The Sentinel: 1 (Vengeance of Memory) (64 page)

‘Hasta pronto,
Gutierrez. I’m sure we’ll see each other again.’ Guzmán stowed the envelope inside his coat and turned to the door.

Gutierrez looked up from the lengthy bill the barman had laid on the counter in front of him. ‘You can count on that,
Comandante
Guzmán.’

MADRID 1953, COMISARÍA, CALLE DE ROBLES

Snowflakes fell through the late afternoon light, floating like ashes against the oncoming night. It was freezing. It seemed to Guzmán that he had never really been warm for months. The
comisaría
was as bleak as ever, shrouded in falling snow and sombre in the failing light. The lobby was dark and smelled of black tobacco and sweat. It was a familiar odour and one which put Guzmán at ease. Behind the desk the
sargento
was scrawling something in the day book.

‘Buenas tardes, mi Comandante.’

‘Muy buenas, Sargento. Qué pasa?’

The sarge looked down at the book. ‘Still got one of the crew from the Bar Dominicana in the cells. That fat queen. Never stops complaining.’

‘Speaking of which, where’s the
teniente
?’

‘Out.’ The sarge frowned. ‘Got a phone call from the
capitán-general’
s office and went over. Oh yes, earlier on he brought a bloke in. Got him in cell sixteen.’

‘Name?’

‘Wouldn’t say, sir. The
teniente
said it was to be kept quiet – on your orders.’

‘That’s correct. Did you put it in the day book?’

‘No, sir. Should I?’

‘No. Listen, I need you to pop out on an errand for me. A little job chatting to your mates in the know.’

The sarge’s evil grin widened. ‘Any expenses, sir – to encourage them to talk?’

Guzmán pushed a roll of dollar bills across the counter top. ‘Keep the change.’

The money disappeared into the sarge’s pockets as he slid from behind the counter and pulled on his coat, pausing only to shout inside the admin room for one of the men to come and take over the desk.

‘Who are we interested in,
jefe
?’

‘Big bruiser attached to Carrero’s staff. Shaved head, name of Gutierrez. He’s the new head of Military Intelligence. That’s all I can tell you.’

The sarge smiled. ‘That’s all I need,
mi Comandante.’

Guzmán watched him go before returning to his office. He unlocked the door and went to his desk. Taking a set of keys from his drawer he returned to the corridor. There was no one about. No one would question him here, but it was better not to be seen. Potential witnesses were always best avoided.

The cells were quiet. Unlike prison, where the sound of footsteps brought cat-calls, cries for food or just insults, here there was only an anticipatory silence. Guzmán’s feet echoed on the stone floor of the corridor. He walked down to the great iron banded wooden door and opened it. Leaving it ajar, Guzmán went to cell sixteen. The cell was in darkness. A man was sitting on the bed. As the door opened, he looked up uncertainly, seeing Guzmán’s bulk, framed against the sallow light from the corridor.

‘Cousin Juan,’ Guzmán said.

The man stood up, tentatively extending his hand towards Guzmán’s offered handshake. It was one of many mistakes he had made recently. A powerful blow into his midriff left him gasping for breath, unable to speak. Guzmán punched him again and Cousin Juan fell to the ground, his breath rattling. Guzmán seized his feet and dragged the man out of the cell and towards the ironbanded door. Cousin Juan gasped for air, his hands clawing at the stone floor. The big door had almost closed under its own weight and Guzmán had to push it with one hand while struggling to hold an increasingly resistant Cousin Juan with the other. Finally, losing his patience, Guzmán punched him again in the belly, avoiding his head since he needed him to be conscious for what was to follow. Cousin Juan gave a visceral moan, curling up into a ball on the cold flagstones, retching and gurgling. Guzmán kicked the massive door open and Cousin Juan’s wordless cries of pain went unheeded as he was hauled through the door and down into the darkness beyond. The door slammed with sonorous finality and then Guzmán and Cousin Juan were alone together, in the place below, where the angular echoes and the sound of dripping water were the only noises to break the subterranean silence. Until the screaming began, and the ancient stones echoed once more with carefully elicited cadences of human suffering.

