It is indeed obvious that the teenager is eager and suggestible, to the point of caricature: the tilted head, the careful gestures, the respect and deference of his gaze. Blond threads of adolescent beard coat the sides of his face and his forehead is pock-marked by acne. Here is a person at the dawn of adult life engaged in a search for meaning, a young man of undecided character pounced upon by opportunists. Just as I was when Hawkes and Lithiby sucked me into the secrecy of Five and Six back in 1995. It is the first rule of recruitment: get them before the cynicism sets in. Get them while they’re young.
‘So your colleague is recruiting for E-T-A?’ I ask.
‘Who knows?’ Arenaza shrugs and drinks his whiskey and of course there will be no certain answer. I steal a second glance at the man and suppress an urge to confront him. Is there anything more dangerous than the ideologue, the fanatic with his bitterness and his cause? I feel a profound and urgent desire to protect this young man from his innocence, from all the pain and anguish that will visit him in his future.
‘Personally I have lost all belief,’ Arenaza says, interrupting this thought. ‘My colleague – his name is Juan – certainly believes that E-T-A will triumph. But I know now that armed struggle is wrong.’
‘But you said it could work. You said bombs will bring politicians to the table.’
‘To the table, yes. After that, everything is consensus. Just look at what has happened in Ireland. So what were we fighting for? It was as pointless as putting on sunglasses in the dark.’
Even if Arenaza is spinning a line, I would like to hear how this plays out. ‘What happened to you?’ I ask.
He repeats my question, possibly for melodramatic effect, and sinks the whiskey in a single gulp.
‘Two things happened. The first is that they set off a car bomb in Santa Pola, a bomb that killed a six-year-old girl. She was playing with toys in her bedroom. You were probably in Madrid when it happened. You probably took part in the manifestations which followed.’ ‘Manifestations’ is a mistranslation of the Spanish word for ‘protest’. ‘The E-T-A did not think to find out if the young girl was there. She was just a child, innocent of politics, of frontiers. And the day after the bombing I was very shaken, it surprised me to feel this way. I could not work, I could not sleep. For the first time I could not even talk to my wife or to my colleagues. It was as if all of my doubts about the direction of my life had been brought together by this single incident. They had printed the girl’s photograph in the newspaper. She looked like my own daughter, almost a copy. The same eyes, the same hair, the same clothes. And I thought, “This is madness, this cannot go on.” And to make it worse, a few hours after the bombing I was forced to issue a statement on behalf of the party, saying that we would be happy to “analyse” the situation. Not condemning the accidental murder of an innocent child, but “analysis”. A nothing word, a word that Rumsfeld might use, even the fucking tax inspector Aznar. The prime minister called us “human trash”, and for once he was right. Then, one week later, another bomb, and I thought, “Now the ban will go through,” and of course it did. The electricity was ordered to be shut off. No water came to any of the Batasuna offices across the whole of Euskal Herria. And in private I criticized the leadership, I told them they could not see what was going on, although of course nobody knew the extent of my dissatisfaction. Then I marched through the streets of the city with everyone else in protest against what the government was doing, because it was undemocratic, because it was stupid of the judge, Garzon, but the situation was hopeless. My heart had gone.’
Across the room, Juan emits a tight, rasping cough, like a dog with something caught in its throat. I hope he chokes. Arenaza leans on the shelf and lights another cigarette. There are dried balls of chewing gum, like little pieces of brain, lying at the bottom of his ashtray.
‘But the killing hasn’t stopped,’ I tell him. ‘Two weeks ago a police chief was shot dead…’
‘Yes, in Andoain. Eating his breakfast in a bar.’ Mikel’s face almost collapses with the pointlessness of it all. If this is an act, it is Oscar-winning. He is now in the throes of a full confession. ‘So I wanted to get out of it anyway. The ban came at the right time.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
He laughs half-heartedly. ‘Well, we confide in strangers, don’t we? I am drunk. I am not careful.’ He leans towards me. ‘This is not the sort of thing that I can tell my friends, Alec. A man does not leave the party. There are those who would take revenge.’
