The Sentinel: 1 (Vengeance of Memory) (61 page)

‘Thanks for the economic and military analysis,’ Guzmán snarled. He glared at Positano with contempt. ‘And thanks for your time,
Señor
Positano. Remember what I said: your Caribbean friends will be dealt with. This isn’t Chicago.’

Positano got to his feet. He was tall, maybe a centimetre or two taller than Guzmán. Less bulky, but muscled and fit. Guzmán looked into the man’s eyes with malice.

‘The
Caudillo
will open the talks officially in a few days’ time,’ Guzmán said. ‘I expect to have the Dominican problem dealt with by then.’

‘I think we’re done.’ Positano turned his back on Guzmán and walked over to the door.
He turned his back on me.
It was the first time someone had insulted Guzmán and he hadn’t responded with physical violence. He struggled for control.
If Franco hadn’t been so clear about the trade talks going ahead, coño, you’d be dead now.
He walked slowly past Positano.
Try it. Make your move.

Positano watched him leave. ‘Good day,
Comandante.’

‘Until next time,
Señor
Positano.’

Outside the hotel, the wind was getting up, sending flurries of snow spiralling through the sombre light of late afternoon. Across the road a movement caught Guzmán’s eye. He stopped and looked beyond the noisy tangle of traffic, seeing the crowds moving along the pavement, hunched against the cold. There was one who didn’t move. Standing in the doorway of a tobacconist, framed by the dull brown paint of the woodwork and the colours of the Spanish flag over the door, the big shave-head from the
capitanía
casually acknowledged Guzmán’s wave and then disappeared into the throng.
Not today then,
Guzmán thought.

BADAJOZ 1936

The kid crawled across the gritty soil, pushing his way through sharp, desiccated shrubs. His eyes stung with sweat and he moved slowly and patiently to avoid making any noise. Then, through the sepia husks of the long dry grass, he saw them. The Moorish soldier lay on his back in a pool of blood, arms flung wide. It was as if the man had burst open. The kid had seen plenty of dead bodies and this one looked very dead. He dragged himself nearer, breathing through clenched teeth to keep from panting. He saw him clearly now, the young man they had called Guzmán. Saw Guzmán’s first-aid armband, the spilled contents of the rucksack, the rolls of bandages, a canteen of water. Heard Guzmán’s voice, rising and falling in a familiar cadence:

‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus, Holy Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of death. Amen.’

The kid emerged from the long grass. Guzmán looked up and stared, open-mouthed, fear blooming on his dirt-streaked face. The kid pointed the rifle at him. ‘Go ahead and shout. Everyone’s dead. Where’s the rest of your unit?’

Guzmán swallowed. ‘There is no one else,’ he said, the words catching in his dry mouth. ‘We’re the last of the company. The other lads got it earlier today when we advanced on the machine guns.’ He looked around him. ‘They’re all dead.’

The kid clicked off his safety catch nervously. ‘Don’t move.’

‘There’s a column coming up from the south. They’ll be here by sundown. Cavalry, artillery. Two regiments of legionaries. Surrender now and it might go easier for you.’

‘Of course,’ the kid said. ‘I know how easy it goes when your lot come to town.’

‘What else can you do?’ Guzmán asked. ‘Badajoz will have fallen by now. There’s nowhere for you to go.’

‘I’ll go to Portugal,’ the kid said. ‘There’s no war there.’

Guzmán shook his head. ‘Portugal’s on our side. Any Republicans trying to cross the border will be sent back,’ he paused, ‘to face justice.’

The kid tried to think of options. ‘What about France? Which way is it from here?’

Guzmán looked at the position of the sun and pointed. ‘Somewhere over there.’

‘More than a couple of days’ march?’

‘Much more,’ Guzmán said. ‘Maybe a week. I’m not sure.’

‘Where else can I go?’ the kid asked, suddenly realising the position he was in.

‘There’s nowhere you can go,’ Guzmán said firmly. ‘Surrender. They’ll let you see a priest and confess. Whatever happens after, at least you won’t lose your immortal soul.’

It wasn’t an attractive option. ‘Can you help me get to France?’

‘No. You’re a Bolshevik. One of the Red horde. I learned all about you people when I joined up. You’re on the side of the Antichrist.’

