The Galician Parallax (23 page)

Thanks to the French Navy they were able to lay the wreaths below the bridge to commemorate the tercentenary of the famous naval battle between the Spanish and French against the British and the Dutch that ended with the destruction of the former and the loss of over 3,000 lives. Apart from the continuous downpour of Galician rain, the festivities ran like clockwork. Although His Majesty’s Ambassador, the mayor, the City of London’s representative and other dignitaries refused to board the minesweepers they joined in the latter pomposity laid down by the town council at the maritime museum in the suburb of Alcabre, just outside the city. Juan Jose had kept them company whilst they all waited for the drenched mariners to arrive in order to start the party.

‘Hello again, Stan,’ said HMA as he greeted the new HBC. Addressing his naval attaché he added jokingly, ‘Forgotten what it was like, John?’

At that moment the President of Galicia arrived in time for the large cocktail party that had been prepared for over 500 people. First in line to greet the dignitary was HMA.

‘We meet again, sir.’

By 6 p.m. the whole show was over. Stan had broken his first tooth as a newborn amateur diplomat.

For over a couple of months now, Sergio had been spending extra time working on his private investigation of the Ordes murders despite having been told to forget about the case by his superiors. He’d arrive early at his workstation before any of the other guards turned up for office duty and plod away at his PC on a never-ending exercise of cross-checking information. Like a hound with a bone, his mind kept playing tricks with the conflicting evidence of the Galician environment of drug trafficking which he knew to perfection, possible low-key terrorism that was well documented within the secret files of the Spanish security network; but an Arab link in Galicia, that was another question. He even kept reverting back to his homeless fiasco in Villagarcia two years ago. He never did understand why Don Paco, the so-called lawyer, had disappeared so quickly that night when the vandals were having a go at “bagmen bashing”. Gloria was more concerned about his encroaching on her own department as Sergio would often ask her for information on past cases that had no apparent connection with the murders and sometimes bordered on the nonsensical.

‘I’m worried,
amor
,’ she had said one evening at her flat. ‘This whole thing may blow up in our faces. We’ve already been warned.’

Sergio had tried to calm her down. ‘Don’t worry, I’m keeping my nose clean; just cross-checking information. No action so far.’ He half giggled when he added, ‘I’ll bring you along next time I go on a raid.’ He then turned serious and posed a very strange question: ‘How come nobody squealed on the vandals that turned the place over, yet we were discovered after our one and only visit?’ It then struck him, ‘Supposing they weren’t vandals but some other lot that came back to the scene of the crime?’

Gloria was not amused, ‘Oh for God’s sake. Why don’t you just drop it, eh?’

Sergio’s obsession with Ordes was cut short on 13 November. The
Prestige
, a thirty-year-old mono-hull tanker with over seventy thousand tons of crude oil sent out an SOS thirty miles off the cost of Finisterre. En route to Gibraltar, navigating in gale-force winds and heavy seas, she suddenly developed a twenty-five-degree starboard list due to a crack in her hull. It wasn’t long before oil began to seep into the ocean.

A large gush of noisy steam poured out of the exhaust from the large espresso coffee machine just as Stan was glossing over the front page of the
Atlantico
local newspaper. He was seated at the counter opposite the contraption.

‘I am sure the EU will make you put a silencer on that gadget,’ said Stan jokingly to the waiter as he was being served a large coffee with the usual portion of breakfast
churros
. It was just past 8 a.m. Due to the bad weather the
Atlantic Pleasure
was now due in at eleven, three hours late. As he leafed over to the maritime section of the news, the top heading on the page was unequivocal:
Prestige. Bahamas registered tanker in peril
. The rest of the news was explicit. Galicia was in danger of yet another oil spill. It brought back memories of a similar tragedy when Stan was a junior apprentice coastguard. He placed three euros on the counter and without waiting for his change rushed out of the coffee shop and made his way to the port.

Chema Cervera, duty pilot, was due to board the awaiting tug to meet the
Atlantic Pleasure
when Stan burst into his office waving the newspaper. Without even a word of greeting he said, ‘Chema, this tanker out there, the
Prestige
, it says here that the captain has refused to stop engines and wants to make it to a port. He’s right.’

