Resistance Music

By T.A. Barnes

Of all the ways Char might have died, suicide was not possibly one. Yet that’s what they were telling Sancia, that her spirited sister, beloved by millions for her raw and haunting music, had thrown herself to the sea from the family castle on the northern coast of Spain. In Sancia’s search for truth behind her sister’s death, she’s confronted with her late parents’ secret past as Spanish resistance fighters. Cursed with an inheritance of evidence damning enough to shake nations, the quiet American-raised concert violinist must find her way in a dark world where no one is what they seem.
On a battleground where war is fueled by fanaticism, Sancia must place her trust in people who claim to want to help her but continually betray her. Can Ryan Everly, the Washington journalist chasing the story of his life really put her interests first when she shares the secrets that could get her killed? Can Kate Guthrie, the Texas-born commando recruited by international terrorist hunters break all the rules to protect her, even when ordered to get Sancia’s evidence by any means?
Betrayed by those she trusts, sought by those whose cause she can’t support and stalked by agencies determined to have what she holds at any cost, Sancia makes her stand alone. Some things, she learns, are truly worth one’s life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: T.A. Barnes
• Release date: Jan 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311852427

T.A. Barnes

T.A. Barnes is a third-generation journalist. He and his wife of twenty-four years divide their time between Texas and a small farm in Virginia. There he keeps a few fat horses and a one-eyed cat and works on novels in his 1850s schoolhouse office.Literary novels interest him the most. The intricacies of the creative effort and the necessary reach for our higher selves are two themes which run consistently in his work.

Book preview

RESISTANCE MUSIC is a work of fiction, with no attempt to represent any real person, living or dead. Any resemblance to any real person is coincidental and unintended. The writer has tried to create his tale within a generally accurate historical landscape. He has also attempted, out of a deep respect for this unique and fascinating race, to adhere to facts regarding the history and culture of the Basque people. The author is indebted to the research and publications of numerous authors and journalists as presented in books, broadcasts, blogs and articles in the public realm.

In the body of research examined by the author, one message is clearly shared among those who have studied the Basque and his history: They are a multi-faceted and richly talented people who have exhibited an admirable spirit through more than one period of extreme hardship and oppression.

To the Basque people, the author is most indebted for the lessons and inspiration he gained through his contact and studies. It is his sincere hope that he has succeeded in portraying at least a glimpse of the passion and nobility of the spirit that dwells in them.

The author is indebted to Dr. Cristobal Valencia, Professor of Anthropology at University of New Mexico, for his thoughtful and highly relevant Foreword which follows.

Foreword

Any reading of Resistance Music invokes a universal human dilemma: the elusive search for a single central truth to any dichotomy. How can two things or ideas be so different? What two persons contrast so much or are separated in such a way that they are always opposed to each other? From a less abstract perspective, how is it possible that one person’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist? What are we left with when the falsehood of our human dilemma is exposed? In other words, when the search for a fundamental kernel of truth of opposites fails, how do we resolve the dilemma of difference? These questions are at the heart of T.A. Barnes’ novel, Resistance Music.

Scholarly and common-sense understandings of otherness are long debated. Consider how over the course of the last century the once popular notion of race became unpopular only to reappear as culture in the twenty-first century. Yet, the socially constructed nature of differences like race has failed to change popular understandings of otherness. For example, we insist on rendering some cultures—and by extension whole countries—modern and others as undeveloped isolated parts of the third world. We then go on to confuse modern and undeveloped with whether or not a nation is democratic.

Our discursive and mental pictures of the world correspond to the social constructions of difference and otherness. Indeed, maps depict reality from a partial perspective with specific aims in mind. These world maps are most often constructed in relation to our unexamined selves and partial knowledge about others. Not long ago we thought about the Orient as an actual place, today we talk about the Middle East without recognizing this as a uniquely modern American construction. We often construct difference and others by positioning people in contrast to ourselves, exalting difference, erasing historical links, and homogenizing internal features along the way. To be clear, others are constructed in order to produce sources of knowledge about ourselves.

