The Crowded Grave

by Martin Walker

  Carlos claimed to know, from agents inside ETA, that a furious debate was raging in the ETA leadership as to whether or not to give up the military campaign and declare a cease-fire with Spain. That debate was close to being won by the moderate side, he insisted.

  “But the hard-liners have one asset: the active service unit we have failed to penetrate. Again for internal ETA reasons, this terrorist unit needs a success, and we believe that tomorrow’s summit is its prime target. This is the team we need to neutralize, in order to swing that ETA debate the right way,” he said, pausing for effect.

  Then Carlos drew himself up to his full height and placed his hand upon his heart. He looked the very picture of sincerity, thought Bruno, who could not make up his mind whether to believe all this or not. Glancing at Isabelle beside him, Bruno could see her lips pursed in a way that he knew meant she was skeptical. Carlos seemed to sense their doubtful mood and rose to the challenge like an accomplished actor.

  “Please understand that the stakes for my government could not be higher,” he said. “We have a chance to finally put an end to a war that has been under way for nearly fifty years and whose roots go a long way further back. I’m instructed to tell you that this is a matter of the highest national priority, which is why my minister has authorized all my actions. Thank you.”

  With a final searching look at the brigadier, Carlos sat down and closed his eyes, putting two fingers to the bridge of his nose. Bruno and Isabelle exchanged glances before looking to the brigadier, who was studying Carlos intently.

  “I’ll explain all this to my minister,” the brigadier said. “I acknowledge what you’ve said without endorsing it. You’ve flouted every principle of the cooperation tomorrow’s summit is supposed to celebrate and I won’t forget that. May we count on your full cooperation from now on?”

  Carlos nodded wearily and pushed a file across the table. “This is everything we have on Todor, the man who was killed twenty-four years ago. His father was shot and killed while resisting arrest. His mother died in the Amorebieta prison after giving birth. They were both arrested for their role in the abortive attempt to blow up a train carrying Franco supporters to a commemoration in San Sebastián in 1961, one of the first ETA operations.

  “Todor himself was raised, along with many other children of enemies of the state, in the orphanage of Sabinosa, an old TB sanatorium on a peninsula near Tarragona,” he said. They were raised to be good Catholics and good Spaniards, with no knowledge of their family’s past, he explained. “Basque militants and families knew of the place and tried to track the orphans down after their release. Most of the boys were sent into the military, and some were recruited for ETA while still in the ranks. Todor, along with several others, found out about his past and was an easy recruit for ETA. He took part in their operations in Spain and here in France and that was why he was killed.”

  Bruno passed the photocopy of the anonymous letter across the table to Carlos.

  “Did you write that?”

  “Yes,” said Carlos. “I’m sorry. But after the car bomb, maybe you realize how high the stakes are for us in Spain.”

  30

  At the top of the ridge, Bruno slowed his horse and waited for Gigi to catch up. He turned to watch, smiling at the spectacle of his dog’s ears flapping and jowls bouncing in that chaotically enthusiastic way peculiar to basset hounds. Bruno had come directly to Pamela’s home from the château, and thought he could combine Hector’s evening ride with a final check at the Domaine. Later this evening, the brigadier’s security teams were scheduled to arrive there, but Bruno recalled the old army saying that time spent in reconnaissance was seldom wasted.

  He gazed down at the wide sweep of the valley, St. Denis hugging the broad curve of the river to his right. The ordered precision of the Domaine’s vineyards lay below him on the far side of the river. Far off to the left was the old hillside village of Limeuil with its château watching over the double bridge where the Dordogne and Vézère Rivers met. The land was greening with the coming of spring, and yellow splashes of forsythia bushes speckled his view. Another month and the stumps in the vineyards would be green and the trees bushy and vibrant with new leaves.

  A panting almost beneath Bruno’s horse signaled the arrival of Gigi, who began nuzzling at Hector’s hooves. The two animals seemed to have reached a good understanding, and Gigi had been curled up in a corner of Hector’s stall when Bruno had arrived. As they started to move down toward the river and the Domaine, Bruno let Hector find his own way while he looked out for the ford. Normally at this point in spring, the river would be too high to cross, but there had been no rain in the past week. Gigi might have to swim.

