The Crowded Grave

order as Bruno scanned the slim file, but as he dragged his thoughts back from those days of living in a bunker and sheltering from the Serbian artillery barrages, his eye went back to the wife’s name, Juanita. And Joe had said something about her talking about the Basques. He went to the office, checked his watch again and called Joe at home.
    “Joe, that woman who married Jan, the blacksmith. You said you remembered her talking about the Basques. Do you remember her name?”
    “Anita, but she talked about human rights for everybody, Bosnians, Rwandans, Palestinians. She was always taking up collections and getting people to sign petitions. A heart of gold but a pain in the neck, if you know what I mean. She was the sort of woman you admired, but you ducked when you saw her coming.”
    “It’s just that she’s listed as Juanita in the registry, and I’m interested in any Spanish connections.”
    “Everybody called her Anita,” Joe said. “She came from Perpignan, already had her teaching diploma when she arrived. I don’t recall ever hearing her called Juanita. Try the
mairie
in Perpignan, they should have something. I think she was born there.”
    The
mairie
at Perpignan took his number to check that he was indeed calling from the
mairie
of St. Denis, and a sergeant of the town’s municipal police called him back almost immediately, saying that Bruno had met his brother on a legal training course in Toulouse. He was happy to help and called him again with details from the birth certificate. Juanita Maria Zabala had been born in Perpignan in April 1950, daughter of Joxe Asteazu Zabala, a naturalized French citizen, and Marie-Josette Duvertrans of Perpignan.
    Bruno thanked him and went to his computer, called up Google.fr and typed “Joxe Asteazu” into the search box. The first item that came up was “Sculpteurs Basques en Espagne,” and the second was in Spanish that he could understand, “Lista de atentados del GAL,” a catalog of the assassination attempts on Basque militants during GAL’s dirty war. So Juanita’s father was a Basque. Bruno then ran a search of her father’s full name plus “Perpignan” in French Web pages only. He was directed to a list of people awarded the Médaille de la Résistance. Bruno called Perpignan again and asked the helpful sergeant to look up any details of Zabala’s naturalization papers, adding that the man had served in the Resistance.
    “Naturalization was granted in 1946, and there’s a note about special recognition for Resistance services, despite his internment record. He was in Camp Gurs; that was the big one for the Spanish Civil War troops who fled to France when Franco won. That’s all it says.”
    Bruno then called the Centre Jean Moulin in Bordeaux, the Resistance archive named after the man who had tried to unify the Resistance under de Gaulle and had died while remaining silent under Gestapo torture. Bruno asked for the curator, whom he knew from a previous case, and asked if there was anyplace that collected details of naturalized Spaniards who had been awarded the Resistance medal. The curator asked for details, took Bruno’s e-mail address and promised to find out what he could.
    Then Bruno called Rollo, headmaster of the local college, to ask when Anita had first started teaching in St. Denis, and who among the other teachers might have been close to her. He was given two names, but while neither one knew of Anita as Juanita, he learned that Anita had been a member of the Communist Party and that she had arrived in town and started work in 1985. Bruno’s next call was to Montsouris, the only Communist on the St. Denis Council, and his inquiry was met with the usual suspicion.
    “I’m trying to find Horst, that German archaeologist,” Bruno began. “He’s disappeared, and he was a great friend of Jan, the blacksmith. Jan said that he’d met Horst through Anita, so I was wondering if there were any other old friends he might have known through her. I’m clutching at straws here so any help you can give …”
    “Horst wasn’t in the party, I can tell you that. Nor was Anita, really. She paid her dues, but it was no secret she was a member out of sentiment because her father had been a lifelong member. I think he was in the International Brigades or something in the Spanish war. I remember she said her dad came into the party through the Resistance, when he was in the FTP. But that’s all I know, and she’s been dead for