The Exile (28 page)

Ochoa offered Guzmán a cigarette and he took it, distracted. ‘It's bad luck the
Yanqui
was the ambassador's brother,' Ochoa said.

‘This was more than bad luck, Corporal,' Guzmán said. ‘El Lobo shot that
Yanqui
deliberately. Why would he do that?'

‘Maybe he was aiming at us?' Ochoa said. ‘He was firing from a distance, after all.'

Guzmán shook his head. ‘No, he's a crack shot. He meant to kill him, which means he knew who the
Yanqui
was.' His face set.

‘Can't we call in some help?' Ochoa asked. ‘General Mellado's got a whole division sitting in barracks. Couldn't we borrow a company or two? That would speed up the search for El Lobo's supplies. We might even flush him out.'

‘No,' Guzmán said. ‘The orders from the top are very clear: do nothing to attract attention. If Mellado gets involved he'll burn villages to the ground and shoot the inhabitants. And those will be the innocent ones. The
Yanquis
would turn faint if they got wind of something like that.' He had a sudden vision of Madrid, slowly moving out of his reach. ‘We stick to my plan. We destroy his supplies and push him into going after the bank truck.'

‘And then he walks into the trap.' Ochoa nodded.

‘After which, we go back to Madrid.' Guzmán swung himself up into the saddle. He glared as he saw the two civil guards leading the horses carrying the bodies.

‘Know how I can tell you're not used to carrying dead bodies, Diaz?'

‘No,
Comandante
, how?'

‘Because your fucking uniform's covered in blood.' Guzmán spurred his horse forward to catch up with Ochoa.

‘Not far now, sir,' Ruiz called, pointing to the mountain looming above them.

Guzmán stared belligerently at the spectacular landscape. ‘Know what our trouble is? Everything's different here. We know fuck all about what's going on.'

Ochoa nodded. ‘Can't Gutierrez provide us with some intelligence?'

‘I don't know, Corporal, because I haven't heard a word from him.' Guzmán swore as a gust of wind threatened to dislodge his hat. ‘I can't get used to this fucking country.'

‘It isn't Madrid,
jefe
.'

Guzmán sighed, almost nostalgic. ‘True, in Madrid all you have to do is kick a few bootblacks, slap a barber or two and in no time we'd have a lead.'

‘Proper police work,' Ochoa agreed. ‘A drink in every bar and all of them on the house.'

Guzmán looked at him. ‘Of course.' He called to the trooper ahead. ‘Diaz, do they have taverns round here?'

Diaz nodded. ‘See that dark shape on the hillside over there, sir? That's La Cueva.'

Guzmán reined in his horse. ‘It's called The Cave?'

‘No, it is a cave,
Comandante
,' Diaz said. ‘It can get pretty rough sometimes.'

‘So can I,' Guzmán said. ‘Perhaps their customers know something about Señor Lobo. Let's get these bodies disposed of and then we'll have a quiet drink with the local peasants.'

OROITZ 1954, CUEVA DE MARI

Guzmán knelt by the edge of the shaft and looked down into the darkness. Dank air rose from the depths below. He took a stone from the floor of the cave and dropped it into the shaft, listening for the sound as it hit the bottom. ‘That's deep enough.'

Behind him, in the mouth of the cave, the two
guardia
were pulling the bodies from the horses. They were taking their time about it, Guzmán noticed, watching the men carry the first corpse in. He groaned at the reverential way they laid the American's body by the edge of the shaft. ‘For fuck's sake, you don't need to be so gentle. He's not going to wake up.'

‘Shouldn't you say a few words, sir?' Diaz asked, wringing his hat in his hands.

Guzmán looked at him, wondering if he was mad. ‘Of course, Private Diaz.'

Diaz and Ruiz doffed their tricornes and stood at attention, heads bowed.

Guzmán put his foot against the body of the dead American. ‘Don't fucking come back, you Red bastard.' He rolled the body over the edge of the shaft and listened to the echoes as the corpse bounced off the stone walls as it fell. Moments later, a final muffled impact, satisfyingly distant. As Guzmán turned away, he saw the two troopers cross themselves. They paused in mid-genuflection, seeing his baleful look. ‘Cut that out and toss that Çubiry in after him,
rapido
.' Guzmán gave Diaz a venomous look as he dragged the Frenchman's body towards the drop. ‘No graveside weeping, Diaz. Throw him in and be quick about it. You're not a mourner.'

