New Beginnings...Old Behaviors

Beyond the Walls of the Citadel

   Promises aside, Nicky had very little contact with his dad after Harry set him up in Charleston South Carolina with his new step-mom, Marilynn. Marylyn and Harry, though still married, were separated and Harry was out of the picture for the most part. Harry was out of the picture because he’d only married Marilyn for Nick’s sake. He had, in spite of his absence, kept his promise to Iniga by trying to assure that Nick would not go wanting. After all, he told himself when the vision of Iniga’s scowl would appear to him late at night; Marilyn’s house was a whole lot better than the way Nick had been left on the orphanage’s porch.

   Nick had taken to studies under a tutor he’d been assigned and even managed to complete prep-school at Bishop England Catholic High School in South Carolina before Harry used his connections to get him into The Citadel. Noting Nicky’s physique and size, Harry hoped Nick would adapt and choose a military career to be primed for life there… better than as a civilian in Ivy League colleges.

   Nick loved the discipline at The Citadel more so than he did the studies and, because he was possibly the most physically intimidating “knob” on campus, he was not hazed as much as other Fourth Class Cadets there. Engineering, mathematics, military history and instruction weren’t for him but, hell, Nick had already been institutionalized and anything, even the rigors of a Catholic prep school and the military academy, were a good deal better than the dumbed-down kindergarten of Los Prietos. He decided, after his first year at the Citadel, he had no desire for a military career nor did he have any academic aspirations. He discovered that a gift for gab and money opened doors for him that even the best colleges couldn’t. By this time, he had taken to the newly discovered privileges of wealth and the prestige that wearing the right clothes, driving the right car and living in the best neighborhoods, could avail him. He felt that he was wasting time sitting in classrooms when there was so much money to be made in the world beyond the walls of the Citadel.

   While Nick was at the Academy, and because Harry was hardly ever around much, Marilynn acquired a Realtors’ license and set up an office in Mount Pleasant. Nick fell right in with her after leaving college and the two; Nick’s natural good looks, glib tongue in conjunction with an innate ability to read other people; together with Marilyn’s pretentious airs and business acumen, made them a good team, tailor made for the polite airs of Southern congeniality. She was a matronly southern-belle whose pretenses were less annoying to Nick than they might have been had he not already spent some time at Bishop England and The Citadel acquiring manners.

  Nick took his libido into town to the gay bars and picked up on an occasional prostitute too. He hadn’t the pedigree for the society girls and he was a twenty-seven year old bachelor with what would be a good prospect anywhere else but Charleston. While sitting at Dandey’s, complaining about his last affair that ended just when he thought he’d arrived, a real-estate acquaintance asked him, “Why honey, are you wasting your time with these stuck-up bitches in Charleston? You don’t have the pedigree for these Southern Belles…”

   “Yeh, that’s true, but if only…”

   “If only… if only, darlin’… if wishes were fishes.” Nicky listened out of boredom but paid attention because this swish with the fishes was on to something when he quoted the Beatles song, “You should get back to where you once belonged… Jo-Joe.”

   “You mean California?” Nick's paranoia had him wondering what this fag knew about his stay at Los Prietos.

   “Oh sweetheart, you are getting warm…” he nuzzled up to Nick’s ear, “C’mon, Nicky, you know Santa Barbara is teeming with trust-fund babies who could care less about class distinction.”

   “What do you know about Santa Barbara?” Nicky wiped the moisture from his ear with his sleeve.

   The friend leaned back on his bar stool slurring, “Oh, they have one of the mo-ossst delightful gay-bars in the whole world, lover boy,” he then stood with his chest puffed out proudly, “go to ‘The Pub’ and be sure to tell Frankie, Donny of Charleston says, ‘Hi there’.”

   Nick’s mind was blank about the night before… he remembered the conversation with Donny about Santa Barbara. His mind raced… putting pieces of memory in place… there was cocaine; making out in the back seat of a cab; a creepy blank space after that. He was there in a strange bed. He turned over on his side to reach over… chiefly, to find out whose bed he was in. His arm fell on cold flesh… Donny was there… face down with wrists tied to bed posts… a silk tie stretched tight around his neck… shit, dead… what? Dead! Oh, God, get out of here!

   He drove to the office, hung-over, replaying the events of the night before in his mind. He remembered making out in Donny’s bed and then the screen went blank… nothing… Oh, shit, what’s going to happen… no one saw me leave his apartment… or did they? Oh, no, everyone at the bar saw us leave together… what the fuck… make up a story now… come up with something. There is sure to be an investigation. Did I leave any evidence?… semen... new stuff… DNA… (DNA was in its infancy back then). Should I call Harry?

The Crisp, Clean, Autumn Air

 I wrote this part of Adriane but didn't know exactly where to put it. It is an important background bit that gives us a sense of exactly who it is we are dealing with. I'm hoping to squeeze it into the novel in such a manner as not to muck it all up.

  A glossary of terms and index will be added by the time I get to the end of the story.

