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The Conrad Press - Walter Ellis

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192 pages

English

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The Spanish Civil War has ended. But with World War II raging, Generalisimo Francisco Franco is presented with a fresh temptation: join the Axis powers and drive the British from their stronghold in Gibraltar - the key to the Mediterranean. Charles Bramall, newly recruited by MI6, is sent to help drive a wedge between Franco and Hitler. He enlists help from two unlikely sources, Isabel Ortega the beautiful, headstrong daughter of a top Spanish official, and Eddy Romero a maverick, half-Spanish Dubliner who fought in the International Brigades and burns with a hatred of the British Empire. The three face impossible odds. Can they overcome their backgrounds, including the legacy of a terrible murder, in time to stop Gibraltar from falling to the Nazis? In this compelling, suspense-filled novel, in which the intrigue comes draped in mystery and betrayal, we are invited into a world where empires collide and Europe's future hangs in the balance.

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Historical fiction

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Publié par	The Conrad Press
Date de parution	01 octobre 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781839781247
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Franco’s Map
Walter Ellis

Franco’s Map
Published by The Conrad Press in the United Kingdom 2020
Tel: +44(0)1227 472 874 www.theconradpress.com   i nfo@theconradpress.com
ISBN 978-1-839781-24-7
Copyright © Walter Ellis, 2020
The moral right of Walter Ellis to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
Typesetting and Cover Design by: Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.

Extracts from interviews given in 1945 by Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring to his American interrogators in Nuremberg
‘In 1940 we had a plan to seize all North Africa from Dakar to Alexandria, and with it the Atlantic islands for U-boat bases. This would have cut off many of Britain’s shipping lanes. At the same time, any resistance movement in North Africa could be crushed. [Afterwards], nobody could have interfered in the Mediterranean.’
‘The attack on Gibraltar was so methodically prepared by the Luftwaffe that, according to all human expectations, there could be no failure …There was only one unprotected airfield on the Rock. In twenty-four hours the Royal Air Force would have been forced off … and we could have battered it to pieces. This was a real task and we were eager to accomplish it.’
‘I urged [Hitler] to put these decisive considerations into the foreground and only after the conclusion of [the Gibraltar]undertaking to examine further the military and political situation with regard to Russia. For, if these conditions were brought about, we would be in a favourable position in the event of an intervention by the United States … Failure to carry out the plan was one of the major mistakes of the war.’