The process of othering obscures the workings of difference. More importantly it ignores the historical links between societies as well as the production and reproduction of unequal relationships of power. How is the other incorporated or not into the modern world? Who is allowed to enjoy democracy? What is sovereignty? We often leave these questions up to the concept of modernity.

The modern world system brought peoples closer together for good and bad in both time and space. Planetary flows of goods, crops, animals and commodities, as well as people looking to make a living or forced into making someone else’s living, were accompanied by abrupt changes in identity, relationships of power, practices and ways of understanding the world. Modernity is a particular political, economic and social dynamic based on the idea that Western European and North American forms of economic production, political organization and aesthetics are superior. It constructs difference and otherness in relation to a small part of the world. The codification of what is considered culture and thus civilized on the one hand, or savage and thus barbaric on the other hand is the project of modernity. What is the difference for example between art and craft? Is the former modern and the latter somehow other?

Particular historical narratives and their accompanying silences become standard ways of explaining how the modern world system developed. They do not describe the world or historical events but a particular vision of the world. They narrate a partial history. Dominant histories are prescriptive in that they relate the correct state of affairs, what is just and unjust, what is good or desirable, how things should be; in short they are ideologies. They are also seductive because they silence historical truths. These dominant narratives deny local explanations and sensibilities. More incredibly they erase the actual histories from which they spring. Historically people belonged to more than one social unit sharing more than one culture affiliation. Diversity then is not new!

Resistance Music unsettles—without denying—our gut feelings about history, modernity, and others by putting these factors into a broader context of world affairs. The story and its conflicting convictions interrogate our understanding of duality as the quality of being opposites. Rather, the reader is challenged to set aside dichotomies and objectivity and consider how our understandings of the world and its inhabitants are conditioned by social constructions of nation, democracy, and even history itself. These constructions emerge not only from powerful political, corporate and media influences but also from our own interactions in a social structure that operates on unequal relationships of political, social and economic power.

Many scholars trace democracy to the ancient Greeks, however, many others argue that ancient Grecian democracy severely limited decision-making to a few elite members of society. Likewise, the concept of state sovereignty is often traced to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia that established the sovereignty of European Kingdoms and Holy Empires. Yet, this treaty resonates weakly with contemporary struggles for state-hood with ancient roots in most of the world. The Basque region—much like Barnes’ homeland New Mexico—is a multiply colonized space historically and contemporarily. It is not an exceptional case, but rather more common than we often think. For example, consider ongoing Native American resistance to colonial settler domination across the Western Hemisphere, the Northern Ireland independence struggle, and the pending separation of Scotland from British rule.

There is no rational course of action within the world community for addressing struggles for self-rule. No ideological consistency, moral rhyme or reason, or ethical guidelines exist to explain the overt and covert, often-violent intervention in struggles for sovereignty. Support for separatist movements in South Sudan and East Timor are not paralleled in inhibiting separatist struggles in Chechnya and Crimea. What sense can we make of the continued colonial relationship of Puerto Rico to the United States? Why deny Puerto Ricans statehood and at the same time arrest independence? And what sense does it make to deny the existence of Palestine while simultaneously walling off Israel?

Resistance Music evokes serious thoughts about sovereignty and self-determination. The novel shows how standing up for rights or what is right is more complex than nationalism or democracy. Even though the Basque region is comparatively quiet these days, Barnes’ is a timely account that speaks to broader ongoing global dynamics. It shows how social justice and war as well as security and sovereignty are contested concepts. The setting and rhythm from section to section and across chapters creatively intertwine the themes of difference, ambiguity and righteous histories of rule by force as well as the challenges made to them.

Cristobal Valencia, PhD.

Professor of Anthropology

University of New Mexico

March 2014, Albuquerque

Part I

All the Convicted

Chapter One

Northern Spain

If she could make it to the tunnels, she would live.

She would have to make her way along the wide galleries with their tapestries and tiled floors, downstairs to the first floor of the castile, to the kitchen pantry with the hidden tunnel entrance.

How long since he passed her door, his brazen boot-steps loud enough to hear from inside her studio, hear and know it was no friend come calling, not this time of night.

Was he alone?

Did she dare make a run?

