‘
Puerca? Urdaiazpiko?
’
Amy was puking. She was leaning to her side and vomiting. David felt the same gag reflex. On his left, Angus had his eyes shut. The Scotsman’s face was blank and impassive. And yet it somehow expressed the deepest emotion. Utter desolation.
And then, at last, Alphonse died. The dark head lolled. The fire had wholly engulfed him. The deed was done. The fire began to subside. The body was a mass of red embers, glowing bones and meat. A black and scarlet effigy of a man, in the black desert night. The ribcage had collapsed and the heart was exposed: a vermilion knot of muscle.
Miguel was still greedily inhaling the smell of burning flesh. And Angus was watching him. Eyes narrowed. There was a cold yet incandescent fury in the Scotsman’s gaze, a shrewd and calculating anger. Ferocious anger.
David noted that even Miguel’s accomplices seemed repelled by the immolation.
They were looking away, glancing surreptitiously at each other, and shaking their heads. But they were obedient. There was no sense of disloyalty. More like fear. They were scared of the Wolf.
Garovillo gazed at David, assessingly.
‘That was impressive, Martinez.’ He ran fingers through his long black hair. ‘You are a man of some…courage. Or uncaring cruelty. Only you watched the whole show. Only you. And you did not vomit like Amy. You have a strong stomach. Strong constitution. You are stocky, like a bull. A wild boar.’
Then Miguel glanced at the sky. The woodsmoke was drifting across the heavens, turning the moon into the pale face of a young widow – veiled with funeral grey. The smoke was dwindling, the fire was nearly done.
‘We need to build another fire. Yes we are all warm and
tostada
now. But the flames are nearly gone. So we need a big new fire. To barbecue our next course. The big man…the American Basque-burger.’
Alan shook his head. ‘Ain’t got no wood, Mig.’
‘But we need to burn him. Burn him next!’ Miguel’s voice was stilted: with a hint of frustration. ‘If we kill and burn the
Amerikako
then Eloise will be offered up to us.’
David felt the rough hands of Miguel’s accomplices drag him to his feet. His knees were weak, he was sagging with the horror.
He was going to be burned alive. Like Alphonse.
The journalist stood there, utterly stunned. And trapped. ‘You know my name?’
‘Heck.’ The monk laughed. ‘You think we don’t read the newspapers? You wrote about those murders in England, didn’t you? Seen the photo.’
He sagged: ‘But…’
‘I’ve been watching you since you got here. We’ve been warned that someone might come…Name’s McMahon. Patrick. Paddy Thomas McMahon.’
Simon leaned against a stack of books. Now he stared around: he saw that many shelves were bare: it was like the library had been ransacked.
The bald monk nodded.
‘And…hey…as you can see, you’re too late anyway.’
‘What?’
‘The papal authorities came two months ago. Took nearly everything.’ He lifted a bottle of wine from the side of his chair and poured into a steel cup. ‘Want some?’
Simon shook his head, and gazed across. Right now Brother McMahon looked less like a monk than anyone he
had ever seen: with his old brown corduroys and a scruffy jumper, dirty sneakers. And quite obviously drunk.
‘They took
all
the documents?’
‘All the important files, yep.’ McMahon laughed, unhappily. ‘All the stuff that would make you go
hmmm
. They said they were a security risk. They had permission from the Vatican. So important, the Pope agreed! And when they were here they said that some people might come looking for the documents, and if they did I was to tell the authorities. And here you are. Welcome to my pleasuredome. Not much left to see.’ The monk took a confirming gulp of wine. His gaze narrowed, as he surveyed the high wall of empty shelves. ‘You wanted to know what was in the documents. Right?’
‘That’s why I came. And I’m too late.’
‘Sure…’
McMahon’s expression was drunkenly sardonic.
Simon felt a twinge of hope, returning.
‘You can tell me, can’t you?’
Silence.
The journalist repeated. ‘
You can tell me? Can’t you?
You know what was in the documents, correct?’
‘Well…’ He sighed. ‘I can tell you
some.
What does it matter now…’
‘Tell me about the Basques? The Cagots? The Inquisition stuff?’
The monk nodded. And tilted his head. For a second he seemed to think, to consider his options. Then he said:
‘Don’t recall the whole lot, but I can tell you the reason they stopped the Basque witch burnings. That was one document they were very keen to take away.’
‘And?’
A mournful, tannin-stained smile.
‘They did it…Because the church was worried that the Basques might become
the second Jews.
More sons of Ham.’
‘Sorry?’
‘It’s church speak.’
‘Explain.’