‘You mean E-T-A?’
‘Of course I mean E-T-A.’ He tries to drink more whiskey, forgetting that it is finished. ‘There is a younger leadership now, more brutal. And then there is the fear that we all lived with, of reprisals from the families of the victims. We were the spokesmen of the armed struggle, we appear on television, and that always made us a target for revenge.’
‘And now you’re caught in the middle?’
Upon reflection, very quietly, Arenaza agrees. ‘Yes, in the middle.’ U2 pounds on the stereo – A Sort of Homecoming from The Unforgettable Fire – while he stares despondently at the ground. When he stoops, the muscles in his shoulders swell and stretch the fabric of his sweater.
‘And the second thing?’
‘What?’
‘You said two things happened. The bomb and something else.’
‘Oh.’ His head rears up, as if regaled by memory, and for a moment all of the pain and the doubt and the sadness seems to leave him. He looks suddenly happy. ‘The second thing that happened was that I fall in love.’
‘With your wife?’
It is a stupid question and Arenaza laughs in a way that opens up his face, gives it light. ‘No, not with my wife. Not my wife. With Senorita Rosalia Dieste. A young woman. From Madrid, in fact. We meet two months ago, at a conference on new energies here in Donostia, at the Hotel Amara Plaza. She is an industrial engineer, very beautiful. Ever since – how can I say? – we enjoy ourselves.’
He is grinning manically. The ladies’ man.
‘She’s your mistress?’
‘My mistress,’ he says proudly, as if the description pleases him. I feel like giving him advice on not getting caught. Get an email account that your wife knows nothing about. Keep any presents that she gives you in a drawer at work. If you go to her house, leave the loo seat down after using the bathroom.
‘So you’ve been to see her? She comes up here and you try to get away from your wife?’
‘It is not this easy. She also has a man she lives with. A boyfriend. But next week I am coming to Madrid to be with her. On Thursday. So we spend the weekend together at my hotel.’ As an afterthought, he adds, ‘Maybe we should meet for an evening, no? You show me around Madrid, Alec?’
Is this part of the grand plan? Is this what Julian wants?
‘With Julian and Sofia?’
‘Sure. But the two of us as well. Rosalia has to go home at night so I have a lot of time in my hands. We go to Huertas, we go to La Latina. I know a wonderful Basque restaurant in Madrid, the best cooking in the city. Two men with no cares in the world. I would like to leave all of my problems behind. I have no responsibilities for five days. And we find you a girl, Alec. You have a girl?’
His hand slaps onto my biceps as I reply, ‘Nothing regular,’ and shake my head. ‘Julian doesn’t know anything about this?’
‘Julian?’
The idea seemed to take him by surprise.
‘Julian. Julian Church.’
‘I know who you mean. No, he must know nothing. Nobody knows anything, and you must speak to nobody about it.’ He starts grinning again, wagging his finger. ‘Can you imagine telling Julian this, anything that I have told you? He would not understand. He would be English about it and wave his hands in the air, trying to make it all go away. They do not understand sex or politics in your country. You do, Alec, I can see that. Maybe it is because of your family’s history, the suffering in Ireland and the Baltics.’
&nbs
p; ‘What? That helps me to understand sex?’
He laughs. ‘Of course, of course. But I tell you this. I once shared a room with Julian and he was asleep as soon as he turned out the light. No dialogue in his brain, no conscience or worry. Just a flick of the switch and – Boom!’ – Arenaza chops his hand through the air – ‘Julian Church snores. Can you imagine such a person? So peaceful. No struggle in his soul.’
Why were Julian and Mikel sharing a room?
‘That does sound like him, yes. Yes it does.’
‘But of course it was not always this way. Like all of us, he has also had troubles in his relations.’
‘Yes.’
He obviously thinks that I know Julian far better than I do.
‘For example when he was living in Colombia.’
‘Colombia.’
‘All the problems with his wife.’
‘Oh yes.’
