Javier Cercas - Outlaws

‘The General saw the two men out. As he did so we looked through the safe: inside were stacks of files full of documents and a gold ring with a precious stone set in it. When he came back out of the house, the General found his wife examining the gemstone against the light. When she saw him, the woman rubbed the stone against her housecoat, as if she’d sullied it and wanted to shine it up again, and then she handed it to Gordo, who in turn handed it to Zarco, who in turn handed it to the General. How much do you want for this? the General asked Zarco, after studying the ring and gem carefully. Nothing, said Zarco. The General looked at him with distrust. I don’t want cash, Zarco clarified. I want hardware. The General’s expression went from distrust to incredulity; I looked at Gordo and Colilla and realized they were as perplexed as the General or, for that matter, as I was: Zarco hadn’t said a word to them about weapons either. The General looked sceptical, scratched his sideburns and said: What happened to Guille has upset you, son. Zarco smiled and shrugged, although he didn’t say anything; his silence was his way of insisting, or that’s how the General took it, and he added: I don’t have weapons: you should know that. Yeah, I know, said Zarco. But you can get some if you want. The General asked: What do you want them for? What’s it to you? Zarco replied softly; and just as softly asked: Do you want it or not? If yes, fine; if not, fine too: I’ll find someone who does. Before the General could reply something nobody expected happened: his wife intervened in the discussion. Get them for him, she said. We all looked at her; standing between us and the General, the woman had her hands hanging down at her sides and, with her blind-woman’s eyes, she seemed not to be looking at anyone or to be looking at us all at once. It was the first time I’d heard her speak and her voice sounded cold and piercing, like the tyrannical voice of a spoiled child. After a moment of silence she repeated: Get them for him. Have you gone crazy too? the General asked then. What if they turn us in? Can’t you see they’re just little kids and that. .? They’re not kids, his wife cut him off. They’re men. As much as you are. Or more. They won’t turn us in. Give them guns. Indecisive or furious, the General put the gem in his shirt pocket, walked over to his wife, grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to the back of the yard; there they stayed for a while, whispering (the General was gesturing, as well), and then both of them went inside the house and a short time later the General came out alone. What do you need? he asked briskly. Not much, replied Zarco. A pistol and a couple of sawn-off shotguns. That’s a lot, said the General. That’s a lot less than the stone’s worth, Zarco replied. The General only thought for a second. All right, he said. Come by tomorrow afternoon and they’ll be here. Before we could consider the deal done he looked at each of the four of us one by one and said: One last thing. It’s a message from my wife. She’s asked me to tell you just once and I’m only going to say it once: anyone who lets it out is dead.

‘The next day the General presented us with a long-barrelled 9mm Star pistol, two homemade sawn-off shotguns, a couple of magazines and a couple of boxes of ammunition. That same afternoon we spent several hours shooting at empty tin cans in a forest in Aiguaviva, and two days later we held up a grocer’s shop in Sant Feliu de Guíxols at gunpoint. The takings were scant, but the job was safe and comfortable, because the shopkeeper was so startled that he offered no resistance and didn’t even report the robbery to the police. I don’t know if our first armed robbery made us think that they’d all be very easy; if it did, the illusion didn’t last long at all.

‘Two days later we tried to rob a gas station on the way to Barcelona, near Sils. The plan was simple. It consisted of Zarco and Tere going into the station and pointing their guns at the guy behind the counter while Gordo and I waited outside, with the engine running, ready to drive out at full speed as soon as they came out with the money; the car, incidentally, was a Seat 124, which was the car we started to use systematically for our hold-ups because it was fast and powerful and easy to handle, and didn’t attract attention.

‘The plan was simple, but it went wrong. As soon as we stopped at the gas station, Zarco and Tere got out and started filling up the tank; meanwhile, Gordo and I stayed in the car, watching as two men waited to pay at the cash register inside the glass-walled station shop, and, when the second man finished paying and left, Gordo gave a signal to Zarco who gave a signal to Tere and they both pulled stockings over their heads at the same time, got out the guns — Zarco the Star and Tere a sawn-off shotgun — and walked into the glass-walled shop aiming them at the proprietor. I saw it all from inside the car, holding my breath beside Gordo, clutching the other shotgun and keeping one eye on the entrance to the gas station and the other on the glass-walled shop: through the huge windows I saw how the owner of the station raised his arms, how then, slowly, he lowered them and how, when he’d lowered them already, he made a strange quick movement. Then there was the thunder of a gunshot followed by a muffled swearword from Gordo, I looked at Gordo and then I looked back at the shop, but now I couldn’t see anything or I only saw shattered glass. A couple of seconds later Zarco and Tere rushed into the car and Gordo pulled away and skidded out through the entrance to take the highway in the direction of Blanes, while in the back seat Zarco explained, swearing his head off, that the money wasn’t where they’d expected it to be or where it should have been and that the owner of the gas station had tried to grab the pistol and in the struggle, while Tere shouted threats at the man, the gun had gone off and the shot shattered the window. Now we were speeding as fast as possible down the main highway, Zarco and Tere seemed calm in the back seat (or maybe it’s just that I was so nervous in the front seat) and, as we got further away from the gas station, Gordo began to ease off a bit on the accelerator, until after a little while, when we were almost going normal speed and the four of us were beginning to feel that the fright had passed, he said, looking in the rear-view mirror: We’re being followed.

‘It was true. We all turned around and the first thing we saw was one of the secret police’s Seat 1430s about a hundred and fifty metres behind us, and at that moment the driver and the officer beside him realized we’d recognized them and put the flashing light on the roof of the car and turned on the siren. What do we do? asked Gordo. Speed up, said Zarco. Although on that stretch the highway was narrow and curved, Gordo floored it and in the blink of an eye we’d overtaken a pick-up truck and a couple of cars, but the police car easily replicated Gordo’s manoeuvre and was back on our tail. It was then that the real chase began. Gordo drove the 124 as fast as its engine would go, the cars in front of us and oncoming traffic started to get out of our way, the police car got close enough to bang into our bumper and twice pulled up next to us and sideswiped us trying to push us into the ditch. Before they could try for a third time, Gordo took the next exit, which turned out to be a dirt track full of potholes that we started jolting along into a little pine forest with the police not very far behind, and at some moment the first shot was fired, and then the second and the third, and before I knew it we were in the middle of a full-scale shootout, with bullets coming through the back windscreen and whistling between us and going out through the front windscreen while Zarco and Tere leaned out the side windows and began to shoot back at our pursuers and Gordo tried to dodge the shots by zigzagging through the pines and driving off the track and back onto it and I cringed in the passenger seat, petrified with fear, incapable of using my sawn-off shotgun, silently imploring that we might get out of that trap, something that actually happened right at the moment it appeared they were going to catch us, when the track ended all of a sudden and we went down an embankment with great difficulty and landed on a sort of semi-paved forest floor while the secret police’s 1430 tried to get there faster than us from behind and halfway down the embankment flipped over spectacularly to the euphoric delight of Zarco and Tere, and also Gordo, who was watching the tumbles our pursuers were taking in the rear-view mirror and took advantage to accelerate through a network of empty streets and get us out of that ghost town or half-built housing development we’d ended up in.