Not With a Whimper Page 12

  There was a SEAT 600 round the corner and someone in the driving seat. The engine was running.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I paused and swore into the folds of the hood. A soft small hand was pushed through the driver’s window and flapped me forward. I dropped the torch, tore off the hood and as I opened the passenger door, the driver crunched the car into gear. It was moving before I had the door shut, the engine howling like a kicked cat. The 600 bucked through potholes, making me crack my knees on the dashboard. My head hit the roof.

  “You said you wanted to see me,” Carol said smugly.

  “Christ, watch the road.” She left scorch marks on an innocent Renault. “I thought Félix was going to leave the keys in it.”

  She didn’t answer that. “He’s waiting round the corner. If we aren’t followed he’ll pick us up and we follow him. We’ve to take the Puerto de Santa María road.” The 600 shook the words out of her.

  She hit the horn as we came to a corner. The taxi was fifty yards from the corner and went straight past.

  I looked back. No cars followed.

  “I told you I didn’t want to get you involved,” I growled.

  “Too late now, Alan.” She eased off the accelerator and the smile she gave me was big, wide and confident.

  “You’re in one hell of a spot if they catch me,”

  “They won’t.”

  I checked behind again. Still no cars.

  “Satisfied?”

  “Christ, I’ve been lucky.” I used the hood to wipe my face. “I know everything stops for the processions but that was too easy.” I shook my head. “I don’t understand it.”

  “I think your friend Félix knows quite a few people, he’s got some organisation. I’ve to let him catch us up outside town. You’ll have to direct me.”

  I looked out on the street to get my bearings. I didn’t recognise it.

  “We don’t want to run into the processions.” She laughed.

  “Try left at the next corner.”

  She cut in under the jaws of an American car that locked big enough to swallow us. It blared at us but she just laughed again and said, “Bully.”

  “We don’t want to run into any cars either.”

  “I’ve had my licence since I was sixteen.”

  I finally recognised where we were. Next on the left would take us onto the dual carriageway. We hit it, turned right and there was no traffic for her to play tag with. “Straight up, across the railway line, bear left.”

  She took her eyes off the road to break out a beam for me. Her teeth stretched white in the darkness of the car. “Worked out beautifully, didn’t it?”

  I grunted and watched the road for us. The seat of the hábito was pulling too tight. I ripped it open. “That’s better. No, I don’t like it.” Her fingers tightened. “If they get a description of the driver, even if someone only says it was a woman driving, Legra will have you inside quicker than swatting flies.”

  Her fingers relaxed. “He’s got to catch me first.” She was happy as a Sunday school queen.

  I turned round, elbow over the back of the seat and studied her. Her smile wasn’t any smaller. “The full outlaw bit, eh? Take to the hills and all that?”

  “Something like that.” She turned the switch up on her smile and her shoulders shook with laughter. It was very pleasant laughter. I even smiled myself. “Honestly, Alan, it’s a real blast.”

  “A prison cell is a hell of an exciting place, too.”

  “What do you think my life has been?” Anger flashed through her voice. “One goddam prison cell after another, fancy expensive prison cells ever since I can remember. This time, I’m choosing my own, doing my own thing.” Then she added more softly, “You’re not responsible for me, Alan.”

  I slumped down in the seat and sighed. The whisky bottle bumped my hip. I took it out, uncapped it and tickled my throat with a mouthful.

  She was in a good humour again and laughed. “Trust you not to forget it.”

  “Not at Spanish prices.” I put it between my feet.

  “Have you always been a drinker?”

  “Pretty steady. It doesn’t always help,” I added morosely.

  “And this is one of those times, I suppose.” She was angry again.

  “It’s not your fault, Carol. You’re right. I am old-fashioned. I feel I’ve used you.”

  “I want to be used.” She stopped then added, “By you.” She said it stiffly as though it had taken a lot of courage to say.

  “I don’t believe in using people.” I put the “using” in quotation marks.

  She nodded, swallowed and drove on grimly in silence for a time. Finally she said, “We’re not on the same wavelength, are we?”