Sofia has never mentioned anything about living in Colombia. Arenaza looks at me doubtfully, but he’s too drunk to make the connection.
‘You know about his time in South America? You know about Nicole?’
‘Of course.’ I have never heard Julian speak of any woman of that name, nor of any time spent in South America. It certainly didn’t come up when I ran checks on him three years ago. ‘He told me over lunch one day. It must have been difficult for him.’
‘Of course, of course. Your wife runs off with your best friend, this is more than “difficult”. I think it nearly killed him.’
I am grateful for the low light and the din of the taverna, because they help to smother my reaction. Julian had a wife before Sofia?
‘You obviously know him a lot better than I do,’ I respond. ‘You and Julian have a history. I don’t think he would reveal something as personal as that to an employee, no matter how close we are. It’s very private.’
I try to work out the implications. Has Arenaza spoken out of turn? I need to put the pieces together without appearing ignorant of the facts. Yet I cannot even work out whether Sofia knows the truth about her husband’s past. Is she an innocent party in this, or has she been playing me all this time?
‘Another whiskey?’ I ask, assuming that alcohol will help to lower Arenaza’s defences.
‘Sure.’
And the brief respite at the bar allows me time to conceive a strategy, a question designed to discover what Julian was doing in Colombia.
‘I forget,’ I ask, returning with two tumblers of Jameson’s. What was Julian’s job title out in South America?’
‘In Bogota? His job title?’ He looks perplexed. ‘I think he was just teaching English. That was the whole problem.’
‘The whole problem.’
‘Well, Nicole is the reason they are there, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘I mean, she works at the embassy all day and Julian has nothing to do but teach English to businessmen and students…’
I experience a thump of shock, a tightening through the upper part of my body. ‘The embassy,’ I manage to say.
‘That’s right.’
‘Yes. For some reason I thought Julian was connected to that.’
But which embassy? US or UK?
‘Are you all right, Alec? You look worried.’
‘I’m fine. Why?’
‘You sure?’
‘It must be the drink. We’ve had quite a bit.’
He shrugs. ‘Yes I think so.’
‘So where did they meet?’
‘Julian and Nicole?’
‘Yes.’
He is starting to look uninterested. ‘In the United States. Julian was working for a bank in Washington and they meet through work.’ Does that make Nicole a Yank? ‘But he gives it all up for love. Follows his new wife to Colombia where she falls for this other man. Why?’
‘Well, maybe that’s why Julian prefers marrying foreign girls,’ I suggest, adopting an ambiguity in the hope of discovering Nicole’s nationality. Arenaza duly obliges.
‘Sure. But I don’t think he will marry any more Americans, no? I think one is enough for a lifetime.’
Maybe it’s all coincidence, but at the very least Julian’s wife worked for the State Department. Yet in what capacity? The fact that neither Sofia nor Julian has ever mentioned her would surely suggest a connection with the Pentagon or the CIA – and that means a link to Katharine and Fortner. But why would Julian put me in touch with someone who had access to that information? Is it because he knows that I will not be able to prevent myself from investigating?
‘I’d forgotten all this,’ I tell him. ‘I’d always assumed that Julian had been with Sofia for longer. I guess that explains why they don’t have any children.’
‘I suppose.’ He is starting to look tired, glancing at his watch. I try to keep the conversation going, but his answers about Julian’s past are either evasive or ill-informed. Only when questioned directly about Nicole’s adultery does he become animated.
‘Look, the infidelity is not so rare, yes? We are all guilty of it. I was like Nicole. I get married very young and we make mistakes. Both of us.’
But this is surely self-serving, words designed to lessen his feelings of guilt over Rosalia. Within moments, Arenaza is looking at his watch again, finishing his whiskey and announcing that he has to leave. I invite him to stay for one more drink, but his mind is made up and he is determined to head for home.
‘It was my wife I was speaking to before,’ he explains. ‘She likes me to be home by midnight. The women, they keep their claws in us, no? But I give you my card, Alec. We call each other when I come to Madrid.’