Diaz nodded unhappily, fumbling for a better grip on the corpse.

‘
Puta madre
,' Guzmán sighed, ‘He's dead, you can't hurt him now.' Irritated, he watched Diaz roll the body into the shaft. ‘Amateurs.'

A cool wind ruffled the sparse grass outside the cave and Guzmán fastened his hunting jacket. ‘I want the squad to start looking for El Lobo's supplies immediately. Anything he can use to store food or weapons is to be burned.'

‘There are some drovers' shelters and old cattle sheds along the ridge,' Ochoa said. ‘I'll tell Ruiz and Diaz to pass the order to the others.'

‘Good.' Guzmán led the way back to the horses. As the two
guardia
saluted, he stopped and towered over them, bristling with aggression. ‘Where's the
Yanqui
's body?'

Ruiz shuffled his feet and looked down. Diaz stared into the distance.

‘At the bottom of Mari's Cave,
mi Comandante
,' Diaz said. He stumbled backwards as Guzmán jabbed him in the chest.

‘Wrong. You never heard of any American, or that French bastard, for that matter. That goes for you too, Ruiz.' He put a foot into the stirrup and climbed into the saddle. ‘We'll see you back here at sunset with the others.'

The two troopers saluted and rode off towards the ridge.

‘Time for a drink then, Corporal,' Guzmán said.

OROITZ 1954, TABERNA LA CUEVA

‘I thought they were exaggerating,' Guzmán said. ‘But it really is a cave.'

La Cueva was a natural opening in the hillside, though the owner had built a rough wooden wall to protect its customers from the mountain winds. A man was standing outside as they tied their horses to a rail by the stone trough. He was bald, though his beard made up for that, reaching halfway down his barrel chest. He stared at them with virulent suspicion.

‘
Muy buenas
,' Guzmán said, almost pleasantly.

The man's face became even more hostile. That took some doing.

‘What do you Spaniards want?' he asked, his beard rising and falling as he spoke.

Guzmán shrugged. ‘I want a drink. What the fuck do people normally come here for?'

‘Why didn't you say so?' The man turned and pushed the door, though with some difficulty, since it was not fixed to its hinges. ‘No need to be unpleasant.'

Guzmán and Ochoa followed him into the cave. Towards the back was a bar hewn from a long boulder. The surface of the rock had been flattened and polished until it shone. Behind the bar, a series of shelves had been hacked out of the side of the cave, all crammed with bottles containing a diverse assortment of bright-coloured liquids, the likes of which Guzmán had never seen outside a pharmacy.

‘This is fucking primitive.'

The bearded man gave him a dark look. ‘It's not like you were invited, is it?'

At the far side of the cave, a fire blazed in a circle of large stones, sending pungent wood smoke into the soot-stained roof. A group of men sat near the fire, staring into the flames with the glazed expressions of the seriously inebriated.

Guzmán leaned against the bar, admiring the smoothly dressed surface of the stone. ‘Bit quiet today then?'

‘I never said it was quiet. What's it to you?' The barman went behind the bar, smoothing a wet cloth across the polished stone. ‘I thought you came here to drink?'

Guzmán turned to Ochoa. ‘What do you want?'

Ochoa looked at the array of bottles. ‘I'll have a beer.'

The barman snorted. ‘We don't sell it.'

‘All right,' Ochoa said, ‘give me a glass of water.'

‘We don't have water.' The bald man narrowed his eyes. ‘And we don't have glasses, either.' He slammed a battered metal tankard on the stone counter.

‘If you don't have water, how do you wash those?' Ochoa asked.

‘What? Are you two
maricónes
or something?'

‘Why don't you tell us what you've got and we'll have some of that?' Guzmán said.

‘All right.' The owner nodded. ‘We have absinthe.'

‘What else?'

A blank stare. ‘
Patxaran
.'

‘I don't like
patxaran
.'

‘Everyone likes
patxaran
,' the man said. ‘But if you don't want that there's absinthe.'

‘So what's in those bottles behind you?'

‘Absinthe.'

‘Why are there so many different colours?'

