Page 36 of The Last Postcard

After what felt like an age, he nodded. ‘Bueno,’ he said, folding the note into his pocket. ‘Let’s talk in my office.’

The girl I had met on the street was right: Bautista ran the show in La Atunara. He could give me what I wanted, knew the people who could make it happen.

By midnight, I was sat in his warehouse office, watching as a forger with stained fingers and beautiful handwriting inked my new self on to a blank passport.

‘Name?’ he asked, stilling his shaking hands with nips of liquor from a flask. In the corner, another man fiddled with a camera, setting up a pair of hissing electric lamps.

‘Alejandro del Potro.’

‘That your real name?’

‘Of course.’

The man snorted. I watched as he wrote the name neatly.

‘Profession?’

That made me hesitate. Cook, I wanted to tell him, but it might give me away.

‘We’ll put “secretary”,’ the forger said, into my silence. ‘Gives you options.’ The pen scratched softly. ‘Age?’

The older I was, the more distance there would be between my former self and this new, suited stranger. ‘Twenty-five,’ I said. But that only made the man laugh.

‘You’re not more than sixteen. Look at that chin. Smooth as an egg.’

I felt myself turning red. ‘Twenty-two?’

‘Twenty-one,’ he said firmly. ‘Got to be convincing.’

‘Stand there,’ the photographer yawned, pulling down a roll of paper on the wall.

By mid-morning the next day, Alejandro del Potro had been born.

‘Scuff it up a bit,’ Bautista said, looking critically at the document in his hand. ‘Don’t want it looking too new.’

I nodded. My mind was swimming, body buzzing with nicotine. I hadn’t slept much. I had been too nervous to stretch out on one of the wooden benches along the edge of the warehouse, in case I murmured in my sleep and blew my disguise. I had tried to leave once, saying that I would return when the papers were ready, but his brute had blocked the door. The message was clear. I could leave when Bautista told me to. Not before.

‘So, chico,’ Bautista said, tapping the passport on the desk. ‘Where are you going to go?’

‘That’s my business.’ I stood up and held out my hand for the papers, wanting out of that place. ‘Gracias, señor.’

Bautista only laughed. ‘Sit down, del Potro. This is not a charity. I am a businessman. And business between us is not yet concluded.’

‘Why?’ I made my voice rougher. ‘You have your money.’

He smiled. ‘Ten pesetas is not enough for a set of papers of this quality. Not nearly enough. Did you think it was?’

My guts began to squeeze themselves together. What if he had seen through me? ‘What do you want?’

He was watching me closely. ‘I want to know where you are running off to. France? Gibraltar? South America?’

‘Tangiers,’ I said, tense. He had control of the port. He would know if I lied.

‘Tangiers.’ He rubbed at his donkey beard. ‘What’s there for you?’

‘Nothing. A fresh start.’

He was silent for a moment. ‘Tangiers,’ he said. ‘Bueno. You’ll wait until this evening to take the boat. I’ll have a little job for you by then.’