He passed time doing
whatever exercises his shoulder would allow. Running in-place helped him stay
in shape and distracted from longing. This cárcel was fairly new. It had been
built after the war as a maximum security facility with the passage of the Ley
para la represión del Bandidaje y el Terrorismo (Law for the Repression of
Banditry and Terrorism) in 1947. These grand names of laws were enacted, and,
built into those names, the excuses to target the maquis. There were no
decaying bricks to scrape through, or bars that could be loosened, as in the older
jails of the Guardia Civil barracks in the towns.
Other than mild
flirtations with the idea of escape, when he lay down on the bare steel bunk
that had no mattress, his vision of Iniga became clearer. He could smell her
scent and feel her firm breasts in his hands while he slept. Sometimes his
thoughts rested on Baker… Harry Baker, the betrayer, back to when Baker was
with him in the Pyrenees as a young O.S.S. agent, to his last meeting with the
contractor; or for a better word, assassin.
Ah, sleep… he had to
fight off the lethargy of sleeping. In the dark of the cell Alesandro shamed
himself for getting excited at the prospect of food… waiting for a tray to pass
through the slot in the door… waiting for the days to pass… days that were
counted by the changing of shifts. He figured it had been a couple of months.
The bulb in the cell above him had been off for three or four days. It seemed
like one long night, before he heard boots approaching with purpose, the door
slammed open, and light streamed in.
He was led back to the
interrogation room to meet the inquisitor once more. Alesandro was surprised to
see the weasel looking El Galopo enter the room and lean against the far right
corner behind the Falcon Nariz. El
Galopo was a black marketer who’d come in handy more than once for cash
transfers, ransoms, and an assortment of other sleazy tasks. Though he was
merely a tool of the trade, there was still an undefinable, and mutual, respect
that bordered on affection they had for each other.
The tall man looked
down his hawk nose over his shoulder towards Galopo, “I’ll give you two
minutes…” and gave up his chair across the table from Alesandro.
Galopo immediately took
the chair and displayed an unopened pack of Lucky Strikes.
“He doesn’t smoke, eh?”
the Falcon Nariz said quietly after checking the pack. His fingers tore at the
foil and dumped the cigarettes. He held up the pack, examined it in the light,
and threw it back empty with its contents sprawled out on the table.
“Maybe he just prefers
American smokes,” Galopo snorted, carefully putting each cigarette back into
the pack and pushing it across the table advising, “Take up smoking to pass
time.” The he picked one up and lit it, blowing the smoke out the side of his
mouth away from Alesandro.
Falcon Nariz left the
room.
“You don’t look so well
fed…. Your arm?” waving a hand past his nose, “Whew, you need a change of
clothes.” He asked, as though feigning compassion, “How are you being treated,
amigo?”
“Amigo? Are you now
with the Red Cross, Galopo?” Alesandro answered sarcastically. It was sarcasm
for show because both knew the room was wired up. He did wonder what the ruse
with the tobacco was about. The truth was, he was glad to see El Galopo just
because Galopo was El Galopo and El Galopo was of utility to both sides in this
peculiar battle. If there was a way for Galopo to make things easier, he could
for a price.
“You might say so,” he
winked. “I’m here as a favor to the proprietors of this fine hotel. But, if I
can help you in any way, let me know. Even here I have influence of a sort.”
“And your debt to our
hosts might be?” Alesandro kept up the appearance of distaste for the benefit
of the microphones but sensed the stealthy Galopo squirm… a shift of the
shoulders… eyes that darted ever so slightly around the room.
“It seems that our beneficiaries
here have this interest… er… Iniga in particular… I don’t know why, but they
have no sense of humor about it. I can assure you of that.”
“Times have changed and
there is little support for the Resistance, El Galopo. I haven’t seen or heard
from Iniga in years. She’s probably in France… or dead.”
“The Resistance… ha! It
isn’t given such an exalted name these days. You are billed in the headlines of
the papers as a common criminal… bandelero, and so is she!”
This wasn’t news. It
had been this way since the Republic had fallen. Alesandro changed the subject,
“Is this long-nosed man who I think he is, Galopo?”
“His name is Martinez
de la Rosa but he might as well be the Grand Inquisitor to you. He is a wise
man and quite efficient at what he does. That is why you haven’t been subjected
to the usual torture and, frankly, he is probably why you’re still alive.”