  “That’s too dangerous.” I reached for the whisky.

  “Are you frightened?”

  “I’m old enough to be your father.” The whisky bit my throat. It did nothing for me.

  “What does age matter?”

  “It does to me. I play the game by my own rules. I can’t help it. I’m too old to learn new rules.”

  She looked shrewdly at me. “Is that why you drink? You don’t like the rules?”

  “Rem acu tetigisti.”

  “Jesus, what’s that?”

  “Latin.”

  “Latin?”

  “You’ve hit the nail on the head,” I translated.

  “Well,” she said brightly, “it’s a new game with new rules and you’re just going to have to learn them.” She was smiling on full candlepower again. Lights flashed and Félix’s taxi went past and settled down in front of us. “I told you everything would be okay.”

  For her, for her age, everything was okay. A new game with new rules. What the hell were we talking about? I sat forward, pushing my back against the squab and leant back, sitting upright. My head pressed the roof. A 600 wasn’t built for me. “I want to get in touch with your father.”

  “You’re not going to send me home?” she squawked.

  “I’ve got to tell someone I can trust and I don’t know who the hell I can. I think there’s going to be a rocket attack on the base.”

  “Christ!” She sounded stunned. She didn’t look at me. She believed me. “That’s what it’s all about.”

  “No, I don’t know what it’s all about but I think that’s what’s going to happen. I don’t know why.”

  She didn’t panic. “Of course, I’ll get in touch with father right away. He’ll know what to do. You really think it’s true?”

  We drove in silence then.

  At El Puerto we trailed Félix down past the bullring to the docks and turned left. We stopped outside a new block of flats and Carol tucked the 600 up against his exhaust. The plain wooden door was open and Félix was waiting at the end of the concrete hall. We hiked up three floors. The plaster was already flaking and the handrail shaky. A good sneeze could have done a lot of damage. He unlocked a blue panel door and stood back to let us enter, came in behind and switched on the light. His eyes were deep and there was grey in his hair which I hadn’t noticed. “You’ll be safe here tonight. Tomorrow night we’ll have to move you.”

  It was a cheap room with cheap furniture and had the cold sour smell of emptiness and bad cooking. The curtains were drawn.

  “Your father,” I said to Carol.

  Félix frowned and I told him that her father was a naval commander, that I had to tell someone I could trust. “Yes, that is good,” he said. “There is a teléfono at the end of the road.

  My eyes burnt and my head felt hollow. “Tell him I want to see him at once.” I rubbed my face hard.

  “You look real flaky.”

  “But not here. Camp or house or wherever. Alright?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Uh-huh.” She looked me over, worried, then sighed. “Alright, I’m on my way.”

  I sat on a thin-seated lumpy chair. “Thanks, love.”

  Félix shut the door behind he
r. A wedge of plaster fell from the doorframe. He kicked it away. “You do not look well, Alan.”

  “And you look one hundred per cent, Félix.”

  He smiled. It was the first time I had seen Félix smile properly. “Two old men, eh, Alan?” Like most people who don’t smile a lot, it suited him.

  “Two old men, Félix.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  On the street it was dark. The Guadalete was flat and still. I turned right at the end of the road and climbed up towards the outskirts of the town.

  There were trees by the crossroads where I was to meet Gil Byrd but no car. I didn’t mind waiting. I lit one of Félix’s cigarettes.

  A car came down the Jerez road and I stepped in behind a tamarisk but it stopped somewhere before the crossroads. I listened but I heard nothing.

  Then I saw it, a car coming along the Rota road on dipped headlights. It looked wide and American. It stopped a hundred yards away, its lights died and the night was quiet again. Nobody moved.

  I decided it was time I did and trod out the butt, brushed through the branches and stepped onto the road.

  I was ten yards away from the car when the headlights came on full beam and slammed up against me. I put my hands up and struggled to see through the dazzle. Car doors swung open either side and a voice said, “Do not move, Herr Christian.” I didn’t move. It would have taken a 1000-volt charge to move me. The voice said: “We are both expert marksmen.”