#####

The Maquisards of the Pyrenees

 

 

   The year was 1943 and fall had brought with it the changing of colors along the Catalonian mountain pass through to Col Du Pourtalet, in the Pyrenees. The Basque Maquis’ heart would have reveled in the crisp cool air of this landscape but he was thinking about how the summer of 1940 had brought bad news in Biarritz when the Maginot line collapsed under the relentless forces of Hitler’s blitz. Then it was just the last summer when the worst betrayal… a reminder of the betrayals by Stalinists in Madrid… the betrayal of Jean Moulin; given up to the Gestapo by another communist, Raymond Aubrac, in Lyon. Word had spread among the anarchist maquisards that no one was to be trusted in the Resistance… no one… especially the communists.

    Alesander Gotson had crossed the Pyrenees many times from 1936 to 1939. He and Marcel Fournier, Adrian’s father, had been in Guernica during the infamous fire bombing, retreating to Bilboa… surviving the War of the North and eventually held out at last in Madrid. Nightmares of squadrons in waves… Junkers, Dorniers, Heinkles, Fiat and Messerschmitt fighters … he could still see the bombs dropping and the strafing. Joining a handful of students led by Francisco Oscuro and his “Dark Ones” they stood up to the Condor Legion as long as they could and then slipped out, or melded with the population, in the confusion and rubble when the city fell with the Republican dream and his hopes for a liberated Basque Country was crushed.

   Having set up a chocolate shop in Biarritz after being released from Camp Gurs, thanks to the influence of Marcel Fournier and fellow maquis, Alesander retired from the revolution. Marcel had escaped, but not untouched, and went on to prosper from the black market in Paris. Both were disillusioned with the betrayals by the Stalinists for the constant infighting and power struggles between one faction or another in Madrid. Being a witness to the atrocities; the murder of over a thousand Nationalist prisoners ordered by the Stalinist advisor, Koltzov, Alesander, the professional guidari (warrior) was more loyal to his people, the Basques of northern Spain and southwest France, than any allegiance to political ideology. Political ideals all sounded good in the propaganda of the time but the sight of such brazen disregard for human life was what he’d been struggling against in the dust and ruins of Guernica, Bilbao and Madrid. The crimes of the Republic under Soviet usurpation equaled those of General Mola on the other side… No pasaron, indeed.

   He seen Paris fall into the dark clouds of insanity for a worse form of fascism, but he also saw the fall of France as an opportunity to help gather forces from Southern France, inflamed by NAZI oppression, sufficient to wrest Basque country from Franco. While, at the same time he did this, he could put a thorn into the side of the Vichey on the French side of the Pyrenees. The Nazis would make it easier to organize a guerrilla movement now that France itself had been occupied and Alesander was more talented at organizing guerrillas than he was at managing his chocolate shop. He’d left the shop to a cousin and disappeared from Biarritz in the Occupied Zone, before the Gestapo found his name on their lists (where it was sure to be), to take up the fight he’d abandoned in March of 1939.

   At nightfall he waited with a half-dozen of his maquisards lined up and ready to light flares illuminating the improvised landing strip. The feint purr of the Lysander in the distant black sky assured him the plane was on time… within seconds... and there would be no waiting around. Alesander didn’t appreciate the help his little band was getting from the British. He didn’t believe in the adage, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” After dealing with the Stalinist, Anarchist and Republican infighting in Madrid, Alesander observed that the worst enemy of the Resistance was the resistance itself. Why would the British government be free of similar play-pen shenanigans? This was life or death to him while they, at times, seemed to view the guidariki as pawns in the big game. His heart beat freer high up in the Pyrenees where his decisions didn’t have to go through a central committee.

   “There it is …” a young guidari called out. The commander’s attention was on the landing strip…  a black Lysander landed squarely in the midst of two rows of flares, having been lit only moments before, coming to a stop fifty feet from those marking the end of the strip. Alesander admired the ability of these pilots to land on a dime and take off again without a minute lost. He watched as a tall, broad shouldered man with close cropped, blond hair and a huge backpack, jumped to the ground.

   The plane was immediately turned around by his men and headed back down the strip to disappear into the night, “This way,” he said in English and the group darted off into the forest.

   After about a half-hour hike they came to a small hut where a young girl, Iniga, one of maquisards waiting for their return, lit a kerosene lamp and put it in the middle of the table. Alesander thought of her as a fiery angel with a moon face and cupid-bow lips framed by unruly and wild brown tufts tied down under a provocative Basque Beret. She was only seventeen but had already been slated for a train from Gur to Drancy and sure death before he, and the former préfet of Aveyon, Jean Moulin, managed to wrangle her release two years before. Though barely a teen at the time she had witnessed the assassination of Durruti at the Bridge in Madrid and had become a hardened veteran by1943.

   “So, what are we doing… no supplies… no ammo… nothing from you Brits but another face to feed?” She blurted out before the tall muscular, blond man could say anything. He was busy opening a suitcase he’d carried from the plane on the table revealing a compact radio.

   "The rest will be dropped tomorrow night… we have another radio code-book…" returning her glare and adding casually, "the others have been compromised. That is why I’m here.”

   Alesander had heard that accent in Madrid. It was the accent of the Lincoln Brigade he’d fought with in the last days of the Republic in Madrid. He had a kinship with the Americans… more than with the British whose class distinctions made them almost as nasty as the Germans. But, some of the Americans of the Lincoln Brigade were idealists who’d become as disillusioned as he.

   The American pulled another kit out of his pack and put it on the table. Beside two dry cell batteries, there were two thirty-two caliber Welrod pistols with silencers and several boxes of ammo.

