THE ENGLISH WITNESS (23 page)

“I want to believe what you’re telling
me,” Jack answered as diplomatically as he could, aware that his life might
depend on the way he spoke. “There hasn’t been a day in these forty years when
I haven’t thought about that summer. I can’t count the number of nights I’ve lain
awake vainly trying to make sense of it, only to relive it in my sleep. And after
days going over the storyline with the police, the worst parts are more deeply
etched on my mind than ever. I don’t know that I can unravel all that and build
up a different story from scratch. It’s too much a part of who and what I’ve
become.”

“Believe it or not, I understand some of
what you have been through. Part of me still blames you for my disability. All
I can do is ask is that you keep an open mind and answer my questions as fully
as you can, because both our lives may depend on it. You may not have much of a
stake in keeping me alive, but you should worry for yourself. However much that
angry part of me would like to tear you limb from limb, I’ve been trying to
move on. And I believe you have much more to fear from someone else. Do you
have any idea of whom I’m speaking?”

“I presume the Condor Legion. They’ve
been after me ever since I entered the country. But they’re your goons, so that
makes nonsense of your assurances that you’re not after my blood.”

“Careful, Jack. I’ve said what I’ve said,
but it’s a close call whether I let you go after this.”  

“So who are you saying is the real
enemy?”

I’ve told you everything you need to work
it out for yourself. But your mind is rejecting the data, and it’s doing so
precisely because it doesn’t wish to rewrite the story of your life. The real
enemy is someone who has reason to hate me for both political reasons and
personal. I’ve been beyond his reach for decades. But now he’s dangled you as
bait and I’ve taken the hook because of what you and he together can do to my new
career.”

“You can only be talking about Antonio.
But for God’s sake, that’s ludicrous. He’s one of my oldest friends, and he
saved my life, and now he’s dead.”

“He played games with you, Jack. And he’s
a better chess player than any of us. Anyway, that’s enough. This is taking too
long, and you’re mistaking it for a conversation of equals. You answer my
questions, succinctly and accurately, or we can do it the other way.”

“OK, he’s dead, so what I say can’t hurt
him. What do you want to know?”

But time had run out for questions of any
sort. There were three sharp taps on the glass. In one perfectly coordinated
manoeuvre Gallego hit the joystick to spin the chair towards the window while drawing
a stubby pistol from under his jacket. The guard in the room went into a crouch
and levelled his machine pistol. Then a flash of light filtered between the
blinds.

The next moment, a section of the window
caved in. One of the guards came through shoulder-first before collapsing in a
quivering heap over the end of the table and sliding off onto the floor. The
bodyguard who had entered the room with them peered out through the hole, then
toppled back in with blood spouting from his head. He slumped to his knees and
knelt there for a moment before falling forward onto his face. The sound of
automatic gunfire could now be heard clearly from outside, accompanied by the all-too-familiar
reek of blood and high explosive.

Jack had no time to think. He snatched up
a machine pistol dropped by one of the fallen guards, and pressed his back against
the side-wall with the corridor to his right. After checking that the weapon was
ready to fire and transferring it to his left hand, he braced himself to pivot
round and shoot along the corridor in the direction of the incoming fire. Then
he became aware of an itch between his shoulder blades and turned to see that Gallego
was pointing the pistol at him.

“Hey,” yelled Jack, “aren’t we on the
same side, at least for now.”

Gallego kept the gun levelled for another
moment, then slowly lowered it. “We aren’t finished. But for the moment my
enemy’s enemy is my… I’m sorry, Jack, I can’t bring myself to say it.”

Then Gallego darted his eyes leftwards,
towards the broken section of glass. Jack had just begun to follow the glance
when there was an impossibly loud noise in the confined space. Out of the
corner of his eye, he saw Gallego’s right wrist explode into pink mist. Blood
and bone fragments spattered the wall behind him, and the pistol tumbled to the
ground enveloped in the remains of a hand. The muzzle of a gun was pressed
painfully into the side of Jack’s neck, and a voice shouted, “Put down your
weapon now!” He let the unused machine pistol hang from his hand, then bent his
knees and rested it lightly on the ground by his feet.

“Put your hands behind your head and move
out into the corridor,” instructed the voice. In his shock, Jack was dimly
aware of a man in a monk’s habit crossing the room and applying a rough
tourniquet to the politician’s ruined arm. Then he was out in the corridor and
being shepherded along it at gunpoint. He was directed to stand in the open,
facing a blank wall, with his hands still on his head and his legs widely
spaced.

Two or three minutes later, Gallego was
wheeled out and positioned beside him. The electric drive of his chair had
evidently been disabled, and another member of the assault force in monk’s
robes had been pushing it by the handles. “Another fine mess you’ve got me
into,” said Gallego in passable American English.

“Silence,” shouted a deep voice behind
them. “James, turn the chair round, then step away from it. Neither of you make
any sudden movements.”

James did as instructed and surveyed the
scene in the plaza. The helicopter still stood there, apparently unscathed,
although its pilot was lying face down on the ground with a machine pistol
trained on him by another monkish figure. There were almost a dozen bodies
lying around on the ground, all still in the contorted positions in which they
had fallen. The car looked functional but had bodywork damage and a broken
window. Facing him were three men in a line. The two on the outside were younger
men in their thirties or forties, both in monk’s garb. The centre figure, also
wearing a habit, was considerably older—if anything a shade older than Jack. He
also shared Jack’s stocky build and iron-grey hair. There was something
familiar about him, though.

“Hello, James. Surprise, surprise.”

“Who… Oh God. Antonio?”

“Oh yes.” Replied the stranger. “Reports
of my death have been greatly exaggerated, as they say.”

“Such a relief. I really thought…”

“Make no mistake, we’re the dead ones,”
snarled Gallego from his wheelchair.