‘The Inquisition and the cardinals were worried by…“Divisions in the indivisible choir of man.” That was one phrase I read in the archives. Striking right? Of course the fear’s based on those…hidden ideas in the Bible, and the Talmud. Patristic texts.’
‘Curse of Cain? Serpent Seed?’
‘Yup.’ McMahon smiled, drunken giddiness mingled with melancholy. ‘You got it in one, good man. For two thousand years scholars and priests and cardinals have wrestled with the terrible and…’ He burped, politely. ‘Terrible and confounding implications of Serpent Seed, of non-Adamite humans. A different line of man. But they have never resolved it. Indeed their explorations made things worse.’
‘The physical tests, on the Cagots?’
‘Yes of course.’
‘What did they discover?’
‘Again, challenging stuff.’ The librarian gargled some wine, and went on. ‘The king’s physicians even tried to test the Cagots’ blood. But that proved zilch. Didn’t have the science – this was the seventeenth century. But the
physical
examination of the Cagots caused consternation with the clerics and bishops. The precise line I remember was: “It is feared the class known as Cagots may not be of the children of God.” That was the Bishop of Bordeaux, to the King of Navarre. After he’d seen the results from the doctors.’
The phrase resonated in Simon’s mind, he could sense it echoing along the bleak concrete cloisters. Doors opening one by one.
He had a final question – then he had to leave. He really had to leave. He couldn’t help remembering Tomasky. The tooth embedded in his cheek. If he was found here by
someone less affably drunk than Brother McMahon, then
anything
was possible; the very worst was very possible. He needed to get out fast – after he’d asked one more question.
‘So. What is it that made you lose faith? You encountered something, in here, that made you lose faith.’
‘Did I…?’
‘What was it?’
The strange concrete pyramidal space seemed to shrink around them. The mad angles, the intensely leaning walls, seemed to narrow and darken. And at the centre of it: this burbling, drunken monk, who no longer believed in God.
McMahon rubbed a sad hand across his eyes.
‘In 1942, the Pope did a deal with Hitler. Kind of peace treaty.’
‘What?’
The monk’s voice was soft.
‘The archives about the arrangement were kept here. Alongside the Basque and the Cagot documents. Because…they were related.’
‘What kind of treaty?’
The librarian kept rubbing his eyes. Obsessively. Like he wouldn’t look at anyone.
‘You ever wonder why Pope Pius the Twelfth stayed so quiet during the Holocaust? Throughout World War Two?’
Simon frowned.
‘Yes. I mean, of course. Yes.’
’Exactly! It’s been seen as one of the great shames and scandals of the Roman church ever since. Maybe the greatest ever. There was total inertia in Rome when Hitler slaughtered the Jews. The Catholic church didn’t even
condemn
the Holocaust, just made vague noises of…
unhappiness.’
Simon asked again.
‘So, this treaty?’
‘Hitler discovered something. Through his scientists, in the camps in southwest France.’
‘You mean Eugen Fischer at Gurs?’
The monk nodded, and sat back in his chair and stared upwards at the tapering mad roof of the pyramid. As if staring at his own disappearing faith.
‘Yes. The deal was just
that.
Hitler agreed not to reveal what his scientists had found. Because what they had found somehow confirmed, scientifically, what the Inquisition and the Cagot examinations had previously implied. This thing that had so embarrassed the church, centuries ago – stuff so embarrassing they needed to keep it locked away. First in the Angelicum. Then here. Stuff that kept sending the archivists mad, or crazy. Stuff that made the monks neurotic, at least – those poor bastards that weren’t deranged by the building in the first place. Stuff too disturbing to understand, yet too important to destroy.’
Simon interrupted: ‘So you don’t know what it actually
was
? The revelations from Gurs?’
‘Nope. After the last librarian at Tourette joined that bunch
– the Society of Pius – the deepest secrets were locked away in a further box, in here. Personally, I never saw them. Not directly.’
‘But you know some of the background.’ Simon was unravelling the knot in his mind. ‘You know that, in return for Hitler not revealing this secret – what they discovered at Gurs – the Pope agreed to stay silent. During the Holocaust?
Right?’
The librarian lifted a steel tumbler full of wine and did the bitterest of toasts.
‘That’s it. You got it. The Pope did a deal with Hitler, he did a deal with the very
Devil,
and six million fucking people died.’
Then the monk added:
‘By the way, you’ve got one hour. To leave. I can’t just pretend you didn’t fetch up. I still have a job here. I may think these weird zealots who took the documents are a shitload of mothers, I may think the whole damn thing is a hateful charade, and the treaty a grotesque betrayal – but I’m sixty-five and I don’t want to go anyplace else. What would I do? Live in Miami?’ He shook his head. ‘So. I’m gonna tell them you broke in and overpowered me. That means you need to run away from here very quick. I will call them in an hour. In return, for my being so good as to not turn you in…I want you to tell me.’