    No one used their real names and very few asked, but Alesander finally recognized the man. He was Harry Baker, aka, Perro de Caza... the Bird Dog, and had come to Madrid in the last weeks before everyone with any sense scrambled out of there. He never got to know him but he suspected that Mr. Baker played both sides to his benefit. Madrid was far away but the wounds… the distrust… it never heals.

   After everyone bedded down outside the hut, Baker sat at the table and lit a pipe, “You are familiar… you were in Madrid at the bridge?”

   “Yes, and you were with the International Brigade at Manzanares…” Inga added, “When Durruti was taken out…” She then went back out of the hut.

   After she left, Alesander picked up on what the girl was implying, “It was almost over then. How did you get out?”

   “That’s classified, sorry,” was Baker pulling rank?

   Alesander swiftly yanked his Welrod from inside his jacket, holding it steady between Baker’s eyes. “This round in the chamber is classified too… so tell me Mr. Baker, how did you get out of Madrid?”

   Baker didn’t flinch… there was no reaction. It seemed as though he didn’t care one way or another whether Alesander pulled the trigger. “Let me just say, it was a matter of knowing where the bricks, walls and body parts fell during the bombardments.”

   “They say… some I know to be reliable… they, and there was more than one, I’ve heard them say that it was a Stalinist that shot Durruti.” Alesander had been with Durruti, the leader of the anarchist column, during the drive to Zaragosa.

   “It could have been,” the American still hadn’t blinked.
   
   Iniga burst in the door and came to a halt when she saw the two men poised in an absurd diorama… neither moved. “I hate to interrupt… better put a bullet in his head, Alesander, we have to get moving.” 

   Two more maquisards entered the hut, “Bind him…,” Alesander ordered, “we’ll pick up our conversation later.”

   Baker put his hands behind his back without resistance while Iniga, with a cord of sinew, had begun to bind them. Alesander stopped her from binding him that way, saying, “Tie them to the front, he can move easier that way. We don’t need to have him stumbling in the dark.”

   “Thanks,” Baker nodded in agreement.

   Two hand guns, 9 mm Lugar semi-automatic pistol and MP 40 German machine pistol with a detached shoulder stock, a makeshift garrote along with two knives in shoulder sheathes, were lifted from inside his heavy jacket. Iniga ran her delicate fingers across the smooth side of the peculiar blade of the biggest one.
 
   Baker grinned at the girl as she examined the odd shaped heavy dagger, “It’s a Smatchet. You can jam that fucker right through an SS helmet. You can have it… I’ll keep the others.”

   She approved as the others left the hut.Alesander still hadn’t put the Welrod down until Baker’s hands were secured. She then snuffed the lamp and the band filed out up the hill, splitting up into two or three man groups. 

   Iniga took the point while Alesander held back behind Baker. He stepped aside and took a stand on an outcrop to pause and check his watch. The column in pursuit would be almost to the hut by this time. He could see a few lights from farm houses in the valley below from his viewpoint but the darkness hid nearly everything else. Had he not known the terrain so well, he wouldn’t have been able to guess where the hut they’d just left might have been… he could hear one of their pursuers loudly complaining that they had to dismount their horses at the hut and hike.

   Alesander left his perch… slinging his British Sten and taking up the rear behind his compliant and strangely complacent captive, he puzzled over what to do now. He could have blown the hut with plastique at this time but he didn’t want to give the Regulares any reason to retaliate with reprisals on the villagers below who had as little knowledge of the actions of the maquis as they did the Guardia Civil. The Regulars weren’t as brutal with reprisals as the Civil Guard, or the Germans in France, but trouble of any kind in the countryside could turn the locals against them and the Maquis sorely needed the support of the villagers.

   They made their way along a path known only to a few; skirting the limestone cliffs that dropped several hundred feet from the barren landscape to wind, below the tree-line, sidelong the steep slopes down and over a crest, forested with firs and some beech trees to a hidden limestone cave where they met the others and stashed the radio. All except the three then dispersed, some down into the town, Jaca: others scattered elsewhere. 

   It is said that the garrison of Jaca’s mutiny against the monarchy and its suppression in 1930 gave birth to the beginnings of the Spanish Civil War. At the cave the three; Iniga, Baker and Alesander, would bind their fates far beyond the immediate circumstances of that day in 1943.

   “Unbind him,” Alesander nodded to Iniga.

   “What, you want to give him a chance to escape?” she sneered indignantly.

   “He could have had that chance a half dozen times by now…” Alesander answered. An uncustomary grin showed the worried features, so weary of warfare, on what ought to have been a youthful face, “You should be a little less eager for blood, my dear one.” But he knew full well how bitterly the savagery of oppression etched itself into the lives of what ought to have been the carefree youth of those times. The Civil Guard had taken her parents to a wall and gang-raped her at fourteen. She went straight to the front lines in Madrid as a messenger before it fell in '39. Alesander understood because he himself had his first taste of combat as a messenger in '36 when he was fourteen. He was only twenty years of age now but had already been a hardened veteran since the Civil War started a lifetime ago in '36.

   Alesander returned Baker’s weapons, “Sorry, we can’t be too careful with our trust." Gesturing for her to unstrap the sheath, "Iniga, give him back his smatchet.”