At least the film was safe, hidden where they’d never find it.

So stupid not to see this coming.

Danel had warned her of this. He said they’d be desperate. He said they’d kill her if they had to. Yes, my Char, you are what the Americans call a tough guy, no? he said when she had scoffed. She had laughed at him again and said of course she was a tough guy and did she not live within the walls of a Roman fortress?

Within those same walls she now crushed in the dark against the stone wall of the alcove, crushed with held breath and strained hearing and the critical need to make a decision.

Have to get to the tunnels.

The irony—a lifetime of recognition beyond her dreams simply for doing what she loved and now, on the verge of the finest thing she'd ever done, the thing that would make sense of her and make so much right in the world, now to die?

I’m not done, you bastards!

She strained to hear down the gallery.

New footsteps. Leisurely.

He’ll find me.

Steeled for the fight of her life, crouched, panting, bared teeth, a deadly shadow waiting in the corner of the alcove with clawed hands.

Go for the eyes.

Scream. No, roar.

He would hear her roar, this invader, louder than the world had ever heard her, on any stage in any city of the world. There was strength in sound.

The smell of a leather coat, the sticky musk of cheap cologne.

The rustle of his clothes as he slowed his pace.

The silence as he halted and stood turning in the center of the gallery, turning, looking back and forward, looking right over the shadow that was her.

His breath was thick. The air smelled bad—something, garlic?

He shines his shoes.

Go for the eyes.

Then he moved, a step, two, up the grand corridor to the marble staircase where he would have to decide whether to climb to the third floor that housed the family bedrooms or down to the castile’s front hall.

So, two of them at least.

She could get around this one by using the servants’ staircase that led to the kitchen. The other was a problem, gone but which direction?

She listened into the darkened corridor, trying to quiet her shallow panting. She eased around the corner of the alcove that served as entrance to her music studio, the safest place in her world no more.

The scrape of a door latch and faint groan of iron hinges reached her from the direction of the grand staircase. He was coming back, working his way along, chamber by chamber.

She drew one last breath. She flung herself into the corridor, racing for the landing of the narrow stairway. If she could get there, she could flee to the kitchen hall and make the pantry and the passage to the catacombs and caverns. At its base, a hundred meters through the solid rock of the cliff, the hidden beach and certain escape to the sea.

She reached the landing to the servant stairway, stopped to catch her breath. She listened into the shadows where the steps led down. Silence. A tentative step.

Someone’s there.

He lunged up from the turn in the stairway, blond hair, hard face, hard breaths rasping across the silence to terrify and drive her.

She seized a little table from its place on the landing. She took it with both hands and threw it down at him. She wheeled to sprint up the stairs to throw herself around the corner, up another flight toward the third floor.

She left the man cursing as the table struck him. She did not stop at the third floor, nor the fourth, where the servants’ quarters spread down dark and long-abandoned halls. She raced upward, pumping legs made fit from rigid exercise and dance, her trained lungs serving well as she reached the wooden door to a rooftop courtyard. She flung it outward to burst into the night.

She knew there was no way to lock the door but she slammed it tight and turned to race for the bridge that would take her high into the ramparts to their hiding place.

She crashed against him as she whirled, someone, the outstretched arms encircling her, the solid chest and trunk stopping her as surely as a door.

Char! He called her name.

Her shriek died as recognition pierced the terror. He held her tightly in his arms. "It’s okay, hija, it’s okay."

"Tio? Thank God, it’s you. But what… who? Are they with you? Who are those men? You’ve scared the almighty shit out of me!"

The door behind her flew open. The man from the stairs broke out. He stopped short of running into them. He touched a hand to his head and brought it down to examine the blood from the wound she had caused. Bitch.

Stop! the man holding her commanded. There'll be none of that.

The two men stared one at the other as she jerked free of him.

"Tio, who is this creep? What’s he doing in my home? And you? What are you doing, in the dead of the night, unannounced?"

Char, calm yourself, said the man she called her uncle. We have to talk. There are things we have to talk about.

Through the stairway door a third man emerged. Ah, he said. Got her, then.

She backed across the flagstone, the chill of the night sinking deep into her, as surely as the deadly calm that overcame her.

