The Sands of Time

‘I know what he is,’ the Prime Minister snapped. ‘I want to know where he is.’ He turned to Colonel Acoca.

‘I’m on his trail,’ the Colonel said. His voice chilled the room. ‘I would like to remind Your Excellency that we are not fighting just one man. We are fighting the Basque people. They give Jaime Miró and his terrorists food and weapons and shelter. The man is a hero to them. But do not worry. Soon he will be a hanging hero. After I give him a fair trial, of course.’

Not we. I. The Prime Minister wondered whether the others had noticed. Yes, he thought nervously. Something will have to be done about the Colonel soon.

The Prime Minister got to his feet. ‘That will be all for now, gentlemen.’

The men rose to leave. All except Colonel Acoca. He stayed.

Leopoldo Martinez began to pace. ‘Damn the Basques. Why can’t they be satisfied just to be Spaniards? What more do they want?’

‘They’re greedy for power,’ Acoca said. ‘They want autonomy, their own language and their flag –’

‘No. Not as long as I hold this office. I’m not going to permit them to tear pieces out of Spain. The government will tell them what they can have and what they can’t have. They’re nothing but rabble who …’

An aide came into the room. ‘Excuse me, Your Excellency,’ he said apologetically. ‘Bishop Ibanez has arrived.’

‘Send him in.’

The Colonel’s eyes narrowed. ‘You can be sure the church is behind all this. It’s time we taught them a lesson.’

The Church is one of the great ironies of our history, Colonel Acoca thought bitterly.

In the beginning of the Civil War, the Catholic Church had been on the side of the Nationalist forces. The Pope backed Generalissimo Franco, and in so doing allowed him to proclaim that he was fighting on the side of God. But when the Basque churches and monasteries and priests were attacked, the Church withdrew its support.

‘You must give the Basques and the Catalans more freedom,’ the Church had demanded. ‘And you must stop executing Basque priests.’

Generalissimo Franco had been furious. How dare the Church try to dictate to the government?

A war of attrition began. More churches and monasteries were attacked by Franco’s forces. Nuns and priests were murdered. Bishops were placed under house arrest, and priests all over Spain were fined for giving sermons that the government considered seditious. It was only when the Church threatened Franco with excommunication that he stopped his attacks.

The goddamned Church! Acoca thought. With Franco dead it was interfering again.

He turned to the Prime Minister. ‘It’s time the bishop is told who’s running Spain.’

Bishop Calvo Ibanez was a thin, frail-looking man with a cloud of white hair swirling around his head. He peered at the two men through his pince-nez spectacles.

‘Buenas tardes.’

Colonel Acoca felt the bile rise in his throat. The very sight of clergymen made him ill. They were Judas goats leading their stupid lambs to slaughter.

The bishop stood there, waiting for an invitation to sit down. It did not come. Nor was he introduced to the Colonel. It was a deliberate slight.

The Prime Minister looked to Acoca for direction.

Acoca said curtly, ‘Some disturbing news has been brought to our attention. Basque rebels are reported to be holding meetings in Catholic monasteries. It has also been reported that the Church is allowing monasteries and convents to store arms for the rebels.’ There was steel in his voice. ‘When you help the enemies of Spain, you become an enemy of Spain.’

Bishop Ibanez stared at him for a moment, then turned to Leopoldo Martinez. ‘Your Excellency, with due respect, we are all children of Spain. The Basques are not your enemy. All they ask is the freedom to –’

‘They don’t ask,’ Acoca roared. ‘They demand! They go around the country pillaging, robbing banks and killing policemen, and you dare to say they are not our enemies?’

‘I admit that there have been inexcusable excesses. But sometimes in fighting for what one believes –’

‘They don’t believe in anything but themselves. They care nothing about Spain. It is as one of our great writers said, “No one in Spain is concerned about the common good. Each group is concerned only with itself. The Church, the Basques, the Catalans. Each one says fuck the others.”’