   “But he said I could have it…” she pouted intriguingly girlish.

   “We have to set up a drop site…” Baker interrupted.

   “Please can I keep the smatchet?”  Iniga flashed her mock, little girl, pout at Baker and patted her side where under her coat the smatchet was holstered.

   “Sure,” Baker smiled flashing his straight white teeth. He couldn’t figure if she was patting her breast teasingly or the smatchet sheath. He then turned his head up the hill and held his hand out, palm down, to signal silence… he heard voices.

The three fanned out and took cover. Alesander’s took a position above and to the side between a couple of boulders where he could watch the entrance of the cave. That radio in there was crucial for their survival. Ambush strategies and tactics had been worked out long before by the maquisards but Baker had only his well honed instincts to land in a perfect place to observe the approaching column. Iniga found cover a hundred meters up the hill camouflaged behind some scrub beneath some beech trees.
 
   This was an operation with too many problems for Alesander. He preferred quiet operations, where a couple of spikes on a mountain railway track could be dislodged, resulting in a supply train headed for Southern France to derail and tumble into a gulch long after his men would be enjoying a few carafes of wine in Jaca; but this one was suspiciously compromised from the start. Those being his feelings regardless, he would get a chance to gain respect for Baker’s abilities this morning as an ominous mist cast an aura of mystery around the arrival of two Civil Guards and a half-dozen Regulars.

   As the squad approached, Baker let the point pass within feet of his position. Alesander had been in so many ambushes by now that he felt calm and focused. The men looked tired and finally the squad leader ordered a rest. They had to scramble up and down these trails, far from the warmth and security of their post. Dumping their packs, rolling and lighting up cigarettes, each made a tremendous amount of noise. From his position he could see Baker gesture, pointing out the sergeant… claiming him for his own… as he was separate from his squad…. taking a dump. Garrote ready, Baker waited, making sure that the sergeant finished his dump before taking him out. He didn’t want to mess himself up in close quarters like that. He gave Alesander a hand signal to wait.

   Iniga had the smatchet out and poised to use on one of them leaning against the same beech she had been using for cover. He’d taken off his German style helmet adorned with the Franco Eagle emblem, to roll up and light a cigarette.  This bothered her because she wanted to see how that damned blade worked even though he’d set aside his new, and hardly ever used, parade-ground Muaser rifle within easy reach. Still, in spite of her youthful petulance she was disciplined enough to wait for Alesander’s signal. He was in the line of sight for both her and Baker but, of course, she had no idea what the waiting was about.
 
   One of the men spoke loud enough for all to hear, “They are probably in Jaca by now… having breakfast… eh?” there would be no answer from the sergeant.


   Alesander was in position to catch most of the rest with his Sten when Baker made his move. These men were green... Franco had to send his more experienced, so-called volunteer, Blue Divisions to the Russian Front to appease Hitler. The army never recovered from the loss of experienced fighters. Now Spain, with the exception of a few Moroccan veterans, had nothing but barracks mavens to send out on patrol: they looked good for the parade grounds but were of little use in the field.

   It was over before anyone was able to lift a weapon. Everyone had all moved in such precision that only a short burst from Alesander’s Sten made any sound. Baker worried that the sound of that burst might have carried. He had taken out three with a knife as Iniga made short work of two more with one of the Welrods. The three had moved in unison as though choreographed in a deadly dance.

   In the end, Iniga had one pinned against a tree by the Mauser she held casually to her side with the business end of the barrel only inches from the boy’s crotch. He was no older than Iniga.

   “What are we going to do with him?” she almost pled.

   Alesander walked straight up to the quivering kid with tears of fear on his adolescent face, saying calmly, “Its going to be alright…” he assured the boy as he put a silenced round into the side of the youth’s head. The boy dropped to the ground in front of Iniga’s Mauser muzzle.

   She turned to catch Alesander walking away as though he’d only delivered a paper. She understood… no prisoners… but a deep ache welled up in her with tears of her own.She then put the boy's helmet back on his head and slammed the smatchet through it to the hilt.
 
   Jerking away she called out to Baker, “Hey, it went through his helmet like a butter knife!” displaying the bloody smatchet.
 
   Baker kicked the body over, the helmet rolled off to show the wound in the back of the kid's head. The helmet had a hole in the middle of the top, “You did that afterwards.”

   “I had to try it,” she answered coyly and smiled broadly.

   He gave her a pat on the back and the three of them got busy hiding the bodies.

   War… the crisp, clean, autumn, mountain air, now smelled of blood, shit and urine soaked trousers,from exploded intestines. All three were young and should have been cramming for studies in dorms or playing soccer… but here they were. It had to be accepted… it is unfair… every dead soldier has a grieving family… a mother… a father… a lover… war!

  

Steely Gray Eyes & Blood Red Gladiolas

Now, at sixteen, Nick was approaching manhood after bouncing from the orphanage to foster homes… to another foster home… to another foster home… to Los Prietos Boys camp.  Harry Baker would have his hands full de-institutionalizing his son but he also had his hands full with his own medical condition. He knew he had four, maybe five years or more, if only he could quit smoking before the emphysema that was gradually drowning him would take him under. He owed it to Iniga… he’d promised her that much… and these were the few kinds of promises men like Harry were honor bound to keep.  

