public to see my beaten face if I went in front of the press. That would be bad for ETA’s support base. They were thinking all the time about the presentation.
Standing again, supporting myself on the open door, I walk very slowly, like an old and crippled man, towards the front of the garage. The air is stuffy and damp. I am aware of my own smell, of my sour breath and sweat. The door is not locked. When I turn the handle it slides up easily over my head, revealing a barren landscape of dust and low, pale hills. This is not the farmhouse. It is a different place. We have left the Basque country and come south into the desert. It looks like Aragon.
Finding more strength in the exhilaration of freedom I walk round to the back of the garage where there are nothing but old plastic sacks and pools of muddy water. A dead bird lies on a pile of wood. I can hear cars passing, the tarmac whisper of engines and tyres. A second, larger building is set back from the garage, ruined and open to the elements. I experience an overwhelming desire to leave this place and to be free. My stiff body is loosening up all the time, but if I do not drink something soon it will be almost impossible to drive. I have the presence of mind to bend down and to check under the car for a bomb and my thighs and back and migraine roar with pain as I do so. Then I lower myself into the driver’s seat, turn the key in the ignition and head out slowly onto the muddy road.
My eyesight seems OK. I haven’t checked the rest of my body for marks or scars yet but I can do that as soon as I find a hotel. The radio works. Just to hear human voices again, to reconnect with the world, feels like a blessed second chance. It is several minutes before I learn the day and the date – Saturday 19 April – but the clock on the dashboard puts the time at 4.06 a.m. That must be wrong; they must have played around with it. Then the news comes on Cadena Ser at 17.00. The anchorman talks at length about the Egileor kidnapping and the invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s statue has been torn down in the centre of Baghdad and some idiot Yank tried raising the Stars and Stripes in its place. A colleague of Arenaza’s has demanded a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death, but there is no mention of Dieste or Buscon, of Javier de Francisco or a dirty war. My own disappearance appears to have gone completely unnoticed.
Then, like a roadside miracle, I pass a stall selling drinks and fruit and swallow almost half a litre of water with unbroken, exhausted gulps. If my appearance or demeanour seems in any way unusual to the stallholder, she does not betray it. Taking my twenty-euro note, she merely frowns at the denomination, hands over a bundle of coins and sits back down on a low stool. I ask her to locate our position on a map and she points to a section of road between Epila and Rueda de Jalon, a two-hour drive south from the Basque border. They must have brought me over in convoy in the boot of a car, dumped me in the back seat of the Audi, closed off the garage and then headed back into Euskal Herria.
The road leads south to the NII autovia. If I turn right, I can be in Madrid by ten, but it’s a long drive and my body, despite the fuel of water, will not withstand the journey. I need to rest and clean up. I need to think. My knees are stiffening up on the pedals and a nerve pain, like a small electric shock, shoots infrequently through the back of my thigh. I require the anonymity of a big city, somewhere I can disappear and gather my thoughts and decide what the hell I’m going to do. I’m not ready yet to face Kitson or Sofia, to go to the police or to confront Zulaika. So I make the decision to drive east towards Zaragoza, booking into a four-star hotel in the centre of the city under my own name. Thank God I left the fake passports, the driving licences, all the stupid paraphernalia of my secret existence back in Madrid. Had the etarras discovered those, they would almost certainly have killed me.
The phones start to chime as soon as I have plugged them in. Message after message from Sofia, two from Kitson and Julian, a single text from Saul. Even Mum has called, and to listen to the gentle, oblivious cadence of her voice is to experience once again the miracle of my survival. I had expected Kitson to be worried, but he rang on Tuesday to cancel our meeting in Tetuan. That would explain why his manner is so unperturbed. His second message, left at midday on the 16th, merely confirms this, citing logistical difficulties in Porto’. Only Sofia sounds upset, her messages growing in intensity to a point where she shuts down in frustration, convinced that I am ignoring her calls in order to ‘spend time back in England with that girl’.
‘Just be honest with me, Alec,’ she says. ‘Just tell me if you want it all to be over.’
I draw a long, hot bath, drinking half a bottle of Scotch with too much Nurofen. The bruising around my stomach is very bad, and my knees, into which they slammed the metal pole, have almost locked up since the drive. There’s an intense yellow-black bruise at the top of my left shin, a stain that I can never imagine eradicating. I’ll need to see a doctor, to pay somebody privately to check me out and not ask too many awkward questions. There are also marks around my shoulders, more bruises on my back, even a clump of dried, sticky blood in my hair. When did that happen? I can book the appointment under a pseudonym and say that I got into a fight. Then I’ll need blood work and X-rays. I’ll need tests.
Just after nine I order a sandwich mixto from room service and make a series of calls on the hotel phone. Mum is out, so I leave a message on her answering machine telling her that I’m away on business and can be reached in my room. Saul is having dinner in a restaurant in London and it is difficult to hear what he is saying, but I feel a delirious homesickness just listening to his words, to the easy laughter of girls in the background. I worry that my voice is unstable and see that my fingers tremble on the bed when we are speaking. He says the divorce is going through with Heloise, but does not elaborate, and promises to come back to Madrid before long. Then I call Sofia.
‘Is it OK to talk?’
‘What do you mean?’ By her clipped, dismissive tone it is obvious that she is in a sour mood.
‘I mean is Julian around?’
‘He is out.’
‘Look, I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch. I can’t explain now. It’s not what you think.’
‘And what do I think, Alec?’
It sounds as though she has one eye on a television set or a magazine, just to irritate me. She knows I hate it when she doesn’t concentrate on what I’m saying. I want to scream the truth at her, to weep, to ask for her help. I feel so utterly fragmented and alone in the hotel room and wish she were beside me, to care for me and to listen. But it is useless.
‘I can imagine what you think. That I’ve been with another woman, that I’ve been in London or something. But it’s not that. I had business, OK? That’s all. Don’t be angry.’
‘I am not angry. I am glad you are all right.’
There is a long pause. She wants to bring the conversation to an end. I draw my knees up tight against my chest and find that I begin to shiver as I talk.
‘Sofia?’
She moves the receiver away from her mouth and takes a deep, stagey breath.
‘Yes?’
‘Can you meet me? When I get back to Madrid? In two days? Can we go to the Reina Victoria?’
‘On Monday? This is when you are coming back?’
There is mild criticism even in this simple question.
‘Yes.’
‘And that’s what I am to you now? Just hotels? You don’t telephone me for more than a week and now you want to fuck me? Is that it?’
‘You know that’s not true. Don’t do this. I’ve been through hell.’ My voice cracks here but she does not react.
‘What do you mean, you’ve been through hell? I have been through hell. I am sick of this, Alec, I am sick of it.’
‘I got into a fight.’
A tiny beat of shock. ‘What kind of a fight?’
It’s strange. All I want now is to win the argument, to make her ashamed of her churlishness.
‘I was beaten up. Here in Zaragoza. That’s why I wasn’t able to go south for Julian. He’s left messages wondering where I am. I was unconscious for a while.’
It is an awful lie, one of the worst I have ever told her, but necessary in that it works to bring her round. She is instantly distraught.
‘ Unconscious? You got into a fight? But you don’t fight, Alec. Where did this happen? Lo siento, como estas mi vida? ’