The bishop was aware that Colonel Acoca had misquoted Ortega y Gasset. The full quote had included the army and the government; but he wisely said nothing. He turned to the Prime Minister again, hoping for a more rational discussion.

‘Your Excellency, the Catholic Church –’

The Prime Minister felt that Acoca had pushed far enough. ‘Don’t misunderstand us, Bishop. In principle, of course, this government is behind the Catholic Church one hundred per cent.’

Colonel Acoca spoke up again. ‘But we cannot permit your churches and monasteries and convents to be used against us. If you continue to allow the Basques to store arms in them and to hold meetings, you will have to take the consequences.’

‘I am sure that the reports that you have received are erroneous,’ the bishop said smoothly. ‘However, I shall certainly investigate at once.’

The Prime Minister murmured, ‘Thank you, Bishop. That will be all.’

Prime Minister Martinez and Colonel Acoca watched him depart.

‘What do you think?’ Martinez asked.

‘He knows what’s going on.’

The Prime Minister sighed. I have enough problems right now without stirring up trouble with the Church.

‘If the Church is for the Basques, then it is against us.’ Colonel Acoca’s voice hardened, ‘I would like your permission to teach the bishop a lesson.’

The Prime Minister was stopped by the look of fanaticism in the man’s eyes. He became cautious. ‘Have you really had reports that the churches are aiding the rebels?’

‘Of course, Excellency.’

There was no way of determining if the man was telling the truth. The Prime Minister knew how much Acoca hated the Church. But it might be good to let the Church have a taste of the whip, providing Colonel Acoca did not go too far. Prime Minister Martinez stood there thoughtfully.

It was Acoca who broke the silence. ‘If the churches are sheltering terrorists, then the churches must be punished.’

Reluctantly, the Prime Minister nodded. ‘Where will you start?’

‘Jaime Miró and his men were seen in Ávila yesterday. They are probably hiding at the convent there.’

The Prime Minister made up his mind. ‘Search it,’ he said.

That decision set off a chain of events that was to rock all of Spain and shock the world.

Chapter Three

Ávila

The silence was like a gentle snowfall, soft and hushed, as soothing as the whisper of a summer wind, as quiet as the passage of stars. The Cistercian Convent of the Strict Observance lay outside the walled town of Ávila, the highest city in Spain, 112 kilometres north-west of Madrid. The convent had been built for silence. The rules had been adopted in 1601 and remained unchanged through the centuries: liturgy, spiritual exercise, strict enclosure, penance and silence. Always the silence.

The convent was a simple, four-sided group of rough stone buildings around a cloister dominated by the church. Around the central court the open arches allowed the light to pour in on the broad flagstones of the floor where the nuns glided noiselessly by. There were forty nuns at the convent, praying in the church and living in the cloister. The convent at Ávila was one of seven left in Spain, a survivor out of hundreds that had been destroyed by the Civil War in one of the periodic anti-Church movements that took place in Spain over the centuries.

The Cistercian Convent of the Strict Observance was devoted solely to a life of prayer. It was a place without seasons or time and those who entered were forever removed from the outside world. The Cistercian life was contemplative and penitential; the divine office was recited daily and enclosure was complete and permanent.

All the sisters dressed identically, and their clothing, like everything else in the convent, was touched by the symbolism of centuries. The capucha, the cloak and hood, symbolized innocence and simplicity, the linen tunic the renouncement of the works of the world, and mortification, the scapular, the small squares of woollen cloth worn over the shoulders, the willingness to labour. A wimple, a covering of linen laid in plaits over the head and around the chin, sides of the face and neck, completed the habit.

Inside the walls of the convent was a system of internal passageways and staircases linking the dining room, community room, the cells and the chapel, and everywhere there was an atmosphere of cold, clean spaciousness. Thick-paned latticed windows overlooked a high-walled garden. Every window was covered with iron bars and was above the line of vision, so that there would be no outside distractions. The refectory, the dining hall, was long and austere, its windows shuttered and curtained. The candles in the ancient candlesticks cast evocative shadows on the ceilings and walls.