  She was there in the V.A Hospital in Boise after he’d managed to verify, through Marcel Fournier, that she was a veteran of the resistance in France: a concentration camp survivor, Franco’s prisons and, while in the resistance, a rescuer of American pilots during D-Day in Normandy. He’d done so after Alesander reached him through old contacts in the OSS and informed him she had been suffering cancer, under an alias, at a sheep ranch near Boise Idaho. He’d only quit his business a few years before and dropped all his aliases for his real name.

   Coming “out from the cold” then, Harry had married Marilyn to have for once a normal life. The posting of wedding notices in the local paper didn’t escape the attention of Alesander’s associates whose antennae had been out looking for Harry since he’d heard of Iniga’s cancer. Harry then went to work with connections that landed her in the V.A. hospital of Fort Street in Boise.

    He came onto her ward with a bouquet of flowers and a gnawing anxiety. Her skeletal frame was hardly discernible from the tubes, oxygen mask and wires to monitors. He put the flowers, Blood Red Gladiolas, in a vase and sat by her as she slept.

   She awoke with a start, “Hurry?” she slurred…. sedated, trying to say Harry through a thickened tongue, 
   
   “Yes, it’s me.”

   “And, along comes the injustice of God.” She managed a weak smile.
 
  “What, Iniga?”

   “That fate would shove your fuckin’ face in front of my eyes before I die.”

   “Gratitude was never your strong suit…”

   “I am grateful that I can tell you about our son.” Her contempt softened as she said, our son.

   To Harry's uncustomary affectionate mind, the lines of premature age and the darkened skin under her eyes wrought by cancer and had not withered away the beauty of her cupid bow lips or the steely determination of her eyes were steely gray like his: gray eyes that were no longer framed by wild shocks of black Basque hair. They were set deep in the death’s skull of her shaved head: eyes that were pleading. Harry was moved by the sight of Iniga submitting to pain… to see her in physical weakness was... well, he remembered his last vision of her in the bath at their departure in Spain.

   “He is in California…” she paused to take another hit off the oxygen mask; “A boy’s camp of some sort. He still has your name, Papa.”

   “What do you want me to do about him?” Harry could tell, as soon as he protested, that any objections he might have would be vanity, He saw no need to tell her of his own emphysema. but he tried… “He doesn’t know me.”

   “He needs help. I had no idea of his situation…” she arose on one arm and spoke forcefully, “until we tracked down that damned wet-nurse.”

   Harry saw again her fierce determination as she continued, “The cur left him with nuns like a donation … a bag of groceries!” she wheezed…”I was too weak to follow-up…. but I found out where he is now.”

   If he was honest with himself about it, Harry hadn’t given Nick much thought at all over the previous sixteen years. Love wasn’t part of his vocabulary. It was an expense… a far too costly an investment in time and energy to be committed to it. He had to do what he knew he needed to do now. He needed to do it now because he realized… or allowed the realization… that within the deep recess of buried emotions… he loved Iniga and, in loving Iniga,his betrayal of her years ago required something of him.

   “It is up to you Harry, find him.”
 
   “I will.
 
   “Try to give him a life, Harry.”
 
   “I will.”
 
   “Oh, yes, Harry…”
 
   “Yes…”
 
   “Thanks for the gladiolas. Red glads were the favorites of the nuns at la Ventas.” She turned her head to the side to hide her tears, “Now go away please.”
 
   Harry knew then what the rest of his life would be. He took the first flight from there the next morning and never again see Iniga's steely gray eyes before she died.

A Sewer of Deceit

   Harry set little Nicky up in another safe-house when he was hatched, until his mama had escaped la Ventas. Three months later she had been taken to the safe house by the bribed Padre. Their first contact was a fiery one. Harry’d gotten the news that his efforts were successful via a phone call from the same bribed Padre. She was taking a bath when the wet nurse let Harry in the apartment.

   “You can wait here, senor.” She gestured towards a straight backed chair next to Nicky’s cradle.

   Harry didn’t even think of lifting the screen over the cradle to look in at his son like any proud father would.

   Harry had counted on his betrayal being a secret and that she wouldn’t know of it. It wouldn't be so bad, he thought, that his affair with Iniga would pick up where it had left off before she was arrested. He sat and waited as the wet nurse knocked on the bathroom door, “Senora, your husband is here.”

   “I don’t want to see him!”

   The ruse that Iniga and Harry were lovers, or even friends, dissipated as he crossed the room and opened the bathroom door. He stood in awe, stunned, at the raw beauty of Iniga’s naked body. She looked better, even after the deprivation of prison, than the last time he’d seen her and he longed to hold her in his arms. “La Ventas treated you well?”

   She was still startled at the sudden opening and reached for a gun that was no longer there, as one would have always been before her arrest. “What makes you imagine that you are welcome here?” she spat out the words with contempt.

   “Is this the gratitude I get for bustin' you loose?” Harry knew this was a weak thing to ask but he had no words for the unaccustomed guilt her indignant posture extracted from his gut.

   “You are alive now because I have no way to kill you, Harry,” she showed her palms as the hatred seethed from the cupid lips he longed to press to his. Those cold steel-grey eyes diverted his eyes to her firm breasts, and then to a newly stitched scar that went down the length of her belly: a Caesarian birth, no doubt.