“Speak again, and I’ll shoot off your
other arm,” responded Antonio in an even tone of voice. “We have so much to
catch up on, James. Sadly, I don’t think we’ll have time to do it justice.
Perhaps a few minutes before we say goodbye.”

Something about his old friend’s choice
of words gave Jack the chills. Something about the eye contact was equally
disturbing. “This isn’t quite the reunion I envisaged,” he said with an attempt
at a smile. “I was looking forward to travelling south with you.”

“Let’s go for a walk now,” answered
Antonio. “We’ll take a little tour of these charming grounds. James, I’m sure
you won’t mind pushing our mutual friend.”

“He needs a hospital,” urged Jack. “Look,
you can see he’s going into shock.”

“I think our friend knows he won’t be
needing a hospital,” answered Antonio. “And there isn’t time to make him a nice
hot drink. Walk.”

Jack took the handles of the wheelchair,
easing it across the cobbles and past the corner of the main building. The
ground sloped downwards as they went, and Jack was glad that the chair had a
manual brake lever on one handle; it took the strain out of holding the chair
back. They walked a few dozen metres down the path, past where Jack had parked
a 2CV so many years before, and parallel with the parapet over which he had
once jumped with Adolfo’s gun in his hand.

“Here’s a nice place to sit,” announced
Antonio, pointing to a wooden bench beside the path. “For me, that is. Our disabled
friend can sit where he is. And you, James, you can stand facing me with your
hands on the wheelchair where I can see them.” He sat down on the bench, and
smiled without warmth. “Well, what a strange situation, James. You are in the
company of two men who want to kill both you and one another. Of course, I’d
have been perfectly happy to let Txema here do the dirty work, but…”

“Txema?” queried Jack. “I heard him
called that once before. I thought José was his real name.”

“Txema is short for José María in these parts,”
answered Gallego tiredly, without looking up. “It’s how friends know me. I do
have friends, you know. And it’s what the meddlesome priest insisted on calling
me long after I went by another name.”

“As I was saying, James,” continued
Antonio with impatience in his voice, “I’d have been quite happy to let Txema have
his fun with you. I’ve been playing you like a trout from the moment I found
you on Facebook, and the real satisfaction has been in using you to draw him
out of his fortress. I expect you’re a bit old and flabby for his tastes, but
I’m sure he’d have thought of something apt. Sadly, though, he has a bigger
investment in my demise than in yours, and I can’t afford to let either of you
live.

“Txema, you destroyed my life and everything
I cared about. James, you are the most annoying person in the world and you
know too much. But in the final analysis you’ve both dishonoured me, and if I
fail to take satisfaction I dishonour myself and my family.”

“I’m really confused,” said Jack. “All
those years we were friends.”

Antonio smiled again, but still not with
any warmth. “And so we were, if a gentleman can befriend a precocious, arrogant
schoolchild. And so we might have remained, until you turned up on my doorstep
out of the blue and triggered the chain of events that destroyed my life.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“How could you understand, coming from a
degenerate culture like yours? Do you know anything about the ancient honour
and hospitality codes? You certainly never acted as though you did.”

“The honour code? Vendettas and blood
feuds? That’s ancient history.”

“You gain nothing by throwing a
caricature of nobility in my face. My family is old, James. My late wife’s
family is older still, and ridiculously wealthy. They may have looked down on
me, but I haven’t forgotten the old values any more than they have. I wouldn’t
expect you to understand.”

“I understand the hospitality code. It
goes back to biblical times. As a traveller eating at your table I came under
your protection, but I incurred a matching obligation to defend your family and
your property. Anyone who breaks the code is a worthless dog devoid of any
honour. But I don’t see how I breached it. Are you still mad at me forty years
on because in a panic I took your air weapon.”

“Don’t add insult to injury, James. You
simply dishonour me further. Let me explain it to you in simple steps that you
can understand before you die. In a rash moment five years earlier I invited
you to my home. You accepted my hospitality in a time of need, and that imposed
on me the obligation to protect you. You may recall that I did that.”

“You were sensational. I’ve never
forgotten. But I was worried about exposing your family to danger. That’s why I
didn’t stay any longer than I did.”

“Just coming to my door was enough to
expose my family to danger, because you put me under obligation and you brought
Gallego and his men in your wake. What happened then, James? You didn’t accept
my offer of a bed, did you? I could see you were sick, and if you’d accepted
you could you could have vanished off the map for a few days. But you insisted
on going back to the hostel, and it signalled to the Legion that you were still
in the city.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jack. “I know it’s too
late to say it now, but I wish I’d trusted you. Can’t we…”

“Even then you didn’t leave, did you? You
stayed on in the city. And just when I thought you’d finally gone, I got a call
from those two British
maricones
and was obliged to make fresh contact
with you. One of the men in the Merc in Guadix was an old army buddy and he
recognised me. It cost them their lives. And it cost me…”

“Your car. I’m so sorry, Antonio.”

“Will you ever stop cheapening everything,
you fool? What the two of you cost me between you was my family. I can’t talk
about it. Gallego knows, and he knows why he’s dying: for his nauseating
crimes, for his self-serving politics, and most of all for my family. That will
have to do for confession time.”

Antonio raised the arm holding the gun,
and moved his aim back and forth between Jack and Gallego. “Who first, I wonder.
Jack, I enjoyed your company for a time, and you deserve to see Gallego die for
all he did to you. But one quick bullet is too good for him. I need to remove
you from the picture so I can give him the attention he deserves. Goodbye,
James.”

“No! Wait!” shouted Jack. “What about the
honour code?”

Antonio half-lowered his arm. “Don’t be
silly, James. You’ve dishonoured yourself so many times, you’ve no part in the
system. A nobleman does not grant a disrespectful peasant the right to a duel.”