Authors: Sidney Sheldon
Tags: #Espionage, #Fiction, #Nuns, #Spain, #General
C
olonel Fal Sostelo was on his tenth cigarette.
I can’t put it off any longer,
he decided.
Bad news is best gotten out of the way quickly.
He took several deep breaths to calm himself and then dialed a number. When he had Ramón Acoca on the telephone, he said, “Colonel, we raided a terrorist camp last night, where I was informed Jaime Miró was, and I thought you should know about it.”
There was a dangerous silence.
“Did you catch him?”
“No.”
“You undertook this operation without consulting me?”
“There was no time to—”
“But there was time to let Miró escape.” Acoca’s voice was filled with fury. “What led you to undertake this magnificently executed operation?”
Colonel Sostelo swallowed. “We caught one of the nuns from the convent. She led us to Miró and his men. We killed one of them in the attack.”
“But the others all escaped?”
“Yes, Colonel.”
“Where is the nun now? Or did you let her get away, too?” His tone was scathing.
“No, Colonel,” Sostelo said quickly. “She is here at the camp. We have been questioning her and—”
“Don’t. I’ll question her myself. I’ll be there in one hour. See if you can manage to hang on to her until I get there.” He slammed down the receiver.
Exactly one hour later, Colonel Ramón Acoca arrived at the camp where they were holding Sister Teresa. With him were a dozen of his men from the GOE.
“Bring the nun to me,” Colonel Acoca ordered.
Sister Teresa was brought to the headquarters tent where Acoca was waiting for her. He stood up politely when she entered the tent and smiled.
“I am Colonel Acoca.”
At last!
“I knew you would come. God told me.”
He nodded pleasantly. “Did He? Good. Please sit down, Sister.”
Sister Teresa was too nervous to sit. “You must help me.”
“We’re going to help each other,” the colonel assured her. “You escaped from the Cistercian convent at Ávila, is that correct?”
“Yes. It was terrible. All those men. They did godless things and—” Her voice faltered.
And stupid things. We let you and the others escape.
“How did you get here, Sister?”
“God brought me here. He’s testing me as He once tested—”
“Along with God, did some men also bring you here, Sister?” Colonel Acoca asked patiently.
“Yes. They kidnapped me. I had to escape from them.”
“You told Colonel Sostelo where he could find those men.”
“Yes. The evil ones. Raoul is behind it all, you see. He sent me a letter and said—”
“Sister, the man we’re looking for in particular is Jaime Miró. Have you seen him?”
She shivered. “Yes. Oh, yes. He—”
The colonel leaned forward. “Excellent. Now, you must tell me where I can find him.”
“He and the others are on their way to Èze.”
He frowned, puzzled. “To Èze? To France?”
Her words were a wild babble. “Yes. Monique deserted Raoul, and he sent the men to kidnap me because of the baby so—”
He tried to control his growing impatience. “Miró and his men are headed north. Èze is to the east.”
“You must not let them take me back to Raoul. I don’t want to see him ever again. You can understand that. I couldn’t face him—”
Colonel Acoca said curtly, “I don’t give a damn about this Raoul. I want to know where I can find Jaime Miró.”
“I told you. He is in Èze waiting for me. He wants to—”
“You’re lying. I think you’re trying to protect Miró. Now, I don’t want to hurt you, so I’m going to ask you once more. Where is Jaime Miró?”
Sister Teresa stared at him helplessly. “I don’t know,” she whispered. She looked around wildly. “I don’t know.”
“A moment ago you said he was in Èze.” His voice was like a whiplash.
“Yes. God told me.”
Colonel Acoca had had enough. The woman was either demented or a brilliant actress. Either way, she sickened him with all her talk of God.
He turned to Patricio Arrieta, his aide. “The Sister’s memory needs prodding. Take her to the quartermaster’s tent. Perhaps you and your men can help her remember where Jaime Miró is.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
Patricio Arrieta and the men with him had been part of the group that had attacked the convent at Ávila. They felt responsible for letting the four nuns escape.