   The conviction of her words left Harry with little to say. Words weren’t his strong suit and neither was the expression of emotion. He understood that she knew what had happened but he tried just one time to explain, “Alesander is in Biarritz.”

   “That was your trade?” she looked up at him.

   “Yes,” and his chest ached to lift her… to draw her body to his.

    “Go, and take Nicholas with you,” she spoke with a determined voice but her steel grey eyes welled with tears, “I’m going back.”

   “No, I won’t take him, he needs a mother.” Harry made a desperate plea to what he imagined to be her maternal instincts.

   “Okay, I’ll keep him for now, but you’ll never see him again.” She countered.

   “You’ll die in the Pyrenees, Iniga, the U.S. has a base in Rota now,” he had to make this one last argument, though he knew it would not mover her. “The CIA is very good at taking care of insurgents. Even if you win… look at Iran…” referring to Mohammad Mosaddegh’s parliamentary government before the CIA re-installed the Shah in 1953, “you think they will tolerate a Basque government run by anarchists, or, most likely, Communists?”

   “No, Harry, my time in La Ventas convinced me. My world is not yours,” she then added, “I can’t go back like you and your kind. I can’t drop out and drop in as I please, like you; Alesander and I are guidari. We counted ourselves as dead the minute we picked up a weapon to resist.”

   "Alesander, I have good reason to believe, is retiring in Biarritz. His stay in Carabanchel convinced him," Harry lay down his trump card hoping she'd...

   "He will never retire until he is dead," she fired back with a hand she knew she ought best fold.

   “So, you are convinced you want martyrdom. You want to die in a worthless Jihad and you choose this over motherhood?”


   He could see that he'd hit her in the chest with a hammer and that the blow only caused her face to set in a concrete resolve that no hammer could bust up.

   Harry remembered the first time he and Iniga met in a cabin in the Pyrenees during the war. She was only a teen then with Alesander’s guerrilla group; a smatchet on her belt,her frame so small that any rifle would outweigh her, but she carried a full pack and a fierce determination he'd just seen again. He let his eyes caress her body one more time before closing the door. 

   He heard her from shout from behind the bathroom door as he left the apartment and his son, Nicky, “Adios, Bird Dog, we are not the same as you say, you are a whore!”

   “Adios, my fiery angel.” He wasn’t used to poetic adieus and he hoped that leaving Nicky with her would temper her revolutionary fervor. She could have left Spain and Franco’s oppression for Southern France like Alesander in Biarritz, but it would not be so. They would not see each other for over four decades… as she lay dying.
 
   Nicky was lost to him too. She arranged for her wet nurse to care for him. When the wet nurse immigrated to the US with Nicky she put the bastardo, her ticket for immigration, on the steps of a Catholic orphanage with his birth certificate in a manila envelope pinned to his blanket a few days after her feet hit the ground off a Greyhound Bus in Los Angeles. A life begun in the sewer of betrayal, abandonment and deceit, left Nicky with a perspective on life that might be understood under these circumstances.

Settlements

Harry took a seat on a surreal Gaudi bench with Commandante Rojelio at the Park Guell in Barcelona. The Commandant was tamping his pipe when Harry approached, pausing a minute to appraise an old acquaintance, “Senor Perro de Caza, it is good to see you are still alive.”

   “Yes, and you have advanced in rank, Commandant, since I last saw you?” Harry was letting Rojelio know that he had inside information, knowing Rojelio’s rank, even though the Commandant was in plain clothes. He also knew he would have a hard time dealing with Rojelio because the man was one of the few decent and honest people he knew in the Policia Armada.

   “Who are you working for now, Harry?” Rojelio, a deeply religious man, was especially suspicious of Harry Baker. He knew that Harry worked as an independent contractor and that meant he had no allegiance to anything, anyone, any ideology or faith. “You have piqued my curiosity, Bird Dog. are you in love with Iniga?”

   Harry knew his body language would not go unnoticed by the Commandant, “Nothing romantic, I can assure you. I’m doing this one on personal business. I am more interested in the salamander growing in her womb. I know I can’t bend you with money but you can still help me, if you will. Can I say, on humanitarian grounds?”

   “Then you are in love with Iniga, si?”

    “Yes, Rojelio, maybe: and you are a Carlist at heart. You already knew she was pregnant?” Harry was reticent to admit he was in love with her but he was glad that Rojelio came directly to the point. This saved them both a lot of time.

   “Oh good... love is a good thing Bird Dog." his face broke out in a sly grin. "She was fortunate I was her interrogator…” he finally lit his pipe, “I can tell, strangely enough, our Lord and Savior must have a special love for you and that woman.”

   “You can help then?” Harry ignored the usual religious clap-trap. He knew he was known well enough by Commandant Rojelio that he didn’t have to bother with cow-towing. He was relieved that the conversation returned to business.

   “Donate some pesetas to the nuns at la Venta and you can get the child out if you act quickly. An adoption is in order, but I have to warn you, the vultures were circling with bids before Iniga’s belly even began to swell. I’m not so sure what it would take to get her released too, but negotiations...”

   “… I have a marriage certificate.”

   “That might help but I can’t promise anything.”