In four hundred years nothing inside the walls of the convent had changed, except the faces. The sisters had no personal possessions, for they desired to be poor, emulating the poverty of Christ. The church itself was bare of ornaments, save for a priceless solid gold cross that had been a long-ago gift from a wealthy postulant. Because it was so out of keeping with the austerity of the order, it was kept hidden away in a cabinet in the refectory. A plain, wooden cross hung at the altar of the church.

The women who shared their lives with the Lord lived together, worked together, ate together and prayed together, yet they never touched and never spoke. The only exception permitted was when they heard mass or when the Reverend Mother Prioress Betina addressed them in the privacy of her office. Even then, an ancient sign language was used as much as possible.

The Reverend Mother was a religieuse in her seventies, a bright-faced robin of a woman, cheerful and energetic, who gloried in the peace and joy of convent life, and of a life devoted to God. Fiercely protective of her nuns, she felt more pain when it was necessary to enforce discipline, than did the one being punished.

The nuns walked through the cloisters and corridors with downcast eyes, hands folded in their sleeves at breast level, passing and re-passing their sisters without a word or sign of recognition. The only voice of the convent was its bells – the bells that Victor Hugo called ‘the Opera of the Steeples’.

The sisters came from disparate backgrounds and from many different countries. Their families were aristocrats, farmers, soldiers … They had come to the convent as rich and poor, educated and ignorant, miserable and exalted, but now they were one in the eyes of God, united in their desire for eternal marriage to Jesus.

The living conditions in the convent were spartan. In winter the cold was knifing, and a chill, pale light filtered in through leaded windows. The nuns slept fully dressed on pallets of straw, covered with rough woollen sheets, each in her tiny cell, furnished only with a straight-backed wooden chair. There was no washstand. A small earthenware jug and basin stood in a corner on the floor. No nun was ever permitted to enter the cell of another, except for the Reverend Mother Betina. There was no recreation of any kind, only work and prayers. There were work areas for knitting, book binding, weaving and making bread. There were eight hours of prayer each day: Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline. Besides these there were other devotions: benedictions, hymns and litanies.

Matins were said when half the world was asleep and the other half was absorbed in sin.

Lauds, the office of daybreak, followed Matins, and the rising sun was hailed as the figure of Christ triumphant and glorified.

Prime was the church’s morning prayer, asking for the blessings on the work of the day.

Terce was at nine o’clock in the morning, consecrated by St Augustine to the Holy Spirit.

Sext was at 11.30 a.m., evoked to quench the heat of human passions.

None was silently recited at three in the afternoon, the hour of Christ’s death.

Vespers was the evening service of the church, as Lauds was her daybreak prayer.

Compline was the completion of the Little Hours of the day. A form of night prayers, a preparation for death as well as sleep, ending the day on a note of loving submission: Manus tuas, domine, commendo spiritum meum. Redemisti nos, domine, deus, veritatis.

In some of the other orders, flagellation had been stopped, but in the cloistered Cistercian convents and monasteries it survived. At least once a week, and sometimes every day, the nuns punished their bodies with the Discipline, a twelve-inch long whip of thin waxed cord with six knotted tails that brought agonizing pain, and was used to lash the back, legs and buttocks. Bernard of Clairvaux, the ascetic abbot of the Cistercians, had admonished: ‘The body of Christ is crushed … our bodies must be conformed to the likeness of our Lord’s wounded body.’

It was a life more austere than in any prison, yet the inmates lived in an ecstasy such as they had never known in the outside world. They had renounced physical love, possessions and freedom of choice, but in giving up those things they had also renounced greed and competition, hatred and envy, and all the pressures and temptations that the outside world imposed. Inside the convent reigned an all-pervading peace and the ineffable sense of joy at being one with God. There was an indescribable serenity within the walls of the convent and in the hearts of those who lived there. If the convent was a prison, it was a prison in God’s Eden, with the knowledge of a happy eternity for those who had freely chosen to be there and to remain there.