Her tio spoke quietly. "Hija, you know why we’re here, don’t you? All we need is the film. That’s all. You aren’t going to be hurt tonight. You know me."

I know you now. She spat the words, lunging past him toward the stone steps. She leaped to the parapet, whirled, plunged higher toward the watchmen’s walk.

The full moon cast a pale and silver light on her and on the castle walls and on the rocks below that broke the north sea into white froth, too far down the cliff to hear.

It was here in the open air on the high walls that she and Sancia had truly learned their music, not in the chambers down below or studios of Manhattan instructors. It was here Sancia had lifted her bow to play to the sea like a girl possessed, while she herself had cast her songs to the very gods. Sancia! Such a better woman than herself. They would get her, too!

Oh, sister, I’m sorry.

The man with the gash in his head was close behind.

He caught her as she struck out across the narrow planks of the bridge that could have, if she had made it, carried her across the treacherous gap between the ramparts to the place they called their hiding place.

He shrugged her off when she tried to pull him with her, over the edge of the useless bridge into the chasm between the fortress walls.

He watched her go soundless into the black, watched long after he lost sight of her, as though to see her break with the sea on the moon-bathed rocks.

---

Chapter Two

Hondarribia – The Coast Road

Okay, lovebirds, the subject has left the village.

Sergeant Kate Guthrie strained to hear through the crackling of the radio.

Roger that. We’re in place. The response came from the shadow beside her that was Cole, team leader.

Half a mile behind him. You’ve got ten minutes. Will inform if status changes.

Ready here.

Cole spoke through the dark to Kate. You’re up for this?

I am.

Straight from the MPs, eh, sweetheart?

That’s right.

Might as well jump right in, eh? Janet got involved in something else tonight. Good chance to get your feet wet. We do things a bit differently. You’ll catch on.

They breathed into the night. She could hear the sea below the cliff road. Tell me about this guy, she said.

Danel Luis Ochoa. Played a part in the Costa Blanca bombing last year. He’s a good catch. His brother, Bakar Ochoa, is top of the list, leader of the local cell. This guy will know a lot. He was the rock star’s boyfriend.

You mean Char?

Right.

So, she was ETA?

In bed with ‘em, sweetheart.

Kate could see his teeth in the moonlight when he grinned.

So that suicide she pulled off last night, that was… us?

The teeth disappeared. Time to get on stage, sergeant.

She felt the car coming before she saw it, her ear to the highway. Her heart pounded against the pavement, annoying her with its throb. She felt the sting of the asphalt on her cheek, the hardness of it against the bones of her hips.

Forcing herself to lie still, vulnerable as the enemy approached, was a difficult achievement in a career of disciplined acts. The survival knife in the small of her back and the Springfield Micro Compact .45 in her ankle holster felt inadequate. Her Army-issue Beretta, along with its familiar comfort, was holstered on the seat of their hidden car, too large to be of use now.

Here he comes, called Cole.

Kate watched the headlights approach from the southwest. The hum of the car’s engine could be heard. In less than five minutes it would be over.

The lights grew bright, the engine loud as the car neared. She squinted her eyes nearly shut, open only enough to tell whether she was in danger of being hit. She heard the change in the whine of the engine as the driver let off the gas, heard the high squeak of a brake needing servicing, saw the car slow as the driver must have studied her dark form outlined in the headlight of the crashed motorbike at the edge of the roadway.

She forced herself to lie still.

The car rolled to a stop. The driver threw open the door, ran toward her. Hey, hey, he called.

Kate felt the hand on her shoulder as the man gently moved her. "Mujer, mujer, are you alive? Can you hear me?"

He put a thumb to the pulse on her neck. She had him by the wrist and on the ground before Cole could approach from the rear to seize their victim around the neck, forcing him to his feet.

Their captive stomped and fought to free himself. He craned his neck to bite Cole’s arm. Cole cursed, struck him on the side of the head with a fist.

Kate was on her feet, moving to help subdue the target.

Dropped it. The rag, get the rag, Cole grunted.

Kate recovered the chloroform-saturated cloth and thrust it toward their captive’s face.

