LITMIR.BIZ

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was nothing.’

      ‘Sorry?’

      ‘You’ve never heard of Miguel? Otsoko?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Otsoko is Basque for wolf. That’s his codename. His ETA codename.’

      He didn’t wait for any further explanation; they ran to his car and jumped in.

      David stared at her across the car. ‘Where should we go? Where?’

      ‘Any village that’s not Lesaka. Head that way…Elizondo. My place.’

      David gunned the engine and they raced out of town. Amy added:

      ‘It’s safe there.’ She looked his way. ‘And we can clean you up, you’re still a bit of a mess.’

      ‘And you?’

      Her smile was brief. ‘Thanks. Go this way.’

      David twisted the wheel, his nerves tautened by the idea of Miguel, ‘the Wolf’. The barman and the drinkers had obviously dissuaded Miguel from further violence: but maybe the Wolf would change his mind.

      The Wolf?

      David sped them urgently out of the little town, past the Spanish police, past the last stone house; he was agitated by all the puzzles. What had happened in the bar? Who was Miguel? Who was this girl?

      He realized, again, that her Spanish had been spoken with a British accent.

      What was she doing here?

      As they raced down the narrow road, through the sylvan countryside, he sensed that he had to inquire, that she wasn’t just going to tell him too much, unprompted. So he asked. Her face was shadowed with dapples of sun – light and dark shadows that disguised the bruising on her face – as she turned. His first query was the most obvious of all.

      ‘OK. I guess we go to the police. Right? Tell them what happened.’

      He was astonished when she shook her head.

      ‘No. No, we can’t, we just…can’t. Sorry, but I work with these people, live with them, they trust me. This is ETA territory. And the police are the Spanish. No one goes to the police.’

      ‘But…’

      ‘And what would I say anyway? Mmm?’ Her blue eyes were burning. ‘What do I say? A guy hit me in a bar? Then they would ask his name…and I would have to say the Wolf. And there, that’s it – then I’ve betrayed an ETA hero, a famous ETA fighter.’ Her expression was grimly unamused. ‘That would not be good for my longevity. Not in deepest Euskadi.’

      David nodded, slowly, accepting the explanation. But her replies had triggered more questions: she worked with these people? How? Where? And why?

      He asked again, outright, about her situation. She turned away from him, to stare at the mellow green fields.

      ‘You want to know now?’

      ‘I’ve got a lot of questions. Why not now?’

      A pause, then she said:

      ‘OK. OK. You did try to save my life. Maybe you deserve to know.’

      Her slender face was set in determined profile, as she offered her answers.

      Her name was Amy Myerson. She was Jewish, twenty-eight, and from London, where she’d been educated, taking a degree in foreign languages. She was now an academic at San Sebastian University, teaching Eng Lit to Basque kids. She had fetched up here in the Basque Country after a couple of years backpacking. ‘Smoking too much hash in Morocco. You know.’

      He managed a smile; she didn’t smile in return. Instead she added: ‘And then I found myself here, the Pays Basque, between the forests and the steelworks.’ The spangled sunlight from the trees was bright on the windscreen. ‘And I also got involved in the struggle for independence. Met some people from Herri Batasuna, the political wing of ETA. I don’t support the violence, of course…But I do believe in the goal. Basque freedom.’ She was looking out of the window again. ‘Why shouldn’t they be free? The Basques have been here longer than anyone else. Maybe thirty thousand years. Lost in the silent valleys of the Navarre…’

      They were at the main Bidasoa highway; huge cement lorries were thundering past. Amy instructed him:

      ‘Turn right.’

      David nodded; his lip was still throbbing. His jaw ached where the pistol butt had smashed across it. But he could tell he clearly had no broken bones. A life of looking after himself, as an orphan, had made him 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.

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