‘He was always a bit of a fool,’ continued Ren. ‘This is between us, right? I know him well. I’ve spent years putting up with his speeches. His lectures in Coimbra, his walks with D’Ors in Santiago, his trips with that Schmitt around Galicia to see tombs, his hunting exploits with the Minister. I know all of that from memory. And meanwhile all this was going on! Blasted keys of a Remington! You could see his horns even when he was wearing that cinnamon hat.’
‘It’s easy to say now, but you were there,’ said Santos incisively. ‘You visited their house.’
Ren’s snort filled the station chief’s office. He barely concealed the effort he had to make to endure his colleague from Crime. ‘Listen here, Mr Scientist, I knew it wasn’t possible. That woman didn’t fit. Or fitted too well. Blasted eyesight! You only had to see her to understand she was Judith. The way she was there and not there. That vaporous presence of hers. Always so diplomatic. Blasted pluperfect! Now that I think about it, it’s as if she had a star on her forehead: I’m Judith, you fool!’
‘I’d like to know what’s in the reports,’ remarked Paúl Santos. He looked at the station chief. ‘To tell the truth, sir, we still don’t know exactly why Chelo Vidal has to be Judith.’
Ren thumped the table. ‘Because she is!’
‘When there’s a drop of blood, it’s our duty to analyse it,’ said Santos, repeating one of his favourite examples. ‘If we analyse it, it could turn out to be a person’s or a duck’s.’
‘Let me tell you something,’ growled Ren. ‘I’ve no fucking idea what a drop of duck’s blood is supposed to be like.’
Mancorvo spotted the station chief’s gesture and took over in a neutral tone. ‘In view of the current situation, many suspicions can now be considered proof that Chelo Vidal was, in effect, Judith. Reports? We had enough documents to drown in! They’ll be here somewhere.’
‘I looked and didn’t find much. It’s funny. There’s no file on Judith.’
Mancorvo glanced at the station chief and then at Ren.
‘You should know by now. .’
He adopted a more conciliatory approach.
‘You should know by now some things are in our domain. We’re working for the security of the State. There were enough documents to drown in. They’ll be here somewhere. Best not to worry.’
‘We’re talking about twenty years ago,’ Ren intervened calmly and sarcastically. ‘Things were different back then, Mr Unknown.’
Now he was the one shuffling papers. He opened a folder and pulled out another sheaf of light blue quartos. ‘These are reports from 1937. Some of them you can’t read so well. They’re often carbon copies of reports requested by the military courts in summary trials of those who organised escapes by boat. In Coruña, there was an organisation, a secret network based on the union Maritime Awakening. It had its merit. This was no game. The city was in a state of war. People with a Republican background were. . neutralised. But this network kept working. In two years, they organised twenty large-scale escapes on fishing boats. Most of them to France. How was this possible?’
Paúl Santos made as if to consult the light blue quartos, but Ren got there first and brandished them in the air. ‘Lots of these reports talk of a strange, mysterious woman. Always dressed in black. Some of those questioned call her Carme, others Lucía, others Dolores, but from the description it appears the woman is always one and the same. Agents of investigation and vigilance even came from Burgos, from the Brigade of Special Services. And seem to have reached a single conclusion: this woman working for Maritime Awakening, rather than being an invention, could be a kind of. . character in a novel. A myth those arrested and questioned believed in and passed on to each other.’
‘What happened to this woman?’ asked Santos. ‘Did she disappear for ever?’
Ren fell silent. Seemed to be drilling his way through history.
‘In the early 1940s, as Chief Ren already explained, she reappeared,’ continued Mancorvo. ‘The transport of wolfram to Germany was repeatedly sabotaged. A special group of German counterespionage arrived and managed to hunt down a guy who’d been hurting them, a man of a thousand faces, who turned out to be German, opposed to Hitler. But this spy’s main contact slipped through their fingers. Theirs and ours. They were of the opinion that Judith did exist. A competent lot. Highly competent.’
He looked at Ren and the station chief. They were lost in thought. He was doing the job of remembering for them.
‘There’s a historical matter that won’t have escaped your attention, my scientific friend. The Third Reich supported the cause of nationalist Spain. It wasn’t just a few crumbs. A large number of weapons arrived by sea. Came in through these ports. Aeroplanes even, in pieces. Did you know the main radio station, Spanish National Radio, was here, in Coruña, on Mount Santa Margarida? It was a special, highly important present from the Führer to the Caudillo. Later, during the Second World War, as you can imagine, it was time to repay the favour. Some very special services were offered here.’
‘We all know about the wolfram,’ said Santos. ‘And the radio station.’
‘But the station wasn’t just for transmitting radio programmes. The intricate Galician coast was used as a base for the control of sea and air traffic between continents. Also for shelter and repairs, especially to submarines attacking Allied convoys in the Atlantic.’
‘I could imagine.’
‘Not just shelter and repairs. Fundamental things like supplies. Minor things such as entertainment. The men, the officers, had to have a bit of fun. .’
‘That’s enough of the history lesson, Mancorvo,’ Ren intervened. ‘What else is there?’
‘Well, there came a time,’ said Mancorvo, ‘when every boat, every submarine, seemed to carry an invisible target. They were always being located, however well camouflaged.’
‘Judith.’
‘Yes, intercepted messages talked of Judith. But that’s not all. Where there’s collaboration, there are common business interests. 1942, for example, was a particularly good year. .’
Ren started growling again.
‘Well, these people also seemed to be located. Other things. There were escapes and arrivals we couldn’t explain. People who slipped through our fingers. Imagine a complete security cordon. There was too much information.’
‘But a single Judith couldn’t be responsible for so much,’ observed Santos. ‘However skilful and active she was, this Chelo couldn’t be everywhere at once. As far as I know, she was at home, painting.’
‘There are nodes. Lots of scattered information converging on a node, like the astral orbits of a celestial sphere. The node has to be somewhere impossible. Judith was a node, the sphere.’
‘You mean she only had to be here? Sit tight and wait.’
‘Something like that.’
‘Thank you, Mancorvo,’ said the station chief. ‘Now we know where we are in history. We’re no longer dealing with ghosts.’
He’d been silent almost all the time. Santos thought he was a subordinate character in the presence of Ren. But now he was invested with authority. His tone was that of someone taking the initiative.
‘We have to find Chelo Vidal,’ he said. ‘Right away.’
He surveyed the others in slow motion, ‘All our heads are on the block.’
He stood up and went over to the window. He was in shirtsleeves and hooked his thumbs behind his braces. These days in the summer of 1963, when Franco delayed his holidays for no apparent reason, everyone looking out of the window seemed to be trying to glimpse the arrival of the Azor, the Head of State’s yacht.