by Lex Lander
‘No, much as I’m tempted.’
Outside the sun had gone in. An omen? Was my new life about to be prematurely foreclosed? I had no desire to return to my former trade. My Spanish was ever more fluent, I was gaining a small circle of acquaintances, both indigenous and expatriate. In effect, I was discovering what the normal life I had craved so long was like, and was even beginning to hope that Maura could be persuaded to share it with me. The other hope was that Il Sindicato had forgotten I existed.
In the midst of this, Britain’s squabble with Spain was of less significance than a fleabite to me.
‘Well?’ Toby was still waiting for a proper answer.
‘You mean Gibraltar?’ I said, reluctant to admit I was even aware of the recent news of moves towards a conference on the status of the ex-colony.
‘Yes, I mean Gibraltar.’ Toby’s face was stern, as if deploring my insouciance. ‘And I’m sure you don’t need me to explain the strategic importance of that hunk of rock.’
I sneaked a glance at my watch: it was five minutes after noon. Smells of cooking were drifting through from my restaurant, titillating the taste buds. I was bored with this talk of politics. Strictly apolitical, even when I worked for the British Government I had kept my views to myself. It was of the past, dead and buried, never to be exhumed.
Toby pressed on. ‘You’ll have heard about the … unrest in Gibraltar, about this new political faction who want to break away from the UK, become independent.’
‘Vaguely. Is Sam coming here to meet you? Why not stay for lunch? I can’t offer you anything exotic but …’
‘André!’ Toby was a man with a slow burning fuse, slower even than me to rouse to wrath. My prevarication had brought him up to flashpoint. ‘Over the weekend there was a riot on the Rock,’ he told me, ‘stirred up by these GIBESTÁ people as they style themselves. You must have heard about it. A number of people were injured, property damaged.’
I stared at him. Not out of sympathy for the injured, nor out of surprise that such a peaceful community could be stirred to violence. I stared in accusation.
‘You want to drag me into it, don’t you, you bastard?’
He blinked.
‘It’s not that …’
‘Yes, it fucking is that. What makes you think I’d be willing to get involved in a load of political shit?’
‘Your history. You worked for the Firm, for a start.’
I waved that aside. ‘That was a lot of years ago. I’ve grown up since then.’
Now he fixed me with a flinty stare. ‘Not so long ago as that. If I mentioned Finland, would that mean anything?’
I let my disgust show loud and clear.
‘It would mean that somebody’s got a big mouth.’ I swirled my glass in aimless circles on the table, thinking hard. Finally, when the thinking had gotten me nowhere, I gave it up and said, ‘Who do you want killed this time?’
‘Killed?’ He started to laugh then saw my expression and sobered up fast. ‘You are joking, aren’t you?’
I slapped him across the shoulders. ‘Sure I’m joking. I only wish you were.’
* * * * *
It was six months since I had used a gun in anger or for profit. Work had been offered, I had passed on it. More crucially, Il Sindicato had left me in peace, either resigned to my retirement or reluctant to start a war. They never said. I never asked. It might have been expecting too much that they really were going to let me resume the life I once had, before Marion was murdered and the tectonic plates of my world had slid sideways, tipping me off into a dark chasm, where good was indistinguishable from bad, and right from wrong, and the moral compass that had always guided me to the side of the angels swung in the opposite direction.
My new life as a bar owner had given me hope anew. Hope that I could finally break free of the chains that had bound me to my deadly profession. My thoughts wandered into the past, to the three women in my life, any one of whom could have transformed it. Marion was the first and most lasting. My only wife so far, who died because I worked for the British Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6.
In the wake of Marion many, many women entered and left before Liza, who wasn’t my lover, though I had loved her in another way, and still did. Liza who called me at regular intervals, and whom I had shut out, for no reason than that I was afraid that the purity of my feelings for her would be corrupted by the primeval pull of the flesh.
Finally, Maura. Not a replacement for Marion, but a new, real love who found that, though prepared to overlook my past, she couldn’t tolerate a future in like vein. So we had parted, then reunited, then parted again. We could take up where we had left off, whenever I wished. Provided I left off killing people.
