The Exile

by Mark Oldfield

  ‘I’ll take the little one, you stay here, Ana.’

  It was Mendez, wearing a Kevlar vest over her uniform. Galíndez watched her take the girls over to where Mercedes and Capitán Fuentes were waiting by their car, faces pale and drawn in the glare of the fire.

  Galíndez watched the reunion from a distance. I’m fine, just a sore throat.

  Mendez came back with a plastic bottle of water. ‘You need to give a statement.’

  ‘The boss,’ Galíndez croaked, her throat raw. ‘I want him to know I tried my best to protect the girls.’ She swallowed the cold water, hoping it would ease the pain in her throat. It didn’t. ‘I need to tell them.’

  Mendez grabbed her arm and pulled her back. ‘Don’t, not now.’ Dazed, Galíndez tried to push past but Mendez stood in her way and took Galíndez’s face in her hands. ‘Listen to me, Ana, they don’t want to talk to you.’

  ‘I understand.’ Galíndez blinked, not understanding. ‘Maybe later?’

  Mendez steered her to the patrol car and pushed her into the passenger seat.

  ‘Why are they looking at me like that?’ Galíndez asked as Mendez started the engine.

  ‘The body count, Ana. There’s at least seven dead. Guys don’t expect this from a woman. Especially not a forense like you.’

  ‘I did my best,’ Galíndez muttered.

  ‘You did something.’ Mendez hit the siren to clear their way to the gate.

  As they went up the drive, Galíndez saw the Fuentes family, still standing by their car, staring at her, their faces blank. As if she was a stranger.

  27

  OROITZ, OCTOBER 1954

  The mid-morning sun patterned the mountainside as Guzmán parked the Hispano Suiza near the village. Overnight, much of the snow had melted and the trees and bushes glittered. He scowled, furious at the unpredictable weather as he slung the sniper rifle over his shoulder and drew the Browning to check the action. Together with the big trench knife strapped to his leg, he had all he needed to deal with El Lobo. He’d killed men with less.

  He left the village behind, following the dirt path that meandered through dense thickets of gorse and broom up to the fortress. The bright sun forced him to squint and, because of that, he almost failed to see the sudden flicker of light near one of the derelict buildings in the distance. He saw it again, a brief repetitive sequence of stuttering flashes. Morse code directed to an unseen observer in the valley below. He’d been right, then. There was someone up there.

  As he continued up the steep path, Guzmán thought once again about Nieves Arestigui, and once again his thoughts troubled him. When he looked at her, it was as if Arantxa had come back to haunt him in the flesh, just as she’d haunted his dreams after the war. It was not the manner of her death that disturbed him, too many people had died around him – or because of him – for death to have any great importance. It was the question she planted that still troubled him seventeen years later.

  Maybe she wanted to fuck him up. You could never tell with her. Volatile, that was what one of her clients had called her. Guzmán had called her many things, depending on his mood – and hers. After all this time, he still remembered her words after they’d captured her. Standing with her amid the shattered buildings of the village, each recovering from this mutually surprising encounter. Wondering how it might affect them.

  You’re the smart one, chico. You work it out. The question tossed to him like a grenade.

  Work it out. For all he knew, she’d said that to many of the men who’d been her clients. But she had shared something more with Guzmán than those furtive transactions in the field brothel. Arantxa had been many things but she had not been a liar. And smart or not, it was easy enough to calculate the time between his last visit to her bed and the child’s birth. Though Arantxa hadn’t confirmed it one way or the other. She’d just planted the question and left his imagination to do the rest. Not that it had changed anything. She’d died anyway.

  And even if Nieves was his daughter, so what? Seventeen years on, what could he do, claim her as his long-lost child and take her back to Madrid? As if she would welcome having a father who worked in the Policía Secreta. He’d already heard the way she talked about ‘fascists’. She meant people like him. He couldn’t even talk to her about her mother. What could he say? Your mama was a whore. She let me have credit when I was broke. Nieves would hardly thank him for that posthumous revelation.

