He led her behind one of the ovens, picked up a section of flooring and revealed a trapdoor. “Watch yourself, Señorita,” he cautioned. “It is dark and the ladder is shaky.”
Regina was four or five steps down the ladder when the trapdoor was closed over her head. It was pitchblack. She had to feel for each rung of the ladder with her foot. There was no way of telling how far down the bottom might be.
Finally she felt the cement of a basement floor under her feet. A moment later there was a hand on her arm, gently pulling her. She was ushered to a door and gently pushed into another room. The door closed swiftly behind her.
Flickering oil lamps lit — or, rather, half-lit—the basement room. Shadows danced eerily on the chalk walls. It took Regina a moment for her eyes to adjust.
There were four people in the room, two men and two women. No one of the four could have been over eighteen years old. One of the boys was cleaning a rather old-fashioned submachinegun, a tommygun of the kind used in the Chicago gang wars in the ’twenties. The other boy was lying on a cot, listening to a headset attached to a makeshift wireless radio. The plumper of the two girls was pouring liquid-—gasoline, from the smell of it—-into milk bottles and attaching wicks to them. The second girl was sorting leaflets.
The boy with the tommygun looked at Regina. “Have you brought us word from Headquarters?” he asked.
‘Tm afraid not,” Regina confessed. “You see, I haven’t come from Headquarters—Whatever that is. I’m here to—” She stopped talking when she saw the pistol in the hand of the boy with the headset. It was pointing straight at her. The click of the safety sounded very loud in the small, underground room.
“How did you know where to find us?” he demanded.
“A friend gave me this address.”
“And did he give you the password as well?”
“Yes.”
“Caramba!” The boy with the tommygun swore.
“State your business and quickly, Señorita,” the girl with the leaflets told Regina.
“Well, I’ve come over from America, New York —” Regina found herself babbling.
“America?” The boy with the tommygun smiled broadly. “Then you have brought us money for La Causa. Is that it?”
“I’m afraid not. You see—”
“The Americans give money only to Franco!” The plump girl spat. “They care nothing for freedom! Nothing for the Basques!”
“I’m looking for a man named José de Galindez,” Regina said in a small voice.
“Captain de Galindez of the Basque Liberation Army?”
“I imagine that’s the man.”
“Then you are too late,” the plump girl told Regina. “The government pigs arrested him three days ago.”
“He shall be missed mucho,” the wireless operator added. “He was very brave. He had mucho machismo.”
“Machismo,” the other boy agreed. “But too impetuous. If he had not been a little loco, he would still be with us now.”
“Should he have let the Falangist swine kill women and children with their bullets and done nothing?” the girl with the leaflets asked acidly. .
“No. But it was loco fighting them alone with only pistol and two grenades. Loco!”
“Magnificent!” The plump girl ended the argument firmlv. “He killed four of the bastidos—may their souls rot in hell before they took him prisoner.”
“And now he rots in a Franco prison cell at the mercy of the Beast of Bilbao,” the other girl sighed.
“Who’s the Beast of Bilbao?” Regina asked.
“Colonel Don Hermano Diego del Campion of the Spanish Army of Occupation, also known as the Duke de Mula, cousin thrice removed to the now dead Spanish tyrant, King Alfonso. He is in charge of Intelligence in Bilbao for the Franco dogs. A sadist! torturer! A true fiend! May the Lord God curse his hellish soul through all eternity!” The wireless operator crossed himself.
“Dogstyle!” Regina exclaimed. Her voice echoed quite loudly.
The four Basque rebels stared at Regina, puzzled by her response, wondering what it had to do with the Beast of Bilbao. Dogstyle? What did it mean?
They never got the chance to voice the question. At that very moment there came a scream from just outside the door to the little basement room. It was followed by a short burst of submachinegun fire mingled with other piercing screams.
What followed was chaos — but chaos with purpose. The girl with the leaflets set fire to them and then doused the oil lamps. The wireless operator started frantically transmitting a message. The plump girl lit one of the homemade bombs and flung it at the door just as the Spanish soldiers came charging through it. Behind her the lad with the tommygun retumed the fire of the uniformed raiders.
“The Americana has betrayed us!” he shouted, turning the gun towards Regina.
Regina dived under the table, narrowly avoiding the bullets aimed at her. From there she saw a Spanish bayonet plunged into the hack of the wireless operator and the chattering key fell silent. The plump girl was flinging Molotov cocktails wildly and the room was in flames. Four or five Spanish soldiers lay about, wounded, bleeding, groaning. The second Basque lad took a bullet in the shoulder and the tommygun went flying from his grasp. The thinner girl dived under the table, a large kitchen knife in her hand, and attacked Regina. “Traitor!” she sobbed.
It was all Regina could do to hold onto the wrist of the hand wielding the knife with both of her own hands. The tip of the murderous blade was scant inches from her throat and coining closer. She jerked her neck aside and pulled hard on the wrist, using the momentum of the thrust to throw her assailant off balance. The blade snapped against the concrete floor and the table over them was upended as Regina kicked the Basque girl in the midriff with enough force to shift her weight off her. They thrashed about on the floor and rolled into the crackling flames. Their clothes were on fire now, but still they wrestled.
Rough hands pulled them apart. Regina felt herself being pummeled as two Spanish soldiers beat out the fire threatening to engulf her. Then, along with the Basque rebels, she was dragged out of the cellar, through the bakery, and thrown into a truck waiting at the curb.
Four soldiers, their rifles at the ready, climbed into the back of the truck with them. The two Basque girls and their wounded comrade glared at them. But the strongest part of their hatred was directed viciously at Regina.
“You are a marked woman, Señorita!” the plump girl hissed at her. “With the wireless, Pablo—may his soul rest in peace!--informed Headquarters of your treachery. Every Basque in Bilbao will have a knife for the American woman, the Yankee traitor. The Spanish swine will not be able to save you! You will never leave Bilbao alive!”
“I didn’t betray you,” Regina protested. “I had nothing to do with this raid.”
“Liar!” The second girl’s voice was filled with contempt. “Did you not call out the word to signal the soldiers? That strange word . . .”
“Dogstyle!” The wounded Basque rebel remembered. “She called it out and the vultures appeared! Dogstyle! The word of the informer! Dogstyle!”
“That wasn’t a signal. Dogstyle means —”
“I puke in your rnother’s milk!” the plump girl told her.
“Informer!” The wounded Basque boy pronounced the word with utmost disgust.
“Traitor!” The second girl spat a huge glob of saliva full in Regina’s face.
Regina wiped it away. The truck rumbled through the cobbled streets of Bilbao towards the Spanish military prison. Regina groaned inwardly. A Basque rebel conspirator to her captors, a traitor marked for death to the Basques—-how had she ever gotten herself into such a mess?