Murder in the Central Committee

by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  ‘Your behaviour outside raised people’s suspicions. You were even seen one day leaving Via Layetana,[3]* and word came down that you were being watched as a possible informer.’

  The bolts and keys, so definitive after roll-call, rang faintly in the back of his memory. While waiting in the prescribed position for a warder to inspect their cell and close the door, Carvalho muttered:

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I put you in quarantine. I told some comrades to be on their guard, although I added that it could be a mistake. Now it’s all cleared up.’

  They had known each other for five years, sharing all the anxiety of underground work. The hapless feeling as you left home with a bundle of leaflets and knew you might not return for five or six years. Five years of swapping false-bottomed suitcases, of greeting contacts from abroad and seeing them back across the same border-tunnel, of distrusting everything outside Mundo Obrero[4] and Radio España Independiente. Five years discovering Sartre, Marx, Brassens, Shostakovich, Mayakovski, Lefebvre, Pratolini, Ostrovski, Sholokhov, and so on. When the warder had finished the inspection and locked the door, Carvalho waited for Cerdán to turn round before saying:

  ‘You really are the biggest son of a bitch.’

  Cerdán answered with a condescending smile. The kind of smile we use with people who, however much we do for them, will never quite reach our own level. A month later, Cerdán was moved to Burgos, and Carvalho could not avoid a final hug straight out of a Soviet film. Cerdán walked down the corridor with a commendably martial air, even though he had been forced to wear a huge, grey prison-suit stitched by stapler.

  In the paper which a stewardess gave him on the flight to Madrid, Carvalho read that Justo Cerdán had been questioned in connection with the murder of Fernando Garrido. There followed a biography of the PCE dissident, now a leader of the radical extra-parliamentary movements and a fierce critic of Garrido’s reformism. Although he was not thought to be directly implicated in the assassination, the man once groomed as Garrido’s successor apparently still had a strong influence on broad sections of the Party. It was therefore possible that the murder had involved an inner-Party conspiracy to break the sizeable mandate of a leader judged disastrous by the most left-wing sections of the organisation.

  He had been expecting a reception committee headed by some ex-worker turned Party-functionary, but he was actually met by two boys straight out of a punk-dress comedy. If they did not call him ‘dad’ or ‘man’ it was not for lack of inclination but because they had cautiously adapted themselves to their assignment from the leadership. It had been necessary to use them in order to throw the Anti-Terrorist Squad off the scent and to transfer any suspicion of the newcomer to the Drugs Squad. The young men tried to behave well and even suggested a bocata in the airport bar in case he had not had breakfast.

  ‘I prefer sharper poisons—ones that work faster.’

  Their sense of humour was quite different, separated from Carvalho’s by twenty years of linguistic degeneration. So he did not try out any Hollywood dialogue from the thirties or forties, but resorted to the kind of questions asked by a Japanese executive.

  ‘Fermín knows that,’ one of them answered.

  ‘No, you’d better ask Fede’s cousin.’

  ‘But he’s not in Castelló anymore.’[5]*

  ‘Ask him later, when we change cars.’

  The Bajaras motorway offered its architectural display to the traveller, condensing ten years of the nation’s complete confidence in its architects, such as had never before been granted to any similar priestly group. As it reached the Torres Blancas heights, the car turned sharply right and zigzagged between small vehicles full of mothers who had dyed themselves blonde in order to justify their children’s fair complexion.

  ‘Are all the children blonde in Madrid?’

  ‘I don’t know why everyone’s coming out the same.’

  ‘Some contamination.’

  ‘No doubt.’

  The car stopped.

  ‘Go into the snack-bar and you’ll see a girl sitting reading Diario 16. Tell her who you are and she’ll go with you.’

  The girl was eating a sandwich with a small glass of wine; not at all bothered that she was the only person sitting among a mass of breakfasters.

  ‘Did you have a good trip?’

