by John Wilson
I looked at Laia; we both nodded.
“Excellent,” Chad said as we sat. “First, what would you like to drink?”
“Kas,” Laia and I said.
“Okay,” Chad said. “While I get them, you should probably read this. It was taped underneath the soccer ball.” He handed me an envelope. There was nothing written on it. Laia and I moved closer together, and I carefully lifted the flap and pulled out two sheets of paper. Both pages were covered with tight, neat writing that sent a shiver through me even before I read the first word. This was a letter from Grandfather.
I have no idea who will read this, if anyone, but if you are standing in the Spanish sunshine, wondering why you have just found a soccer ball inside a Roman mine, you deserve some kind of an explanation.
It is unlikely that you have stumbled across this; therefore, you have followed a trail of clues to reach this point. I intend to leave clues to this and to other aspects of my complex and secret life in a secure place. If that is how you have found this, then I will be long dead, and I offer you my posthumous congratulations. If your code name is that of a Russian writer, then I say—too late.
There was a time in 1938 when I was convinced I could never return to Spain, but now, in 1975, with Franco on his deathbed, I find I am back for the third time. I passed briefly through during the Second World War, I was here in 1966, and now I am back. Of course, I have never been back as myself. During the war I had no identity; I was a shadow passing through the landscape by night. The other two visits have been as Pedro Martinez.
For those of us who survived Spain in the 1930s, it was hard to give up the fight. Some, like Kim Philby—whom I met in 1938 outside Barcelona when he was, supposedly, a reporter and I was about to be repatriated—had already chosen sides and simply continued the secret work they were doing. Others, like my fellow survivor Bob and myself, were less certain. The world after Hitler and Mussolini were defeated was a complex place. I missed the certainty of what we had fought for in Spain, and however hard I searched, I could find no cause that promised a better world. I was approached by the Soviets, but by then I knew a little of what Stalin had done to those who disagreed with him, so I turned them down.
Several months after that, Bob came to visit me. He told me that the Soviets had approached him as well and that he had accepted their offer. He asked if I would work beside him. Again I said no.
The very next day, I was visited by an American, a rather brash young man, who suggested that I keep in loose contact with Bob, but that I work for him. We talked a long time, and he was very persuasive, presenting the work I would do not as picking one side or the other, but rather as finding and using information to maintain a balance in the world. He said it was futile to try and make the world a better place, and that the best we could hope for was to stop it from getting any worse. I thought long and hard before I accepted his suggestion, and I drew the line at becoming a full double agent, but I guess I liked the idea of being in touch with both sides. Of course, it never worked out as simply as I had expected, and every job I did had its own issues and drew me deeper and deeper into this strange secret life I find myself in now.
In any case, shortly after Christmas of 1965, I was contacted by my young friend and told that I had to go back to Spain. He had word of a plot to sabotage a plane carrying nuclear weapons. Despite my identity as Pedro Martinez, I was very nervous, but I went. I met our information source in Spain and for the first time learned of Gorky and his network. I didn’t agree with the American nuclear policy, but what Gorky was trying to do was madness. I came and based myself in Palomares in hopes that Gorky would show himself. I could think of nothing else to do.
Every day, I came into the hills to watch the B-52s refueling, and the rest of my time I spent traveling around, listening, trying to find the slightest hint of who Gorky was or where he might be. I talked with everyone I met, including the shepherds in the hills. I learned many fascinating stories, one of which led me to the ancient mine where you discovered the ball.
Unfortunately, my attempts to prevent the sabotage failed. The planes did blow up and the bombs fell—thank God they didn’t explode. Some of the bombs did, however, break apart, and the plutonium core from one landed close by. Knowing Gorky was somewhere nearby and would do anything to obtain this weapon, I hid it in the mine.
I didn’t know who I could trust. Remember, these were very paranoid times. We all thought we were on the brink of destroying the world. Children used to practice hiding under their desks for when the bombs dropped. There were books and films about an accident or a mistake triggering nuclear war. I didn’t want the bomb I had found to fall into the wrong hands.
After I hid the bomb, I left Palomares quickly. The area was crawling with police and American soldiers, and the chances of my real identity being discovered were too great. However, I did take a risk. I went to Barcelona and visited Maria. I told her what I had done. That was probably a mistake, but seeing her again after all those years was wonderful. We talked all night. She said that I should leave the bomb hidden so that it could never be used by anyone. She said that it would be a tiny piece of good I could do to make the world a better place. I agreed. I think that night, seeing Maria again, I would have agreed to turn myself in to Franco’s police if she had asked me.
I left Maria as the sun was rising, and it was the hardest thing I have ever done. But I had to get out of Spain, and I had a wife and family back in Canada. Why is it that life leaves so many loose ends? But I am wallowing in nostalgia and becoming maudlin. This will be of little interest to you, whoever you may be, so I must complete my tale.
After I crossed the Spanish border, reported to the young American and told him the whole story, omitting only that I had hidden the bomb, I returned to Canada and had as much of a normal life as I could manage in those strange days.
