The Sentinel: 1 (Vengeance of Memory) (47 page)

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Guzmán said, standing up, ‘they only take up a couple of tables and they won’t eat much.’

Liebermann looked up as Guzmán and Peralta entered the mess. He peered at them through his thin, wire-rimmed spectacles.

‘Ah,
Comandante. Teniente
Peralta,
Guten Abend.
’

‘Speak like a Christian,’ Guzmán snapped. The German gave him a stealthy look of hate before bending again over the corpse on the table. Peralta stepped nearer to get a better view. A youngish woman, hair the colour of straw. Peralta could see she was middle class from her jewellery. Liebermann was struggling to pull the woman into a sitting position and looked to Guzmán, expecting help. Guzmán didn’t move.

‘I don’t think she wants to go with you,
Herr Doktor.
’ Guzmán pronounced the German words with exaggerated distaste.

Liebermann held the woman’s shoulders, trying to wrestle her into a sitting position.

‘Please,
Herr Comandante,’
he said in his clipped Spanish, ‘I need to remove her blouse. It shouldn’t be difficult, rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet.’

‘Take her blouse off? We’re paying you for this,’ Guzmán said, ‘and you want to play with her tits? You should pay us,
Herr
Doktor.’

Peralta could see Liebermann was incensed. The more he rose to the bait, the more Guzmán would enjoy it.

‘Let me help you.’ Peralta moved forwards to take hold of the woman’s shoulder but Liebermann waved his free hand.

‘I’ve got her weight now. Just undo the blouse.’

‘Venga, Teniente,’
Guzmán said, ‘you must’ve done that before surely?’

Peralta undid the bone buttons of the woman’s blouse. They were large and difficult to pull from the buttonholes.

‘Rapido, Teniente,’
Guzmán heckled, ‘what’s up – first-night nerves?’

Peralta finally unfastened the last button and yanked the woman’s blouse from the waistband of her skirt. He then pulled back the blouse over one shoulder while Liebermann held the other. The woman’s head fell back into the space between the two men. With some effort, Peralta inclined her towards Liebermann while he pulled the woman’s arm free from the sleeve and then Liebermann did the same at his side. They lay the woman back down on the table, now suddenly exposed, her black brassiere a stark final defence of her modesty.

‘Well, let’s have that off then,’ Guzmán said cheerfully.

Liebermann looked at him coldly. ‘That will not be necessary,
Herr Comandante.
It is her armpit I wish to examine.’

Guzmán turned to Peralta and winked. ‘That’s the Germans for you,’ he grinned, ‘go straight for the weird stuff.’

Liebermann lifted the woman’s arm. He poked at the thick tuft of hair, pulling the skin taut, probing. ‘There,’ he said with an air of martyred vindication.

Guzmán leaned forwards. ‘She’s got spots under her arms,’ he said uninterestedly.

‘They aren’t spots, though, are they, Dr Liebermann?’ Peralta asked.

Liebermann smiled cadaverously. ‘You are correct,
Teniente.
They are needle marks. This lady has been injecting something. And, if I may conjecture,
Herr Comandante
?’

Guzmán had been admiring the pearl and silver necklace the woman was wearing and looked up distractedly. ‘Do what you like, doctor, as long as you pronounce it correctly.’

Liebermann sighed again. ‘I suggest that, from the number of needle marks, this lady was addicted to whatever it was she injected. Morphine, I imagine. And,’ his voice became more pompous, ‘I would further suggest we will find the other bodies you have encountered will exhibit a similar cause of death. These injections,
Comandante
, they use parts of the body where they can’t be seen – the armpit, between the toes even.’

Guzmán stepped back from the weak pool of light illuminating the half-naked corpse. ‘You know, doctor, if you’d brought the same level of expertise to your tactics at Stalingrad, they’d be speaking German in London and Paris by now and you’d still be sewing children’s heads onto gypsies in one of your camps.’ Guzmán strode to the door and left the room.

Peralta nodded to the German. ‘Thank you, doctor, you’ve been a great help.’