  Their run in the SEAT–850 was the occasion for a pleasant chat about the rain that fell much less often in Madrid than when she had been a young girl. She had nice legs, even if a bit thin, and a fringe allowed her face to begin with two magnificent, ring-shadowed eyes, as plaintive as her thin, Audrey Hepburn figure accentuated by a black-and-lilac dress.

  ‘Which hotel did you book me into?’

  ‘One near the Opera, but I’m not taking you there. Santos is waiting in a private house.’

  The main slogan on the walls was: Comunistas, Asesinos.

  ‘The Fuerza Nueva spent the whole night painting those,’ she told Carvalho. ‘Yes, call me Carmela. Is the traffic this bad in Barcelona? You Catalans have a reputation as better drivers.’ It was a long time since anyone had referred to him as Catalan. ‘Barcelona’s different—like Europe. Isn’t that what they say?’

  ‘I didn’t think people said that anymore.’

  ‘Oh yes! Particularly if you talk with a Catalan. I don’t know why, but they do say it.’

  Carmela stopped the car outside a chalet on the Jarama road. She got out, looked right and left, and asked him to follow her through the iron-gate leading into a garden completely covered by the trunk and bare scaffolding of a willow tree. She said a few words to a man with slanting shoulders who was walking up and down the entrance-hall with his hands behind his back. She then climbed a granite stairway, so nimbly that Carvalho had to take two steps at a time to keep up with her. Behind the upholstered, gold-locked door, Santos was waiting together with an old strong-man who eyed Carvalho with the professional suspicion of a sergeant-major.

  ‘Señor Carvalho, may I present Julian Mir, our chief security man. We’ll just have a quick chat to fix things for the immediate future. Then Carmela will take you to the hotel, and we’ll start to move as soon as you give us word.’

  Carvalho wanted to see the scene of the murder, a ground plan of the Party centre, a chart of the seating arrangements at the central committee, and have all available information about everyone present on that day.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘That’s all for the moment.’

  ‘Before the morning’s over, I have to introduce you to the government contact-man between yourself and Fonseca. Nor will it be possible to avoid meeting Fonseca. You’ll travel around Madrid in Carmela’s car, accompanied by her alone, or so everyone will think. In fact, another car will be following you with two comrades. It’ll be the two who met you at the airport. You can’t see them from the window, but they’re parked up there round the corner. You can contact me or Julian through Carmela, at any time of the day or night. Here, that’s for your initial expenses.’

  Santos handed him an envelope, and Julian Mir asked him to sign a receipt for fifty thousand pesetas.

  ‘We’ll keep you a long way from Party headquarters. Apart from Fonseca’s boys, there are at least two or three parallel services sniffing around. We know about them from the government contact-man himself. Nothing can be done to stop them.’

  ‘Those people only stop strike pickets. That’s what they’re for.’

  Carvalho wondered whether Mir’s irritability was just a passing mood or part of his usual way of looking at an uncontrollable reality.

  ‘I was threatened over the phone. They didn’t say why, but it seems obvious.’

  Mir nodded, as if Carvalho’s words confirmed his earliest suppositions. Santos closed his eyelids in a gesture of agreement, and it was then that Carvalho noticed how white his hair had become.

  ‘Salvatella told me something about that over the phone.’

  ‘Something? No, he’ll have told you all. Who’s i
n the picture about what I’ll be doing?’

  ‘The secretariat of the executive committee. That is, six people in Madrid and Salvatella in Barcelona. Apart from Salvatella, who acted as a go-between, none of our comrades in the Catalan leadership has been informed.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘All our phones are tapped, now more than ever.’

  ‘The government?’ Mir complained.

  ‘Who knows? The government is more nervous than we are—at least it seems like it. I feel they have tightened up security and put an anti-coup plan into motion. Fernando’s murder could be a signal. Anyway, we haven’t mentioned your side of things on the phone. They must have followed us: that’s the only explanation. When they saw us get in touch with you, they must have guessed what we were up to.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘If we knew, we might have the answer to Fernando’s murder.’

  ‘I warned you,’ Mir shook his finger accusingly.