Chema was too busy trying to put on his all-weather anorak.

Stan went on, ‘I’ve lived through this back in 1993 with the
Braer
, an American tanker carrying the same amount of fuel that ran aground in the Shetlands shitting all over Scotland. Her engines were dead but this one still has her power. Christ. Let the bastard use it.’

Chema held up both his hands and waved them gently trying to calm him down. ‘I know, Mr Bullock, you don’t have to convince me, but we have to wait and see what the authorities do; you know that as well as I do.’

A naive Stan insisted, ‘No I don’t; what do you mean?’

Chema, a seadog of old, finished readying himself to meet the liner, took Stan by the arm and led him out onto the wharf. ‘The problem is not out there,’ he said, pointing out to sea, ‘it’s become a political battle.’

Stan was not convinced. Within minutes he was back in his office making a phone call.

‘Stan. Long time, no see, as they say. How’ve you been
Señor
?’

It was Ron Welby, one of Stan’s old colleagues on duty at the Falmouth Coastguard Centre.

Avoiding niceties, Stan said, ‘Look, are you guys involved with the
Prestige
?’

Although taken aback at his mate’s abruptness, he answered, ‘We’re monitoring the distress, why?’

‘Do you have the latest details on her condition?’

Ron ran up the information on the screen monitor. ‘She’s now listing over thirty degrees and heading north-east. She’s leaking about three to four thousand tons of oil. Pretty bad I’m afraid.’ Stan was about to hang up when Ron interrupted, ‘Wait, you’ll like this one. A Dutch salvage lot has just arrived and has taken over.’

Meanwhile, the Spanish Government, the salvage organisations and the ship’s owners began a series of ferocious arguments as to what to do with the stricken vessel. Captain Apostolos Mangouras, a sixty-plus veteran, had refused tug assistance and maintained his wish to save the ship by sailing it into shallow waters and a safe haven. He was eventually arrested. For the next few days, and after navigating up and down the Galician stretch of the Atlantic, at 8 a.m. on the 19
^th
, the
Prestige
broke in half and sank. She was 200 miles from the coast. The President of Galicia, Don Manuel Fraga, said that the problem of pollution had been avoided by sailing away from the shore. It didn’t take long for the sunken tanker to start belching its seventy-odd thousand tons of fuel that would eventually end up on the coast from Vigo to Corunna covering every rock and inch of sandy beach with a thick and mucky sliver of oily slime. Although the aftermath was the worst ecological disaster in the history of Galicia, for weeks on end and with the courage and willpower of its seafaring people, assisted by hundreds of volunteers from around the country, the coastline was eventually cleaned up thus salvaging the Galician breadwinning seafood industry from ruin.

‘Now we’ve got it, Colin, how much time shall we give them?’ President George Bush was referring to the United Nations resolution 1441 signed on 2 November that gave Saddam Hussein a last chance to prove that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

‘The inspectors are there now, sir. With the approval we’ve got from Congress to use force if the bastard is still lying, then I suggest we prepare for military action by spring of next year.’

‘Good. The CIA has already been working with the Kurds up north, Blair is on board which means that the Aussies will follow.’

At that moment, Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State, knocked and walked in. ‘Morning Mr President.’ Bush and Powell returned greetings.

‘Just got word from the French and Germans; they’re dead against any force. I also think we’ve got an anti-war movement starting up around the world because…’

‘Shit. Not again,’ interrupted Bush. ‘What does the bloody world want? That we sit on our butts and pussyfoot with the bastard until he goes loony and begins to destroy us all? Shit no, I’m not going to allow it.’ He got up from his desk and walked over to within inches of both his senior staff. ‘Colin, start working hard on the United Nations. Look for support from wherever you can.’ He looked at Rumsfeld; ‘Don, give the generals the prelim, OK. Let’s start the ball rolling.’