‘I don’t even know what that is,’ the kid muttered.

‘It doesn’t matter. The priests told us. You want to murder nuns.’

The kid tried to think. It was difficult in the murderous heat. He was exhausted, his face was burned from the sun and his lips were cracked. He wanted to sleep. ‘If I help you back to your lines, will they spare me?’

Guzmán shook his head. ‘No. They say there’s no point sparing Reds. They can never change. They’ll shoot you. Unless the Moors get you first.’

The thought of the Moors made the kid nervous. He imagined their boots pounding on the dry red soil, marching inexorably towards him. He looked at the equipment strewn around Guzmán’s feet. ‘Got any water?’

Guzmán shrugged. ‘I’m not supposed to give it to you. Deny all comfort to the enemy, those were the orders.’

The kid saw a canteen half hidden by the rucksack. He motioned towards it with his rifle. ‘Give me that.’

Guzmán reached for the khaki canteen.

The kid licked his cracked lips. It had been hours since his last drink and his tongue felt like leather. Guzmán picked up the canteen. The kid swallowed, anticipating the cool rush of water in his dry mouth.

Guzmán hurled the canteen at the kid and leaped at him in an effort to grab the barrel of his rifle. The kid staggered back, trying keep his distance, but Guzmán pursued him, still trying to snatch the rifle. The kid stumbled and fell backwards, his finger closing on the trigger, hearing the whiplash crack of a shot. The bullet hit Guzmán in the face, blowing away the top of his head and a thin red mist hung in the scorching air as he fell. The report echoed around the yellowing hills, fading slowly until once more there was only the chirping of crickets in the simmering heat.

The kid lay on the parched soil, clutching the rifle tightly, staring at Guzmán’s body sprawled a metre away. He crawled towards it, braced in anticipation of another attack. But Guzmán lay face down in the faded dust, the back of his head covered in a dark gelatinous mass that was already attracting flies. The kid rolled him onto his back and saw the bullet wound in his face. It seemed small and inconsequential. He felt tears prickle his eyes. How would he get to France now? He picked up the canteen and drank, unable to pause for breath until the last of the water was gone. He looked around as if, somewhere on this desiccated plateau strewn with corpses, there might be someone who would help him. Help him get to France.

And this Guzmán would help him after all, he realised. He went back to the body and unbuttoned the heavy khaki shirt and removed it, tossing it to one side. He unlaced Guzmán’s boots and put them with the shirt. Within a few minutes, Guzmán’s uniform was laid out on the dried ground. The kid took off his own uniform and dressed
Guzmán’s corpse in it. A reasonable fit. When they came to bury the bodies, no one would pay attention to the Republican dead – particularly in this heat.

The kid struggled into Guzmán’s uniform. It was a little tight but not enough to draw comment. He found Guzmán’s kepi and put it on. Strapped on the ammunition pouches and canteen and took Guzmán’s rifle. The red cross armband he threw away – Guzmán’s days as a stretcher bearer were over. The kid now seemed just another regular soldier of Franco’s army. Until he got to the French border, that was. He rummaged through the contents of Guzmán’s pockets, finding identity papers, a faded sheet of devotional verse and several letters from relatives. He would read them as he walked. If he was challenged they might help bolster his credibility.

The kid took the curved knife from the dead Moor. The blade flashed in the white light of the sun. Guzmán’s body would soon begin to rot but the kid decided to hurry the process and slit open the belly, opening a path for the flies and small creatures that would soon come. Just to be sure.

It was a long walk to the Nationalist lines. The kid passed the time reading Guzmán’s letters from home. He retraced the route through the trees and shrubs he and the others had fled through hours before, walked past the bodies of his comrades, now swarming with flies. He scrambled down the narrow path that led back down from the plateau, stepping over the piles of dead Moors. Always past the dead. There were no wounded.

He was staggering now and he rested for a while, alert and cautious. If he ran into his own side they would probably kill him outright in this uniform. He also had to avoid the Nationalists, couldn’t risk them identifying him as one of the enemy. If he stayed here, he would die of hunger or thirst. He would have to steal food from farmhouses, sleep rough and live off the land as he made his way towards the frontier. Wherever that was.. He kept walking.