As the years passed, Gorky’s name cropped up from time to time. I realized that when he was not on the run from the Americans, he was hunting me. There could be only one reason: the bomb. Somehow he had discovered its existence and thought I knew its location. Now it was too dangerous to leave it in the cave. I resurrected Pedro Martinez and came back to Spain. I will replace the bomb with the soccer ball and this note, place the bomb close to Morón Air Base and phone in an anonymous tip. The Americans will no doubt dispose of the bomb quietly. There are no more nuclear-armed B-52s in the sky—we have more efficient ways of killing each other now.
I don’t know how much of this, if any, will make sense to you, but I need to set the story down. I will write other things down in other places in case the day ever comes when I have to justify any of the things I have done.
I will return home now and devote my time to my family. They, after all, are what is truly important. I will not visit Maria again.
David McLean
TWENTY-ONE
Laia and I sat and stared at the letter long after we had finished reading. I had choked up. Grandfather was telling me another piece of his life. I knew he had no idea when he wrote it that I would be the one to read it, but that didn’t matter. It was still him talking to me.
“It’s not fair,” I said. “Why is it only after he dies that I get to know Grandfather and the extraordinary things he did?”
Laia reached over and squeezed my hand. “He was an amazing man,” she said. “I wonder what the others are finding out about him.”
I sniffed loudly and looked up from the letter. Chad had returned with our drinks and was sitting across from me, a faint smile on his lips. He looked different, older, more relaxed, like an actor who has finished a role and taken off a mask. “Who are you?” I asked.
Chad’s smile broadened, emphasizing the wrinkles around his eyes. “I’m the brash young man your grandfather mentions in the letter.” Even his voice was different—deeper, more mature.
“You’re not old enough,” I blurted out. When I’d met Chad in the plane, I had guessed he was in his fifties or sixties, whic
h would have made him a teenager in 1966, and Grandfather had been recruited by the young man sometime before that.
“In my business, you never retire. There are too many loose ends that can come back to haunt you. So I keep myself in shape, and since I’m afraid my one weakness is vanity”—Chad pulled the skin around his eyes until the wrinkles disappeared—“I have had some chemical and surgical help. I’m not going to see seventy again.”
“What is your business, exactly?” Laia asked. “You’re not an investment counselor or an international real-estate advisor.”
“You’re correct, I am neither of those things, although I pride myself on the depth of knowledge I have picked up over the years in both those fields. Broadly, I am an employee of the American government. I would rather not go into details, as I am sure you understand, but if I can rely on your discretion, I can fill you in on some background pertaining to your grandfather.”
Both Laia and I nodded.
“Excellent. I was what’s called a child prodigy—I was reading Shakespeare at age four and performing calculus by age seven, that sort of thing. My parents were well-off, so I was pushed through a very expensive, very high-powered education program. I completed a university degree at fifteen and my doctorate at eighteen. I take no credit for this—my brain is merely a freak of nature. Learning just comes easily to me. What I really wanted was to become an actor like Marlon Brando or Humphrey Bogart, but my achievements had attracted attention. I was approached by the US government and persuaded to work for them. They made it sound important and interesting, and gave me the impression that it would only be for a few years. Of course, that last bit was a lie.”
A look of regret flashed across Chad’s face, and I wondered what he could have done if the government hadn’t got its claws into him. I was certain he lived with that question every day.
“One of my first tasks was to meet with David McLean and see if he would work for us. I managed to persuade him—and in the process learned that acting was in fact a large part of what I would be required to do. No Oscar nominations though.” Chad’s smile returned fleetingly. “I enjoyed working with your grandfather very much. He was an intelligent man, and I have always admired that. David McLean required good, rational reasons for everything he did. Some of the people I hired simply required a paycheck at the end of each month. Bob was one of those.”
“Bob!” I said. “The Bob who was with Grandfather in Spain and worked for Gorky?”
“The very same.”
“He was a double agent?”
“And a very good one,” Chad said. “Unfortunately, he was betrayed by someone—we think it may have been Kim Philby—and died in a mysterious car crash. Gorky’s network was not as tight as he would like to think; a number of our agents infiltrated it.”
“Was Maria one?” Laia interrupted.
Chad shook his head. “We approached her, of course, but she was a very strong woman with a clear moral code, and she refused. I think she used Gorky much more than he did her.” Chad smiled, as if remembering a pleasant experience. “However, you may recognize another of our agents, Arturo.”
“The saboteur at Morón Air Base?” I asked.
“There was no saboteur at Morón.”
“But the planes exploded,” Laia said.
“Gorky did have a plan,” Chad explained, “but Arturo told us about it. I sent your grandfather down to see if he could find out who was supplying the explosives and see if it would lead us to Gorky. He was becoming too dangerous, so we decided to close him down.”
I wondered what exactly close him down meant, but I said, “Except Grandfather failed. There was a bomb on the plane.”
“He did not find Gorky, that’s true, but there was no bomb on the plane. The explosion above Palomares was simply what everyone said it was: a terrible accident. We think the tanker got too close and the fuel line punctured the skin of the B-52 behind the cockpit, causing the explosion that took both planes down.”
I stared at Chad. Was he telling the truth? There was no way to know. He had taken his interest in becoming an actor seriously. “What about the lost bomb?” I asked.
“We could never work out what had happened to the plutonium core from bomb number three. We calculated that it should have landed in the hills, but extensive searches never turned it up. Eventually, we assumed it must have become entangled in one of the parachutes and drifted out to sea. We gave up searching for it. We did not know that David had visited Maria on the way home from Palomares and that she had persuaded him to leave the bomb a secret. Nor did we know that Gorky had visited Maria the next day and that she had let slip the bomb’s existence. We thought Gorky and his network were neutralized, but in reality, he was searching for the bomb and becoming more fanatical and obsessed every year.
“I became involved in other things, most of which had nothing to do with David McLean. The events of that January in Spain faded. As I said, one never retires in this business, but you do ease off with age. Earlier this year, I was on a beach in Florida when I received a phone call from your grandfather. We chatted about old times and he told me about you seven boys and the plans he had for you.” Chad was smiling broadly as he talked about Grandfather. “It was so typical of him to give you all mysterious envelopes. Anyway, he ended the conversation by telling me about hiding the bomb in the hills. I was horrified and asked him where it was. He laughed and said that I probably had a better idea than he did. Then he hung up.
“I was confused and traveled up to Canada to ask him what he meant. I didn’t think there was a tearing rush. But there was. I arrived the day after David McLean died. With him died the location of the bomb.
“Of course, I realize now what happened. Your grandfather assumed I knew that the bomb had been returned to Morón Air Base, hence his comment about me knowing where it was. Trouble was, the Air Force never told anyone about retrieving the bomb; they simply disposed of it in our storage facility in the Utah desert. I guess they didn’t want an embarrassing incident from the past brought up and had no idea it might be important. So, there I was, convinced there was still a nuclear bomb hidden in the hills above Palomares. That’s where you come in.”
“How?” I asked.
“After David died, I set up surveillance on you and your cousins.”
“You what?” I almost shouted. “I was being watched all this time? That’s illegal!”
Chad laughed. “I’m sorry,” he said when he had finished, “but after what I’ve told you, do you think legality is a large part of the work I do? In any case”—he held up a hand before I could launch in again—“no one was watching you; we simply followed your movements by putting tags on your passport number and bank-card use. It’s quite easy.
“We did take more notice when we saw that your envelope was bringing you to Spain and”—Chad looked at Laia—“when we saw you were meeting Maria’s great-granddaughter, we did crank up the interest level a bit. Interest faded when we discovered you weren’t coming anywhere near Palomares—by the way, I would love to read your grandfather’s journal one day—but you remained on our radar. When we saw you were coming back to Spain, I booked the seat beside you on the last leg of your flight and arranged the meeting with Felip to see if we could get you here and find out anything.
“We knew Gorky was still alive and living in Almería. He was harmless as long as the bomb remained hidden, so we let him be. Yesterday, after you two went off to look for where the bombs landed, Felip told me a bit about the mysterious codes you were following. I guessed immediately what they must be, and I had a problem: Palomares is a small town, and Gorky might find out what was going on. I decided to pre-empt him.”
Chad stopped talking and looked down at the table. He looked almost guilty, not a feeling I associated with him. “What happened then?” I encouraged him.
Chad looked up. “I phoned Gorky and told him what was going on.”
It took me a moment to work out what that meant. “You told hi
m we were here and knew where the bomb was?” I almost yelled, realizing that Chad’s phone call was how the guy on the red scooter had found us and how Gorky had managed to kidnap us. “You could have got us killed!”
“It was supposed to be under control,” Chad said miserably. Was his guilt an act as well? I was furious.
“Well, it wasn’t under control, was it?” I said, banging my fist on the table. The barman glanced over at us.
Chad shrugged. “I did try to take precautions. When I bumped into you last night, I’d just finished adding sugar to the red scooter’s gas tank. I figured that would slow them down a bit.”
“So that’s how Lucio lost us,” I said. “He couldn’t follow us up the hill until he had fixed his scooter.”
“We were going to track you using your GPS signal,” Chad went on. “When Gorky contacted you, we could move in. That way we would have the bomb and Gorky.”
“But we didn’t take the GPS with us this morning,” Laia said. “Felip had it.”
“Exactly,” Chad agreed. “We lost you in the hills—until you made a cell-phone call.”
“I didn’t…oh, the pocket-dial to DJ,” I said. “You were monitoring my cell phone. When I rolled over in the van and speed-dialed DJ by mistake, you could zero in on the signal.”
Chad nodded. “We lost the signal soon after, but by then the chopper was in the air and we had a fairly close location for you. You must have just gone into the mine when we came over the hill—the cavalry to the rescue,” he added weakly. “Only Lucio and Gorky tried to put up any kind of fight, and that didn’t last long. I’m sorry Gorky had a heart attack,” Chad said as if talking about an old friend. “I should very much like to have had a conversation with him.”
