a good judge of his physical condition. He was going to be OK. But what about her?
Amy was gazing his way.
‘So. That’s my autobiography, not a bestseller. What about you? Tell me your story.’
It was only fair: she should know too.
Swiftly he sketched his strange and quixotic situation: his parental background, the bequest from his grandfather, the map and the churches. Amy Myerson’s blue eyes widened as she listened.
‘Two million dollars?’
‘Two million dollars.’
‘Christ. Wish someone would leave me two bloody million dollars!’ Then she put a hand to her pretty white teeth. ‘Oh God. You must be grieving. Stupidest remark in the world. I’m sorry…It’s just…this morning.’
‘It’s alright. I understand.’ David wasn’t annoyed. She had just saved him from a beating – or worse – as much as he had saved her. He remembered Miguel’s dark eyes glaring.
‘Take this left here.’
David dutifully steered them off the main road; they were on a much quieter highway now. Ahead of them he could see a wide and sumptuous valley, leading to hazy blue mountains. The upper slopes of the mountains were lightly talced with snow.
‘The Valley of Baztan,’ said Amy. ‘Beautiful, no?’
She was right: it was stunning. He gazed at the soothing view: the cattle standing knee-deep in the golden riverlight, the somnolent forests stretching to the blue-misted horizon.
After ten minutes of admirable Pyrenean countryside, they pulled past a tractor repair depot, then a Lidl supermercado, and entered a small town of dignified squares and little bakeries, and chirruping mountain streams that ran past the gardens of ancient sandstone houses. Elizondo.
Her flat was in a modern development just off the main road. Amy keyed the door and they snuck in; her flat had tall windows with excellent views of the Pyrenees up the valley. With their slopes draped with ice and fog, and the summits looming blue above, the mountains looked like a row of Mafiosi at the barber’s, white-sheeted to the neck.
A row of killers.
He thought of Miguel as Amy busied herself in the kitchen. Miguel, Otsoko, the Wolf. The immensely strong muscles, the tall dark shape, the deeply set eyes. He tried not to think of Miguel. He glanced around the apartment: the walls were sparsely decorated but the bookshelves were full of heavyweight literature: Yeats and Hemingway and Orwell. A mighty volume called The Poetry of Violence.
What did she teach these kids at San Sebastian University?
Then he swivelled: she had returned, carrying paper towels and flannels and antiseptic cream, and a plastic basin of hot water; together they knelt on the bare wooden floors, and tended to each other’s wounds. She dabbed at his lip with a white flannel; the cloth came away red and brown with old blood.
‘Ouch,’ he said.
‘Not broken,’ she said. ‘Brave soldier.’
He waved away the absurd compliment; she bent to her task, squeezing the flannel in the water, making soft crimson blooms of his blood. Then she spoke.
‘We could go to the doctor…but we’d just have to sit for six hours to get a stitch, maybe. Don’t see the point. Mmm?’
He nodded. Her expression was serious, impassive and reserved. He guessed there were still a lot of things she wasn’t telling him yet; but then again he hadn’t yet asked her the truly probing question: why had Miguel attacked her, so instantly and angrily?
‘OK, Amy, let me help you.’ He took a clean flannel and moistened it with hot water. She presented her face, eyes shut, and he began to dab and wash the blood from her hairline. She winced at the tang of the water, but said nothing. As he cleaned her wound, he questioned her.
‘I want to know more about that bar.’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘What I don’t get is…is…It wasn’t just that guy Miguel, the whole place was punchy. What did I do wrong? How did I upset so many people just by asking a couple of questions?’
Amy’s head was tilted, letting him clean her forehead. She was silent for a moment, and then she said:
‘OK, here’s the deal. Lesaka is one of the most nationalist towns in the Basque Country. Fiercely proud.’
David nodded, and took some paper towels, beginning to dry the deep but now unbleeding scratch.
‘Go on…’
‘And then there’s ETA. The terrorists. Miguel’s friends.’ She frowned. ‘They killed some Guardia Civil, just two weeks ago. Five of them, in a horrible bomb, in San Sebastian. And then the Spanish police shot dead four ETA activists. Madrid claims they were also planting a bomb. Basques are saying it was cold-blooded reprisal.’
‘Ah.’
‘That’s why there are police