The Spanish Game

30. Out

There is a Dutch film, The Vanishing, in which a man wakes up inside his own coffin. He has been buried alive. In the final scene he is left alone to suffer this terrifying end, this nightmare suffocation, and the audience drifts out into the night bewildered by fear. And so it is in the aftermath of my own terror as I wake into the total blackout of a living death. I am lying on my side. When I reach out with my right hand it hits a wall. When I stretch it above my head it collides with a hard plastic panel which sends a numb pain through my fingers and wrist. My feet can push out no more than two or three inches before they too are stopped by a hard, fixed surface. Everything around me feels completely enclosed. Only when I reach above my face, as if to search for the lid of the coffin, do I encounter open clear space.

My senses gradually awaken. I am wearing clothes. It is warmer than I can remember for a long time. There are shoes on my feet and my eyes are gradually growing accustomed to the light. But when I lift my head, trying to sit up, a migraine sears across my skull, lifting vomit into the back of my throat. The pain is so intense that I have to lie down again in the darkness, breathing hard for release, swallowing.

I feel again with my right hand, slowly tapping along the panel above my head. There is an odd, recognizable smell, a mixture of alcohol and pine, that same acid sting in my throat. My fingers curl around what feels like the handle of a door. Lifting my head, risking the pain, I pull it and a bright light immediately flares into the space. When I open my eyes against it I see that I have been lying on the back seat of a car parked inside a tiny breezeblock garage. I am inside the Audi. What am I doing here?

The agony of asking my twisted body to move is worse perhaps than any pain that I can recall from the interrogation. Every part of me aches: feet, calves, thighs, arms, shoulders, neck, blending into a single conscious suffering. I am wretched with thirst. I have to sit with the door open and my feet on the ground for as much as thirty seconds while I gather the strength to stand. There is terrible bruising around my stomach, a scarlet map which appals me when I lift my shirt to look at it. These are my clothes, the ones I wore to Valdelcubo; I am no longer wearing their rags. I try to put weight on my legs, but the pain makes it difficult to walk. After just two steps I open the passenger door and collapse into the seat.

The glove box is open. Inside I can see my wallet, the two mobile phones and their chargers. It is bewildering. The SIM cards are inside and I switch the phones on, but they are drained of power. Why would they give them back to me? The etarras have taken all but twenty euros from my wallet, but the credit cards, the photographs of Kate and Mum and Dad, are all there. Dangling behind the wheel I can see my keys in the ignition. The keys to Calle Princesa, to the PO box, even to the bedsit in Andalucía.

What is this place? A waiting room for death? My captors have clearly left, yet I have no idea where I am, of the time or date, of their reasons for doing so nor of my right to survive. I check my unshaven face in the rear-view mirror for signs of bruising and cuts, but it appears to be mercifully unmarked. They would not have wanted the public to see my beaten face if I went in front of the press. That would be bad for ETA’s support base. They were thinking all the time about the presentation.

Standing again, supporting myself on the open door, I walk very slowly, like an old and crippled man, towards the front of the garage. The air is stuffy and damp. I am aware of my own smell, of my sour breath and sweat. The door is not locked. When I turn the handle it slides up easily over my head, revealing a barren landscape of dust and low, pale hills. This is not the farmhouse. It is a different place. We have left the Basque country and come south into the desert. It looks like Aragón.

Finding more strength in the exhilaration of freedom I walk round to the back of the garage where there are nothing but old plastic sacks and pools of muddy water. A dead bird lies on a pile of wood. I can hear cars passing, the tarmac whisper of engines and tyres. A second, larger building is set back from the garage, ruined and open to the elements. I experience an overwhelming desire to leave this place and to be free. My stiff body is loosening up all the time, but if I do not drink something soon it will be almost impossible to drive. I have the presence of mind to bend down and to check under the car for a bomb and my thighs and back and migraine roar with pain as I do so. Then I lower myself into the driver’s seat, turn the key in the ignition and head out slowly onto the muddy road.

