“Everybody called her Anita,” Joe said. “She came from Perpignan, already had her teaching diploma when she arrived. I don’t recall ever hearing her called Juanita. Try the mairie in Perpignan, they should have something. I think she was born there.”
The mairie at Perpignan took his number to check that he was indeed calling from the mairie of St. Denis, and a sergeant of the town’s municipal police called him back almost immediately, saying that Bruno had met his brother on a legal training course in Toulouse. He was happy to help and called him again with details from the birth certificate. Juanita Maria Zabala had been born in Perpignan in April 1950, daughter of Joxe Asteazu Zabala, a naturalized French citizen, and Marie-Josette Duvertrans of Perpignan.
Bruno thanked him and went to his computer, called up Google. fr and typed “Joxe Asteazu” into the search box. The first item that came up was “Sculpteurs Basques en Espagne,” and the second was in Spanish that he could understand, “Lista de atentados del GAL,” a catalog of the assassination attempts on Basque militants during GAL’s dirty war. So Juanita’s father was a Basque. Bruno then ran a search of her father’s full name plus “Perpignan” in French Web pages only. He was directed to a list of people awarded the Medaille de la Resistance. Bruno called Perpignan again and asked the helpful sergeant to look up any details of Zabala’s naturalization papers, adding that the man had served in the Resistance.
“Naturalization was granted in 1946, and there’s a note about special recognition for Resistance services, despite his internment record. He was in Camp Gurs; that was the big one for the Spanish Civil War troops who fled to France when Franco won. That’s all it says.”
Bruno then called the Centre Jean Moulin in Bordeaux, the Resistance archive named after the man who had tried to unify the Resistance under de Gaulle and had died while remaining silent under Gestapo torture. Bruno asked for the curator, whom he knew from a previous case, and asked if there was anyplace that collected details of naturalized Spaniards who had been awarded the Resistance medal. The curator asked for details, took Bruno’s e-mail address and promised to find out what he could.
Then Bruno called Rollo, headmaster of the local college, to ask when Anita had first started teaching in St. Denis, and who among the other teachers might have been close to her. He was given two names, but while neither one knew of Anita as Juanita, he learned that Anita had been a member of the Communist Party and that she had arrived in town and started work in 1985. Bruno’s next call was to Montsouris, the only Communist on the St. Denis Council, and his inquiry was met with the usual suspicion.
“I’m trying to find Horst, that German archaeologist,” Bruno began. “He’s disappeared, and he was a great friend of Jan, the blacksmith. Jan said that he’d met Horst through Anita, so I was wondering if there were any other old friends he might have known through her. I’m clutching at straws here so any help you can give…”
“Horst wasn’t in the party, I can tell you that. Nor was Anita, really. She paid her dues, but it was no secret she was a member out of sentiment because her father had been a lifelong member. I think he was in the International Brigades or something in the Spanish war. I remember she said her dad came into the party through the Resistance, when he was in the FTP. But that’s all I know, and she’s been dead for years now.”
Bruno knew that the FTP was the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans, the Communist wing of the Resistance. He called Bordeaux again to tell the curator of this extra snippet of information.
“I could have told you that,” the curator replied. “We’ve found a fair bit on our friend Joxe. He escaped from Camp Gurs in 1940, like a lot of the internees did. It wasn’t well guarded, and he had relatives in France, among the Basques in Bayonne. They probably wangled him some identity papers. He was in the FTP from the beginning, after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, and with his Spanish experience he did a lot of training of the young recruits in the Maquis. He also helped organize the Spanish refugees. The citation for his medal says he fought at Tulle and Terrasson in the summer of ’44 and was wounded.”
“I knew I could count on you for this,” Bruno said. “Thank you, it’s a great help.”
“Hang on, there’s more,” the curator said. “He joined the French army when he recovered and fought his way into Germany in ’45. That’s how he escaped being rounded up and sent back to Spain like so many of the other war refugees. The British and Americans were worried about these Resistance-trained Spaniards going back to overthrow Franco and replace him with a Communist regime. So they handed a lot of them back to Franco’s tender mercies.”
“I never knew that,” said Bruno, his satisfaction at tracking down the information suddenly chilled.
“Not many people do. The Cold War started a lot earlier than most people think.”
20
Although the sun was out, Pamela was wearing a heavy woolen coat in black, a cream cashmere shawl around her shoulders and black boots that somehow looked both elegant and sturdy when Bruno raced into her courtyard, scattering gravel. She waved good-bye to Fabiola and climbed in beside him, pulling her carry-on bag onto her knees and looking nervously at her watch after she kissed him.
“I checked the meteo. It’s cold in Edinburgh,” she said, gesturing at her coat as he drove off. She began to wrestle with the strap of the seat belt.
“Just that small bag?” He wished he could have driven her all the way to Bordeaux.
“I have clothes at Mother’s house. Are you sure you can take care of the horses?”
“Fabiola will help,” he said. “Don’t worry about things here. Have you had any more news about your mother?”
“Yes, from my aunt, who saw her and said that it’s her left side that’s affected. But she recognized my aunt. She just can’t speak much, but the doctor says that should come back in time.” She was twisting the black leather gloves in her hands as she stared through the windshield. “Will we be in time for the train?”
“Comfortably,” he said, but pressed the accelerator a little harder, glad that his new police car had a bigger engine than the old one. “Have you eaten?” he asked.
“Fabiola made me eat an omelette and an apple and drink some tea. She put a sandwich and a bottle of water in my bag. I’ll be fine.” She looked at her watch again. “I’m worried about the train.”
“If I have to, I’ll put the siren on.” He tried to make light of it.
“This is the time I should be processing all the bookings for the gites this summer,” she fretted. “I’ll go broke if I can’t get them all settled and the deposits in the bank.”
“There are bound to be Internet places in Edinburgh where you can deal with that. I can check your mail and deposit checks at the bank,” Bruno said, looking both ways before turning onto the busy main road toward Le Buisson. He understood that she was saying these things as a way to make a mental list of things to be done, an effort to impose control over her life again after the shock of the news about her mother. She needed reassurance.
“These things can all be resolved. Right now, your concern is your mother, so don’t worry about anything having to do with St. Denis. We can take care of things here. I can send you reports by e-mail.”
“I can’t leave it all to you, Bruno,” she said, rummaging in her handbag to check that she had her passport and the printout of her boarding pass. “You have more than enough on your plate as it is, and now this dynamite and the corpse at the dig and the foie gras and Horst disappearing… Oh God, this is all happening at the worst possible time. And now there’s Charles.”
Bruno hated taking his eyes off the road when he was driving, but he looked quickly across at her, not sure what she meant.
“It means I’ll have to see my ex-husband again,” she said, her voice flat and almost dull. She was looking fixedly at the road ahead, not meeting Bruno’s eye. “He stayed very close to Mummy even after the divorce, and she always thought the world of him. She was furious when I left him, barely spoke to me for ages. He still visits her from time to time.”
“That’s to be expected,” he said, not sure why she was telling him this. Pamela had always spoken of her mother with great affection, even though Bruno had sometimes wondered why she never came to visit her daughter in France. “An illness in the family, it brings people together.”
“It’s not that,” she said. “It’s just that knowing I’ll see him will bring back all the things I disliked about marriage, not just him but the institution, the way it forces people into roles.” She paused, and then said almost to herself, “I hate depending on people, or their depending on me.”