  When he reached the riverbank near Gérard’s canoe rental center, the water was not all that deep, but it was flowing too fast for Gigi. Bruno wondered if Hector would accept a novel passenger. He dismounted, picked up Gigi and placed the dog in front of his saddle, making Gigi lie down so that his belly was against Hector’s back. He smoothed his dog’s back to tell him not to try to stand. Then Bruno patted Hector’s neck and swung up into the saddle. One hand on his reins, the other holding Gigi firmly, he let Hector pick his way over the mud and stones of the ford and scramble through the brush on the far bank.

  “You’ve got a good horse there,” came a voice from the bushes. “I never thought he’d accept that dog on his back.” Bruno looked around, seeing nothing, but then came a blur of camouflage and the paratrooper major stepped out into a glade. He walked forward and began stroking Hector’s muzzle and then looked with amusement at Gigi trying to wag his tail in greeting as he slumped over the horse’s back.

  “We’ve been walking the riverbank, checking on shallows and access points,” said the major as a second blur came into view. Bruno recognized the CRS sergeant who found Jan’s arms cache with him. “I saw you coming down the far slope and thought you might be heading this way.”

  Bruno dismounted, lifted Gigi and placed him on the ground. He shook hands with the two uniformed men, observing that the security should be easier here, with the open views through the vines, than it would have been in the wooded hills above the château.

  “True, but we can’t get the jeeps through the vine rows,” the major said. “Watching you, I was thinking that it would make sense to put some of the patrols on horseback. Have you got any spare horses we can use? Two or three would do it but I wouldn’t mind borrowing yours.”

  “I might be using him myself,” said Bruno. “But Julien at the Domaine keeps a couple of horses for hotel guests. I’m sure he’d be happy to add them to the bill.”

  Leading his horse, Bruno walked with the two men to the small stable yard at the rear of the hotel-château and installed Hector in an empty stall, where he snorted and then gazed at the two other horses there. Julien was happy to rent them out for the day, and after saddling the two rather elderly mares Bruno and the two soldiers set out to ride the property. The two horses knew their territory and walked slowly through the vines.

  They rode back to the river, where Bruno suggested that one squad might be based at Gérard’s canoe site on the other bank. After a full circuit of the Domaine, the major pronounced himself satisfied, and they returned to the stable yard. Julien invited them in for a p’tit apéro of Ricard, but Bruno said he had to go.

  At Pamela’s he unsaddled Hector and rubbed him down, then drove back with Gigi to his own house to resume his cooking of the navarin d’agneau. He lit a fire in the stone cheminée and then decanted a bottle of the Pomerol that he and the baron bought by the barrel. They bottled it themselves with friends on a bibulous autumn afternoon each year. He fed his ducks and chickens and then Gigi, calling him in from his patrol of the grounds, then quickly showered and changed into khaki slacks and his favorite green corduroy shirt.

  At the back of his mind, where he tried with little success to keep it, was the question of how the evening would progress. Was this to be a dinner of old friends and former lovers who
had exchanged passion for simple affection? Or would Isabelle be offended if he did not invite her back into the familiar bed? Bruno knew which he’d prefer. Isabelle entranced him in ways that were beyond the usual urgings of lust, in ways that balanced the sadness that he would feel when she left for Paris again, as she always did. He chided himself for the touch of self-pity that had crept into his thoughts.

  A car horn gave a cheerful double beep from the lane, echoed by the joyful yelps of Gigi. Curious, thought Bruno, that his dog was so devoted to Isabelle, while only mildly affectionate toward Pamela, who made just as much fuss over him and saw him far more often. Was there a message for him in that? Bruno thought fleetingly, as he opened the door to greet her and welcome her back into his home.

  “What a lovely fire,” she said after hugging him briefly on the doorstep and then advancing into his living room. She shrugged off her coat to reveal a black turtleneck sweater and a black skirt that came to below her knees. Elegant boots of black leather and a belt of heavy silver chains completed the outfit. “I’ve never been here before when it’s cold enough for a fire.”