My eyesight seems OK. I haven’t checked the rest of my body for marks or scars yet but I can do that as soon as I find a hotel. The radio works. Just to hear human voices again, to reconnect with the world, feels like a blessed second chance. It is several minutes before I learn the day and the date – Saturday 19 April – but the clock on the dashboard puts the time at 4.06 a.m. That must be wrong; they must have played around with it. Then the news comes on Cadena Ser at 17.00. The anchorman talks at length about the Egileor kidnapping and the invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s statue has been torn down in the centre of Baghdad and some idiot Yank tried raising the Stars and Stripes in its place. A colleague of Arenaza’s has demanded a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death, but there is no mention of Dieste or Buscon, of Javier de Francisco or a dirty war. My own disappearance appears to have gone completely unnoticed.

Then, like a roadside miracle, I pass a stall selling drinks and fruit and swallow almost half a litre of water with unbroken, exhausted gulps. If my appearance or demeanour seems in any way unusual to the stallholder, she does not betray it. Taking my twenty-euro note, she merely frowns at the denomination, hands over a bundle of coins and sits back down on a low stool. I ask her to locate our position on a map and she points to a section of road between Épila and Rueda de Jalón, a two-hour drive south from the Basque border. They must have brought me over in convoy in the boot of a car, dumped me in the back seat of the Audi, closed off the garage and then headed back into Euskal Herria.

The road leads south to the NII autovía. If I turn right, I can be in Madrid by ten, but it’s a long drive and my body, despite the fuel of water, will not withstand the journey. I need to rest and clean up. I need to think. My knees are stiffening up on the pedals and a nerve pain, like a small electric shock, shoots infrequently through the back of my thigh. I require the anonymity of a big city, somewhere I can disappear and gather my thoughts and decide what the hell I’m going to do. I’m not ready yet to face Kitson or Sofía, to go to the police or to confront Zulaika. So I make the decision to drive east towards Zaragoza, booking into a four-star hotel in the centre of the city under my own name. Thank God I left the fake passports, the driving licences, all the stupid paraphernalia of my secret existence back in Madrid. Had the etarras discovered those, they would almost certainly have killed me.

The phones start to chime as soon as I have plugged them in. Message after message from Sofía, two from Kitson and Julian, a single text from Saul. Even Mum has called, and to listen to the gentle, oblivious cadence of her voice is to experience once again the miracle of my survival. I had expected Kitson to be worried, but he rang on Tuesday to cancel our meeting in Tetuán. That would explain why his manner is so unperturbed. His second message, left at midday on the 16th, merely confirms this, citing logistical difficulties in Porto’. Only Sofía sounds upset, her messages growing in intensity to a point where she shuts down in frustration, convinced that I am ignoring her calls in order to ‘spend time back in England with that girl’.

‘Just be honest with me, Alec,’ she says. ‘Just tell me if you want it all to be over.’

I draw a long, hot bath, drinking half a bottle of Scotch with too much Nurofen. The bruising around my stomach is very bad, and my knees, into which they slammed the metal pole, have almost locked up since the drive. There’s an intense yellow-black bruise at the top of my left shin, a stain that I can never imagine eradicating. I’ll need to see a doctor, to pay somebody privately to check me out and not ask too many awkward questions. There are also marks around my shoulders, more bruises on my back, even a clump of dried, sticky blood in my hair. When did that happen? I can book the appointment under a pseudonym and say that I got into a fight. Then I’ll need blood work and X-rays. I’ll need tests.

Just after nine I order a sandwich mixto from room service and make a series of calls on the hotel phone. Mum is out, so I leave a message on her answering machine telling her that I’m away on business and can be reached in my room. Saul is having dinner in a restaurant in London and it is difficult to hear what he is saying, but I feel a delirious homesickness just listening to his words, to the easy laughter of girls in the background. I worry that my voice is unstable and see that my fingers tremble on the bed when we are speaking. He says the divorce is going through with Heloise, but does not elaborate, and promises to come back to Madrid before long. Then I call Sofía.

‘Is it OK to talk?’

‘What do you mean?’ By her clipped, dismissive tone it is obvious that she is in a sour mood.

‘I mean is Julian around?’

‘He is out.’

‘Look, I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch. I can’t explain now. It’s not what you think.’

‘And what do I think, Alec?’

It sounds as though she has one eye on a television set or a magazine, just to irritate me. She knows I hate it when she doesn’t concentrate on what I’m saying. I want to scream the truth at her, to weep, to ask for her help. I feel so utterly fragmented and alone in the hotel room and wish she were beside me, to care for me and to listen. But it is useless.

