friend. Then I saw Rosalia with Luis Buscon. Do you know Luis Buscon? He is the GAL. I’m sure of it. There’s a journalist, Patxo Zulaika, who knows all about this. Maybe you know him. I think you know him. He works for Ahotsa. He doesn’t know about Buscon because I don’t trust him. But he knows about the GAL. He told me at lunch. You need to believe me. You need to talk to him.’
Nothing is said. There is absolute silence, a minute for the dead. Then suddenly, heatedly, as if the volume had been turned up on a television, I hear them arguing in Basque. Even in my demented state I can tell that I have said something to unnerve them, something that might keep me alive. I may not have to tell them about Kitson. If they put me on the stove I would tell them about Kitson. I don’t think I’d be able to stop myself. I like Richard. He is what I wanted to be. But if they put me on that stove and they light the gas under my naked thighs, God knows I do not know what I will tell them.
‘Say that name again,’ she says. ‘Did you say the name Luis Buscon?’
‘Yes, yes.’ I seize on this like food. ‘Luis Buscon. He is also called Abel Sellini. He was working with Dieste. He murdered Arenaza and took the body to Valdelcubo. That’s why I was there today. Buscon is a Portuguese mercenary. Juan Egilan… I can’t remember his name. The one who was kidnapped…’
‘Juan Egileor.’
‘Yes. He has been kidnapped by the Spanish. And Otamendi too. He was shot because he is one of you. They hate you. They think you are terrorists. They are fascists who do not believe in the cause.’
Again they go back to their conversation. All I want is half an hour to rest and gather my strength. I would give anything for that. I would give anything just to hold Sofia and to go back to our hotel in Santa Ana. If they stop hitting me, if they let me go, I will tell her that I love her. If they take away the gas, I will tell her that I love her.
‘Luis Buscon is somebody that we know about. How did you know his name?’
‘I bribed the concierge at the hotel.’
‘Which hotel?’
‘The Villa Carta in Madrid.’
‘And how do you know that he is a Portuguese mercenary? How does a private English banker know something like that?’
How do I answer this? It is as if I can feel all three of them moving towards me, shutting down the space. It should be easier to lie because they cannot see my eyes, but I cannot think of what to say.
‘The concierge told me. Alfonso told me.’ The found deceit is like a miracle. ‘He said Buscon always stays at the hotel and the staff had gone through his belongings. The hotel knows about fake passports, all the money he keeps in his safe. He books into the room under the name Abel Sellini. The police are keeping him under surveillance, but they don’t arrest him because of what he is doing to ETA. Don’t you see? They want him to carry on. He is leading the GAL.’
‘That is unlikely.’ The woman’s reply is very abrupt and I feel the dread fear of another beating. If they do not believe me they will light the gas. Then it’s over, all of this. They speak in Basque and one of them moves back to the stove. If I hear the click of the cigarette lighter again I think I will scream.
Say something. Do something.
‘Why is it unlikely?’
‘Because we have known about Senor Buscon for a long time.’ The woman’s voice is directed away from me, as if she is looking towards the door. I wonder if there is now somebody else, a fourth person, in the room. I wish that one of the men would say something. ‘He is an associate of the Interior Ministry. One of his oldest friends is second to the minister himself. Have you met these men?’
‘No, of course I haven’t. Of course not.’
‘Then why are you involved?’
‘I’ve already told you. I am not involved.’
‘You do not know Javier de Francisco?’
‘No.’ And this is the truth.
‘If there is another GAL, it will be Francisco controlling it. He is the scum. You know that he was a soldier in the days of Franco?’
‘I told you, I know nothing about him.’
‘Then let me educate you. A young Basque confronted him, a brave boy from Pamplona. And de Francisco took the boy, who had done nothing, and with two of his men they went into the countryside and they beat him with shovels until he was dead. So this man knows what it is to kill like a coward. He is the black viper of the government in Spain. And it has all been concealed by the corrupt government that you serve.’
‘That’s not true.’ I do not understand the link she is making between Francisco and Buscon, between a murdered boy and soldiers of long ago. I know that I will get out of this place alive if I can just prove the authenticity of what Zulaika told me. And yet he must already have shared his theory with my captors. Great waves of pain pulse across the left side of my head, making it impossible to think. Is this what Kitson wanted all along? Did he set me up? I cannot work it out. If Julian walked in now, or Saul or Sofia, it would somehow make more sense. I cannot seem to reason. ‘I’ve told you. I’m a private banker. I live on my own in Madrid.’ I am saying things now that they have already heard, but there is nothing left. ‘I became interested in what happened to Mikel. I liked him, I really did. I shouldn’t have followed Buscon. I shouldn’t have followed the girl. I was just bored. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I am not a spy.’
And then the beating starts again. After this I remember nothing. No more talk, no more questions, no fear nor even pain. I remember nothing.
30. Out
There is a Dutch film, The Vanishing, in which a man wakes up inside his own coffin. He has been buried alive. In the final scene he is left alone to suffer this terrifying end, this nightmare suffocation, and the audience drifts out into the night bewildered by fear. And so it is in the aftermath of my own terror as I wake into the total blackout of a living death. I am lying on my side. When I reach out with my right hand it hits a wall. When I stretch it above my head it collides with a hard plastic panel which sends a numb pain through my fingers and wrist. My feet can push out no more than two or three inches before they too are stopped by a hard, fixed surface. Everything around me feels completely enclosed. Only when I reach above my face, as if to search for the lid of the coffin, do I encounter open clear space.
My senses gradually awaken. I am wearing clothes. It is warmer than I can remember for a long time. There are shoes on my feet and my eyes are gradually growing accustomed to the light. But when I lift my head, trying to sit up, a migraine sears across my skull, lifting vomit into the back of my throat. The pain is so intense that I have to lie down again in the darkness, breathing hard for release, swallowing.
I feel again with my right hand, slowly tapping along the panel above my head. There is an odd, recognizable smell, a mixture of alcohol and pine, that same acid sting in my throat. My fingers curl around what feels like the handle of a door. Lifting my head, risking the pain, I pull it and a bright light immediately flares into the space. When I open my eyes against it I see that I have been lying on the back seat of a car parked inside a tiny breezeblock garage. I am inside the Audi. What am I doing here?
The agony of asking my twisted body to move is worse perhaps than any pain that I can recall from the interrogation. Every part of me aches: feet, calves, thighs, arms, shoulders, neck, blending into a single conscious suffering. I am wretched with thirst. I have to sit with the door open and my feet on the ground for as much as thirty seconds while I gather the strength to stand. There is terrible bruising around my stomach, a scarlet map which appals me when I lift my shirt to look at it. These are my clothes, the ones I wore to Valdelcubo; I am no longer wearing their rags. I try to put weight on my legs, but the pain makes it difficult to walk. After just two steps I open the passenger door and collapse into the seat.
The glove box is open. Inside I can see my wallet, the two mobile phones and their chargers. It is bewildering. The SIM cards are inside and I switch the phones on, but they are drained of power. Why would they give them back to me? The etarras have taken all but twenty euros from my wallet, but the credit cards, the photographs of Kate and Mum and Dad, are all there. Dangling behind the wheel I can see my keys in the ignition. The keys to Calle Princesa, to the PO box, even to the bedsit in Andalucia.
What is this place? A waiting room for death? My captors have clearly left, yet I have no idea where I am, of the time or date, of their reasons for doing so nor of my right to survive. I check my unshaven face in the rear-view mirror for signs of bruising and cuts, but it appears to be mercifully unmarked. They would not have wanted the