Galopo spoke almost gleefully for the benefit of the bugs, but with contempt
shown only by a slight lift of his upper lip, away from the usual one-way
observation window.
“Ah, Té
inflamos de la Rosa, yes. I prefer to think of him as the Falcon Nariz,” he quipped but he was
glad to have a name for this shadowy character known only by a few. Alesandro
feigned contempt, “So, did the Falcon Nariz send you to persuade or to ensnare
me?”
“You, Alesandro, are
already trapped… in case you haven’t noticed.” Galopo paused as though his mind
seemed to be searching for a clue, “Ah, I see now. You call him a falcon
because he is a bird of prey?”
“Si, a small bird of
prey… trained to hunt and kill for his master.” Alesandro spoke loudly enough
for the benefit anyone sure to be listening.
“Aren’t we all… all of
us in this game we are playing?” Galopo nervously squirmed.
“Don’t waste our time
on persuasion, El Galopo.” He let Galopo slip the pack of cigarette papers into
his free hand. Awkwardly and painfully, he put the pack in his shirt pocket.
Suspicious, he wondered if the Falcon Nariz wanted to have this message passed.
Either way, El Galopo accommodated.
The Falcon entered the
room just as soon as Alesandro’s hand was back on the table. Galopo stood,
pushing his bent body from the table. “May I leave now, Señor de la Rosa?” he
deferred.
“Si, you are done,
Señor Galopo.”
Alesandro looked up as
the gaunt Falcon Nariz hovered over the table… looming like a hawk… a bird of
prey. “Get up,” the Falcon Nariz ordered.
Standing across from
the table Alesandro resigned to what was coming next. On such occasions he went
to a place inside his mind where there was nothingness. He was taken back to
his cell. Left there alone, he pulled out the cigarette pack finding a short
note on a paper scrap wrapped around a small glass capsule. The note could
barely be read in the dim light printed clearly, “Faith… Biarritz watches”, and
a scribbled signature below, Perro de Caza. The capsule was an implied
footnote, “Just in case.” Knowing El Galopo was hired by the Madrileño,
Fournier, to look after him was feint hope because El Galopo usually worked for
any highest bidder.
It would be hard for
anyone to out-bid the resources of the billionaire Fournier and that was a
small comfort. He crumpled the note, swallowed it and wondered what it meant.
What did the Rose mean when he said, “You have done well, Señor Galopo”? It
didn’t make sense that this meager note would serve any purpose for De La Rosa.
It promised no guarantee that he wouldn’t be tortured but Bird Dogs signature,
Perro de Caza, added to a note of Fournier’s support did hold a glimmer of hope
that he was somehow protected. Perhaps even the Falcon Nariz could be bought.
Ruled by fear or bribe, the Franco economy depended on a system of favors. A
string of hope was all he needed to keep from popping the new cyanide capsule
he would tuck away in the space between the steel of his bunk and the concrete
of the cell’s wall.
A guard opened the food
tray slot in the iron door and ordered, “Strip off your filthy rags.” Then the
door opened as two guards entered. One stood by the door while the other
blasted with a hose; cold water on naked flesh. The water pricked his skin like
piercing needles but he didn’t shy away from it because he too was weary of the
stink of several weeks on hold in these cells. This could very well be the only
hygiene he might enjoy… drawing his mind back to cold mountain streams where he
once stood naked under the falls after a two day hike from the Val d’Aran. He
imagined the cool air on his flesh washing away dried blood and grime. His
attention snapped back to the commands of the guard as a jump suit was thrown in
front of him onto the concrete floor. The jump suit was wet from the floor but
that didn’t matter… it was clean. The door clanged shut.
He was able to count
the days by the changing of the guards. A single bulb above in the middle of
the cell was either on all day and night or off all day and night for several
weeks at a time so that it was impossible to tell one day from another
otherwise. It must have been a couple of weeks by the time he was taken back to
the interrogation room.
He could hear the keys
jangle and the clank of steel doors echoing against concrete halls and boots
approaching his end of the corridor, “Keep an eye on this, my friend,” He
whispered to the cockroach on the wall a foot from where El Galopo’s capsule
was tucked… “Just in case, Pancho, you never know.”
Led back to the now
familiar room a few days later he was seated at the table. Nariz dropped a
tablet and pencil on the table. He spoke softly. “You think you are beyond
help…”
“And you are here to
help me?”