Sister Lucia was awakened by the tolling of the convent bell. She opened her eyes, startled and disoriented for an instant. The little cell she slept in was dismally black. The sound of the bell told her that it was 3.00 a.m., when the office of vigils began, while the world was still in darkness.

Shit! This routine is going to kill me, Sister Lucia thought.

She lay back on her tiny, uncomfortable cot, desperate for a cigarette. Reluctantly, she dragged herself out of bed. The heavy habit she wore and slept in rubbed against her sensitive skin like sandpaper. She thought of all the beautiful designer gowns hanging in her apartment in Rome and at her chalet in Gstaad. The Valentinos and Armanis and Giannis.

From outside her cell Sister Lucia could hear the soft, swishing movement of the nuns as they gathered in the passage. Carelessly, she made up her bed and stepped out into the long corridor, where the nuns were lining up, eyes downcast. Slowly, they all began to move towards the chapel.

They look like a bunch of penguins, Sister Lucia thought. It was beyond her comprehension why these women had deliberately thrown away their lives, giving up sex, pretty clothes and gourmet food. Without those things, what reason is there to go on living? And the goddamned rules!

When Sister Lucia had first entered the convent, the Reverend Mother had said to her, ‘You must walk with your head bowed. Keep your hands folded under your habit. Take short steps. Walk slowly. You must never make eye contact with any of the other sisters, or even glance at them. You may not speak. Your ears are to hear only God’s words.’

‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’

For the next month Lucia took instruction.

‘Those who come here come not to join others, but to dwell alone with God, solitariamente. Solitude of spirit is essential to a union with God. It is safeguarded by the rules of silence.’

‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’

‘You must always obey the silence of the eyes. Looking into the eyes of others would distract you with useless images.’

‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’

‘The first lesson you will learn here will be to rectify the past, to purge out old habits and worldly inclinations, to blot out every image of the past. You will do purifying penance and mortification to strip yourself of self-will and self-love. It is not enough for us to be sorry for our past offences. Once we discover the infinite beauty and holiness of God, we want to make up not only for our own sins, but for every sin that has ever been committed.

‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’

‘You must struggle with sensuality, what John of the Cross called, “the night of the senses”.’

‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’

‘Each nun lives in silence and in solitude, as though she were already in heaven. In this pure, precious silence for which she hungers, she is able to listen to the infinite silence and possess God.’

At the end of the first month, Lucia took her initial vows. On the day of the ceremony she had her hair shorn. It was a traumatic experience. The Reverend Mother Prioress performed the act herself. She summoned Lucia into her office and motioned for her to sit down. She stepped behind her, and before Lucia knew what was happening, she heard the snip of scissors and felt something tugging at her hair. She started to protest, but she suddenly realized that what was happening could only improve her disguise. I can always let it grow back later, Lucia thought. Meanwhile, I’m going to look like a plucked chicken.

When Lucia returned to the grim cubicle she had been assigned, she thought: This place is a snake pit. The floor consisted of bare boards. The pallet and the hard-backed chair took up most of the room. She was desperate to get hold of a newspaper. Fat chance, she thought. In this place they had never heard of newspapers, let alone radio or television. There were no links to the outside world at all.

But what got on Lucia’s nerves most of all was the unnatural silence. The only communication was through hand signals, and learning those drove her crazy. When she needed a broom, she was taught to move her outstretched right hand from right to left, as though sweeping. When the Reverend Mother was displeased, she brought together the tips of her little fingers three times in front of her body, the other fingers pressing into her palm. When Lucia was slow in doing her work, the Reverend Mother pressed the palm of her right hand against her left shoulder. To reprimand Lucia, she scratched her own cheek near her right ear with all the fingers of her right hand in a downward motion.

For Christ’s sake, Lucia thought, it looks like she’s scratching a flea bite.

They had reached the chapel. The nuns said a silent mass, the sequence from the age-old Sanctus to the Pater Noster, but Sister Lucia’s thoughts were on more important things than God.

In another month or two, when the police stop looking for me, I’ll be out of this madhouse.

