The Guardian of Secrets: And Her Deathly Pact (64 page)

Chapter 70

P
edro’s battalion incurred heavy losses in February, seeing their number almost halved. He and Hans were relatively unscathed so far, apart from a slight deafness in their ears and a touch of diarrhoea that reared its ugly head at the most inconvenient of times. When the fighting eased off, they lay in muddied trenches full of flies feeding off the filth and, when there was any, ate congealed stew and drank coffee that Pedro’s new ‘friend’, Harry Miller, always managed to get his hands on. Orders had filtered down the line, and they were fit and ready for the next day’s advance to Guadalajara. They were on the move at last, and for Pedro and Hans, the orders had come not a minute too soon. They lay in a corner of the trench, Pedro sleeping and Hans tossing and turning and flicking away the mosquitoes that were eating him alive:

“I think they’ve got coffee over there… I smell coffee,” Hans whispered to a sleepy Pedro, who was not amused at being woken up.

“You get some. I don’t want any,” Pedro told him. “And whatever you do, don’t bring that Harry Miller back with you. I’m sick of the bloody sight of him. He’s a pain in the arse; he’s stuck himself to me like bird shit.”

“And here’s me thinking he’s your new best friend,” Hans laughed. “I think he is jealous of me; I do not like the way he looks at me. You
must
want coffee,” Hans insisted. “Don’t tell me you don’t, Englishman.”

“Hans, just get the bloody coffee, will you? And try not to wake me when you slurp it down like you always do.”

Pedro closed his eyes and smiled. Hans had become a great friend, and friends were what kept him going, gave him strength, and made him smile in all the madness. But if he woke him up again, he’d have them sleeping in separate trenches from now on!

Joseph Dobbs hid in his usual shadowy place, which was always no more than a few feet away from Pedro. He watched Hans leave the trench and followed him into the thick grass, his face full of hatred. For weeks, he’d waited for an opportunity like this to come along, to get rid of the German bastard, to get him away from Pedro.

Both Hans and Joseph hunched down as low as possible to avoid sniper fire. They were only yards apart, but Joseph was a good stalker, with plenty of practice under his belt since meeting Pedro. Hans stopped suddenly, kept his head low, and looked around the area. He moved again, this time on his belly, slowly and meticulously.

Joseph circled around him. His heart felt as if it were jumping out of his chest, and he almost turned back with fear, but he had a job to do, and in order to get it done, he had to be ahead of the German. Joseph stopped by a clump of trees and checked his pistol. He had four bullets in the chamber and figured that was more than enough. He had never fired the pistol before; this would be its first outing. He cocked it as quietly as possible and waited.

Hans’s head came into view, and Joseph aimed the pistol, practicing for the real thing. It’s just like shooting a bird, he told himself. He had shot birds many times in Kent, and he didn’t need to kill Hans. He just needed to wound him, get him out of the way for a while. The bastard wouldn’t leave Pedro’s side for a minute, which meant he couldn’t get near his son without falling over the German in the process. He was ruining the plan. Joseph found his target in a perfect position. Hans was now far enough away from the supply trucks, far enough away from Pedro but close enough to the enemy lines. He steadied his hand, gently covered the trigger with his finger, and fired three shots in succession. He heard Hans moan and slump to the ground. Joseph smiled. He had hit his mark!

The shots were fired from the treeline, three shots. Pedro lifted his head cautiously, looked to the left of his position, and saw a body in the distance being dragged through the grass by two stretcher-bearers. Hans, he thought. It had to be him.

“That bloody stupid German,” he spat, hitting his fist on the ground.

He crawled over to the medical trench through the tall grass, taking the same route as Hans, listening for shots that always seemed to come out of nowhere to pick them off like rabbits.

“Please, God, no. Please don’t let it be him,” he whispered.

In the medical station, Hans’s bloodied body lay on a makeshift stretcher. A nurse said:

“This station’s too small. There’s not enough room here to treat him. Anyway, he needs a doctor. He will have to go to the field hospital by ambulance.

Pedro then heard the nurse tell the stretcher-bearers, “It’s only five minutes away, but it’s too dangerous on foot at this time of night. You’ll never make it with all the sniper fire that’s going on. It’s too close tonight.”