  She reached into her bag and brought out a box wrapped in brown paper and sealed with red wax. This was the characteristic sign of one of the better bottles from the renowned cave of Hubert de Montignac, which for many Frenchmen was St. Denis’s greatest claim to fame.

  “It was so nice to see Hubert again. When I told him I was eating with you he suggested I get you this, but said it wasn’t for drinking tonight. You should really keep it a couple of years.”

  “Then we’ll save it for a future visit,” he said, breaking the seal and unwrapping a bottle of Clos des Ursulines Pommard ’05. “This is wonderful, thank you.”

  “Hubert said it was high time you widened your horizons beyond your beloved Pomerols,” she said. “I told him how much trouble I always had in getting you to widen them as far as Paris.”

  When he offered her a drink, Isabelle asked for mineral water, saying she’d have to drive back, so two glasses of wine with dinner would be her limit for the evening. Well, that seemed to define the evening ahead, thought Bruno. As he poured himself a glass of wine Isabelle turned the conversation to business.

  “What did you make of Carlos’s little speech?” she asked.

  “It was plausible.” He shrugged. “We know how the politicians are and I can see his minister trying to keep this summit from being overwhelmed by another GAL scandal. But I was surprised he hadn’t told us before about this prospect of an ETA cease-fire.”

  “There’s a lot he hasn’t told us,” she said, stroking Gigi’s ears as he gazed up at her in adoration. “Maybe I’ve been lucky, liaising mainly with the British so far. They do share and they tell us when they can’t.”

  “You’ve spent more time with him. What do you think of Carlos?”

  “He thinks of himself as a ladies’ man, holds doors open and sends flowers, but he’s too sure of himself and there are little flashes of the predator beneath the good manners. The more I see him, the less I like him, and I think he could be a very accomplished liar. That’s why I wasn’t altogether convinced by his speech today.”

  “You noticed the way he put his hand on his heart?”

  She nodded, grinning at the memory. “Quite the actor, our Spanish colleague.” She paused and bent down to attend to Gigi, who had rolled onto his back with his paws in the air, his eyes beseeching for a tummy rub. “What’s for dinner?”

  “We’re starting with a soupe de poisson, followed by navarin d’agneau with fresh spring vegetables and then a mâche salad with cheese, and I’d better get started on the rouille. Come into the kitchen with me while I do it.”

  He began by setting a pot with salted water on the stove to boil for the vegetables, put a spoon of duck fat into his frying pan and tore some of the bread he sliced that morning into generously large croutons. Then he grated the rest into bread crumbs, sliced and squashed some garlic and began blending it into a paste with some olive oil and the defrosted red peppers. The croutons were fried until they were golden, and he placed them inside the oven for the interiors to dry fully.

  “I like watching you cook,” she said, adding a small splash of Bergerac Sec to her Perrier. “You never seem to pause, one movement flows into the other.”

  “It’s just practice,” he said, adding the navets and carrots and spring onions to the boiling water and beginning to grate a block of Parmesan cheese. He set his timer to five minutes. “What do you eat in Paris?”

  “I wake up with orange juice, have a croissant for breakfast in a café, a bowl of soup or salad at lunch or sometimes just some fruit if I’m working through,” she said. “In the evenings, restaurants or dinner parties two or three nights a week and the rest is omelettes, pizzas and takeout Chinese or Vietnamese. My refrigerator would break your heart, just milk, eggs and orange juice and frozen pizzas in the freezer.”

  “What about those things you learned to cook with me?”

  “Once a month, I try to give a dinner party, usually all women, and spend a day attempting to read my handwriting from that notebook where I wrote down your recipes.” He turned to her, pleased at the thought of her cooking his dishes. She shrugged in return. “You’d be surprised how few women still cook in Paris, at least the ones I know, with jobs like mine. When I go to a dinner, it’s usually catered or bought in from a traiteur. It’s the way we live now.”