‘And you,
Herr Teniente,
are a gentleman,’ Liebermann said, bringing his heels together with a sharp click as Peralta hurriedly followed his boss back to his cheerless office. Liebermann sighed and turned back to the dead woman. This was what he liked. Someone who couldn’t mock him, who could not resist his intimate explorations. It brought back memories of happier times, he thought, lifting his scalpel. The times in the camps. Though when they were alive it had been so much more interesting. He sighed again.
Beggars can’t be choosers.
Then he began to cut.

BADAJOZ 1936  

The kid ran, following the corporal through the trees. Both still carried their rifles, although the effort was slowing them down. Five of them still alive. The kid felt sweat run down his face from his sodden scalp. His clothes were soaked, chafing at every move. The heat was unbearable but the thought of the Moors’ long knives kept him moving.

Some way ahead, the others had stopped running. The corporal caught up with them and a rapid argument began as to whether to continue their hopeless flight or attempt to surrender. The corporal thought they should continue upwards. These men had known him for well over a year, yet now they looked at him as if they had never seen him before, and in their eyes he saw something he had seen in prisoners’ eyes when they were about to be executed. A void, an emptiness as the brain refused to allow the eyes to see any more horror, and reason bridled against the ghastly imminence of death. They were the eyes of the dead.

The corporal checked the magazine of his rifle. Three bullets left. He removed one and gave it to the kid. Of the other men, only one still had a rifle. Another man had lost his weapon and his fear was so great he could not stand still, his feet moving in involuntary anticipation of further flight. The corporal went through the man’s pockets and found several bullets which he shared with the kid.

The ground rose ever more steeply ahead of them. It was clear they would soon find themselves trapped against the sheer slope of the hillside above them. This was as far as they could go. In their condition they could not climb the cliffs looming above. Now flight was no longer possible, they prepared for a final confrontation with the Moors. One of the men unwrapped a rolled-up groundsheet and
brought out a tommy gun, its round magazine slick with oil. He had carried it all this way without using it, saving it until the time arrived when he could deploy it to its best advantage. He and the corporal had been regular soldiers and they now set out their battle plan. The kid was placed in bushes far over to the right. The corporal took up position in the centre, amongst scrub that would afford him cover until the Moors got near. The two others were placed on the left, the one without a weapon was now clutching the corporal’s bayonet.

The kid knew he would never be able to use it if the Moors got close. The tommy gunner crawled further into the deep coarse grasses and shrubs amongst the trees, seeking a suitable spot somewhere between the two men on the left and the corporal. The kid lay in the dry grass and waited. He placed two grenades in front of him. When he had fired the five bullets he now possessed, he would throw one of the grenades. The other he would use on himself. He had seen it done before: remove the pin and hold the deadly canister to the side of his head. Death might be inevitable, but at least he would cheat the Moors of the manner in which it was done.

There were shouts amongst the trees below them. And again he heard the harsh voices of the Moors calling ‘Guzmán’. Whoever Guzmán was, he was coming.

15

MADRID 2009, UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DEPARTAMENTO DE HISTORIA CONTEMPORÁNEA  

Galindez strolled slowly towards the Faculty of Modern History. Buildings and trees rippled in the torrid, wavering air, shapes and colours merging in fluid patterns. The humidity was getting to her: she felt a headache coming on. The stone steps leading to the entrance reflected the remorseless heat against her bare legs. At the top of the steps she paused as a barb of sharp pain flickered behind her eyes.
Bloody heat. It’s giving me a migraine.
Thankfully, inside the building it was cool and quiet. A low murmur of distant voices. Luisa was sitting in her office by the open window, looking out over the sweltering campus. Hearing Galindez in the doorway, she turned.

‘Holá, Ana. Que calor, verdad
?’

‘Yes, it’s murder. Thirty-three degrees today,’ Galindez said, settling into a chair.

‘And how’s your investigation going?’  

‘Slowly. At the moment, I’m putting names from the diary into our database to match them with lists of people who went missing in the war. It’s very hit and miss: even if we can match the name, there’s often no surviving relative for me to get a DNA sample to confirm the identity. It’ll take a while: there are twenty-three sites identified in his diary.’  

‘And you’re going to excavate all of them?’ Luisa’s smile was softly mocking. ‘I hope the
guardia’
s paying.’  