  The car on the Jerez road roared and came round the corner on two wheels and a lot of luck, braked desperately behind me, chewing out gravel with its tyres. A voice said in Spanish, “That’s him. We’ll take him now. You can go back to the casa, Erik.”

  “I am coming with you.” He walked forward, first a silhouette in the light and then it was six feet of hard, well-trained German. The headlights dimmed and I could see two shapes behind him, men holding guns. Two there, plus Erik. Two behind me. There was nothing I could do about it.

  I let them march me back to the second car and tip me onto the back seat. Erik sat on my left, one of the Spaniards on my right and the other got in beside the driver. He U-turned, leaving a yard of rubber on the road and we headed into El Puerto.

  Then we were in front of a wrought iron gate set in a long white wall. The man in the passenger seat got out, unlocked it and the car whooshed through into a driveway bordered by whitewashed stones, past what was an office block with vines or some sort of creeper growing darkly over the pale walls; through an arch and into a courtyard. It coasted to a stop outside a large double door with a small door inset.

  We sat in the car and listened to each other breathing until a man came and unlocked the small door. The two either side backed out, but there was no way I could do anything but follow them. It wasn’t a matter of choice.

  The small door was a black rectangle leading to outer space. We stepped through it. Neon lights stuttered and came on. It was a long room with an earthen floor and huge barrels piled five high along one of the walls. The whole room was heady with the smell of sherry.

  “You can make as much noise as you want,” Erik said. His eyes looked savage, and his face was pale apart from two high spots of red on his cheeks. One of the men backhanded me across the face. I took it, shook my head, tasted salt on my lips. “Four hours.” His eyes looked me over and then he said, “You don’t know, do you?” He looked triumphant.

  “Don’t I?” My face didn’t hurt – it was just numb. All over. Sleepwalking. I would wake up.

  Erik sneered. “We’ll take him downstairs.”

  “Downstairs?” He was a small, stocky Spaniard with bad teeth but he had a good punch. I had felt it.

  “Downstairs!” Erik jerked irritably.

  We marched the full length of the building. Our feet made soft scuffing noises on the bare earth and one of the Spaniards breathed heavily.

  The one with the keys unlocked a door, leant inside and switched on a light. There was a concrete flight of steps with a green painted door at the bottom. We waited while he went down and unlocked that, too. It was at least nine inches thick.

  I tapped on the door as I passed it. It made a soft metallic noise, lead-lined. The room was a rectangle, about twenty by twelve with a seven-foot ceiling. The walls were grey concrete and it was kitted out like a command room. Two-tier bunks along one wall, six of them altogether. The end and side walls were cupboards apart from a chemical toilet. On the wall beside the door there was a steel grey desk, about which a lot of very functional equipment and gadgets and dials were set. And above them there was a six by four colour print of Hitler.

  “Home from home, mm?” I murmured.

  “It will be.” Erik strutted and then added, “For some of us.”

  I realised then what it was. A fallout shelter. Were they expecting the balloon to go up? Going to try and hit the nuclear stock pile on the base? I didn’t know anything about nuclear physics but I didn’t think that was likely to be enough to detonate a warhead. But I didn’t know. It could. But again, why?

  “You can make all the noise you want, Herr Christian,” he told me again. He didn’t need to tell me. He waved his hand round the room. “Completely lead lined.” The colour had drained entirely from his face now and he breathed through his mouth.

  “And bomb-proof.”

  “Yes, Herr Christian, completely bomb-proof.” A smile smudged his face. He looked at his watch. I have got half an hour in which to make you talk.”

  “What have we got to talk about?”

  “I do not know yet. That is what I have come to find out.” He nodded. Hands locked onto my arms and lifted me onto a hard-backed chair, forced them behind me where rough cord chewed into my wrists. They didn’t tie me expertly but they used enough cord to lash down a three-master.

  “You only had to ask,” I said.

  “How did you get out of jail?”