“Is he going to live?” Pedro asked the nurse.

“I doubt it. He’s got one in the stomach and one in the side of the neck, although I don’t think the bullet hit the artery,” she told him matter-of-factly.

Pedro looked at Hans’s unconscious body and decided in an instant that he would have to go with him. He would need him when he woke up. “I’ll go too and cover the stretcher-bearers,” he said. “You can’t let this man die, do you hear me?”

The nurse gave him a sympathetic smile. “We’ll do everything we can to save him, but I’m afraid he will die if we don’t get him to an operating theatre soon.”

Pedro didn’t take his eyes off Hans, who recovered consciousness just as the stretcher-bearers lifted him out of the trench. His ashen face and bright eyes stared up at them, begging to be saved. He whispered in German, plainly unaware of Pedro holding his hand, and Pedro could only guess that he was praying. The three men ran, bodies cowed and heads lowered, away from the treeline and towards a waiting ambulance at the back of the line.

“What have you got for me?” the ambulance driver asked, jumping down from his seat.

“Some stupid brigadier who thought he’d take a walk in the middle of the night,” one of the stretcher-bearers said.

“Right, get him in. It’s the east station, right?”

The stretcher-bearer nodded. “Take him with you,” he said, pointing to Pedro.

It was dark and difficult to see the road ahead. They took the long road round, but it was the safest route. The ambulance didn’t have lights for fear of an ambush attack on the narrow road; but the ambulance driver had done this journey a hundred times, always knowing that it could be his last.

“It’ll take us two or three minutes. Don’t you worry—I can do this run backwards and blindfolded. But he’ll probably be dead by the time we get there in any case; you do know that?”

“Shut up!” Pedro told the driver without taking his eyes off Hans for a second. “If he dies, I’ll kill you just for saying that.” Pedro knew that the driver was probably right, but later, when Hans had been deposited, he sat outside one of the tents where life-and-death operations took place, holding his head in his hands and praying for a miracle.

An hour passed. A good sign, Pedro thought, a sign that the operation had gone well and that Hans was still alive. They would have told him by now if he’d died on the table, wouldn’t they?

“Excuse me, soldier, are you with the German man?” Pedro heard a familiar voice ask.

“Yes, I am.” He didn’t lift his head, instead thinking that war plays all sorts of tricks on the mind. Once, in Madrid, he convinced himself that a woman getting into an ambulance at one of the dressing stations was his Lucia, and now he was hearing his sister’s voice.

He looked up into the face belonging to the voice, and she stood frozen in front of his eyes.

“María?” he still questioned.

She nodded, unable to speak.

“My God, it is you. It really is you!”

“Yes, it’s me, Pedro.”

Pedro crushed her to him, and they cried, clinging to each other, unwilling to lose the tender moment.

“Pedro, I’ve dreamed of this, dreamed and dreaded it at the same time. Thank God you’re alive,” María said, still sobbing.

Pedro pushed her gently away and wiped his wet eyes on his sleeve. His little sister was not two feet away from him; it was a miracle. “María…”

“Not now, brother. Come with me. Your friend is asking for you.”

Pedro involuntary sucked in his breath, retching at the smell of blood, urine, iodine, vomit, and the furtive odour of the dead. This was even more prolific than on the battlefield, he thought. How could anyone work in this place? He followed María through the lines of injured men. Some were lying on trolleys and others on the floor. There was a maze of tents, each one connected, filled to the brim with bloodied men and too few medical staff. As they moved forward towards the last tent, Pedro noticed that in this area, the injuries were more severe.

“María, I am so proud of you,” he whispered to her.

“Me, a nurse, eh,” she said with a smile. “The operating theatre is in the next tent. He’s waiting for you.”

María told Pedro to stay where he was for a moment, and then she disappeared beneath the flap of the last tent.

Pedro thought again about the job his sister was doing. She had taken him by surprise, not just because she was there but because of her ability to endure a job that would even turn the strongest of male stomachs. María, who loved all living creatures, from ants to wild boars hunted in winter, was surrounded by death in a place far from her peaceful world at La Glorieta. Life was full of surprises, and some of them were even pleasant ones.

“Englishman,” Hans whispered from the trolley. His neck was bandaged, and a dressing had been placed over the stomach wound. His chest rose and fell in shallow gasps, and Pedro knew at once by the defeated expression on the surgeon’s face that his friend wouldn’t make it.