Well we can make up for that now,
Arrieta thought.
He turned to Sister Teresa. “Come along with me, Sister.”
“Yes.”
Dear blessed Jesus, thank You.
She babbled on. “Are we leaving now? You won’t let them take me to Èze, will you?”
“No,” Arrieta assured her. “You’re not going to Èze.”
The colonel is right,
he thought.
She is playing games with us. Well we’ll show her some new games. I wonder if she’ll lie quietly, or if she’ll scream?
When they reached the quartermaster’s tent, Arrieta said, “Sister, we’re going to give you one last chance. Where is Jaime Miró?”
Haven’t they asked me that before? Or was that someone else? Was it here or—it’s all terribly confusing.
“He kidnapped me for Raoul because Monique deserted him and he thought—”
“
Bueno.
If that’s the way you want it,” Arrieta said. “We’ll see if we can’t refresh your memory for you.”
“Yes. Please. Everything is so puzzling.”
Half a dozen of Acoca’s men had entered the tent, along with some of Sostelo’s uniformed soldiers.
Sister Teresa looked up. She blinked dazedly. “Are these men going to take me to the convent now?”
“They’re going to do better than that,” Arrieta grinned. “They’re going to take you to heaven, Sister.”
The men moved closer to her, surrounding her.
“That’s a pretty dress you’re wearing,” a soldier said. “Are you sure you’re a nun, darling?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. Raoul had called her darling. Was this Raoul? “You see, we had to change clothes to escape from the soldiers.” But these were soldiers. Everything was muddled.
One of the men pushed Teresa down on the cot. “You’re no beauty, but let’s see what you look like underneath all those clothes.”
“What are you doing?”
He reached down and ripped off the top of her dress while another man tore at her skirt.
“That’s not a bad body for an old lady, is it, fellows?”
Teresa screamed. She looked up at the circle of men surrounding her.
God will strike them all dead. He will not let them touch me, for I am His vessel I am one with the Lord, drinking from His fountain of purity.
One of the soldiers unfastened his belt. An instant later she felt rough hands pushing her legs apart, and as the soldier sprawled on top of her, she felt his hard flesh penetrate her and again she screamed.
“Now, God! Punish them now.”
She waited for the clap of thunder and the bright flash of lightning that would destroy them all.
Another soldier climbed on top of her. A red haze came over her eyes. Teresa lay there waiting for God to strike, almost unaware of the men who were ravaging her. She no longer felt the pain.
Lieutenant Arrieta was standing next to the cot. After each man finished with Teresa, he said, “Have you had enough, Sister? You can stop this at any time. All you have to do is tell me where Jaime Miró is.”
Sister Teresa did not hear him. She screamed in her mind:
Smite
them down with Your power, Lord. Wipe them out as You wiped out the other wicked ones at Sodom and Gomorrah.
Incredibly, He did not answer. It was not possible, for God was everywhere. And then she knew. As the sixth man entered her body, the epiphany suddenly came to her. God was not listening to her because there was no God. All these years she had deceived herself into worshiping a supreme power and had served Him faithfully. But there was no supreme power.
If God exists, He would have saved me.
The red haze lifted from Sister Teresa’s eyes and she got a clear look at her surroundings for the first time. There were at least a dozen soldiers in the tent waiting their turn to rape her. Lieutenant Arrieta was standing at one side of the bed watching. The soldiers in line were in full uniform, not bothering to undress. As one soldier lifted himself from Teresa, the next soldier squatted down over her and a moment later penetrated her.
There is no God, but there is a Satan, and these are his helpers,
Sister Teresa thought.
And they must die. All of them.
As the soldier plunged into her, Sister Teresa grabbed the pistol from his holster, and before anyone could react, she turned it on Arrieta. The bullet hit him in the throat. She then pointed the gun at the other soldiers and kept firing. Four of them fell to the floor before the others came to their senses and began to shoot at her. Because of the soldier on top of her, they had difficulty aiming.