  ‘We took every precaution—just like when we were underground. Not that we thought our mission would remain a secret for long, but we hoped to gain enough time at least for you to reach Madrid without any problems. Don’t be too worried. Your escort will be armed. We even have authorisation from the government.’

  ‘This is all going to complicate the economic question.’

  Mir looked at him as if he were an exploiter of the working class. Santos, however, kept one of his eyes half-closed, trying to calculate how much Carvalho’s life was worth.

  ‘We’ll leave that until you present us with the bill. That shows we’re confident that we can pay and that you will live to receive the money.’

  ‘I don’t know where, but some years ago I read that you were optimistic people.’

  Santos did not allow the perfect exit and retorted just as Carvalho was leaving the room:

  ‘Anyway, remember that no one can look after you better than yourself.’

  ‘Tú, Carmela, who do you think killed the old man?’

  Carmela smiled with relief at her passenger’s use of the familiar tú.

  ‘Well, I don’t know, because we hadn’t been killing much lately. Things were getting a bit dull. A real drag, starting with all the parliamentary stuff. Do you understand?’

  The car proceeded down Calle Serrano. The numerous taxi-drivers assisted their advance by banging on their steering-wheel, while with the other hand they conducted a conversation with their fare. The girl’s driving was affected by her surfeit of tasks: to show that women are good drivers; to get Carvalho to his hotel as quickly as possible; and to check that the escort-car had not been caught at some traffic lights.

  ‘It’s real heavy weather being followed in this town. I’d like them to make an American gangster film in Madrid!’

  ‘Do you work at it full time?’

  ‘Do I look like a professional taxi-driver?’

  ‘No, I mean a Party full-timer.’

  ‘Well, I get thirty-six thousand pesetas a month for full days and occasional nights, with no guaranteed holidays, no benefits and so far no social security. If you call that being a full-timer, I guess I am one. Sometimes I also stick up posters for nothing and lend them the kid.’

  ‘What kid?’

  ‘My son. He can be carried, and I take him along to all the demonstrations in favour of divorce and abortion. So they can see on telly we also have babies when we have to.’

  ‘Does the little one mind?’

  ‘He copes with everything. Like when I take him to a demo against squid rolls and what he likes are frankfurters. No, but seriously. . .’

  She turned back to the realm of historic responsibilities. With her grave eyes and a voice like that of the tsar’s messenger, Mikhail Strogov, she said to Carvalho:

  ‘I work at the central committee, and I’ve been given this job so that everything should look more normal.’

  She was wearing some whitish tights, as if to flesh out her almost over-slim legs, or to cover blue-veined branches like those which showed through the translucent skin stuck to her cheek-bones. Almost forcibly stuck, one would say, so that room should remain for her well-painted excessive eyes, swallowing up an inevitably small nose, and a pair of cheeks which, when she smiled, had to ask the mouth’s permission before leaving a thick furrow tight as a bow string down to lips that were continually being moistened by a small tongue. A shop-window full of cheeses replaced Carmela’s face. At the end of the street, the square on the right was dominated by the squat torso and tall legs of the Opera building, one shoulder higher than the other and undoubtedly narrow in compass.

  ‘Escalinata,’ Carvalho muttered as the car reached the steps leading to Calle Escalinata.

  ‘You know it?’

  ‘I had some friends there many years ago. A painter, his patroness and her daughter, just arrived from Egypt.’

  ‘It’s getting interesting. Was the girl a mummy?’

  ‘No, she was a flamenco dancer. She specialised in sevillanas, which were much liked in Egypt.’

  Lost in thought, Beethoven showed not the slightest intention of waving from the plaster perch where he stood like an animal in a music-shop window. The road opened on to the Plaza de Oriente, with its enveloping Goya-like skies, but only for an instant. For Carmela then circled the back of the Opera and reached the square, pointing her car towards the billboard for Kramer versus Kramer.

  ‘There’s your hotel. To start with, we booked you a room for a week. It’s under the name of Selecciones Progreso, Ltd, not the Party. Look, it’s very difficult to wait for you here in the car.’

  ‘Don’t wait for me.’