  So they wanted to know if Legra were behind me. “I walked out.”

  Erik sighed and looked at his watch. “They are coming for the papers in exactly twenty-eight minutes. I said that I would have the information from you by that time. I am a reasonable man, Herr Christian, so I shall explain to you that I am going to kill you when they arrive. These are your last twenty-eight minutes on earth.”

  “Twenty-seven,” I corrected.

  “So I must hurry. They can be the most painful minutes of your life or you can tell us what we want to know and it shall be painless. There is nothing you can do to stop us now.”

  “Twenty-six.”

  The red patches came back to his cheeks and he bent forward and slapped me. It didn’t have the authority of the Spaniard. I sneered and the flush stayed on his face. “How did you get out of jail? Who helped you?” he bawled. I let the sneer stay in position. Good old Christian. He wasn’t going to crack under interrogation. Iron man Christian. I hoped. I felt cold as old bones and just as brittle.

  “Take his shoes off. “

  The Spaniard knelt in front of me. He had foul breath to go with his bad teeth. It smelled of garlic and oil. He put a hand behind my heel to yank off the shoe. I stamped on his fingers with my left and kicked with my right. I couldn’t get enough leverage but I didn’t need much to do damage. My foot cracked full on his lips. There was the sound of snapping teeth and blood spurted in sharp drops onto my shoe. I rocked on the chair, nearly overbalancing. He squatted there, making no sound. His eyes were small, bright and funny. Then he spat and a fragment of tooth jetted out of his lips. The blood ran slowly down the centre of his chin and dripped onto the floor.

  “Get him,” one of them yelled and they both leapt on me and Erik shouted, “Careful – we want him conscious.”

  I went over backwards under them. My head cracked the floor. They dropped on my shoulders.

  I lifted my head. The Spaniard was still squatting at my feet. He started on my right foot and took his time. He pulled the shoe off, then the sock and then did the same to my left foot. His eyes were still smal
l, bright and funny. He lifted the right foot up, holding the little toe between fingers and thumb of each hand. We looked at each other. Then he snapped it. The pain travelled like ice, filling my body for one sharp second and I screamed. Iron man Christian. I screamed.

  He stood up then, took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the inside of his mouth and chin. There was hatred in his eyes now. The other two men stood up.

  “That is just the beginning.” Erik was sweating.

  I tried to sit, up but it was impossible. I rolled over onto my side and one of them kicked my shoulder.

  “Careful,” Erik yelled. “That could have been his head.” He wiped his brow with his knuckles. His jet black hair fell to his eyebrows and he pushed it back.

  “Why do we not kill him now?”

  “We’ve got to find out how much he knows before she sails. Who else is with you?”

  “Miguel Aberaccín.” I couldn’t do him any harm – any more harm.

  “We know about him.”

  “Don Carlos,” I suggested and that was overdoing it. Erik’s face twisted. The Spaniard bent over my feet again and the same pain racked me but this time I didn’t scream. I felt the pain alright but it wasn’t happening to me. My mind felt very clear and sharp and separate from my body. It was another body it was happening to. I smiled. “Two down and eight to go. Then where do we go for honey, Erik?” Iron man Christian.

  A buzzer sounded at the door.

  “Mein Gott, sie sind früh.” All the colour had leached from his face, especially round his eyes, a paper white circle with bright blue centres.

  One of them opened the door. Erik stood with his back to it, looking down at me. He was trying to get his breathing under control.

  The door opened and there was a big German there who shouted, “Achtung.”

  A shot arched him forward, mouth open, face twisted. A man burst through the doorway with the big German, shotgun waist-high and the second barrel caught Erik in the chest and side, lifting him off his feet. Félix followed. He carried a four-inch Colt Python. Erik fell, spinning through 360 degrees. At five feet, the shot spread was no more than inches. The blood spurted once, spraying in thick three-dimensional drops. Erik fell on me and I heaved my chest to roll him off. His body was warm and soft. He rolled onto his back. His eyes were blue glass, misted, empty. The blood seeped across his chest.