After morning prayers, Sister Lucia marched with the others to the dining room, surreptitiously breaking the rule, as she did every day, by studying their faces. It was her only entertainment. It was incredible to think that none of them knew what the other sisters looked like.

She was fascinated by the faces of the nuns. Some were old, some were young, some pretty, some ugly. She could not understand why they all seemed so happy. There were three faces that Lucia found particularly interesting. One was Sister Teresa, a woman who appeared to be in her sixties. She was far from beautiful, and yet there was a spirituality about her that gave her an almost unearthly loveliness. She seemed always to be smiling inwardly, as though she carried some wonderful secret within herself.

Another nun that Lucia found fascinating was Sister Graciela. She was a stunningly beautiful woman in her early thirties. She had olive skin, exquisite features, and eyes that were luminous black pools.

She could have been a film star, Lucia thought. What’s her story? Why would she bury herself in a place like this?

The third nun who captured Lucia’s interest was Sister Megan. Blue-eyed, blonde eyebrows and lashes. She was in her late twenties and had a fresh, open faced look.

What is she doing here? What are any of these women doing here? They’re locked up behind these walls, given a tiny cell to sleep in, rotten food, eight hours of prayers, hard work and too little sleep. They must be pazzo – all of them.

She was better off than they were, because they were stuck here for the rest of their lives, while she would be out of here in a month or two. Maybe three, Lucia thought. This is a perfect hiding place. I’d be a fool to rush away. In a few months, the police will decide that I’m dead. When I leave here and get my money out of Switzerland, maybe I’ll write a book about this crazy place.

A few days earlier Sister Lucia had been sent by the Reverend Mother to the office to retrieve a paper and while there she had taken the opportunity to start looking through the files. Unfortunately she had been caught in the act of snooping.

‘You will do penance by using the Discipline,’ the Mother Prioress Betina signalled her.

Sister Lucia bowed her head meekly and signalled, ‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’

Lucia returned to her cell, and minutes later the nuns walking through the corridor heard the awful sound of the whip as it whistled through the air and fell again and again. What they could not know was that Sister Lucia was whipping the bed.

These freaks may be into S & M, but not yours truly.

Now they were seated in the refectory, forty nuns at two long tables. The Cistercian diet was strictly vegetarian. Because the body craved meat, it was forbidden. Long before dawn, a cup of tea or coffee and a few ounces of dry bread were served. The principal meal was taken at 11.00 a.m., and consisted of a thin soup, a few vegetables and occasionally a piece of fruit.

We are not here to please our bodies, but to please God.

I wouldn’t feed this breakfast to my cat, Sister Lucia thought. I’ve been here two months, and I’ll bet I’ve lost ten pounds. It’s God’s version of a health farm.

When breakfast was ended, two nuns brought washing-up bowls to each end of the table and set them down. The sisters seated about the table sent their plates to the sister who had the bowl. She washed each plate, dried it on a towel and returned it to its owner. The water got darker and greasier.

And they’re going to live like this for the rest of their lives, Sister Lucia thought disgustedly. Oh, well. I can’t complain. At least it’s better than a life sentence in prison …

She would have given her immortal soul for a cigarette.

Five hundred yards down the road, Colonel Ramon Acoca and two dozen carefully selected men from the GOE, the Grupo de Operaciones Especiales, were preparing to attack the convent.

Chapter Four

Colonel Ramón Acoca had the instincts of a hunter. He loved the chase, but it was the kill that gave him a deep visceral satisfaction. He had once confided to a friend, ‘I have an orgasm when I kill. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a deer or a rabbit or a man – there’s something about taking a life that makes you feel like God.’

Acoca had been in military intelligence, and he had quickly achieved a reputation for being brilliant. He was fearless, ruthless and intelligent, and the combination brought him to the attention of one of General Franco’s aides.

Acoca had joined Franco’s staff as a lieutenant, and in less than three years he had risen to the rank of colonel, an almost unheard-of feat. He was put in charge of the Falangists, the special group used to terrorize those who opposed Franco.