He heard the sound of horses. The staccato drumming of hooves on the rocky soil. And singing, a martial song. ‘El Camarada’. They were Franco’s men. The enemy. The kid hid in a patch of dense scrub
trying to work out his options. As the sound of horses grew louder, he began to panic. He staggered through the bushes, trying to remain hidden, trying to find somewhere he could hide. The ground was uneven and he tripped and fell, his rifle clattering onto the hard ground. Horses whinnied and men shouted in alarm. The kid struggled to his feet, heard the sound of weapons being cocked. He looked up. A line of men aimed rifles at him.

And then a shout. ‘Hold your fire, he’s one of ours.’

21

LAS PEÑAS 2009, SIERRA DE GREDOS

The road rose into a land of sun-scorched scrub, stunted trees and huge overhanging rocks. An arid landscape broken by sheer cliffs and sharp boulder-strewn ridges.

‘Do you want the air con any higher, Ana?’

‘No, gracias.
I’m freezing. In any case, that’s the mine up ahead, just past that sign.’

Tali slowed and turned off the road, bringing the car to a halt on the flat patch of land near the derelict buildings of the Compañía Española de Minas,
fundada
1898
. Everything seemed much as it was the last time Galindez had been there: the parched landscape, the eerie sagging outlines of the buildings in their slow decline into the dusty scrub. The heat.

‘It doesn’t look much,’ Tali said, looking round. She raised her sunglasses to squint at the ochre surroundings. ‘It’s so desolate.’

‘There was an important mine here sixty years ago,’ Galindez said. ‘Then they hid the bodies in the entrance tunnel and closed it for ever – or so they thought.’

‘But why did they shoot people at a mine, of all places?’

‘I think it must have seemed an efficient way of getting rid of a large number of bodies. I don’t know yet whether they were dead when they brought them here or if they were killed in the vicinity of the mine. I’m not sure. Maybe there’s something I missed last time. I didn’t have any help that day and it took me a long time to get the skeletons out and bag them up. It would have been easy to overlook a bit of evidence.’

Humid, leaden heat bore down on them as they left the hermetic chill of the car.

‘I want to visualise how it happened,’ Galindez said. ‘They must have parked their vehicles somewhere here. The plans of the place show that the track up to the quarry was rough and unsurfaced back then. It would have been too steep to drive up.’

Tali peered at the bleak landscape. ‘It’s not hard to imagine people being killed here. This countryside is brutal.’ She leaned on the car, watching as Galindez paced the arid ground, trying to picture the scene.

‘That wall was here back in 1953 and there was a fence running between the buildings and the track – you can just see the remains of it sticking out of the grass. That means that if they parked here, they’d have to go along by the wall and then up the track on foot.’

‘With the bodies?’

‘I suppose. Or they might have marched them up there and shot them in the quarry.’

A drainage ditch ran parallel to the stone wall, some three metres away. It must have been needed once but now it was just a rugged furrow of dirt and stones. The wall was covered in yellowing sun-blasted lichen. Many of the rough stones showed signs of weather damage. Galindez stopped. On closer examination, she saw a series of indentations on the stones. The height of the indentations varied but the spaces between them were pretty regular. Those patterns weren’t caused by the weather, she thought.

Tali watched Galindez kneel to examine the marks.
‘Qué te pasa,
Ana María?’

‘Do something for me, Tali? Kneel down just here, by this little ditch?’

Tali shrugged, and knelt. Galindez turned her to face the stone wall. ‘Bend your head, will you?’ She unfastened her bag and took out a ball of string. ‘Lean forward, that’s it, lower your head a bit more.’

Tali laughed.
‘Vaya.
Are you going to tie me up?’

Galindez handed her one end of the string. ‘Keep hold of that,’ she told her, stepping across the ditch to the wall. ‘OK. Hold the string to your forehead.’ With Tali keeping the string taut, Galindez aligned the other end with one of the marks on the wall, calling instructions to Tali to move a few centimetres to one side or the other. Once Tali was positioned satisfactorily, Galindez began to sketch diagrams and scrawl measurements in her notebook. Next came the photography: each of the marks on the wall had to be carefully recorded and its position noted – Galindez didn’t want to drive out here again.