  But there were other, better things he could tell her. She could have betrayed me when she was captured but didn’t. She fought and died for a cause she believed in. Those were things Nieves would be proud of, no doubt. He would certainly omit the worst thing of all, the memory that still stalked his dreams. She asked for my help and I let her down. His breathing grew faster at the memory of it. Seventeen years on and the memory of it still burned inside him. He hadn’t let her down. General Torres had moved the execution forward, wanting to show he was in command. Whoever had carried out the killings even used the sword the Moors engraved with Guzmán’s name. He remembered walking towards the building when he returned from patrol, seeing his sword lying in the grass, smeared with blood. Reaching down for it. And then the sound of footsteps as Ochoa came running up from the cellar, clutching his camera, pale-faced, his eyes widening as he saw Guzmán holding the sword. His scream ringing in the chill air before he fled, spewing. You fucking murderer.

  Things had happened fast that night. No sooner had he left that dank cellar, strewn with the corpses of the anarchists, than Torres announced his posting had been brought forward: he was to leave immediately for General Mellado’s column in the south. There was no arguing: the papers came from Franco’s HQ. Twenty minutes later, Guzmán was in a staff car, driving past the labourers sealing up the cellar to conceal the slaughter from the visiting journalists.

  Guzmán had been powerless to help Arantxa. He’d tried and yet everything had seemed to conspire against him. What hurt most was that his plan to free her and the child failed. He had grown too used to having his own way. Not that he had seen fit to share any of that with Ochoa back then and he had no intention of doing so now. Enlisted men had no right to challenge their superiors.

  He paused to light another Bisonte. It was time to put aside his tainted memories. Very likely El Lobo was up in that ruined fortress. If he was, Guzmán had to kill him. There wouldn’t be another chance, not after losing five million of someone else’s money. Even if he wasn’t shot, the price of failure would be professional and social obliteration as he fell through the net of patronage and reciprocal dependencies that held the establishment together. He would fall so far that for the rest of his life he would be something else, something unspeakable. He would be poor.

  He threw down his cigarette and ground the butt into the earth with his heel, disturbed by this line of thought. The dead were dead, little use worrying about them now. As for him, he was Guzmán. He was what he always had been. A survivor. So far at least.

  OROITZ 1954, MENDIKO RIDGE

  Sargento León lay hidden in the gorse, angrily chewing a stalk of grass. This enforced inactivity left him with nothing to do but think and his thoughts were disturbing at the best of times. The more he brooded, the more angry he became, reflecting on a catalogue of grievances both serious and trivial, visualising diverse forms of revenge on those who had offended him. And of those, there were many.

  Throughout the morning, León had worked his way down the hillside, crawling through the sharp scrub, tormented by the flies swarming over the cow pats scattered in the grass. Once night fell, he planned to slip into the village and steal a horse. Then he would ride to the border, though with a long diversion south to avoid Çubiry territory. Once across, he would make for Lourdes or Tarbes. He could find work there, he was sure. Maybe he would learn French. It had to be easy: even the children could speak it.

  León held his breath, suddenly aware of rustling grass and the sound of rapid breathing. Someone was coming up the dirt path towards
him. Just one person, walking fast, from the sound of it. That was good. Someone alone was not a problem for a man with his violent skills. He raised his pistol, peering through the shrubs at the trail as the footsteps came nearer and passed within two metres of his hiding place. He saw a swinging black skirt and white, rope-soled alpargatas, their red laces tied around firm tanned calves. As the woman continued up the hill, León rose from the bushes, his eyes glinting with malice as he weighed things up, balancing the risk to himself against other, more base desires. The calculation took only a second. Carefully, he made his way through the gorse and started up the trail, following Nieves Arestigui.

  OROITZ 1954, FORTALEZA DE ZUMALACÁRREGUI

  The trail petered out a hundred metres from the old fortress. Ahead, lines of crumbling defence works sprawled across the hillside. At the centre of the ramparts was an arched gateway, its wooden gates long gone, the great fallen stones of the arch lying shattered on the ground nearby. He passed through the ruined portal and paused by a large opening in the rocks, edged with brick and smooth carved stone. A long tunnel stretched away into darkness. At the far end he saw an oblique patch of faint light

  He unslung the rifle and went into the tunnel, making for the light at the far end. He emerged on a long gun terrace cut into the hillside, where rusting cannons stared out across the lonely countryside as they had for the last hundred years. Along the rear of the terrace several regularly spaced supply tunnels led to the arsenal deep inside the mountain, guaranteeing a steady supply of ammunition to the guns. Or would have if this isolated stronghold had ever been attacked. But no enemy ever had need to lay siege to it. Instead, it had been ignored and bypassed, making it a vain and futile monument to bad planning, worthy of Franco himself.

  Guzmán took out his Zippo and snapped it into flame as he entered a tunnel halfway along the terrace. Along the walls, a long row of iron rings had been set into the stone just above head height, for the ropes of ammunition carts, he guessed. Bats fluttered out of the darkness, dark whispers whirling past his face. He walked cautiously through the strange, muffled silence, sensing the vast weight of the mountain overhead. And then, behind him, a sudden creaking followed by the sound of falling stones and debris rattling down onto the floor of the tunnel. He turned and lifted the lighter. Though a vague cloud of dust he saw scattered debris along the floor of the passage. Above the debris the curved ceiling sagged, spilling thin streams of dirt and powdered rock through growing cracks in the rough-hewn stone.

  He continued down the tunnel, feeling cold air on his face, a silent chill draught that troubled the flame of his lighter, forcing him to pause and shield it with his cupped hand. That pause was fortunate, he realised as he looked down at the gaping drop a few paces ahead. A length of the tunnel floor had collapsed, opening up a deep chasm some twenty metres long between him and the next section of the tunnel. When he leaned forward, in an attempt to see the bottom of the crevasse, a stream of cold air from below extinguished the flame.

  Behind him, he heard again the sound of grating rock and flurries of pulverised stone. From the sound of it, the tunnel roof might come down at any moment. That left him no choice but to continue on into the mountain towards the arsenal.

  Guzmán looked again at the chasm in front of him. The collapse of the tunnel floor had left nothing, no slight ledge at either side where he might gain a foothold. He stared at the smooth curved stone walls, his eyes settling on the line of rusted iron rings extending along the tunnel. It was possible, he supposed. Possible, though not desirable. There was no guarantee the rings would take the weight of a man. His deliberations were cut short as a further small avalanche of broken stones tumbled down into the tunnel behind him.

  Guzmán reached up and seized an iron ring with each hand. He hung from them, making sure they could bear his weight. When both rings survived that test, he launched himself to one side, grabbing a ring further to his left, then bringing his right over to grab the next before reaching out with his left hand again.

  It was laborious work, made worse by the weight of the rifle. Within minutes, his fingers knotted from grasping the rusty iron, and soon after, the muscles of his forearms began tightening in painful spasms. If his arms cramped, he might not reach the far side of the crevasse. He was carrying too much weight, he realised. The rifle would have to go.

  Guzmán let go of one of the rings. Sweat stung his eyes and he grunted at the effort of supporting his weight with one hand as he tried to shake the rifle strap from his shoulder without sending himself plunging into the chasm.

  Finally, the rifle slipped from his shoulder and moments later he heard a sharp clatter as it hit the rocks below. He took a deep breath and continued. He was perhaps ten metres away from the next section of the tunnel, he guessed. That spurred him on as he grasped the next ring and continued his painful journey. And then, as he swung himself along, his outstretched foot hit stone. He shook sweat from his eyes, cursing the pain in his arms and wrists. Another two more rings and he would be across. He reached out, teeth clenched as he extended his arm, running his fingers over the stone, searching for the next handhold. Cramp burned across his shoulders as he hung by one hand, trying to find the iron ring with the other. Something was wrong, he realised as his fingers touched the rough holes where the bolts holding the ring in place had once been. There was only so long a man could support his own weight like this and he twisted and turned, swinging back and forth, creating new geometries of pain in his tortured muscles as he built up the momentum to fling himself forward towards the broken lip of the gaping hole, digging his fingers into the stone as he dragged himself up into the tunnel. A flurry of obscenities followed as he kneaded his forearms, forcing blood through the muscles. And then his cursing was interrupted as a distant sound cut through the darkness, resonating in brittle echoes off the stone walls around him. The sound of footsteps.

  OROITZ 1954, MENDIKO RIDGE

  The oil lamp swung in her hand as Nieves approached the fortress. High above, the pinnacle of Mari’s Peak towered into a hazy sky as she whispered the name of the goddess, invoking her protection, confident Mari would come to her aid, because her cause was just. She came seeking justice for Patxi Gabilondo.

  Nieves made for the entrance, negotiating her way over irregular piles of fallen stones. The carved gateway loomed over her, its lintel cracked and sagging under the eternal weight of the mountain. She took a box of wax cerillas from her pocket and lit the lantern before entering the tunnel. She walked slowly, distracted, as she planned what she would say to El Lobo when she confronted him. It had seemed a good plan when she’d left home. She was less sure of that now.

  A few metres further on, she stopped as she heard faint echoes, growing louder as they reverberated down the tunnel towards her. Even a country girl like Nieves could recognise the sound of gunfire and she slowed to avoid making a noise, wondering who was doing the shooting. She was still wondering that as the man came out of the shadows behind her, clamping his hand over her mouth, his other arm wrapping around her body, pulling her close against him. The lamp clattered to the ground

  ‘Keep quiet.’ León’s breath stank of garlic and sour wine. Her heart pounding, Nieves fought desperately to break free, though against León’s strength there was never much chance of that. As she struggled, she called for help, the repetitive cadences of her voice echoing around her in the tunnel as León wrestled her to the ground.

  Once León had pinned her down, it was easy to twist her arm behind her back, securing his hold on her. By way of emphasis, he pressed the muzzle of his service revolver against her head, muttering dark threats.

  ‘Don’t try anything,’ he muttered, ‘just walk. Try to get away and you’ll suffer.’

  Nieves obeyed. His grip was so tight there was no chance of her breaking away. She would have to wait. Perhaps there would be a way out of this. The thought there might not be made her shiver.

  ‘Cold, Niña?’ León muttered. ‘I’ll warm you up s
oon, don’t you worry. Now, let’s get moving.’

  Nieves had no choice. She began walking down the tunnel, wincing at León’s fierce grip on her arm.

  OROITZ 1954, FORTALEZA DE ZUMALACÁRREGUI

  Guzmán listened as the echoes of Nieves’ cries receded into silence. He glowered, angry that she had put herself in danger and angry that he had no way of finding her in the warren of tunnels running through the fortress. He continued along the tunnel, aware of soft echoes ahead, like the sound of autumn leaves. Ten metres away, the tunnel ended. Beyond that, he saw the pale wavering light of torches. Someone was expecting company. Crouching in the mouth of the tunnel, he peered into the huge cavern that had once served as the fort’s arsenal. He had no idea who might be in there along with El Lobo. Dozens of heavily armed Çubiry, for all he knew. One thing he did know: if he had to get out of the cavern in a hurry, he didn’t want to use this tunnel again. He reached down, picked up a stone and scratched a large X on the wall as a reminder to avoid this route.

  He stepped out into a dank silence, broken by the rustle of bats and the slow drip of water from the cavern roof. At the far side of this vast stone chamber he saw a stack of long wooden crates stacked in neat rows. New crates too. Brand new. A delivery from the Çubiry to El Lobo, without doubt. Cautiously, he went over to examine them. The labels all carried the crest of the Military Governor. The weapons were from General Mellado’s armoury. At the other side of the cavern he saw a cluster of great carved stone tables heaped with pyramids of cannon balls, their bulbous outline now muted by a century of cobwebs. Above the tables a long gallery had been carved into the wall of the cavern and from it burning torches threw a fitful, disorienting light over the cavern floor, picking out the large well at its centre, the buckets and pulleys hanging lopsided and rotten from a crooked gantry.