Iniga

Harry had understated the complexities behind Nick’s surname. Ventas prison was from Franco’s dark decades as Generalissimo of Spain. Iniga had the misfortune to finally end up in one of the various prisons people like her perished. This imprisonment of the wives and lovers of radicals went on well into the sixties and for some into the nineties. Harry often tried to salve his guilt by reminding himself that the odds were that she’d end up in one of Franco’s jails or be shot down by the Civil Guard, with or without, his collaboration eventually anyway.

Harry was a young independent contractor back when the CIA was formed from the OSS. His physique had him standing-out too much for the CIA or anything but what he was so very good at. He was better suited for “black ops” that were “in and out” affairs of which there would be no official record if he was captured, arrested or killed. In other words, Harry was an assassin that carried under his fifties style crew cut-an encyclopedia of interesting details about the last forty years of the Cold War: details he could count on that no one in the Agency or the State Department would want out on the streets.

Rather than kill Gotson back in ‘53, Harry had informed on the whereabouts of his fellow guidari. Gotson was arrested and disappeared into the maze of Franco’s gaols in spite of Harry’s many connections of his past collaborations. At least Gotson wasn’t shot but he languished in the hell of Caracremada for four years and by coincidence, shortly before his unexpected release, Iniga was finally captured by the Civil Guard and put in with the nuns at la Ventas. Harry had everything to do with Iniga’s arrest; but, regardless, he experienced a deep remorse uncharacteristic of his occupational talents. He was, however, ignorant of the fact that little Nicky was a salamander planted in Iniga’s womb by him and he was disturbingly informed of Iniga’s pregnancy by an old colleague… a black-marketer he ran into while on one of his rare binges of regret.

Sitting at a table in a dark corner of a cantina in a seedy side ofBarcelona, downing one shot of American whiskey after another, he spotted the shady Argentinean enter the room before their eyes met.

“Senor Baker,” El Estraperlista (the black marketeer) slid into a chair at Harry’s table, uninvited. “Have you heard Gotson has been ‘rehabilitated’ He signed a denunciation of the anarchists and will be released this week?”

The creep reminded Harry of a sleazier version of Peter Lorre in Casablanca but he had to humor him. He was, after all, good source of information, “Yep, I heard… I haven’t been in a cave all this time.”

“Maybe you don’t know that Gotson’s chucha, Iniga, was arrested, serendipity, si?” 

Harry shoved his shot-glass across the table and filled it, “Drink? What else can you tell me that I don’t already know?”

“No thank you, por favor,” he shoved the glass back to Harry, “Oh nothing much, she was embarazada… heavy you say… with child… without a padre.”

“Pregnant, we say… eh.”

“Oh yes, I already have a lock on someone who pays good cash to the nuns for the little bastardo.”

“And, of course, you get a nice cut… eh?” Harry sobered up. He didn’t want to give away his hand, that he knew more and was most intimate with Iniga, to a man whose living depended upon playing both sides for a pecuniary advantage. The price would go up considerably if the shit-head knew he was interested, “Do you know where they are keeping her?”

There was no use wallowing in doubt or self-pity, for there were strings to pull, plans and bribes: He could not allow this uncustomary remorse to let his child be adopted-out and lost to an upstanding, good Catholic couple of moral and political rectitude. That is what would have been done with Nicky had he been officially termed “huérfano”, or, an orphan. Without an important American father these things were a regular atrocity for the duration of Franco’s horrible oppression… a policy that continued far past the generalissimo’s death in 1975 into the mid-nineties.

Iniga had made their first contact a month before in Barcelona, the stronghold of anarchists at that time. The Stalinist Communists in the PCE had left guerrilla groups associated with anarchists to fend for themselves in the struggle against militias, contras, Guardia Civil, almost everywhere else in Spain. Harry found himself caught between his affection for his old allies and overriding reflexes to duty and his duty called for him to take out the leadership of what was once the Maquis in Spain.

He was sitting at his usual corner table, as was his habit in most cafés, across from the door pretending to read the newspaper. Headlines featured the word, ‘bandoleros’, always something about this or that successful government action against common criminals. Harry knew that ‘common criminal’ was the euphemism within the jargon of Spanish journalism for ‘maquis’ by government censors in Spain. These were rarely written about unless there was an arrest of a guidari and these days the isolation of anarchist enclaves was nearly complete. He didn’t need to read the paper because he always had inside information on the real news of the day that the papers dared not touch.

“Perro de caza, you bird-dog, what brings you back to this cess-pool?” her voice still stirred him.

Harry flashed a grin. Only a few knew of Harry’s old code-name… ‘Bird Dog’… “Iniga, sit down, I have some business here.” Harry knew that his use of the word, “business’, carried some weight with Iniga.

Her eyes scanned the room… “Even here in Barcelona, one has to watch one’s back, eh?” She pulled out a rickety chair from across the table and sat down.

“Be careful too that you don’t miss what is in front of you,” he quipped. They sat quietly, with eyes fixed on each other, not in longing… checking…, as they had so many years ago in the Pyrenees.

“You are here on business, aren’t we well aware of what your business is today?” Iniga was never one to hedge; “We no longer have the same alliances, do we?”

“I have been away from OSS business since the war ended.” He was also well aware that this was a prevarication. Iniga would let it pass however, as they had more important business to take care of. “You were never all that good at diplomacy, were you, dear girl?”

“And you are still so good at lying,” she took one of the cigarettes Harry offered, “So, you had nothing to do with Gotson’s capture?”

“You still blame me for what happened four years ago but don’t give me any credit for his impending release, eh?” Harry could see by the way her eyes lit up that this was news, very good news, to her.