Now here I was, proving to myself that killing had been banished from my daily cycle. And when I had finally proved it to my own satisfaction, I would present myself to Maura and we would go forward together, with her daughter Belinda, and become the family that I had hungered for ever since I stepped outside the law all those corpses ago.
* * * * *
The three of us – Sam had checked in with us – lunched in my adjoining restaurant. Carlos, the chef, did us proud with a paella de mariscos to start and chicken cooked in pineapple rings to follow. Simple Andalucia grub, but so tasty. Washed down with a bottle of Condado Viejo, a dry “oloroso” style white wine from the Huelva region, on the Atlantic coast.
We talked mostly of niceties and Brexit. The subject of Gibraltar and its troubles was avoided. Afterwards we parted, they to visit the alcazaba – the fortress – obligatory for tourists, I to return to the bar. Customers were still at a premium. Gustavo would have no difficulty coping at least until the evening “rush” began. So I took off for a drive along the coast road, south towards Torremolinos. The earlier sunshine had been superseded by grey clouds, their bellies swollen with rain, and as I pulled off the road into a turnout overlooking a bay, the mutter of thunder reached me from out at sea. Rain began to spot the windshield.
I cut the engine and lowered the window to let the ozone in. As always at times of stress I sought solace in the balm of music, feeding the slot with a CD of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony conducted by Bernstein. The low-key start with its sweeping violins quickly leads to a sense of conflict with unexpected interruptions by other instruments. It was not really soothing music. It was in keeping with my mood.
‘You bastard, Toby,’ I growled over the swirl of the cellos. ‘You goddam, scheming bastard.’
It was not a serious slander, though it was certainly heartfelt. His proposition was not welcome. The side of me that yearned for normality told me to reject it flat. If owning a bar in Malaga was no cakewalk and less than lucrative, I was at least answerable only to myself. I was in a legal business. The demands on me were slight, the lifestyle easy-going. Meeting new people of all backgrounds and nationalities every day brought out an affable, sociable side of me that I hadn’t been aware existed. Even the occasional troublemaker didn’t ruin my day – they kept me on my toes.
The clouds towards the horizon were darkening. Brahms’ pounding climax was accompanied by visual effects – sheet lightning flashing on-off, no sooner seen than gone. The splashes on the windshield grew in size and density, merging to become rivers.
Toby had painted me a lurid picture. Street violence in Gibraltar was unheard of under British governance, the only incident there since World War II being the shooting of an IRA bomb squad by British undercover agents. Yet since the date for the Madrid conference had been set – 8th May – there had been a series of demonstrations by this GIBESTÁ crowd. Until the weekend, the violence had gone no further than the odd scuffle, some juvenile stone-throwing, and scattering the contents of litter bins in the streets. Hardly the stuff revolutions are made of. All this had changed last night.
GIBESTÁ – a contraction of "Gibraltar está", meaning simply Gibraltar is – had been formed only recently, as far as was known, before the Madrid conference was moo
ted. My knowledge of it, before Toby had enlightened me, was confined to a mention in El Correo Español sometime last week: an adherent had thrown rotten tomatoes at the front door of the Governor’s residence. Mild crowing from the Spanish press, though GIBESTÁ, so Toby told me, wanted no more truck with Spain than they did with the UK. They represented Gibraltar for the Gibraltarians, a great number of whom, in any case, have Genoese not Spanish forbears.
And what was Toby now proposing I should do? Get in amongst them, for Christ’s sake. Infiltrate and report in order to sow the seeds of their downfall from within. Admittedly, in my period as a lackey of the Secret Intelligence Service, I had often operated under cover. My talent for subterfuge was less likely to be the reason for my selection than my outsider status. The British Government would go to any lengths to keep its hands officially clean. By using me they could deny complicity if it all went pear-shaped on them. It had been done before. It had been done by them to me before, not very long ago at that. I had fallen for it then. To fall for it again would, I was convinced, be a colossal error of judgment on my part.
‘Can’t afford to have the Rock opting out of the jolly old club, can we, dear boy?’ Toby had said breezily, puffing away at his cigar as if it were the last he would ever smoke.