Prologue
Carabanchel Prison, Madrid,July 26 1940
T he vast prison complex, which Franco boasted would be the largest in Europe, was still not finished and smelled of concrete and lime. On the way from his cell to the execution chamber, Romero passed squads of inmates skimming cement onto bare walls. They averted their eyes as he shuffled by, the jangling of his shackles echoing down the dusty corridors. One old man who mumbled a prayer was rewarded with a sharp prod in the back from a guard’s baton that made him wince. Another whispered, ‘Don’t be afraid, comrade – the people are with you.’
He had nodded at this, wishing it to be true. But now, strapped to the garrotte post, there was no one. Only in the past could he find freedom, or hope. Think back, he told himself. Concentrate!
He had been nine years old. It was high summer, 1915 and he was with his father Alonso and his mother Molly at the funeral in Dublin of the exiled firebrand Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, whose body had been brought home from America for burial. The rain that day hung in the air like mist and many of the thousands of mourners who lined the route from City Hall to Glasnevin Cemetery carried umbrellas. Among the gaudy memorials, the men wore dark suits and hats, or else the uniforms of the Citizen Army, the Irish Republican Brotherhood or the Irish Volunteers. Sweat ran down his father’s face. No one spoke. The word was that this would be no ordinary funeral and the sense of anticipation was extraordinary. The coffin was lowered. The priest in his cassock made the sign of the cross and led a recital of the rosary.
What followed marked the day in history. First a volley of shots rang out, then a young man wearing the peaked cap of an officer in the volunteers stepped forward. Drawing a paper from his pocket, he surveyed those present with a look of almost mystical authority. Padraic Pearse did not have to call for silence. He spoke at first in Irish, which few among his audience understood. Then he switched to English. Ireland’s foes, he warned, were strong and wise and wary. But they could not undo the miracles of God who ripened in the hearts of young men the seeds sown by the dead generations.
The voice was compelling. ‘Life springs from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations. The defenders of this realm have worked well in secret and in the open. They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! – they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.’
The speaker was half-mad, half-visionary. But Romero had believed him. He believed him still. The Easter Rising, when it came, would be a blood sacrifice, not a feat of arms, but from it would spring a living nation. A half-Spanish boy, with his dark eyes and sallow skin, Romero remembered how his father placed both hands on his shoulders as Pearse spoke. He remembered the hypnotic impact of the words and how hard his father gripped, the pressure of each finger on his small bones. So long ago and it seemed like the beginning and the end of everything. He had thought nothing as important would happen again in the whole of his life.
But the years, full to the brim with evil, had rolled past like clouds on a windy day. Now, as he faced his own death in this bleak and awful prison, he tried not to let his hands shake. They mustn’t know the fear he felt. He prayed for the souls of his father and his mother; for his dead comrades, their bodies heaped into mass graves across Spain, with neither cross nor winding sheet nor a friend’s lament; for his new-made companions in the fight against Hitler. And for one in particular. There was no one else. He looked up, twisting his head so that he could focus on the group of officials gathered to legitimise his death.
He had been refused the Last Rites of the church. The priest stood against the wall, reading from the Bible, not daring to meet his gaze, pretending that he couldn’t see that the condemned man had not only lost an eye at the hands of his captors, but all of his fingernails. A prison guard circled the garrotte, checking that everything was in order. The man tested the straps and the collar – a technician, nothing more. Then, without warning, a second guard drew a leather hood over his head and the world grew dark. He wished that his last sight had been of the woman he loved. The door to the execution chamber opened, emitting a draft of ice-cold air before it shut again with a distant click. There was a rattle of keys, followed by the footsteps of the executioner. Through the metal, he felt the man’s hands grip the lever.
The prison’s deputy governor stepped forward. ‘Edward Alonso Maria Romero: in the name of the Spanish people and in accordance with the requirements of the Penal Code, you have been convicted of wilful murder and are sentenced to death for your crime. The sentence will now be carried out. Have you anything to say?’ Romero straightened himself, feeling the steel of the collar against his skin. ‘Long live the republic!’ he shouted.
The official nodded. Romero’s last words, heard only by himself, were the closing lines of the centuries-old Catholic prayer known as the Confiteor. ‘May Almighty God have mercy on me, forgive me my sins, and bring me to everlasting life. May the Almighty and merciful Lord grant me pardon, absolution, and remission of all my sins. Amen.’ The executioner began to twist the lever. The collar tightened. After a few seconds, he couldn’t breathe. His body began to shake in the wooden chair. His arms and legs pushed against the straps that held him. Then his eyes began to roll. He had no control over them. He felt them bulge and twist. His tongue protruded from his open mouth. It was at this point that the metal screw positioned at the back of his head penetrated his neck and severed his spinal column. His head fell forward, the convulsions stopped, and his life gave out with a sigh.
‘Remove the prisoner,’ the deputy governor said. ‘Bring in the next one.’

1
British Crown Colony of Gibraltar: six weeks earlier
T he Rock divided the light from the darkness. East of the ridge, the colours of the morning were clear and vivid. The Mediterranean reached out, past Oran, past Sicily, past Tobruk and Crete, all the way to Egypt and Palestine. To the west, the town and its dockyards remained in shadow and the colder, deeper waters of the Atlantic pressed against the harbour, where the aircraft carrier Ark Royal sat at anchor.
At half-past five, the great lamp of the lighthouse at Europa Point dimmed and went out. A marine sentry finishing his watch in the forward observation post raised his field glasses and swept the narrow Strait from west to east. It was the clearest time of the day and, to the south, Morocco’s Mount Jebel Musa stood out in sharp relief against the ochre haze of Africa.
Two miles to the north, in a stone-walled villa overlooking the Spanish border town of La Linea de la Concepción, an agent of German military intelligence, the Abwehr , observed the colony through a similar, but superior, pair of high-powered binoculars. He was logging details of the continued extension of the colony’s airstrip and focused for several seconds on the face of a heavily moustachioed Canadian Army engineer about to end his shift, who stood for a moment facing east, feeling the warmth of the sun on his face.
The runway, with its support facilities, was the colony’s biggest single project in years. Built on rubble left over from a network of supply and communication tunnels, it stretched 200 metres into the bay beyond the Western Beach, continuing across the northern littoral as far as the Eastern Beach, where it looked across to the modest market town of Marbella.
By six o’clock, the streets and alleys of the town echoed to the