  “Reminds me of that Prévert poem in the book you sent me, ‘Déjeuner du matin.’ ”

  “I know it, about the guy who sits and stirs his coffee and says nothing and has his cigarette and says nothing and puts on his hat and goes and the girl is left crying.”

  “It hardly sounds like France,” he said.

  “Paris never was France,” she said. “Sunday brunches are fashionable now, champagne and orange juice and eggs Florentine and bagels with smoked salmon. Waffles with maple syrup are suddenly all the rage. When I got back to the office from the convalescent home, they’d bought me a waffle maker as a welcome-back present.”

  She held out her glass for more Bergerac Sec. It was mainly wine now. He took the rouille and grated cheese and croutons to the table and began making the beurre manié, whisking butter and flour together to make a paste that he added, little by little, to the navarin until he judged the sauce thick enough. The buzzer sounded on the timer, and he added the vegetables to the stew and left it to simmer gently while he served the soup into two bowls and followed her to the big table in the living room. He brought the glasses, lit the candles and sat.

  “Bon appétit,” he said, and her lip trembled.

  “If you knew how often I remembered you saying that when I was in the hospital,” she said, and tried to laugh. “Those history books you sent me brought me back to earth, but I’m glad you read the Prévert.”

  He stirred rouille into his soup, added some cheese and croutons and raised his glass to her.

  “It’s good to see you at my table again, and I really appreciated the Prévert, even when a poem made me think of you.”

  “Which one?”

  “ ‘L’automne,’ ” he said, and recited:

  Un cheval s’écroule au milieu d’une allée

  Les feuilles tombent sur lui

  Notre amour frissonne

  Et le soleil aussi.

  “Yes, that one,” she said, her voice wistful, looking into her wineglass. “And the one about the sun disappearing behind the Grand Palais, and my heart following it.”

  He recited:

  Comme lui mon coeur va disparaître

  Et tout mon sang va s’en aller

  S’en aller à ta recherche.

  “How do you remember them?” she asked softly.

  “It was the kind of schooling I had, old-fashioned provincial teachers, lots of things to learn by heart,” he said. “I can still recite Napoléon’s speech at the battle of the Pyramids about how forty centuries looked down upon them. Come on, enjoy your soup while it�
�s hot,” he said, changing the mood. He knew it wasn’t his schooling that made him remember the poems. It was reading and rereading them aloud on wintry evenings as Gigi slept before the fire and thinking of Isabelle in the hospital with her thigh smashed by a bullet.

  “They weren’t crazy, those teachers. A pity we’ve lost all that.”

  “I must have been one of the last generation to be taught that way.” He removed the empty soup bowls and came back with the casserole. He raised the lid and the scent of thyme and rosemary from the bouquet garni he’d made began to fill the room. He excused himself and went out to his herb garden, turning on the outside light to pick some of the new parsley that was emerging. As he returned, Bruno smiled at the sight of Gigi slipping out past him to patrol the grounds, pausing by the chicken coop with his ears up and one paw raised, a good sentry going on duty.

  He tore up the green leaves to sprinkle them on each of the plates she had served.

  “This looks wonderful and smells better,” she said. “I can’t think when I last had navets. It reminds me of my childhood. Is that where the word navarin comes from?”

  “Some say it comes from the battle of Navarino against the Turks, but I prefer to think it comes from the navets. You can use any spring vegetables but if you don’t include navets, then it’s not a navarin,” he said, pouring the red wine from the carafe. “Tell me more of your life in Paris. I can’t really imagine it.”

  “There hasn’t been much of it. Not long after I started in the minister’s office, I was sent to Luxembourg to get into the bank accounts of that mysterious food company that turned out to have been set up by our own defense ministry. You remember that?” She began to eat. “This food is wonderful, and this wine. It’s your usual Pomerol, no?”

  He nodded. “It’s the ’03, from the heat-wave year, so it won’t last much longer.”

  “Mmm … delicious. After a month or so in the office they deployed me to London to liaise on joint operations against illegal immigration, and then I got shot at Arcachon and was in the hospital for nearly two months. I could still be on convalescent leave, but I was bored and they let me come back to do office work.”