‘This call for independence is just a spontaneous reaction. They’re running nervous. Afraid your masters are going to hand them over to Spain, and I can’t say I blame them for that.’
Toby had looked exasperated. ‘But it’s simply not true. We’ve reassured the Gibraltar Government that under no circumstances will we relinquish sovereignty.’
‘Like in Northern Ireland, you mean?’ I scoffed. ‘No wonder they’re not buying it. But if that’s really your position, why hold the talks? What will you talk about if not a handover?’
‘Oh …’ He gestured vaguely. ‘We’ll offer some concessions … placebos, bear a few gifts to soothe their Iberian sensibilities. Agreeing to the Madrid venue was itself a major concession, you know.’
‘If that’s the attitude the negotiators start out with the whole exercise will be a fraud.’ I gave him a suspicious glance. ‘Will it be a fraud, Toby?’
Toby flared his nostrils and hid behind cigar smoke.
‘Toby isn’t like you, André,’ Sam, looking younger than her forty-five years in a cashmere sweater and tight pants, observed. ‘For him the Government can do no wrong. Unquestioning obedience is his battle cry.’
So it might have been for him. But my world did not begin and end with Queen and Country. For me, there was life on other planets, other causes to espouse, other circles to circulate in, and none of them touched on Government or politics. God forbid that they should.
‘Anyway, why me, Toby?’
He sucked his teeth.
‘You’re here, for a start. You speak Spanish, you know explosives, you’re for hire. That enough for you?’
‘Explosives? Jesus, Toby, that was nearly fifteen years ago. And it was a one off.’
‘No matter, dear boy,’ he said airily. ‘We’ll give you a refresher course. Oh, and you’re a freelancer. We, I mean they, like freelancers. If anything goes tits up the Government can feign innocence.’
The explosives bothered me. I couldn’t see the relevance, unless he was expecting me to blow up the Rock from within so they could blame it on the Spanish.
Toby rested his elbows on the table, fixed me with an earnest look. ‘Between you and me, you can write your own cheque for this one, André. You’re in good odour with Sir Peter, thanks to that business in Finland, on top of which they’re pretty desperate. Let me put it like this – England hath need of thee.’
‘Is that a fact?’ I stifled a laugh. ‘England hath need of me. Is that a quote, or a Toby original?’’
‘No good asking him,’ Sam said with a snort. Of the two she was by far the more erudite. ‘He’s the most unliterary man in the Civil Service. Actually, it was Wordsworth, in an invocation to Milton. It’s incomplete though – shall I finish it off for you, dear?’ She smiled sickly-sweetly, portending mischief. ‘“England hath need of thee: she is a fen of stagnant waters.”’
I roared with laughter. Toby did not share my amusement.
* * * * *
Some heavy vehicle ground past the turnout, brakes squealing as it entered the poorly cambered bend just beyond. The charcoal-coloured cloud was sitting overhead now, darkening land and sea. Wind beat at the car in gusts that grew stronger by the minute. The windshield blurred over with rain; I started the wipers. The horizon had been gobbled up by the advancing storm, and only a narrow band of water, white in its turbulence, remained. I stared gloomily into the greyness of it all.
Gloomily, not on account of the weather, but because, for all the plethora of good and valid reasons why not, I was sorely tempted to do as Toby asked. Go to London. Talk to the Foreign Office. Suit up for the occasion, shave off my beard (no, screw that for an idea. Let them learn to love it), put on a dedicated face. Be sucked into a world of red tape, rubber stamps, and inter-departmental memoranda. Become one of them. I must have been mad to even contemplate it.
One saving grace, and it was a big one: they weren’t asking me to kill anybody.
Good news awaited my return to The Golden Palm. My good and faithful friend, Colin Baynes, had phoned to say he had found me a caretaker manager. I interviewed the man that same evening at Baynes’s office overlooking the Rio Guadalmedina. His name was Fernando de Valasco Ruiz and he struck me as unambitious and colourless. On the credit side he wasn’t demanding an extortionate salary and had a commendation from his previous employer who had sold his restaurant to some property developers.