It was seven thirty. Guzmán finished washing his hands, letting the tap run until the last swirls of blood disappeared down the drain. He dried his hands on the filthy towel. Entering the darkened mess room, he went to the armoury, unlocked the reinforced metal door and swung it open. He turned on the light and saw the bleak single bulb reflected in the reptilian glint of the weapons: the lines of rifles and machine guns, piles of batons, the boxes of ammunition. He found what he wanted and took it from the shelf. A heavy landmine. This was hardly part of the usual armament of a police station but then this was no ordinary police station. Locking the door of the armoury, Guzmán returned to his office, carrying the mine under his arm, his footsteps quiet and measured on the stone floor.

Inside the office, Guzmán placed the mine on his desk. His desk for now, he thought. By tomorrow he could be in one of his own cells with some goon from the night shift kicking his kidneys. It was a distinct possibility, the way things were going. Everything was getting out of hand. He had a feeling his luck had turned against him. Perhaps it was all those gypsies he’d punched – and worse – during his career. They’d put the evil eye on him. But he doubted their power to do that. If any of those who came into contact with Guzmán at the
comisaría
had magical powers, they would never have remained there. The first fifteen minutes would have been enough. But no one had such powers. They stayed because the real power here was his.

He had done great work here. Dealing with those people. Those who had chosen a path that led to the damp cells, where the walls echoed to the sound of shouts and blows and screaming. Familiar sounds. The annoying, slapping sound naked prisoners made when they fell repeatedly onto the flagstones. He hated them, shivering, bleeding, babbling excuses as they sprawled on the cell floor. Convoluted excuses for what Guzmán saw – and despised – as the result of their stupidity in making decisions. You made choices and you stuck with them. If you could not, you were weak. Weak, no matter how principled the arguments and excuses might be. There was no pity and very little mercy for such people. They had to die, both as an example to others and as punishment for their foolishness. Perhaps, now and again, Guzmán would be lenient, ending a wretched life quickly and unexpectedly. Such release was only for those who made a full confession and whose account did not in any way annoy him. But those occasions were rare.

He struggled to pull the heavy metal filing cabinet away from the wall. He was sweating by the time he had moved it far enough to get at the flagstone. With sufficient strength you could do anything, he knew that well. Strength was important. The strongest side won the war. Before the war, life had been against him. A blur of accusations and squabbles, pointing fingers. The priest with his stick.
Always you, boy. Causing trouble, playing too hard, hurting people.
The stick rising and falling, the priest’s boot stabbing into his ribs. Later, Guzmán’s attempt to play rough with the girls caused even more trouble and the beatings got worse. Especially when one girl’s family got hold of him. Afterwards, when he finally crawled home, bloodied and bruised, he got another beating from his father who was just sober enough to do it before collapsing into his chair. After that, he had never gone back to school and passed the time in the woods, sharpening sticks with his big knife. Watching and waiting, without knowing what he was waiting for. Then the war came.

Guzmán removed the broken flagstone and took out the American money from the pit below. He would have to risk carrying it. If he had to flee, that cash could save him. There were other things down there: diaries, wallets, photographs, a few knives, pistols, bundles of foreign and frequently worthless currencies, a dessicated hand, some underwear, a few watches. Fragmented remains of fearful lives suddenly ended. He had other such caches, repositories of trophies and treasures. Like a magpie, perhaps. Or maybe not, considering what he had done to those birds in the woods as a youth.

And his book. Nestling in its metal box. The ledger containing the details of his murderous career, the full lists of names, dates, places. Details of the orders given and by who. Pages that would condemn him if found. He knew keeping such a record was stupid. No one in this job would do such a thing. Yet he did it. He had seen what happened to the Nazis after the war, how quickly their fortunes changed. This was his insurance, a bargaining chip he might use if ever things were to change – however unlikely that might be. In a life conducted amidst the uncertainties of perpetual war, sometimes you had to take a gamble.

