They followed the source of the breeze and found themselves at the head of a flight of stone steps cut into the rock. At the top they found themselves outside in the night air.
‘We can’t be!’ whispered Leavey. ‘It’s impossible!’
Both men crouched down in the darkness giving their eyes time to adjust. MacLean was first to work out the truth. He got the clue from the fact that the wind sounded much more ferocious than it felt. They were being sheltered from it. They were being sheltered by virtue of the fact that they were surrounded by cliffs on all sides. They were standing in the middle of a hollow mountain. The hollow comprised a valley about a hundred metres long and fifty across and totally cut off from the outside world.
EIGHTEEN
Leavey and MacLean moved well clear of the mouth of the tunnel. As their eyes became more accustomed to the dark and, with the help of an occasional break in the clouds, they were able to make out the shapes of buildings on the valley floor.
‘There’s a complete village here!’ whispered Leavey.
MacLean’s reply was cut short by a light clicking on in the building nearest them, scattering light from the window and causing them to throw themselves to the ground. The silhouette of a young woman drifted briefly across the light and they watched as the figure put on a jacket she took from a cupboard in the room. The light clicked off again and moments later a door opened.
A torch beam appeared and started to move over the ground, illuminating the holder’s path between the building she had just come from and the one next to it. As she fumbled with the door handle the torch in her hand swung upwards and lit her face for a moment. She was in her early twenties, dark-haired and pretty. When she disappeared inside MacLean said, ‘When she comes out we’ll grab her and find out what the hell’s going on.’
Suddenly the cry of a baby came from the building. It was long and loud and echoed up the face of the cliffs.
MacLean shook his head in disbelief but before he could say anything, the baby’s cry was joined by another and yet another. Lights were switched on and Leavey and MacLean were forced to retreat from the position they had taken up in order to intercept the girl when she left. A torch beam appeared out of the darkness to their left. It was followed by another to their right. Both beams converged on the building where the noise was coming from. When they met, the light coming from the windows revealed their holders as two more young women. They spoke briefly in Spanish and went inside.
‘It’s a nursery,’ whispered Leavey.
Peace was restored over the course of the next few minutes and the lights were turned off once more. The two girls who had arrived after the start of the disturbance were the first to leave and spent a little time in whispered conversation outside the front door before saying good-night and separating. A few minutes later, the original girl left the building and turned on her torch. She started out on her journey back but had only taken a few steps when Leavey came up silently behind her and cupped his hand over her mouth. He lowered her gently to the ground and whispered reassurances in her ear until her panic had subsided.
MacLean asked gently, ‘Do you speak English?’ and Leavey relaxed his hand to allow her to answer. He kept it close, ready to smother any attempt at a scream.
‘A little,’ replied the girl.
‘Good. Who are you and what do you do here?’
‘My name is Carla Vasquez. I look after the children.’
‘Carla Vasquez? Maria’s friend?’
‘You know Maria?’ exclaimed the astonished girl.
‘She told us about you,’ replied MacLean. ‘She suspected you were some kind of prisoner.’
‘But not here,’ added Leavey, looking up at the high cliffs against the night sky.
‘Your mother thinks you’re in Madrid,’ explained MacLean.
‘We are given post-cards to write to our parents.’
‘You said “we”. How many are there of you?’ asked Leavey.
‘Twelve. We look after the children.’
‘What children?’ asked MacLean. ‘Where do they come from?’
‘I don’t know Senor. None of us knows. We get babies to look after for a few weeks, then they take them away and we don’t see them again.’
‘What happens then?’
‘We get more babies.’
‘Who brings you the babies?’ asked Leavey.
‘Dr Von Jonek.’
MacLean savoured the moment in silence. He’d found Von Jonek and the knowledge seemed to drain him momentarily of all energy. He rolled over on to his back in the grass and looked up at the sky, thinking of just how long the road had been and how hard. Leavey put a reassuring hand on his shoulder and said, ‘We’re nearly there.’
Leavey said to Carla, ‘We’ll help you escape Carla but we are going to need your help. It’ll be light in three hours and we have no place to hide.’
‘Come with me,’ said Carla. ‘I share a hut with Fernanda Murillo. You can hide there.’
Carla lit up the way with her torch beam and Leavey and MacLean crawled along in the grass behind her. They had almost reached the front door of the hut when they realised that something was wrong. There were voices coming from inside. They were raised in argument and one of them was male. He sounded drunk.
Leavey looked to Carla for an explanation. Carla was distraught. ‘It’s one of the guards!’ she whispered. ‘Sometimes they get drunk and try to bother us. We keep the door locked but I must have left it unlocked when I left!’
The sound of crying came from inside and MacLean made to move but Leavey stopped him. ‘I’ll go,’ he said and started towards the hut.
Leavey turned the handle of the door slowly and steadily until the lock was silently released. He moved the door just an inch, to make sure that it would swing easily, and then in one swift movement he opened it, slipped inside and closed it again behind him. The sound of a girl protesting angrily came from the room to his left. The sound was interspersed with coarse sounds of male assurance. He moved slowly along the wall and pushed the room door very slightly ajar. He saw a man with a large beer gut holding the girl’s hands to prevent her fending him off. In her frustration she spat in his face forcing him to let one of her hands go. The girl immediately brought her fingernails down the right side of the man’s face. He let out a bellow of pain and raised his fist to strike her. The blow never landed. Leavey dropped him with a hard blow to the back of his neck. ‘Not tonight,’ he murmured.
The girl was on the bed with her knees drawn up to her chin and her hands over her mouth. Her eyes were wide with fear and shock and she was shaking. Leavey put his finger to his lips and made a reassuring gesture with his hands before opening the door for MacLean and Carla. Carla rushed to her friend to comfort her and apologise for what she saw as her fault.
MacLean looked down at the man on the floor and said, ‘We’ll have to do something with him before daybreak. How about the tunnel?’
They conferred briefly and decided that, at that late hour, their chances of getting the unconscious man up the tunnel to the disused shaft where they had found the skeletons were good. They put the lights off, and moved the man’s body out of the front door.
It took them fully ten minutes to drag him up the shaft because of his weight but they encountered no problems and left him bound and gagged in one of the old cells. Carla made coffee and sandwiches on their return and they learned what they could from the girls.
By the time the first streaks of dawn were in the sky, MacLean and Leavey had built up a picture of life in the hidden valley. There were six separate wooden chalets where the girls lived; each housed two girls. The babies, usually about thirty at any given time, were kept together in a single nursery building and looked after by ten of the girls during the daytime and by three at night. If the babies should start crying at night however, the other girls were under orders to lend a hand in quietening them because Dr Von Jonek got very angry about the noise. ‘There is an echo off the cliffs,’ said Carla. ‘Sometimes people can hear the sound on the other side.’