The Crowded Grave

father on the daughter. We’ve made our point. Leave the door open for a reconciliation. She’d certainly appreciate it just now.”
    The mayor was silent, but Bruno could hear him chewing on the stem of his pipe. “Interesting,” he said finally. “I’ll haveto think about that. Meanwhile, am I meant to give a formal welcome to these two ministers tomorrow?”
    “I think they’re too worried about security for that, and with good reason. I can’t say any more.”
    “Tell me what you can, when you can,” said the mayor, and hung up.

27
    Bruno made the 9:00 a.m. meeting by the skin of his teeth, having to park far from the château because of the military and gendarme vehicles filling its parking lot. There was no time to speak to Isabelle. And she was already distracted by the firearms report. Ballistics analysis had confirmed that the nine-millimeter automatic pistol that Bruno had found beneath the blacksmith’s coke pile was the gun that had killed Teddy’s father more than twenty years earlier.
    The British police had reported that Teddy’s mother had heard nothing from him since they had spoken the day after Horst’s lecture. She knew nothing of the discovery of the skeleton of Teddy’s father and had seemed truly stunned by the news. She was trying to help a British police artist create an Identi-Kit sketch of the only contact she had with Todor’s family, a cousin named Fernando who visited occasionally with gifts for Teddy. What she had been able to provide was the news that the authorities in Madrid had not yet been able to deliver—the date and place of birth for her Basque lover.
    “We’d better check that thoroughly,” said Carlos. “It’s always possible that he didn’t give her the right date. I’m sorry,but it seems we’re having trouble back in Madrid tracking anything about this guy.”
    “False dates of birth are standard procedure for these people,” said the brigadier, diplomatically trying to spare Carlos embarrassment. The minister must have insisted the Spaniards be treated with every consideration, Bruno thought.
    The brigadier ran through the arrangement for the security cordons and mobile patrols, giving brief credit to Bruno although the committee had now been joined by a tough-looking young paratrooper major. He’d have been a junior lieutenant when Bruno had served with them, but there was no look of recognition. With a final pep talk on the need for the Basques to be found before the scheduled summit the next day, the brigadier closed the meeting having said nothing of the backup plan he had arranged at the Domaine.
    “Could the reason why Madrid can’t trace this man be linked to the
desparicedos
from Franco’s time?” Isabelle asked Carlos as they headed out the door. Bruno had heard of the “disappeared ones” in Argentina, when people were rounded up and arrested, never to be seen again. But he’d never come across the term in the context of Spain.
    “I was wondering that myself,” said Carlos, nodding solemnly. He turned aside and asked one of the security guards to bring his car around from the hotel. Then he seemed to notice Bruno’s raised eyebrows and stopped to explain. It had happened earlier in the Franco period, after the civil war and the world war, when the Spanish dictator was still terrified of the left. Women militants would have their babies in prison, who would then be taken away to church orphanages or to be adopted by reliable Spanish families. This had been standard treatment for Communist militants but also for the Basques.
    “If it did happen that way, the boy would never have been given the name ‘Todor’ in an orphanage,” Carlos added. “The Basque children were always given Spanish names to break the link with the real parents. They were usually dead anyway.”
    Isabelle nodded and turned to Bruno. “I saw what the newspapers did to that magistrate of yours this morning. Ugly. Remind me never to take on St. Denis.”
    “I’m not proud of it.”
    “Were you involved? It didn’t seem like your kind of strategy, even if she did try to get you fired.”
    “It wasn’t, but there’s no point making excuses. I suppose we’re all responsible.”
    Carlos shrugged and walked on to the communications center. Bruno and Isabelle were left alone.
    “Sorry I missed you last night,” he said. “I was staying at Pamela’s, looking after the horses. I told you, she had to go back to Scotland to look after her