‘The colour doesn't matter,' the bald man said. ‘It's the strength that counts. In fact, it's a matter of life and death for some folk.'

‘Why?'

The barman sighed as if it was obvious. ‘If you have a couple of glasses of that yellow stuff there,' he pointed to a squat bottle on one of the upper shelves, ‘you'd better not be walking home after dark. We've had people fall over cliffs, others froze to death, and don't get me started about the ones who ended up in the river.'

‘So what do you recommend?'

‘None of them. They all lead to trouble.'

‘I come into a bar for a fucking drink and you try to talk me out of it. What kind of barman are you?' Guzmán said despairingly.

‘Fuck you and your fancy ways.' The barman slammed another metal tankard onto the bar next to the first and splashed blue liquid into both. With a scowl, he pushed the tankards across the smooth stone counter. ‘Get that down you.' It was less a friendly injunction and more a threat, Guzmán thought, taking a mouthful. ‘
Puta madre
.' He clutched at his throat.

Ochoa took a tentative sip, his eyes widening as he swallowed. He shrugged and lifted the tankard again, chugging half of it down in one gulp. Slowly, he lifted his left hand in front of his face and stared at it, entranced.

‘What the fuck's up with you?' Guzmán grunted.

‘My hand's on fire.' Ochoa grinned. He lifted his hand to admire the flames.

‘I think you'd better take it easy with this stuff,' Guzmán suggested.

A man came in, though Guzmán smelled him before he got through the door. ‘
Kaixo
,' he said, leaning on the bar. Just another peasant, Guzmán deduced from his threadbare clothes and tattered
alpargatas
.

The barman looked up. ‘
Kaixo
, Aïtor. What will you have?'

‘Absinthe.' He leaned against the bar. ‘Nothing like a day's work to build up a thirst.'

The barman lifted his stone flagon above one of the rusty tankards. It was empty.

‘Out of absinthe?' Aïtor said. ‘I can always go somewhere else.'

The barman reached behind the bar for another flagon. ‘Not unless you want a twenty-kilometre walk you can't.' He filled the tankard and pushed it across the counter. ‘In any case, once you've drunk this you won't be capable of going outside for a piss, let alone to another bar.'

‘Let's get a seat.' Guzmán led the way to a couple of chairs near the fire.

A few more customers drifted in. Few looked at Guzmán or Ochoa. This was clearly a place where men minded their own business and that business was drinking. Guzmán cast an eye over the clientele. Degenerate drovers, garrulous goatherds and shambling shepherds, all drinking home-made absinthe or
patxaran
as if their lives depended on it. Soon the rough stone walls of the cave echoed with drunken arguments and half-remembered jokes.

‘I like it here,' Guzmán said, trying to focus as he looked at Ochoa. ‘Though you're a bit of a misery.' When he got no answer, he decided to make small talk. ‘So how's the wife?'

Ochoa peered at him, his pupils small dots in his pale eyes. ‘I wouldn't know.'

‘Why not?' Guzmán waved to the barman for a refill. ‘Isn't she in Madrid?'

Ochoa took a swig of absinthe. ‘She left me and took the kids with her.'

‘Shame.' Guzmán held out his tankard as the barman brought more drink.

‘When this is over, I'm going to take some leave and find her.'

‘Good idea. You going to make it up, get her to see sense?'

‘No.' Ochoa gave him a blank look. ‘I want to find her so I can kill her.'

‘So there's no chance of a reconciliation?' Guzmán had a sudden urge to laugh and changed the subject. ‘How many kids have you got, Corporal?'

‘Three,' said Ochoa. ‘Two boys and a girl.'

‘Which are the hardest to bring up?'

Ochoa's eyes rolled. ‘They're all difficult to bring up. I can't say.'

‘Try thinking about it then, Corporal, and I'll ignore the fact that you're habitually as miserable as fucking sin.'

Ochoa shrugged. ‘Girls are more of a worry. And they cost more to keep.' His face creased into a lopsided grin. ‘Why do you ask,
jefe
? Planning on having a few?'

‘I ask you a perfectly serious question,' Guzmán snapped, ‘and you turn into a fucking comedian. Any more of that and I'll take you outside.'

‘Forget it.' Ochoa slumped back in his chair.

‘Don't tell me what to do. I don't like someone having a laugh at my expense.'