Civil Guard Antonio Molina was on patrol with one of his colleagues on the motorway when he observed a Ford Escort reversing in the wrong direction down the right-hand lane. The guards ordered it to stop. They were about twenty-five miles from Madrid near the outlet to the town of Collado. It was around four-thirty in the afternoon. As Antonio approached the stationary vehicle to ask the driver for his driving licence, Jose Maria Etxeberria pulled out a revolver and started firing at the civil guard. An immediate shoot-out took place that ended with the death of Antonio, and Jose Maria’s companion seriously wounded. Jose Maria was able to stop a Renault Clio driven by a woman and he sped off in the opposite direction. The aftermath was the cordoning off of that section of the motorway and the eventual uncovering of 130 kilograms of explosives in the terrorists’ car that were later exploded by the authorities. Jose Maria was eventually captured six hours later in the coastal city of San Sebastian. Despite the tragedy of the murder, a set of major massacres programmed for New Year’s Eve in several shopping malls in Madrid had been averted. The assailants were members of ETA, the Basque terrorist organisation.

When word flashed through the corridors of the Corunna HQ, Sergio was nowhere to be found. He’d taken the day off to move his belongings to Gloria’s apartment as the young couple had decided to make a go of their relationship on a more permanent basis. Sergio had left his mother’s home some time ago and had lived in the civil guard barracks ever since. Gloria on the other hand was at her post as usual, although nobody in the office was aware of the news as it happened sometime in the afternoon. When she finally arrived at her apartment, just past six, Sergio was typing away on his laptop as she entered the large living room that overlooked the city’s Riazor beach.

Looking around the room she said warmly, ‘You certainly are a neat character.’

Although he didn’t have many belongings, Sergio made sure that what he did add to the household would be totally inconspicuous when Gloria got back home. The only slight discrepancy they’d had was over Sergio’s motorbike. Although there was a garage slot in the basement and Gloria didn’t drive, she had insisted to no avail that he get rid of the contraption and buy a car. She gave up trying to persuade him.

Still perplexed at his neatness, she said, ‘Never understood how you survived that scruffy ordeal down south.’

Sergio had told her all about his “outdoor” stint in Villagarcia, although he didn’t go into the details of the aftermath of the arrest of the Northern Ireland seaman. He got up and just as he was about to give her the first hug of “living together” Gloria said, ‘What’s that lovely odour coming from the kitchen?’

Sergio grinned, ‘I thought we could celebrate with a nice spicy coffee from Jamaica.’

‘What? You’re nuts; that stuff costs a fortune.’

An hour later, seated on the sofa, Sergio finally admitted that he’d given up going on a wild goose chase looking for ghosts in the Ordes case. During his reprimand Sergio had confided with his superior, Colonel “Tito” Seone, of the extra investigation work he had been doing on the case and why he decided to search the bungalow with Gloria. The colonel didn’t say much; in fact, he gave the impression of not being very interested.

‘Let the big boys in Madrid take care of the terrorist threats.’

It wasn’t until next day that the young couple found out about the latest ETA attack.

‘Let it never happen again,’ said Badi, head of the al-Qaeda movement in Spain. He was referring to the rucksack with the Islamic contents that had finally been retrieved and handed back to them, thanks to their ETA contacts, although they were never advised of where or how they were found.

‘Let’s just say that our collaboration is effective.’

He was especially harsh on Habib, who was in charge of the disposal of the Ordes group and latter clean-up of the premises, for having left them behind. ETA had thanked them for the assassinations as the Basque group knew that the Galician wing of extremists was under surveillance by the civil guards and it was only a matter of time before they were exposed by the authorities delving a blow to the organisation. One of their “undisclosed” informers had arranged to go into the bungalow and simulate a hippy-type “sit-in” to disarray the evidence and divert the tracks of any further investigation into the case.

‘Now to other business, I can confirm that the United States is readying itself to attack our brothers in Iraq. This is good news. The British Government is also in agreement and we’re waiting for confirmation that the Spanish will join the group of infidels. Osama’s plans are working and our turn will soon come.’

The three terrorists ended their meeting. It was prayer time.

The Madrid train timetable left behind in the bungalow night table had been overlooked.