  ‘Not on your life! You’re my responsibility, and anyway they’re following us.’

  ‘I’d like to visit the memorial chapel.’

  ‘There’s no chapel, pal. The Party is said to have priests and even bishops, but we don’t yet set up memorial chapels for general secretaries.’

  ‘I’ll just drop off my suitcase. Do a trip round the block.’

  The Hotel Opera blended the neatly bricked dignity of an English or Dutch hotel with the historical collage of the square. The exterior did not have the somewhat dusty ochre of Aragon brickwork, but resembled the new houses in Amsterdam, Rotterdam or Chelsea which seek to simplify volume without losing the visual rhythms of traditional architecture or falling into the sharp visual intolerance of concrete. The hotel formed a corner that offered apologies to declining neo-classicism and particularly the hunchbacked Opera palace, which looked more like a storehouse for Vopo electric truncheons on the Unter den Linden. He left his case with a bellboy, who seemed rather unsure of the day ahead, and returned to the warmth of the car and Carmela.

  ‘There was going to be trouble if you didn’t come back. Those two saw me set off round the block and started flashing their lights. I told them to get lost. They could have thought a bit more or have had some respect for another’s initiative. So, it’s to the memorial chapel, as you put it?’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘We didn’t have anywhere suitable on hand. Nearly all our places are in blocks of flats—you can imagine the rumpus there would have been. So we’ve been given the entrance-hall to the Cortes. I’ll drop you off and wait in the Plaza de Casanova, just on the corner of Carrera de San Jeronimo. But don’t stand in the queue, because you won’t get through in time and we have two appointments this morning.’

  She circled the Opera again and drove into the heavy, Frenchified Plaza de Oriente. As a check to French stylistic dominance, the street separating the edges of the palace and the square had been called Calle Bailén, its function being to watch, question and cancel out the palace. The route along the Gran Vía, Alcalá and the Paseo del Prado displayed all the normality of city life, hardly affected by the police jeeps and armoured coaches parked at every major intersection on the Plaza España, the Callao and the Red de San Luis.

  ‘A lot of cops, eh?’

  ‘They’ve formed a ring round the Cortes in case some extremi
sts try to stir things up.’

  Carvalho got down and walked uphill towards the dark lions that framed the entrance to the Cortes palace. He kept parallel to the line of mourners forced to hug the façades at the constant urging of the police. A sergeant caught him by the arm and took him to one side, aggressively insisting that he could not remain in front of the staircase but must either join the queue or go away. From the pavement on the other side of the street, he saw the queue as an animal moving compact into the palace and leaving with its skeleton shattered, as if something had happened inside the building to break its cohesion. Nothing missing: not the tears, nor the stiff posture of scornful yet curious onlookers, not the semblance of being there in passing or by chance.

  ‘What have they got there?’ asked one sharp-eyes with enormous hair-filled nostrils.

  ‘Communion hosts.’

  He lowered his nostrils and drew his teeth back into his mouth. An official black car stopped and let out an ex-minister of culture. All around were microphones and hovering notebooks from which Señor de la Cierva’s mighty senatorial head emerged; probably declaring that, in spite of all the political rivalry, he still recognised the great loss.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked sharp-eyes, this time in the hope of really finding out and regaining the friendly attention of the caustic stranger.

  ‘A ghost from the past.’

  ‘You should say: “I’ve come to pick up my passport—Señor Plasencia is expecting me.” They’ll take you straight up.’

  Anyone with the slightest knowledge of its functions, past, present and future, is always impressed in passing through the gates of the State Security Office. But if the guard clicks his heels at the statement, “I’ve come to pick up my passport—Señor Plasencia is expecting me,” then a royal mantle immediately falls over one’s shoulders and the halberdiers seem to shout the echoing announcement: Pepe Carvalho. . .Pepe. . .Carvalho. Looking over his glasses, Señor Plasencia rubbed his chilblained hands and led him away from the bustling offices, where clerks quizzed the sports pages of the morning papers and someone was asking: ‘Do we have diplomatic relations with Outer Mongolia?’