“I wish I hadn’t smelled that coffee,” Hans said, his voice barely audible.

“Don’t speak. Save your strength,” Pedro heard himself say unconvincingly.

“I’m dead already, Englishman. I just wanted to see your ugly face before I closed my eyes, and I wanted to tell you to get Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and all the other fascist bastards. Promise me?”

“I promise, Hans. I’ll get them all, and then I’ll come visit you in Germany and you can buy me a jug of your best beer.”

“I would have liked that. Stay safe, Peter. Make sure you survive this, for both of us…”

Pedro waited for his friend to speak again, but instead he closed his eyes, leaving his mouth open and unspoken words on his lips.

Pedro had seen plenty of dead men, women, and children along the way, but this dead man was his best friend, his confidante, and his mentor. Hans had breathed real passion into him, and the solid convictions he felt now had stemmed from Hans’s philosophy. What was the point of it all if men like him died? Who would be left to pick up the pieces when the war was all over? Hans was a man who could never be replaced, and the world had suffered a great loss. Men like him were rare.

“María?”

“It’s over for him, Pedro. Come outside for some fresh air,” María told him.

Outside in the dark, Pedro clung to her and sobbed quietly, and María held him until he was ready to speak.

“María, this is the happiest and most miserable night I can ever remember. Hans brought me to you, and now he’s gone. I wish you had known him. You would have liked him,” he said.

She nodded sadly and then said, “Pedro, do you see that tent, two down from here?”

“Yes, why?” Pedro asked.

“There’s someone in there who would like to talk to you.”

“Talk to me? Who is it?”

“You’ll see. Just go. I’ll wait here for you.” María smiled.

Pedro walked towards the tent pointed out to him and lifted the flap. Inside, the tent was lit by candlelight which cast shadows against the canvas, giving the place an eerie, almost supernatural atmosphere. Men lay on makeshift beds whilst nurses shuffled efficiently and silently around the room deep in concentration, unaware of Pedro’s presence.

Pedro settled his gaze on the face of one of the nurses who was bending over a patient: Lucia! His mouth opened, but he didn’t speak. She looked tired, thinner, and very pale. Was she ill? He panicked. She smiled at the man she was attending to, and her bright sparkling eyes, the vision that he had faithfully carried in his mind for months, were exactly the same. He sighed with relief but couldn’t bring himself to break his silence. Instead, he watched her, drinking in the sight of her adorable face, greedily imprinting it in his mind before it was lost to him again.

Neither moved nor spoke when Lucia looked up and, for no apparent reason, directed her eyes at Pedro. They devoured each other from opposite sides of the tent. Their eyes told the story of two people desperately in love and overwhelmed with joy until finally the spell was broken. Lucia ran to him, speaking his name repeatedly. He kissed her and swung her body around in his arms, causing even more of a stir. Unaware of their surroundings, they heard and saw only each other in that moment. There were no patients, no war; there was only love.

Pedro stared again at Lucia, took her by the hand, and led her outside. He had imagined this moment in his mind’s eye as far back as the campaign in Spanish Morocco. In his mind, he had seen her in many different places, but his sweet imaginings were always halted abruptly by reality and truth. For him, the reality was that the women he saw in ambulances, in route marches, towns, and dressing stations could not possibly be Lucia, for she was in Valencia. They only resembled her in some way. To see two of the women who meant more to him than life itself here in a battle zone some four hundred kilometres from home was too much for him to take in. He cried, releasing all the sadness and guilt that the war had brought him. Lucia stroked his head, pushing her fingers through his matted curls. She held him and told him that she loved him repeatedly—until he looked into her eyes and kissed her into silence.

María joined them later. They sat together huddled behind a crumbling stone wall, drinking coffee and talking about everything they could think of before Pedro had to leave for the front again.

María began to feel anxious. She had warned Lucia that her family thought it best not to tell Pedro about Marta’s death. Although at the time she had not agreed with this decision, she knew now that she couldn’t bring herself to tell him. Her parents had probably been right all along. She looked at his war-wearied face; he had lost his friend only five minutes earlier. She would not be guilty of making his burdens even heavier than they already were: