33

Pedro Teacher was dead. Dead as a doornail: that much was clear. Only a short while before, he had described the situation as lethal, and now he was proving it by his own example. His body lay on its back in a pool of blood in the middle of the room. The legs and arms were outstretched, as if he had collapsed on the spot. He was still wearing his coat; the bowler hat had rolled a meter from the head of its former owner. Next to his face, the lens shattered but still intact, lay the monocle.

Spurred on by his survival instinct, Anthony found himself out on the landing again before he had even attempted to weigh the situation. He heard the sound of footsteps climbing the stairs. Looking down, he saw armed men rushing up toward him. Some of the neighbors were opening their doors, peering out, then darting back and shutting themselves in. It would have been useless to call on them for help; besides, Anthony was so weary he could not even think. What will be, will be, he told himself. As this was passing through his mind, he was surrounded by four individuals who urged him not to offer any resistance. The mere thought of it made him smile involuntarily.

“Is there anyone else?” they wanted to know.

“A dead man inside. To whom do I have the pleasure?”

They made no reply, but bundled him into the apartment and shut the door. One of the men trained his gun on him while the other three quickly searched the rooms, guns at the ready. When they had completed their search, they made a call from the telephone on the wall in the passageway. The response at the other end was immediate, as if someone had been expecting the call. The conversation was over in two monosyllables. After he hung up, the man who had telephoned relayed it to the others:

“We’re not to touch a thing. He’ll be here in five minutes.”

Still keeping their eye on him, the four men rolled cigarettes and lit up. Anthony tried to work out whose hands he was in. Following what to him seemed like an eternal wait, the arrival of Lieutenant-Colonel Marranón and an assistant provided the answer. His appearance would doubtless have allayed the Englishman’s fears if the new arrival had not immediately strode over to him and punched him hard in the face. The blow and the shock knocked Anthony to the floor. From there he gazed up at his attacker more in sorrow than in anger.

“Son of a bitch! If it weren’t for that blasted Republican insistence on legality I’d put a bullet in you right now!” roared the lieutenant-colonel.

His assistant, who was much calmer, had gone down on his haunches next to the body, carefully hitching up the tails of his coat so that he would not get any blood on them. From there he gave his preliminary report:

“The body is still warm. He was shot point-blank in the thorax region, with a large-caliber weapon. The coat and his dark suit make it hard to say exactly where the point of entry was, but he must have died instantaneously. The neighbors would have heard the gunshot, but in the current situation they’ll keep mum.”

This reasoned report helped calm the lieutenant-colonel down.

“Was it you?” he spat at Anthony.

“No! How could it be me?” Anthony protested. “I’m an art historian and couldn’t kill a fly; I couldn’t even think it. Besides, where’s the weapon?”

“How should I know? You could have thrown it away or hidden it. No murderer waits for the police gun in hand. Do you know the victim?”

“Yes,” said Anthony. “In fact, I was with him less than an hour ago, in Chicote. He arranged to meet me there to tell me something important, but he was frightened someone might overhear. To avoid that he told me to come here, but when I arrived he was already dead.”

“Nothing fits,” growled the lieutenant-colonel. “Where exactly are we? This looks to me like a safe house, somewhere for terrorists, gangsters or foreign agents to meet.”

“As you can imagine, I didn’t know that. He described it to me completely differently. I walked here from Chicote. If Captain Coscolluela has been following me as he usually does, he can confirm that.”

“Captain Coscolluela was killed this afternoon,” the lieutenant-colonel said curtly. “And I ought to do the same with you. Claim you were trying to escape. Because of you I’ve lost my best assistant. And now they’ve rubbed out this fellow, who could have provided us with information.”

“Pedro Teacher?”

“Or whoever he is. We’ve been tailing him since he arrived in Madrid, but he’s a slippery character. If you hadn’t left a napkin on the table with this address on it, we would never have found him. Of course, he’s not much use to us now.”

Now that things had calmed down somewhat, Anthony could tell from the lieutenant-colonel’s face just how weary he was. At that moment, he turned away from Anthony to talk to his men.

“Two of you stay here until the magistrate comes to remove the body. The rest of you, come with me. This numbskull is coming with us to the National Security Headquarters. We’ll get him to talk one way or the other.”

On the way to headquarters, Anthony asked for details of how Captain Coscolluela had been killed. The lieutenant-colonel, who after his initial outburst had recovered from his distaste for the Englishman, coldly told him what had happened. The captain’s lifeless body had been found around six o’clock that afternoon on wasteland near Retiro Park. The evidence suggested he had been shot somewhere else and dumped there later. In the lieutenant-colonel’s view, it was plain who had committed the crime: a few days earlier a law student affiliated with the Falange had been killed in a street battle, and his comrades, as was their custom, had in this way avenged his death. The attack was part of the terrorist campaign the Falange was launching to prepare the terrain for a military uprising.

“Do you have any proof for what you’re saying?” asked Anthony once he had finished. “Any eyewitnesses? Has the Falange admitted responsibility?”

“There’s no need.”

Anthony Whitelands took a decision.

“When we reach your office, I’ll tell you where and when I saw poor Captain Coscolluela for the last time. And I suggest you call the Interior Minister. He’ll want to hear it.”

While this conversation was taking place, in an apartment at 21 Calle Nicasio Gallego, where the Falange had its center of operations, a visit by Father Rodrigo, an old acquaintance of the Marquis of Estella, and the news he had brought, had led to an urgent meeting of the political junta being called.

“I heard it as clearly as you can hear me now: for the moment they are going to do nothing.”

The party’s secretary-general, Raimundo Fernández Cuesta, sounded concerned but conciliatory:

“The situation could change at any moment. As things stand now . . .”

“What if things don’t change?” said Manuel Hedilla.

José Antonio Primo de Rivera cut the argument short by slapping the table with the palm of his hand. When he spoke, he was deliberately downbeat.

“Comrade Hedilla is right: nothing will change. Mola and Goded have got water in their veins. And Franco is lily-livered.”

“That leaves Sanjurjo,” José María Alfaro pointed out. “He’s got guts, and we’re with him.”

“Ha,” snorted José Antonio, “neither Franco nor Mola are going to bring Sanjurjo back from Portugal to hand him the commander-in-chief’s baton. They all want it for themselves. It’s a dogfight. By the time they all agree, it’ll be too late.”

The Political Junta was split, and the foreseeable revelations Father Rodrigo had brought straight from the mansion on Castellana only exacerbated their differences. The moderates considered it absolutely necessary to unite with the Army, even if that meant the Falange played a subordinate role in any uprising. The hardliners were in favor of seizing the initiative. Others, who were more thoughtful, insisted they were all missing the point: whoever took the first step, if the Army intervened the generals would take command, and the Falange’s ideology, spirit and political program would necessarily be distorted in the short or long term. Some of those who held this view preferred to stay out of things and wait for a clearer opportunity in the future. For an uprising against the Popular Front government to take place and the Falange not to do a thing was an odd, almost obscene idea: not even those in favor of this strategy dared suggest it openly, knowing this would be seen as cowardice and indecision. It was only occasionally and indirectly that one of them hinted at the idea of staying neutral.

José Antonio Primo de Rivera was wrestling with his doubts. As the National Chief of an authoritarian party, he had no need to consult with or to be accountable to anyone over his decision. Deep down, however, he was not a political leader but an intellectual, a jurist trained to examine the facts from every angle. His fanaticism was rhetorical. Having known them since childhood, he was more aware than anyone that the generals, with their patriotic pomposities, were simply carrying out the wishes of Spain’s landowners, financial bourgeoisie and aristocracy. Many officers, including some of the highest rank, admired the Falange’s youthful energy; but this admiration was no more than a nostalgic throwback to what they once had been or would have liked to be, before they got caught in the swamp of automatic promotions, the mud of mediocrity, easy living and petty rivalries. With few exceptions, the generals behind the coup were mediocre, lightweight and, when it came down to it, just as corrupt as the government they were proposing to overthrow. But what was the way out of this dilemma? José Antonio asked himself. A year earlier he had thought up a plan which would have altered the balance of forces. Taking advantage of a change of government that nobody agreed with, he had planned a march on Madrid similar to the one Mussolini had led on October 28, 1922. The entry into Rome of the serried ranks of Fascist militants, with their black shirts, imperial ensigns and banners flapping in the wind, had left a lasting impression on him when he had seen it on a cinema newsreel at the age of nineteen. On that occasion the people had acclaimed their new leader; King and Church had recognized him as such, and the Italian army, which had previously looked down on him, was forced to submit. Both Mussolini and Hitler had fought in the Great War, but neither of them had followed a military career; even so, unlike the centuries-old tradition of dictatorships in Spain, in the two preeminently totalitarian countries the Army obeyed civilians and their doctrines, and not the other way round. In 1935, with the threat of a Popular Front government looming, José Antonio had wanted to achieve something similar in a march on Madrid from Toledo with thousands of Falangists and the military cadets from the Alcázar. Thousands more would join them along the way, and he was counting on the support of the Civil Guard. But the plan never came to fruition: it was torpedoed at the last moment by some of the high-ranking officers. José Antonio Primo de Rivera knew their names, and in particular that of the person who, as chief of the general staff, had had the last word: Franco.

“I’ll tell you what we will do,” he said finally. “I’m going to give the military an ultimatum. Either the uprising takes place now, with the Falange as its spearhead, or the Falange takes the lead, whatever the consequences. That way, we will have warned them. They will be the only ones responsible before God and history for the outcome.”

He then asked José María Alfaro to call Serrano Suñer. When he came in, he told him:

“Ramón, I want you to organize a meeting for me with your brother-in-law as soon as possible. If it can be tomorrow, all the better.”

As the meeting broke up, Father Rodrigo trotted after José Antonio like a lapdog.

“Don’t trust the military men, Your Highness. They will not fight God’s war, but their own.”