‘Of course not. We don’t have the resources, though I may be able to get permission to open up one or two sites – we’ll see. I’m also going to do an examination of the remains from Las Peñas in a day or two when there’s a laboratory available.’  

Luisa nodded. ‘So you’ve come up with very little, really, Ana María.’  

‘Which is why I’m doing the tests on the skeletons,’ Galindez said, annoyed by Luisa’s patronising tone.  

‘You must do as you see fit, Ana.’  

Luisa was insufferably smug this morning, Galindez thought. ‘I expect you’ve made more progress, Luisa?’  

‘Oh yes. What with the Freudian discourse analysis on the early diary entries and the intertextual exposition of the later material, we’ve built up a mass of narrative data. Later on, we’ll merge that with the stories of survivors, biographical accounts and so forth. Toni refers to it in his thesis as “revoicing”.’

‘I’m sure he does, Luisa. You’re his Ph.D. supervisor, after all.’  

Luisa frowned. ‘Ana, why so hostile? You’ve a free hand here to do what you like for this report. You don’t get that in the
guardia.
Try to be a bit more amenable to the ideas of others.’  

‘That cuts both ways. For example, if I write a forensic paper on Guzmán, will you include it in the report?’  

Luisa cast a glance over Galindez’s legs. She pulled her chair closer. Uncomfortably close. ‘It’s an excellent idea,’ she said, ‘parallel narratives, separated by epistemological divergence. It’s nice having that kind of tension. Though my approach will be altogether more populist.’  

‘Really?’ It was difficult for Galindez to imagine Luisa descending from the theoretical clouds long enough to be populist.  

‘Definitely. I want to bring the experiences that shaped Guzmán to a wider public. Not just an academic audience, but Spain as a whole:
Guzmán – My War Within.
That’s the working title. An account of how a sensitive and talented young man ends up in charge of policing Franco’s defeated enemies. There’s a big market for work of this kind. People want to share those experiences in all their raw detail. I think I’ll be able to help them share what Guzmán suffered. Connect his suffering to Spanish society in general. Make connections.’

‘Oh come on, that’s just adding insult to injury,’ Galindez said. ‘At the very least, Guzmán was orchestrating people’s suffering – even if he didn’t actually harm anyone himself as you clearly believe. Portraying him as a victim is going to upset a lot of people, surely?’  

‘You’re missing the point.’ Luisa smiled. ‘The Pact of Oblivion silenced so many voices in this country. Now, those voices are crying out to be heard. In fact, I’ve found that many people from families who supported Franco feel their experiences were silenced once democracy was established. I think there’s a big market – sorry, audience – among them as well. People don’t want to feel guilty for what their parents or grandparents did in the war. Nor should they. I can help them see how behaviour in the war can be explained in terms of the wider context. Let them know they needn’t feel guilty.’  

‘Using textual analysis, of course?’  

‘Correct, Ana María,’ Luisa said, as if Galindez had just answered a question in class.  

Galindez was starting to understand Luisa’s plan: aim at volume sales rather than academic consumption. Break out from the confines of research work and start shifting books.
Mierda
, a memoir of misery, exploiting the suffering of the Civil War alongside a ludicrously sanitised portrait of Guzmán. Worse still, Luisa was providing a means for those who supported the dictatorship to reinvent themselves as victims. A fabrication, Galindez thought angrily,
no scientific evidence at all.

She calmed herself, realising that while Luisa improvised her account of Guzmán’s secretive life, Galindez could continue with her own work, focusing not only on the bodies from the mine but also pursuing Guzmán’s involvement in the attempted coups in the seventies. Luisa didn’t yet know about the
Centinelas
material. She would find out about it later, Galindez decided. Much later.  

‘The Guzmán report will be submitted to the European Union Education Commissioner you know,’ Luisa said. ‘As part of the bid we’re making for funding for the new Research Centre: The International Centre for Intertextual Historical Studies. The university is very excited about it, given that the funding amounts to several million euros.’  

Now Galindez understood why Luisa was so pleased with herself. ‘Who’s going to be in charge of the centre, Luisa?’ She asked, already sure of the answer.