The man fought harder, but Cole was strong and had a death grip on his neck. Kate seized the goatee, avoiding his boots, forcing the rag to his face.

He grunted, kicked, threw his head side to side, screamed in Euskera. Kate’s hand found its mark, mashed the rag against the face, held it there until their prey hung still. Cole let him fall hard to the ground, kicked him in the head.

That’s for biting me, you dirty spic.

He bent and grabbed the man’s shoulders. Get his feet.

They carried him to the edge of the road, stiffening as the lights of a vehicle approached from the village. The radio crackled in Cole’s belt. Just me, lovebirds. Don’t have any cows.

Cole bent and checked the man’s pockets. He drew out the wallet and removed some bills, stuffing them into his pocket with a grin at Kate. Spoils of war, sweetheart. We’ll split ‘em later.

She grimaced in disgust.

Martin stopped the van beside them, walked around to slide open the door.

Cole, finished ransacking the pockets, pulled the victim’s shoes off and handed them to Kate. He and Martin lifted the unconscious body into Martin’s van.

Kate moved to the edge of the cliff to create tracks with the shoes. When she had scuffed away all trace of her own presence, she faced the sea at the place where the victim would be supposed to have leaped.

She could hear the waves breaking on the rocks below, where a body could be lost. She thought of what their victim probably faced in the days to come. If she were in his place, she’d rather face the rocks.

The night was dark. The wind from the sea felt cold.

Pamplona

Colonel Thornton regarded the woman at parade rest across his desk, taking in her blue jeans, rodeo buckle, denim shirt and combat boots. Her blond hair was feathered to her jaw, short enough that she could go without brushing it. Her blue eyes were steady on his.

I’m told you performed well last night, Sergeant.

Thank you, sir.

I apologize that we did not have a chance to get acquainted before you had to jump in on that assignment. I’ve been in Madrid. I suppose we should settle a few formalities, even if you are already on the job, so to speak.

Yessir.

I’ve reviewed your file, of course. In fact, I picked you out of several candidates. As I say, I’m told you performed well in action last night. This adds up to a green light as far as I’m concerned. All that remains is to be sure you understand what you’re getting into and that you’re completely committed.

Kate Guthrie made no answer.

You know what we do here.

Anti-terrorism, sir.

And that interests you, why?

Sergeant Guthrie blinked. It’s in my file, sir.

I want to hear it from you.

Her jaw twitched. Her chin moved upward. My older brother was Army Intelligence. Taken in Beirut. Held for months, tortured… beheaded. The film was on the Internet.

The colonel watched the fine bones beneath her cheeks ripple as she won the fight for control. He nodded, possibly approving.

Our mission is to kill terrorists. Our code is simple—loyalty to your team, annihilation of your enemy. Success is measured by bodies.

He stood and moved to the window, tapped his fingers on the sill. "You’ll work with eleven others here in Pamplona. Our mission is to eradicate the ETA—we usually call them Eta, as some do here. Since we’re an international unit, high levels of the Spanish government know we’re here, but we still get damned little cooperation. Like our country, they have their share of bleeding hearts who would treat terrorists like children gone astray. The Etarras in prison we don’t care about at this point. The ones who are not locked up need to be dead."

When the blue eyes before him remained steady and no questions came, he continued.

"The Washington Tribune is sending a hotshot to poke around the death of this rock star, Char, full name Itxaro Bastida. You know who she is, yes? She's been a person of interest because of her ties to Eta and because she was in possession of information that could be highly damaging to several governments, including the United States."

The colonel turned to the desk to flip through the pages of Sergeant Guthrie’s file. You have experience as a news photographer, correct?

It was just a high school job, Colonel, stringing for the local paper. Sports, mostly.

It’ll do. To start with we’ll hook you up as a photographer for the Tribune, get you with this reporter. The guy’s got a reputation, pretty big name, probably a little too good at what he does. I want to know everything he knows.

The colonel studied Kate. "This singer’s family runs deep. The parents were big-time movie stars. There’s a sister in the States, Sancia Bastida. She probably has information we need. She’ll likely be at the family