   “Do you find this park to be disorienting?” Harry didn’t like getting confused and the wavy undulations, swirling lines of the walkways and niches, evoked a touch of vertigo in his gut. Harry’s mind preferred straight lines… or, it could have been the carafes of wine from yesterday.

   “No, it is a glorious tribute to the convolutions of the Catalonian politics we have to engage in to survive.”  He let out a wisp of smoke adding, “You ought to be used to that, Bird Dog, and you also must have known before that, Iniga would have to escape. The only way she will be released would be via the Ley de Fugas,” he added while putting a forefinger to the back of his head. He then paused to consider, "I will pull a few strings if I can."



   The necessity of Alesander’s escape, and Harry’s efforts to spirit him back into France, at the behest of Marcel Fournier, might have been less than an uneasy fellowship: of the betrayed with the betrayer. Nothing tasted worse on Harry’s tongue than his betrayal of Iniga and the certain knowledge that Alesander’s instincts were keen enough to know what was done on his behalf. Regardless, Iniga had to sit with the nuns in La Ventas until Harry could somehow spring her. He was compelled to devote himself whole heartedly to this task using whatever fees he’d earned for managing Alesander’s release to somehow get her out. His efforts finally came to a head after Nicholas was born in prison. Even Harry’s forged marriage certificate and testimony by the priest (he’d bribed to sign it to verify that the marriage took place) wasn’t enough for the stubborn mother superior.

   A few guards that were bribed to look the other way, and the help of the underground to create a diversion, converged to facilitate a rather easy escape. Had she not been able to break free of la Ventas, she would have been shipped to another of the hundreds of prisons to be then let out and unceremoniously shot... another escapee, as had hundreds of others who had disappeared before her.

The End of Confinement

Before Carabanchel was Razed

   Alesander had endured four years of, solitary confinement and deprivations that can hardly be described. Harry observed the Civil War guidari, veteran of Guernica and the Battle of Madrid… Los Oscuros (the Dark Ones) with the infamous Galvan, who never surrendered, the Maquis of the Basque struggle, and the Resistance in France and Spain… The list is long and Harry had only respect for the man… were it not for Alesander’s embarrassing passion.

   They met in a safe house of one of the enlaces in Huesca as Harry spoke first to make arrangements… the betrayer with the betrayed, “We meet again, Alesander.”

   “It is difficult to say why,” Alesander answered, “but I am glad to see you again, Bird Dog,” His frail frame sank into the easy chair on the other side of a small table.

    "Down to business. You will be on the train through the Canfranc frontera as an Argentine tourist," he slipped a passport and visa across the table.

   Harry watched, fascinated by the reed of an arm that was barely able to pick up the papers, “Didn’t they try to fatten you up before they released you?”  Harry knew that his negotiations, 1.e., bribes of prison officials, were formally resisted and backhandedly accepted, that Alesander was released: by the guard at the sally-port, blinded by Harry's forged papers and high ranking Policia Armada Officer uniform, pushed the button to open the gate as he, at midnight, escorted Alesander Gotson out to freedom and finally, managed the Maquis’ escape.

   “No, I expected the usual treatment,” setting the cup down and pointing to the back of his head… “You know, a bullet there, the usual treatment: killed while escaping.”

   Harry didn’t marvel at Alesander’s lack of bitterness. Even four years of isolation, sense deprivation, physical and psychological torture did not destroy the quality that preserved him through twenty years of post Civil War concentration camps in France, guerrilla warfare and, now, Carabanchel: he never hated his enemy. Even the Stalinists back in Madrid or the PCE (Communist Party of Spain), when their purges of non-communist leadership, kidnapped and assassinated, summarily judged and shot resistance fighters after the failed assault on the Aran Valley in ‘44; or when the Central Committee of the PCE suspended support for the Spanish guerillas, Agrupacionesor Guerrilleras (the A.G.E.), in’48: Harry had never heard a sour word spoken by Alesander against the Stalinists, Nazis, the Civil Guard, the paramilitary Somaten, or the horrors committed by Franco’s Moroccan division. To Alesander, a soldier was a soldier and soldiers do as soldiers must. The horrors of war hardened him against its cruelty and it didn’t matter how inhumane the atrocities were: even for mad and vicious crimes against humanity by mercenaries like Harry Baker… Alesander didn’t forgive or forget… he just understood.

Iniga: Ley de Fuges

   Iniga was able to reach the street corner and, honed by years underground, her instincts told her she was being followed. Ducking into a shop entrance, she tried the door. Of course, it was locked. Unarmed but for a small butterfly knife, she knew there was no choice other than to toss the knife where she might find it afterward, if there was an afterwards, and to wait and watch. Waiting and watching was a talent developed over years as a guidari in the resistance. There was no traffic, so the tinny sound of the SEAT’s four-cylinder motor approaching came as an alarm. The sedan screeched to a halt with all but the driver’s door swinging open in the early dawning hour of the Barcelona morn.
   
   The irony of the trade-off for the release of Alesander was that Iniga, Harry Baker's closest confidant was his ransom, and, the Guardia Civil set in motion the poetry of doom after Iniga slipped away from his bed into the night. 

   She was politely interrogated at first. Her interrogator offered her a cigarette across the desk-top that was gouged with a hollow protest… “No pasaran!”:  probably scratched in with an edge of a captive’s hand cuffs. He called her by her alias as he opened a file, “Maria Francesco?”