“Drop the sarcasm, bandelero,
I might be able to make your stay here more comfortable.”
“Gracias Martin… but
why?” Alesandro asked, knowing full well that any kindly gesture had a price.
“Alesandro, were you
ever a Christian?” Nariz waited for an answer and then continued, “Or, are you
still an anarchist… a Basque pagan burning churches?”
Alesandro choked back a
laugh at this repeated question. This man could never become an ally. But he knew that it was more important to
make friends rather than enemies. He would see where this man stood… where
Nariz was going with his interrogation,
“I suppose that I am…
you know, most anarchists in Spain are papists gone sour.”
He’d studied history,
philosophy and religious studies as a maven at the left bank cafes of Paris
before he left for Madrid in ’36 at sixteen. The poetry of San Juan de la Cruz
spoke directly to his soul and he longed for something of a mystical union with
God. He would not feel anything like it until he’d met with death’s face at the
barricades of Madrid. The unrestrained horrors and violence of ambushes in the
Pyrenees… his thoughts returned to the fields; of pausing in the shade of an
ancient megalithic stone boar in the fields of Mingorria where he’d felt a
union with the past. However, his mystical experiences were of the martial
variety: that razor’s edge where life and death sliced through the moment of
truth… not at all scholarly or so refined as in the cloisters of the Church his
fellow Anarchists were so prone to burn.
Nariz insisted, “It is
ironic symbolism that a church burning pagan be captured in a crypt of the
Church. Perhaps you are secretly a Christian?”
A vision of Ávila
returned. Ávila, where the Bird Dog dragged him after a sniper’s bullet smashed
into his upper arm and shoulder as he crossed town towards Catedral de Ávila.
Bird Dog was going to meet him there. He had supposedly set up an alliance with
rogue agents of the American C.I.A. to support him with munitions. He barely
remembered the Bird Dog taking him to the church’s crypt where his wounds were
treated in the crypt of the Cathedral at Ávila among the long dead saints where
Juan de la Cruz had been betrayed four centuries before.
He tried to remember
more than one stanza of the saint’s poetry but had been distracted.
Y aunque tinieblas
padezco
en esta vida mortal…
Although I suffer a
dark night
in mortal life…
He didn’t respond to
Rosa’s question, and his silence was interpreted as an answer.
Nariz’s voice broke
through where his thoughts drifted like clouds above Alesandro’s mind, “Spain
is old, and her Saints are old too. I am a Christian and I am bound by Christ
to show mercy.”
Alesandro countered in
a low voice, “And you expect mercy from God in return?”
The tables had turned,
and he was, for a brief second, the inquisitor.
Nariz’s composure was
quickly regained as he spit-out the words. “We would prefer cooperation.”
“From me… or from
Christ?” Alesandro didn’t care any longer. If the tortures were to begin, he
was ready.
Nariz’s face became
confident as he set a familiar cyanide capsule on the table, “We found this in
your cell. When the electrodes are attached to your cojones, you won’t have
this at your disposal.”
Alesandro watched the
capsule roll to the side of the gold-speckled-formica top and stop at the
chromed strip in front of his free hand, “Are you saying I should take it now?”
Nariz sneered, “No, señor, a suicide would be
more convenient for us."
Relieved one option was
off the table, Alesandro said, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh…”
“Yes, you are right,
Gotson. I am a Christian and, according to the teachings of the Church, I would
prefer that you write a page or two on this tablet and sign it as a confession
of your sins… as a sacrament and not the result of torture. Suicide opens only
the gates of Hell for you,” he said, as he tucked the capsule into his vest
pocket.
“So, are you here to
save my soul from Hell,” Alesandro was glib, “or to save my body from torture?”
He no longer cared either way.
Nariz added, “the codes
you used to contact el Quito and Cara Quimada would enrich your confession
greatly. Such a confession could even absolve your most unforgivable sins.”
Alesandro wanted to ask
the Falcon Nariz what Christ meant by the only unforgivable sin. He wanted to
ask for his own sake and not to taunt. He wanted to ask because he had felt in
his heart that somewhere down the line he had forgotten what he was fighting
for and had, in the process, blasphemed against the Holy Spirit. He had
hardened himself to compassion over the years.
No comments:
Post a Comment