Sister Teresa and her last ravisher died at the same moment.
J
aime Miró came awake instantly, aroused by a movement at the edge of the clearing. He slipped out of the sleeping bag and rose, gun in hand. As he drew nearer he saw Megan on her knees, praying. He stood there, studying her. There was an unearthly beauty about the image of this lovely woman praying in the forest in the middle of the night, and Jaime found himself resenting it.
If Felix Carpio hadn’t blurted out that we were headed for San Sebastián, I wouldn’t have been burdened with the sister in the first place.
It was imperative that he get to San Sebastian as quickly as possible. Colonel Acoca and his men were all around them, and it would have been difficult enough slipping through their net alone. With the added burden of this woman to slow him down, the danger was increased tenfold.
He walked over to Megan, angry, and his voice was harsher than he had intended.
“I told you to get some sleep. I don’t want you slowing us down tomorrow.”
Megan looked up and said quietly, “I’m sorry if I’ve angered you.”
“Sister, I save my anger for more important things. Your kind just bore me. You spend your lives hiding behind stone walls waiting for a free trip to the next world. You make me sick to my stomach, all of you.”
“Because we believe in the next world?”
“No, Sister. Because you don’t believe in this one. You ran away from it.”
“To pray for you. We spend our lives praying for you.”
“And you think that will solve the problems of the world?”
“In time, yes.”
“There is no time. Your God can’t hear your prayers because of the noise of the cannons and the screams of children being torn apart by bombs.”
“When you have faith—”
“Oh, I have lots of faith, Sister. I have faith in what I’m fighting for. I have faith in my men, and in my guns. What I don’t have faith in are people who walk on water. If you think your God is listening now, tell him to get us to the convent at Mendavia so I can be rid of you.”
He was angry with himself for losing his temper. It wasn’t her fault that the Church had stood idly by while Franco’s Falangists had tortured and raped and murdered Basques and Catalans.
It wasn’t her fault,
Jaime told himself,
that my family was among the victims.
Jaime had been a young boy then, but it was a memory that would be etched forever in his brain…
He had been awakened in the middle of the night by the noise of the bombs falling. They fell from the sky like deadly flowers of sound, planting their seeds of destruction everywhere.
“Get up, Jaime. Hurry!”
The fear in his father’s voice was more frightening to the boy than the terrible roar of the aerial bombardment.
Guernica was a stronghold of the Basques and General Franco had decided to make it an object lesson: “Destroy it.”
The dreaded Nazi Condor Legion and half a dozen Italian planes had mounted a concentrated attack, and they showed no mercy. The townspeople tried to flee from the rain of death pouring down from the skies, but there was no escape.
Jaime, his mother and father, and two older sisters fled with the others.
“To the church,” Jaime’s father said. “They won’t bomb the church.”
He was right. Everyone knew that the church was on the side of the Caudillo, turning a blind eye to the savage treatment of his enemies.
The Miró family headed for the church, fighting their way through the panicky crowds, trying to flee.
The young boy held his father’s hand in a fierce grip and tried not to hear the terrible noises around him. He remembered a time when his father was not frightened, was not running away.
“Are we going to have a war, Papa? he had once asked his father.
“No, Jaime. That’s just newspaper talk. All we’re asking is that the government give us a reasonable amount of independence. The Basques and the Catalans are entitled to have their own language and flag and holidays. We’re still one nation. And Spaniards will never fight against Spaniards.”
Jaime was too young then to understand it, but of course there was more at stake than the issue of the Catalans and Basques. It was a deep ideological conflict between the Republican government and the right-wing Nationalists, and what had started out as a spark of dissension quickly became an uncontrollable conflagration that drew in a dozen foreign powers.
When Franco’s superior forces had defeated the Republicans and the Nationalists were firmly in control of Spain, Franco turned his attention to the intransigent Basques: “Punish them.”
And the blood continued to flow.