‘I can imagine what you think. That I’ve been with another woman, that I’ve been in London or something. But it’s not that. I had business, OK? That’s all. Don’t be angry.’

‘I am not angry. I am glad you are all right.’

There is a long pause. She wants to bring the conversation to an end. I draw my knees up tight against my chest and find that I begin to shiver as I talk.

‘Sofía?’

She moves the receiver away from her mouth and takes a deep, stagey breath.

‘Yes?’

‘Can you meet me? When I get back to Madrid? In two days? Can we go to the Reina Victoria?’

‘On Monday? This is when you are coming back?’

There is mild criticism even in this simple question.

‘Yes.’

‘And that’s what I am to you now? Just hotels? You don’t telephone me for more than a week and now you want to fuck me? Is that it?’

‘You know that’s not true. Don’t do this. I’ve been through hell.’ My voice cracks here but she does not react.

‘What do you mean, you’ve been through hell? I have been through hell. I am sick of this, Alec, I am sick of it.’

‘I got into a fight.’

A tiny beat of shock. ‘What kind of a fight?’

It’s strange. All I want now is to win the argument, to make her ashamed of her churlishness.

‘I was beaten up. Here in Zaragoza. That’s why I wasn’t able to go south for Julian. He’s left messages wondering where I am. I was unconscious for a while.’

It is an awful lie, one of the worst I have ever told her, but necessary in that it works to bring her round. She is instantly distraught.

‘Unconscious? You got into a fight? But you don’t fight, Alec. Where did this happen? Lo siento, cómo estás mi vida?’

‘Here in Zaragoza. I was looking at some property. Saul is thinking of buying a place up here. I said I’d help him while he was back in England. Some men attacked me when I went to my car.’

‘Saul was with you?’

‘No. No. He was coming out from London later on. I just left the hospital today. Tell Julian, all right? I don’t want him to be angry.’

It feels bad to be doing this, but I don’t have any choice.

‘Alec,’ she says sweetly, touching my heart with her voice. I think of the barn, of that blackness under the hood, and squeeze my eyes tight to reply.

‘I’m all right now. It’s just some bruises. But I’m so angry, you know? I think if I saw those men again, I would kill them.’

‘I know, I know…’ She is crying.

‘I long to touch you,’ I tell her. ‘I miss you so much.’

‘Me too,’ she says. ‘I will book the hotel. We can talk about it then.’

‘Yes. But don’t cry, OK? Don’t be upset. I’m fine.’

‘I just feel so bad…’

There is a knock at the door. This startles me perhaps more than it might once have done, but it’s just room service. Saying goodbye to Sofía I stand up slowly off the bed, securing my dressing gown as I look through the fish-eye lens in the door. There’s a waitress on the other side, very pretty and alone. She seems struck by me when she walks in, a reaction that may be sexual, which may be shock. I cannot tell. She places a tray on the bed.

‘Buenas tardes. Señor Milius.’

Out of nothing, a dream of sex pulses inside me. I would gladly lie down with this girl on my bed and sleep next to her for days. Anything just for the gentleness and peace of a woman’s touch. I hand her a five-euro tip and wish she wouldn’t leave.

‘Thank you, it was my pleasure,’ she says, and I am on the point of asking her to stay when my head suddenly splits with pain. She has gone, closing the door behind her, and I drop like a stone on the bed, wondering how many more pills, how much more water and whisky I will have to drink before this all goes away. I am angry as I look at my broken body, knowing that it was wrong to have arranged to meet Sofía so soon. The bruising on my legs and stomach will terrify her. I wish the girl had stayed. I wish I was not alone.

Like an invalid, I manage to eat only half of the sandwich before vomiting its contents into the toilet. Something is wrong with me, something more than just shock and exhaustion. It’s as if they poisoned me back at the farmhouse, as if they put something into my blood. I fall into a hopeless sleep, waking up wired and distraught at four in the morning. I leave the lights on in the room for comfort and get dressed slowly, taking a walk around the centre of Zaragoza for more than an hour. Then, back at the hotel, unable to sleep again, I check out at six, eat breakfast, and head back on the road to Madrid.