And that’s it. Any further information will have to wait for a week, when I can ply Arenaza with drink over dinner and tour him around the bars of Madrid. At the edge of the Parte Vieja he waves me off, sinking into the back seat of a cab, and half an hour later I am back in the hotel running through three years of encounters with Sofia and Julian, trying to piece them all together. There’s a bad American movie on TV and I have five miniatures of Scotch for company, but nothing makes any sense. In the end, I get into bed, resign myself to a night without sleep and switch off the light.
11. California Dreaming
I check out of the hotel at seven the following morning and leave San Sebastian in darkness, heading south to Madrid on roads blurred by fog. Stopping for breakfast in a motorway cafe north of Vitoria, I send Arenaza a text message thanking him for the meeting and we arrange to have dinner on Saturday week in Madrid. That should give him a couple of days of unbridled passion with Rosalia, after which he might feel like opening up. Then Saul calls when I am an hour south of Burgos, sounding oddly nervous about my return. On the basis that he is probably hiding something, I tell him that it will be at least three o’clock by the time I make it back. This is a lie. Given decent traffic, I should be home by midday.
I park the Audi in its reserved space below Plaza de Espana, remove the bag of money from the boot and carry my luggage the short distance up Calle de La Princesa to the apartment. A woman’s voice, American with a Hispanic lilt, is audible as soon as I step out of the lift.
‘You’re serious?’ she says, rising on the question with Californian surprise. ‘People pay that much money for an apartment in London?’ It is not possible to hear any answer.
I press my ear to the door but there is now no sound. Three or four seconds pass and all talking has stopped. Have they realized I am outside? I turn the key in the lock and expect – what? A team of American operatives planting bugs in light fittings? Instead I am confronted by a sight both strange and wonderful: a stunning black girl walking out of the spare bedroom wearing nothing but a pair of bright yellow knickers. She stops dead in her tracks when she sees me.
‘Who are you?’
Saul comes rushing out of the bedroom, wrapped in a crumpled sheet.
‘Alec!’
‘Hello, mate.’
I ought to be angry, but it’s a bedroom farce.
‘You said y
ou weren’t coming back until three. What happened?’
‘I wasn’t hungry. Didn’t stop for lunch. Been having fun?’
The girl has disappeared.
‘Almost, almost,’ he says, a considered response given the circumstances. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
He’s worried that I’ll think she’s a spook. Nothing could be further from my mind, but I’ll play along just to give him a fright.
‘Who is she?’
‘Just a girl I met last night.’ He struggles to remember her name, frowning with frustration. ‘Sasha? Sammy? Siri? Something like that. She’s cool, man.’
‘Really? You sure?’
Saul shakes his head.
‘Don’t go paranoid on me.’
‘Who said anything about going paranoid?’
We have drifted out of earshot of the spare bedroom, moving towards the kitchen.
‘Look, she’s not here to steal stuff. She’s not here to plant bugs. I went up to her in a club. We came back and watched a DVD.’
‘Yeah? Which one?’
‘Ronin.’
‘Sounds exciting. Glad to see you haven’t lost your touch with the ladies.’
Saul rubs his eyes. There’s a twist of amusement in his face. ‘Look, she’s an art student from Columbia. Studying Cubism.’
‘Analytic or synthetic?’
And now he’s on to me. ‘Oh fuck off.’
I turn away, grinning, and walk back towards my bedroom. ‘See to your guest. Make her feel at home,’ I tell him. If anything, I am relieved by what Saul has done; it helps to balance out my own moral failings. Does adultery still count if your estranged wife is sleeping with another man? ‘Would she like some coffee? A daily newspaper? A glass of freshly squeezed orange juice?’
‘I’m going to get dressed,’ he replies.
Yet once Saul has disappeared back into the bedroom I experience a strange mixture of contradictory emotions: mild panic, assuaged by his insistence that the girl is just a student; relief that he will no longer occupy the moral high ground when it comes to criticizing my own behaviour; and jealousy, if only because the sounds of giggling coming from the spare bedroom would be enough to make any man feel lonely.
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