A hard core of Basque leaders had formed ETA, a movement for a Basque Free State, and Jaime’s father was asked to join.
“No. It is wrong. We must gain what is rightfully ours by peaceful means. War accomplishes nothing.”
But the hawks proved stronger than the doves, and ETA quickly became a powerful force.
Jaime had friends whose fathers were members of ETA, and he listened to the stories of their heroic exploits.
“My father and a group of his friends bombed the headquarters of the Guardia Civil,” a friend would tell him.
Or: “Did you hear about the bank robbery in Barcelona? My father did that. Now they can buy weapons to fight the Fascists.”
And Jaime’s father was saying, “Violence is wrong. We must negotiate.”
“We blew up one of their factories in Madrid. Why isn’t your father on our side? Is he a coward?”
“Don’t listen to your friends, Jaime,” his father told him. “What they are doing is criminal.”
“Franco ordered a dozen Basques executed without even a trial. We’re staging a nationwide strike. Is your father going to join us?”
“Papa—?”
“We are all Spaniards, Jaime. We must not let anyone divide us.”
And the boy was torn.
Are my friends right? Is my father a coward?
Jaime believed his father.
And now—Armageddon. The world was collapsing around him. The streets of Guernica were crowded with a screaming mob trying to escape from the falling bombs. All around them buildings and statues and sidewalks were exploding in showers of concrete and blood.
Jaime and his mother and father and sisters had reached the large church, the only building in the square still standing. A dozen people were pounding on the door.
“Let us in! In the name of Jesus, open up!”
“What’s going on?” cried Jaime’s father.
“The priests have locked the church. They won’t let us in.”
“Let’s break the door in!”
“No!”
Jaime looked at his father in surprise.
“We don’t break into God’s house,” his father said. “He will protect us wherever we are.”
Too late, they saw the squad of Falangists appear from around the corner and open machine-gun fire on them, mowing down the unarmed crowd of men, women, and children in the square. Even as Jaime’s father felt the bullets tear into him, he grabbed his son and pushed him down to safety, his own body shielding Jaime from the deadly hail of bullets.
An eerie silence seemed to blanket the world after the attack. The sounds of guns and running feet and screams vanished, a trick of magic. Jaime opened his eyes and lay there for a long time, feeling the weight of his father’s body on him like a loving blanket. His father and mother and sisters were dead, along with hundreds of others. And in front of their bodies were the locked doors of the church.
Late that night, Jaime made his way out of the city, and two days later when he reached Bilbao, he joined ETA.
The recruiting officer had looked at him and said, “You’re too young to join, son. You should be in school.”
“You’re going to be my school,” Jaime Miró said quietly. “You’re going to teach me how to fight to avenge the murder of my family.”
He never looked back. He was battling for himself and for his family, and his exploits became legendary. Jaime planned and executed daring raids against factories and banks, and carried out the executions of the oppressors. When any of his men were captured, he conducted daredevil missions to rescue them.
When Jaime heard about the GOE being formed to pursue Basques, he smiled and said, “Good. They’ve noticed.”
He never asked himself if the risks he took had anything to do with the cries of “Your father is a coward,” or if he was trying to prove anything to himself and to others. It was enough that he proved his bravery again and again, that he was not afraid to risk his life for what he believed in.
Now, because one of his men had talked too freely, Jaime found himself saddled with a nun.
It’s ironic that her Church is on our side now. But it’s much too late, unless they can arrange a Second Coming and include my mother and father and sisters,
he thought bitterly.
They walked through the woods at night, the white moonlight dappling the forest around them. They avoided the towns and main roads, alert for any sign of danger. Jaime ignored Megan. He walked with Felix, talking about past adventures, and Megan found herself intrigued. She had never known anyone like Jaime Miró. He was filled with such self-assurance.
If anyone can get me to Mendavia,
Megan thought,
this man can.
There had been moments when Jaime had felt pity for the sister, and even a reluctant admiration for the way she handled herself on the arduous journey. He wondered how the other men were getting along with their charges from God.