‘What?’
‘If you ever find the truth – what Hitler found – what scared the church. Tell me? I spent a life believing in this shit and serving the Dominicans and suffering in this fucking madhouse of a building and hell’s teeth I’d like to know why I’ve lost my faith. Because I was born a believer, I was meant to believe. And yet now I am alone. So very alone.’ He stared at the metal cup of wine in his hand. ‘Blood of Christ, body of Christ, body of lies.
Cheers.’
Miguel’s expression was distinct; weary yet sated yet triumphant. David realized it was the same expression the terrorist had worn just after copulating with Amy in the witch’s cave of Zugarramurdi.
‘Wait. Wait wait…I am
sleepy,
’ said Miguel. His breath was visible in the cold night air. ‘We can wait.
Bukatu dut!
The American will warm us in the morning.’
Angus gazed at the terrorist.
Miguel gave orders for his men: Angus, Amy and David were tightly chained to an acacia tree, with their backs to the trunk. Guards were allotted. Then the terrorist very suddenly bedded down: so fast it was as if he had fainted. He was now lying deadweight on a canvas sheet, by the dying fire, faintly warmed by the glowing body of Alphonse.
‘Klein Levin,’ said Angus, blankly, and quietly.
David whispered to Angus, who was right beside him, chained with his back to the same tree.
‘What?’
‘The syndrome, Garovillo’s condition…Hypersomnia, facial tics. Violence. I think it is Klein Levin.’
‘And?’
‘It’s just…interesting.’
Silence. Then Amy spoke. Her voice tremulous with emotion:
‘Angus. Whatever. We need – need – need to do something – just something –
’
Angus nodded. ‘I know. But…what?
What can we do?’
No one spoke.
It was a cold and grotesque night, twisted with agony. David couldn’t sleep. His thoughts stared down a black tunnel at one singular horror: he was going to be burned in the morning. At dawn. He was going to suffer like Alphonse. He hoped that death would come quickly.
He was the only one who didn’t sleep. Angus and Amy whispered words of comfort to him, but in the end the sheer exhaustion weighed too heavily: they nodded out. Heads sagging.
David stayed awake. Staring into the desert black. Bitten by mosquitoes. Moths flickered against his face like tiny frightened ghosts. Even they departed as the night grew ever colder.
But then, in the grey weary hour before dawn, something moved. Something human. David stared.
Miguel was surreptitiously approaching the almost-dead bonfire. The accomplices were all asleep. Miguel had replaced the guard, and taken over the duty. Now he was creeping towards the sad smoking heap of the bonfire.
The ETA terrorist looked left and right, to make sure he was not being observed. David was in the shadows, beneath the tree, away from the lanterns. Miguel evidently didn’t realize that David was watching.
But watching what? What was Garovillo doing? There was something simultaneously awkward, and terrible, in the lonely drama.
José Garovillo’s son crawled up to the bonfire and reached
out a hand, across the charred and smoking embers. And he pulled at the roasted body of Alphonse. Tugging at the sagging dead meat of the man.
He was pulling on a leg. The broiled thigh of the poor Namibian youth – it came away easily from the hip bone. Like a chicken leg from an overcooked bird. Miguel laid the roast leg on the sand. Then he reached in his pocket, and he unclasped a sharp big knife. He was drooling now, a line of silvery spittle caught in the moonlight; David watched as the terrorist sliced and dug with the knife, carving a chunk of the charred and broiled flesh, from Alphonse’s leg.
Miguel glanced left and right one more time: the Wolf Nocturnal, guarding its prey. Then he stabbed the meat with the blade and lifted it greedily to his dribbling mouth, the salivating maw of the wolf.
Otsoko.
David retched.
Miguel looked up at the noise. The terrorist saw David. Saw that his attempt at cannibalism was observed.
A flash of guilt seemed to cross his face, inexpressible shame and guilt. The terrorist dropped the knife to the dust as if he had never meant to be holding it. Abruptly he stood, and disdainfully kicked the meat and bones into the dirty embers of the fire. Then he wiped his face with a sleeve, and sneered at David. Silently. But the sneer was unconvincing; the shame was still there. Terrible shame.
Miguel retreated into the shadows, dragging his blanket. And slept again.
David stared. Transfixed by the horror of what he had just witnessed.
