they terrified me, making my heart beat wildly. There were three men, in their late 30s. I was even more scared to see that they weren’t wearing masks. Two of them were of medium height and built like small, stocky rugby players. The third was bigger and taller. They were wearing jeans and open-necked shirts. Two of them were wearing leather jackets; the big one was in his shirtsleeves. He was holding the cosh, a fat little rubber sausage that he patted lovingly against the palm of his hand. He had a narrow, sly face under a high and pockmarked forehead. The other two stood opposite me, just to the left of our dining table. One of them had a narrow moustache and slicked-back, greasy hair, the other one’s fair hair was fashionably cropped. They surprised me by speaking English, with an unmistakable Irish accent.
“Well, my friend. Welcome back to the land of the living,” said the big man with the cosh. “Now we’re going to have a nice little chat. Apologies for not introducing myself first, but we know about your Japanese talents, so we thought it best to get you nice and settled first. Before our little chat. Don’t you think? You should sit comfortably when you’re having a friendly little chat, don’t you think?”
“Three clowns in my house,” I said.
They reacted fast. Three steps and moustache was standing behind me and yanked my vain ponytail, pulling my head back with a crack, while the cropped one jabbed me twice, precisely and sharply, in the liver, racking my body with pain. Everything went dark again.
“Well, well, well, Mr Lime. Mr fucking-funny-name Peter Harry Lime of movie-fame,” said the big one with the cosh. “Not a good idea to be a naughty boy at night.”
“What’s t
he IRA doing in Euskadi?” I said when I had got my breath back. I probably appeared quite calm on the surface, but I was terrified.
“We’ve got a lot in common with our Basque comrades,” said the cosh. “They’re good nationalists and Marxists. Like us they’re oppressed and kept in chains by a fucking king who they don’t acknowledge. Like us they’re nationalists first and Marxists second. Like us they have a just cause in an unjust world.”
There had always been connection between the IRA and ETA. I knew that they had collaborated on arms deliveries and the purchase of Czech Semtex. The IRA could call on American sympathisers for money and weapons. ETA could buy weapons from the IRA, financing their purchases by collecting protection money, which they chose to call a “revolutionary tax”, and other activities. I understood why Tómas had been so nervous. Friendship was one thing, the issue apparently another. If he hadn’t been given the choice between betrayal and death, that was. Now I couldn’t make it all fit. I simply couldn’t see what they were after. If they didn’t want me snooping, they could just have liquidated me and left me at the side of the road with a bullet through my mouth. Then they would have sent yet another clear signal.
That was probably how this was going to end anyway. They weren’t wearing masks because they didn’t count on me being around to describe them.
“Fuck off,” was all I said, and tensed my body, but it didn’t help, the pain was still intense as the cropped one belted me on the jaw and I tasted blood as he hit me hard and accurately in my side again.
“Mr Lime,” said the cosh. “It’s not worth it. I know you’re a tough guy, but it’s not worth it. We won’t let up.”
“I don’t know what you want,” I said hoarsely.
“Mr Lime. Please accept my apologies. I had quite forgotten to say. What do we want? We want to know where you’ve hidden the suitcase containing a photograph or two which we would like to have for our photo album.”
Lime's Photograph Page 14