At least he had Amparo Jirón. At night Jaime found her a great comfort.
She’s as dedicated as I am,
Jaime thought.
She has even more reason than I do to hate the government
Amparo’s entire family had been wiped out by the Nationalist Army. She was fiercely independent, and filled with a deep passion.
At dawn they were nearing Salamanca, on the banks of the Tonnes River.
“Students come here from all over Spain,” Felix explained to Megan, “to attend the university. It’s probably the best in all of Spain.”
Jaime was not listening. He was concentrating on his next move.
If I were the hunter, where would I set my trap?
He turned to Felix. “We’ll skip Salamanca. There’s a
parador
just outside town. We will stop there.”
The
parador
was a small inn set away from the mainstream of tourist traffic. Stone steps led to the lobby, which was guarded by an ancient knight in armor.
As the group approached the entrance, Jaime said to the two women, “Wait here.” He nodded to Felix Carpio and the two men disappeared.
“Where are they going?” Megan asked.
Amparo Jirón gave her a contemptuous look. “Maybe they went looking for your God.”
“I hope they find Him,” Megan said evenly.
Ten minutes later the men were back.
“All clear,” Jaime told Amparo. “You and the sister will share a room. Felix will stay with me.” He handed her a key.
Amparo said petulantly, “
Querido,
I want to stay with you, not—”
“Do as I say. Keep an eye on her.”
Amparo turned to Megan. “
Bueno.
Come along, Sister.”
Megan followed Amparo into the
parador
and up the stairs.
The room was one of a dozen set in a row along the gray, bare upstairs corridor. Amparo unlocked the door and the two women entered. The room was small and drab and sparsely furnished, with wooden floors, stucco walls, a bed, a small cot, a battered dressing table, and two chairs.
Megan looked around the room and exclaimed, “It’s lovely.”
Amparo Jirón swung around in anger, thinking that Megan was being sarcastic. “Who the hell are you to complain about—?”
“It’s so large,” Megan went on.
Amparo looked at her a moment, then laughed. Of course it would seem large compared to the cells that the sisters lived in.
Amparo started to get undressed.
Megan could not help staring at her. It was the first time she had really looked at Amparo Jirón in the daylight. The woman was beautiful, in an earthy way. She had red hair, white skin, and was fullbreasted, with a small waist and hips that swayed as she moved.
Amparo saw her watching. “Sister—would you tell me something? Why would anyone join a convent?”
It was a simple question to answer. “What could be more wonderful than to devote oneself to the glory of God?”
“Offhand, I could think of a thousand things.” Amparo walked over to the bed and sat down. “You can sleep on the cot. From what I’ve heard about convents, your God doesn’t want you to be too comfortable.”
Megan smiled. “It doesn’t matter. I’m comfortable inside.”
In their room across the corridor, Jaime Miró was stretching out on the bed. Felix Carpio was trying to get settled on the small cot. Both men were fully dressed. Jaime’s gun was under his pillow. Felix’s gun was on the small, battered table next to him.
“What do you think makes them do it?” Felix wondered aloud. “Do what,
amigo
?”
“Lock themselves up in a convent all their lives like prisoners.”
Jaime Miró shrugged. “Ask the sister. I wish to hell we were traveling alone. I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Jaime, God will thank us for this good deed.”
“Do you really believe that? Don’t make me laugh.”
Felix did not pursue the subject. It was not tactful to discuss the Catholic Church with Jaime. The two men were silent, each preoccupied with his own thoughts.
Felix Carpio was thinking:
God put the sisters in our hands. We must get them to a convent safely.
Jaime was thinking about Amparo. He wanted her badly now.
That damned nun.
He started to pull up the covers when he realized there was something he still had to do.
In the small, dark lobby downstairs, the room clerk sat quietly, waiting until he was sure that the new guests were asleep. His heart was pounding as he picked up the telephone and dialed a number.