Alone in the wilderness, he gazed at the desert sky. Dawn was summoning the worshipful earth to life. It tinged the horizon with green and cool blue, and the palest apricot. Faint dark shadows began to stretch across the canyon floor.
The slender trees bowed like courtiers in the freshening breeze. David was still the only person awake.
He squinted, watching a big cat a few hundred metres along the dry river valley; the cat was tawny and gracile, with tufted ears and a long pert tail, prowling between the camelthorns. A caracal.
Further down the shallow canyon, he could make out large moving black shapes. Desert elephants. Making their unique pilgrimage, across all the thirstlands of Namibia, searching for water.
He wanted to cry. Because he was about to die. And the world was so beautiful. Cruelly beautiful. Savage and deathly and beautiful. He had never felt so vividly aware of everything. Every beetle, ebony black on the golden sand, every chirp of every desert bird that trilled in the soft green acacias. And he was about to die.
Miguel’s voice echoed across the camp.
‘OK. Come on. It is
fucking
cold. We need to burn him. Come on!
Egun on denoi!
Wake up.’
Suddenly the clearing was alive with people. Shivering men waiting for their orders.
‘We need wood, Miguel?’
‘Get them to do it.’ Miguel barked at his men. ‘Use Amy and Nairn. Let them gather the firewood to roast their friend. We can brew coffee on his brains.’
‘Alright.’ Alan was nonchalantly pointing a pistol at them. ‘As he says. Don’t see why we should sweat.
You
go and gather some wood. We’ll be right behind you.’
Amy and Angus were unchained. A jabbing motion of the pistol gave them the direction. David watched from his bonds. The two prisoners shuffled down the canyon; Amy bent and picked up a small dead acacia branch. The men were smoking and laughing, swapping obscene jokes about the upcoming execution.
He noticed that Angus was talking to Amy. Whispering. Alan barked across the dust at the toiling captives: ‘Shut the fuck. Just collect the wood.’
Angus turned, and apologized, then stooped to the sand and wrenched at a small dead tree, with a few remaining green leaves. Amy copied him: wrenching at a similar tree, a few yards away.
The day and the task had begun. Angus and Amy did their slow and sombre duty, piling the wood high in the clearing; a chilly breeze was kicking across the wastes, the sun was already shining, but it was still cold.
Miguel’s voice was loud in the dawnlight.
‘Alan, get the fire lit. It’s freezing. Put our friend in the middle.’
‘Yes, Mig…’
David felt himself torn apart by the accumulating horror. Even though he had been preparing himself all night, the reality was too appalling to bear. This mustn’t be.
This mustn’t be.
But now they came for him. He fought and writhed, but he was one and they were many; he tried to bite one of his captors, but they slapped him into silence. Inevitably and inexorably, he was dragged across the dust to the waiting heap of wood.
‘Got the ropes?’
With brutal force he was half lifted, half shoved – hoisted into the middle of the firewood. For a moment his hands were unlashed and he tried to use his fists to hit out, hit someone, anyone – but the men grabbed his flailing fists: he felt them knotting his wrists behind the stake, and then the same happened to his ankles: they were roping his ankles too. Roping him to the big wooden stake.
Wood was stacked all around him, he was knee deep in distinctive grey desert wood. Dry and waiting.
He stared at Amy; she stared at him. Tears were running
down her face, yet she was silent. David sought out her blue eyes: he was searching, in his final moments, for a confirmation, some proof that she loved him. And there
was
something in her expression, something distantly gentle, and wistfully pure. But what was it?
‘
Basta!
’ said Miguel. ‘Let’s go. Breakfast.
Torrijas
.
Kafea
.’
‘Wait.’ Amy spoke: ‘Let me kiss him goodbye.’
Miguel looked at her, sceptical and wry – almost laughing. The sun was up and David could feel the first real warmth on his face. Soon he would be boiling, the blood would boil in his veins.
‘
Aii.
Why not? Kiss him goodbye. Say
agur
. Taste him one more time. And I shall watch.’
Amy nodded, subserviently. She walked to the bonfire. And she stepped over the wood and she leaned to kiss David, softly, on the lips, and as she did she whispered, very quietly, and very clearly.
‘Try not to breathe the smoke. Euphorbia wood. Just try.’
David was biting back his own terrified sadness. He nodded. Mute. He accepted a second kiss, then Amy retreated and Alan stepped forward.
‘Gas mark five?’
Someone laughed.
‘Who’s got the lighter?’
