THE SPANISH WAITER: THIRTEEN

Starting home???

“That’s interesting,” murmured Valentina, still sitting at the table and with Ivan looking on, “I wonder what they’re up to?”

“Who?” asked the waiter Ivan.

She was staring at the backs of Boney and his two companions as they tried to leave the hotel like invisible spirits, no easy task as they were the only people anywhere near the double front door that led, via a short drive, onto the main road.

“On to Portugal, where they reckoned to be going originally?” suggested Ivan.

“If that’s the case, why did they leave their party on that rather splendid coach and come back here?” asked Tomas. “It can’t have been just to con a free lunch out of us!”

“Geraldine told me they’re members of the British secret service. Not very high up in that shadowy organisation and, apparently, not well regarded by the top man,” Valentina told them. “Geraldine did quite a lot of research when you became her client, Ivan.”

“She’s good, is Geraldine,” muttered Ivan uncomfortably. But he was aware that the probation officer had gone out of her way to clear his name once she had convinced herself of his innocence.

“She discovered that the leader of them, the one they call Boney, was in charge of, what’s the word? Infiltering? Something like that: into a group of men from the middle East in case they were terrorists intent on planting bombs in the town where they lived.”

“I wondered why they were there,” sighed Ivan, “and when Boney disappeared nobody from their organisation had the courtesy of saying he was alive and well, and so the police happily convicted me of killing him!”

“Well, they’re out of sight now,” said Valentina, “and I saw which way they turned when they reached the road. They’re going the opposite way if they plan to catch their coach up. They’ll end up back in Santander if they keep going that way. And with no passports it’ll be interesting to see what they do next!”

“Of course,” agreed Ivan, “they left their papers along with other personal stuff on the coach. They’ll have no clean underwear when they wake up tomorrow either!”

“If they find somewhere to sleep tonight,” murmured Tomas, “it wonlt be fun outdoors, open to the elements.”

“That’s a good point,” agreed Valentina, “there’s not much habitation between here and the coast, which is many kilometres away. I tell you what I must do. I’ll get a couple of officers in a police car to keep a wary eye on them. Excuse me while I nip to the phone as my mobile’s in my car: it’s something I have to do as they are aliens in my country especially since your brexit. I’m afraid that being agents of a UK secret service doesn’t carry much weight here, not that it ever did! After all, they may well be spying on something they expect is being planned in Spain!”

She went out of the restaurant and to the reception desk, where she could be seen on the phone. When she returned she was smiling.

“They’re already being observed secretly by two officers,” she told Ivan, “and from what I was told they’ve reached a facility that is developing solar powered flight. They’re watching it from the road, and they seem to think that the woman is the most curious. And apparently they’re not very observant considering they’re supposed to be used to operating secretly because our men are parked really quite close in an unmarked car, yet they don’t seem to have noticed them.”

“Do you think I should follow them?” asked Ivan.

Valentina shook her head. “No, Ivan,” she said, “that’s the last thing you should do. Just think about it: if they notice you they might try to take the law into their own hands, and where we are now is Spanish land with Spanish law.”

Ivan nodded. “Anyway,” continued Valentina, “Geraldine is on her way back from your homeland. She’s taken an additional holiday in order to help sort this mess out.”

“She was only here a couple of days ago,” muttered Ivan, “she must be worried that somehow the spooks we’re talking about might have something unpleasant up their sleeves.”

“I don’t think that’s the reason, “ smiled Valentina, “I think she feels she needs to care for you!”

00000

“Don’t look now, but I reckon we’re being observed,” hissed Murial to the other two as they crouched partly concealed by a bush and staring at the apparently solar powered helicopter as it settled bavk down in front of the barn-like building.

“I noticed the car too,” replied Boney, “and I reckon it’s civilian police, so nothing for us to need to worry about.”

“Not British police though,” reminded Sparky, “they might not take any notice of our authority, not here in Spain.”

“And without our papers,” added Murial, “the daftest thing you did, Boney, was to get us to leave our stuff on the coach.”

“We needed to get off,” scowled the agent.

“No, Boney, you needed to get off because you’d spotted someone who you were sure thought you were dead and buried and who had been locked away for doing it, and you weren’t dead or buried, you were alive and you supposed that he hated the way you kept quiet and might have decided that as he’s done time for killing you he might as well kill you and put the matter straight.” said Murial in the most forthright voice he’d heard her use.

I’m losing my authority, he thought, ‘ll have to get the cell to regroup around me or there could be all sorts of trouble ahead…

“Just you shut up, woman Moo!” he snapped, “any decision I make had to do with the safety of the three of us! After all, you were there when the guy couldn’t fix my car so he recognises you too, I wouldn’t wonder! You were there when he stalked off before you could play your part in our planned drama and abducted me!”

“Watch your language with me, Boney,” warned Murial, “as I see it I’m your best hope when it comes to getting back home!”

“Yes, Boney,” muttered Sparky, supporting his female colleague, “and what are you going to do now we’re being observed by the occupants of yon car? I can’t see them that well, but I’d swear they were cops. They’ve got that sort of arrogant look about them!”

“Well team,” growled Boney, “I’m giving the orders before we fall into fragments and my orders are that we carry on along this road with our thumbs out hoping for a lift, but even if we don’t get a vehicle to stop we’re gong to Santander, from where we’ll find out way home, with or without documents!”

“I’m not walking that far,” murmured Murial, “not when there’s a delicious and brand new electric helicopter waiting for us to fly it to London!”

“Solar powered,” smirked Boney, “and when the sun goes down and its dark and cold? What’ll it do? Float across the seas to Blighty, bobbing on the gentle waves and praying not to overturn?”

“It’ll have a battery back-up,” Sparky suggested, “they wouldn’t invent it without a back-up, surely?”

“Whether there is or isn’t, we’ll fly home in it from dawn tomorrow,” decided Murial, “it’s too late to get far today, and I take on board your comments about the sun being needed. I’ve flown proper helicopters and I bet the controls of this mimic them.”

“Bah!” snapped Boney, “you think they’ll let us get far in an untried experimental thing like that?” he waved one arm in the direction of the helicopter, still parked near the barn.

“Then you walk,” insisted Murial, “because I’m not!”

© Peter Rogerson 07.11.22

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