Baynes undertook – for a fee, naturally – to keep a watching brief, and this, coupled with my impatience to absent myself for a few days, clinched the deal. I just hoped Fernando’s fingers wouldn’t stray into the till too often. He would start the following morning, receive a day’s tuition in how to pull pints and balance the books, leaving me free to make an unscheduled trip to the Rock on Thursday morning.
* * * * *
‘Come on over, old top,’ Toby said when I phoned my decision to him. He was staying at the Miramar, 5-star luxury funded by the British taxpayer. ‘We’ll open a bottle of something to celebrate.’
‘Celebrate? Is that what I should be doing? A wake would be more appropriate. You celebrate, Toby. Mug recruited, mission accomplished. The PM is bound to make room for you in the end of term Honours List.’
He began to protest his purity of soul.
‘Forget it, amigo. I’m only pulling your leg. Say g’night to Sam for me.’
I hung up, wishing he’d stayed in England. Wishing I wasn’t so readily seduced. Yet, perversely, as excited as a kid contemplating a trip to the seaside.
Now why was that?
Chapter Six
Toby returned to London later in the day. I was to report to him the following week for more briefing and to sign the Official Secrets Act, though they had had my signature on that dusty scroll for years. In between times I was looking forward to my jaunt to Gibraltar. It was a private project, which, out of my innate distrust of people in the pay of the British Government, I did not disclose to Toby. First-hand knowledge of the Rock would be a card up my sleeve, to be produced if ever I needed to bolster my position.
My farewell shot to Fernando and Gustavo was designed to motivate them with the twin incentives of profit and loss: a bonus if they did well, the boot if they screwed up. They waved me off, insisting on jointly transferring my overnight bag to the trunk, and minutes later I was rolling along the highway, known otherwise as the autopista A7.
On a clear day the Rock of Gibraltar becomes visible about five kilometres north of Marbella, heaving up from the flat skyline where the shore joins the sea. Gibraltar, from Gebel Tarik – Tarik’s Hill – after Tarik-Ibn-Zeyad, commander of the Berber armies who landed there in 771AD. Bi-lingual Spanish-English. The last British garrison left in 1991 and th
e Royal Gibraltar Regiment was now the sole arbiter of keeping the Spanish out. No combat aircraft were stationed there on a permanent basis. What else had my Google trawl thrown up? As a British Overseas Territory it was still under the overlordship of a Military Governor – Sir Gilbert Dover was the newly-appointed incumbent. However, it had its own civilian rulers: the moderate Fabian Picardo and his Socialist Labour Party had seized power from the even more moderate Social Democrats in the 2011 election and held on to it in a subsequent election. The GSLP’s policies were uncontroversial, their stance on the whole pro-British. They could be relied on to back any moves to break up the GIBESTÁ outfit as a bunch of renegades. So sayeth Toby.
I left the autopista at San Roque, where it bears away westward to skirt the Bay of Algeciras, and headed into La Línea, the last outpost of Spain. From here the Rock appeared as if detached from the sterile foreground of undulating hills of scrub, haphazard electric pylons, and plumes of ochre-hued smoke marking the position of some chemicals plant in La Línea. A cloud crouched over the Rock itself, as it often does, according to my Google search. It was ragged-edged, in constant flux like smoke trailing from a steamship’s funnel. The summit, twelve hundred feet or so at its highest point, was lost in it. Now, too, across the Strait of Gibraltar, the rampart of the coast of Morocco, blurred by haze, joined the backdrop.
Finally the sea hove into sight. I turned left onto a road running alongside a shingle beach. It was early afternoon and at this southerly latitude the siesta is observed by many throughout the year. Consequently the traffic was light, and the frontier quiet. Spanish customs, notorious here for their delaying tactics, checked the trunk and waved me through. The British, ever respectful of upmarket wheels, gave my British passport a perfunctory flick-through. Anyone who drives an Aston with a personalised licence plate is respectable by association.
Just goes to show the power of appearances to deceive.
* * * * *
In Gibraltar’s Main Street I window-shopped, soaking up the ambience.