   She knew that her alias would not have such a thick file and at first the ruse was courteously accepted. She had documentation. By all appearances her identity was settled. She had people from the enlaces, unaffiliated with guidari, that could have come to retrieve her but she was not about to implicate anyone else until she could determine the seriousness of her arrest. She played it like an innocent woman, Maria Francesco, caught on the streets in the predawn hour… “Si, senor,” her voice quavered.

   “You were on the street alone tonight… You are puta? No, you don’t look...”

   “No, no, no… no señor. I was going home but my brother couldn’t come for me.” She lifted her eyebrows and let her steel-gray eyes catch his. A woman couldn't be seen unescorted by a male family member in Franco's Spain. To be caught was to suffer a prison term or huge fine; i.e., bribe.

    “You’re eyes and accent, they are Basque? … even unusual for Basque, eh?” He flicked open a Zippo lighter… the US Marine Corps emblem etched on its face flickered little diamond reflections as it click-snapped, “I am Comandante Rojelio.”

   She restrained herself from a snide retort about the American source of the Zippo that would have been uncharacteristic of a woman of good standing. She stayed in character and managed to blush, casting her eyes towards her lap, “Yes, I am Basque.”

   “So, your name… Maria Francesco, it is uncharacteristic of Basque names too, eh?” he was now taking out a yellow legal tablet from the center desk drawer. “I have been honest with you as I have given you my name and rank. It is a futility of horrible consequences to try to deceive me, Iniga?”

   A chill straightened her spine. Her thoughts were clear… focused… sharp. This is where it begins. She knew what was coming. She would be told to list her enlaces (circle of supporters) in lieu of an offer… a chance that her plight might be relaxed. The Law of the Fugitives (Ley de Fugas) decreed a fugitive’s life was dirt. Any fugitive could be generously offered clemency and released. Then, as she walked away, believing to have avoided years of imprisonment, a bullet would be dispatched to the back of her head; thus saving considerable bother for all involved.

Her Trademark Smatchet

   “I’ve wanted to meet you for several years now. It is a curious phenomenon, notoriety, si?” the commandant was authentically moved to meet an adversary that had been a nemesis since he had graduated from the academy in 1948. He’d been on the scene when Alesander was taken and he had seen the only picture of her from a WWII snapshot in a file. She held, in that image, her trademark smatchet in front of her cupid bow lips framed by a face he would have no need to double-check.

   Refusing to list her collaborators assured her that she would be tortured, raped and, most likely, murdered instead. She knew, from morning sickness, that she held one trump card up her sleeve that could reprieve her from further torture… if the Commandant found it to his advantage. “I am embarazada.”

   “So, you want lodging with the nuns at la Ventas? I can assure you that your stay will be most comfortable for your first, what, nine months?” He saw her as a young woman that could have been his own wife or daughter and dreaded the torture and rape that he was sure she would be in store for her otherwise if she weren't pregnant..

   “More like seven or eight,” she thought back to when she first decided not to abort the child and her lips quivered for the first time.

   The Commandant was a practicing Catholic and, as a practicing Catholic, he’d embraced a compassion unfamiliar to those whose ambition pre-empted their devotion to Catholicism.

   “We are ready for whatever you can dish out, Commandant.” She stiffened her resolve and considered that she would indeed be more comfortable than she was sure to be afterwards, rotting in prison.

   “I’m sure you can endure more of it than me, Senorita… or should I say Senora?”

   “It is Senora. I am married to the Basque cause.” She knew that these words were an empty proclamation but had always wanted to say something along those lines if captured again because she was sure that the next time she would most likely be executed. She'd been captured before when she was young: so young that the oblivion of death couldn't be imagined because of the immortality of youth. It was little more than a romantic fantasy before the gears of experience dispelled that delusion.

   The Commandant stood to leave the room and stopped by the door, “You say you are married to the Basque cause, Senora, but the Basque cause has abandoned you. You will find your revolutionary fervor a luxury you can hardly afford from now on.”

   It would be hard for any but the most proficient observer to determine whether Harry harbored any feelings beyond the task he needed to perform. He did, indeed, love Iniga in his own way; but, could it be said he felt that love in the form of an emotion for her? So many years of working within the context of spy-craft didn’t allow his emotions to determine how his operations were executed. He now had to find a way to get Iniga out of prison if he was to have any chance of getting his seed away from being adopted by a wealthy minion of Franco.

   Harry considered what would become Nick; after all, little Nicky would be raised in luxury and live a life of cushy privilege if Harry didn’t act. What would be so bad about that? But, he feared the Franco grip on power was about to slip, or eventually be overturned, and he couldn’t predict how things would turn out for the ruling class in Spain.He had been witness to what happened to collaborators in France when Hitler's SS boys skedaddled during and after Normandy. He also thought that, if he worked it right, Nicky could have American citizenship and get the hell out of Spain along with Iniga. This would take nothing more than obtaining a forged marriage certificate and bribing a few corrupt prison administrators. Finding the right corrupt prison official wasn’t all that difficult as they were as common as fleas on a cur around Madrid. However, a high-profile Basque separatist such as Iniga posed a problem because she would be slated for a summery execution as soon as she gave birth.