The book was Guzmán’s gamble. Its contents were not accessible to the casual reader. He encoded his records using a
Wehrmacht
code the Germans used to communicate with their U-boats when they made secret visits into Vigo for supplies. Guzmán had combined the German code with another, one he had found below in the vaults on one of his expeditions down there. It had belonged to the Inquisition and was like no other code he had ever encountered. That code was safe beneath the floorboards of his
piso
in Calle Mesón de Paredes and even that had been encoded, disguised as a diary, a youthful memoir of his life. He had used the real Guzmán’s diary as a foundation, adding his own amendments – once he had mastered the other man’s handwriting. The diary set out his strong Christian values, describing a youth who helped the local priest deliver alms to the poor, his devotion to Spain and to Franco’s noble cause, his enlistment in the army the only reason he had not gone to the seminary for training. The new Guzmán had made some additions, adding in a few of his youthful experiences to reshape the journal. And to muddy the waters. It was a world of lies that recreated Guzmán in bogus, saccharine detail, though there was some truth in the later entries – the growing hatred of the villagers towards him before the war, their petty jealousies and complaints.

The diary, with all his additions and inventions that would distract the casual reader, was the key which would unlock his real chronology of horror, hidden here, beneath the flagstones. In this book there was no invention. Just lists of victims, locations where they died, sometimes the exact details if their deaths had been particularly interesting. The codes were strong and it would take great effort, whether in code-breaking or torture, to extract their secrets – assuming anyone could get hold of both parts of the code – since the diary and the book were always kept in different locations. He took the book and placed it back in its hiding place, closing the metal box. For now it was safe. In a minute, it would be safer still.

If things went against him, he might not see this treasure again: they might take it all from him, take away the life he had fought for more savagely and determinedly than anyone else in Spain. He placed the mine into the hole below the flagstones and armed it. Using a couple of ammunition boxes, he weighted down the trigger before putting the flagstones back in place. If things went well, he would return and disarm it at his leisure. If things went the other way, then whoever came to search his office would be rewarded for their trouble. Guzmán dragged the filing cabinet back into position. It was a good hiding place, but there were always some who would persevere in their search. Those who knew that dogged persistence was the key to unlocking others’ secrets. But that was their problem. Let them seek all they wanted. Let them decide if their pursuit was worth it. By the time they found this last secret, Guzmán might not even exist.

He poured a brandy and picked up the folder Gutierrez had given him, spilling out the contents onto his desk. Three photographs, secured with paper clips. He arranged them on the desk, half expecting them to be of some long-past action of his returning to incriminate him. But it was not Guzmán in the photographs, it was the Dominicans. Somewhere in the Caribbean, he guessed, noting palm trees in the background. The pictures were overexposed but he could make out their faces well enough, see the decorations and badges of rank on their uniforms, as the men stood stiffly at attention in front of the preening dictator Trujillo, at some military review. Whatever they were, they were hardly petty criminals. Nor was the man standing behind them in his dapper lightweight tropical uniform: Positano.

The next photograph was a family portrait of a young but recognisable Positano and four adults; parents and grandparents apparently. But the picture was not taken in the Neapolitan countryside where Positano supposedly lived until the thirties. There was no mistaking the familiar building behind Positano and his family. It was the White House, Washington, DC. The photograph was dated on the back: August 1922.

The telephone rang, loud and brittle in the sombre office.

‘Guzmán?’ It was Gutierrez. ‘You sent your
sargento
to check up on me. You were rather over-confident in his abilities, I must say.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘No, though he deserves to be. You can have him back if you want.’

‘Well, I do need someone on the desk here. Send him back. I’ll kick his arse.’

‘Do it later. I want to see you.’

‘Just as you wish,’ Guzmán said calmly.

‘Estación de
Atocha. The bar on platform two.’

‘Now?’

‘Right now.’

‘I’ll be there in thirty minutes.’

As Guzmán came through the doors into the lobby, Peralta was at the desk, signing in.

‘Buenas tardes, Comandante.’

‘I’m going out for a while,
Teniente
, don’t go anywhere until I return.’