The Frenchman, Jean Paul, was chucking petrol from a can on the dry firewood. David felt the cold splash of the gasoline on his ankles, the heady smell of raw petrol rose to his face and then Enoka took the lighter. The squat Basque man clicked and cupped the lighter flame with a hand, protecting it from the desert breeze, like a little bird, like a baby chick, and then he knelt and tended the lighter and he stepped back slowly, inquiringly, carefully – and then with a polite
woooof
of an explosion, the gasolined firewood burst into flame.
It was really happening. Here. Now. In the yellow Damara riverlands. With the Lanner falcons wheeling over the wistful Huab. He was going to burn alive.
The desert timber was so dry it burst into vivid flame at once: big roaring yellow flames. Angus and Amy were crouched around the fire, warming their hands. Miguel laughed.
‘That’s good. Warm your hands on your cooking friend! Me too.’ Miguel flashed a glance at his colleagues, and snapped an order. ‘Keep a gun on them.’
Miguel stepped near to watch his victim’s ordeal. David’s eyes were watering in the smoke; his feet were hot; he could feel the heat on his own legs, flames crawling up his body, like the arms of loathsome beggars. He tried not to breathe the smoke. Euphorbia. Was there some plan? He was almost passing out with fear. He was going to die. His mind swam with terror and tiny hope. What were they doing? Amy and Angus were upwind of the thick oily smoke issued by the dead, crackling branches. Glancing at Miguel, who was downwind.
Miguel was inhaling the smoke. Breathing in and smiling serenely.
‘The smell. Smell of the meat, like lamb. A little like lamb, no? You can smell the wood and soon the meat? Yes?
Ez? Bai? Amy?
You can smell? That is…that is your friend…burning – and –’ Miguel began to mumble, through the fire-heat and the smoke – ‘Yess…
Marmatiko…
he will be…’
David gazed from his own lashed and burning execution: astonished.
Miguel was stumbling, sideways. He was slurring and toppling – and then Miguel fell to his knees, half conscious.
The ETA terrorist was down.
And now Angus was on him like a predator; before anyone saw a chance to respond, Angus had leapt round the fire,
grabbed Miguel by the neck; at the same time he snatched Miguel’s own pistol – and put it to Miguel’s lolling head.
The killer slurred a mumbled curse, barely conscious.
His guards were frozen with shock. Angus snapped: ‘Stop! Or I kill him!’
The moment jarred. Hands on guns. Men half out of cars.
Now Amy grabbed the knife lying in the dust, the knife Miguel had used to slice the human flesh. Diving into the rising flames, she slashed the ropes that tied David to the stake; as the cords fell into the fire, he leapt away, Amy pulling him free. Angus was shouting:
‘I will kill Miguel.
Don’t move!
’
No one moved. Apart from Amy: who slapped at David’s clothes, his smoking jeans and boots. The fire roared, as if in anger, denied its food. Amy put a hand to his face.
‘You’re OK?’
‘I’m OK – I’m OK –’ He could barely hear her, over the blaze of the flames and the sound of his own choking coughs: he was spitting the vile taste of his own burning clothes.
A few yards away, Angus was dragging the semi-conscious Miguel through the dirt – as Miguel’s men threw glances at each other. But their faces, in the clear morning light, flashed with extreme confusion. What to do, without Miguel? Without their commander?
Angus yelled: ‘Come any closer he won’t have a head, you fucks. Amy – grab all the car keys. And get the case with the bloods. David – get a gun and get to the car –
get in the Land Rover
–’
Again the men glanced at each other, confused, angry, and helpless. A few seconds, and Amy was done, brandishing a fistful of car keys in her hand.
‘Angus. I got them! And the bloods.’
‘Go to the car! David!’
Obedient, suppressing his fears, he raced to the car and jumped up and
sat at the wheel. His burned, painful hand was poised on the key. Ready to flee the first moment Angus was safe.
The Scotsman was pulling the deadweight of Miguel closer to the Land Rover. Muzzle of the gun still close to his temple. Amy was in the seat next to David, watching. Ready to go. To escape.
Ready.
But Miguel was stirring from his torpor, whatever the effect of the euphorbia smoke, it was wearing off – he was fitfully struggling in Angus’s grip; David could see in the headlights – Miguel was trying to wriggle free.
‘Angus!’
The scientist had the muzzle on Miguel’s head, at the temple. David knew what was going to happen. Angus Nairn’s face was set with grim satisfaction.
David watched, appalled, as Angus pulled the trigger: a point-blank execution.
But his grip was unsure: at the last possible moment, Miguel writhed, violently. Again he was the
jentilak
, the giant of the forest, unkillable, legendary: Angus got off a shot, and blood spat from Miguel’s head, but it was a wound, just a wound in the scalp. The Wolf was alive, and down, and free.
And signalling his men.