Then, like a roadside miracle, I pass a stall selling drinks and fruit and swallow almost half a litre of water with unbroken, exhausted gulps. If my appearance or demeanour seems in any way unusual to the stallholder, she does not betray it. Taking my twenty-euro note, she merely frowns at the denomination, hands over a bundle of coins and sits back down on a low stool. I ask her to locate our position on a map and she points to a section of road between Epila and Rueda de Jalon, a two-hour drive south from the Basque border. They must have brought me over in convoy in the boot of a car, dumped me in the back seat of the Audi, closed off the garage and then headed back into Euskal Herria.
The road leads south to the NII autovia. If I turn right, I can be in Madrid by ten, but it’s a long drive and my body, despite the fuel of water, will not withstand the journey. I need to rest and clean up. I need to think. My knees are stiffening up on the pedals and a nerve pain, like a small electric shock, shoots infrequently through the back of my thigh. I require the anonymity of a big city, somewhere I can disappear and gather my thoughts and decide what the hell I’m going to do. I’m not ready yet to face Kitson or Sofia, to go to the police or to confront Zulaika. So I make the decision to drive east towards Zaragoza, booking into a four-star hotel in the centre of the city under my own name. Thank God I left the fake passports, the driving licences, all the stupid paraphernalia of my secret existence back in Madrid. Had the etarras discovered those, they would almost certainly have killed me.
The phones start to chime as soon as I have plugged them in. Message after message from Sofia, two from Kitson and Julian, a single text from Saul. Even Mum has called, and to listen to the gentle, oblivious cadence of her voice is to experience once again the miracle of my survival. I had expected Kitson to be worried, but he rang on Tuesday to cancel our meeting in Tetuan. That would explain why his manner is so unperturbed. His second message, left at midday on the 16th, merely confirms this, citing logistical difficulties in Porto’. Only Sofia sounds upset, her messages growing in intensity to a point where she shuts down in frustration, convinced that I am ignoring her calls in order to ‘spend time back in England with that girl’.
‘Just be honest with me, Alec,’ she says. ‘Just tell me if you want it all to be over.’
I draw a long, hot bath, drinking half a bottle of Scotch with too much Nurofen. The bruising around my stomach is very bad, and my knees, into which they slammed the metal pole, have almost locked up since the drive. There’s an intense yellow-black bruise at the top of my left shin, a stain that I can never imagine eradicating. I’ll need to see a doctor, to pay somebody privately to check me out and not ask too many awkward questions. There are also marks around my shoulders, more bruises on my back, even a clump of dried, sticky blood in my hair. When did that happen? I can book the appointment under a pseudonym and say that I got into a fight. Then I’ll need blood work and X-rays. I’ll need tests.
Just after nine I order a sandwich mixto from room service and make a series of calls on the hotel phone. Mum is out, so I leave a message on her answering machine telling her that I’m away on business and can be reached in my room. Saul is having dinner in a restaurant in London and it is difficult to hear what he is saying, but I feel a delirious homesickness just listening to his words, to the easy laughter of girls in the background. I worry that my voice is unstable and see that my fingers tremble on the bed when we are speaking. He says the divorce is going through with Heloise, but does not elaborate, and promises to come back to Madrid before long. Then I call Sofia.
‘Is it OK to talk?’
‘What do you mean?’ By her clipped, dismissive tone it is obvious that she is in a sour mood.
‘I mean is Julian around?’
‘He is out.’
‘Look, I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch. I can’t explain now. It’s not what you think.’
‘And what do I think, Alec?’
It sounds as though she has one eye on a television set or a magazine, just to irritate me. She knows I hate it when she doesn’t concentrate on what I’m saying. I want to scream the truth at her, to weep, to ask for her help. I feel so utterly fragmented and alone in the hotel room and wish she were beside me, to care for me and to listen. But it is useless.
‘I can imagine what you think. That I’ve been with another woman, that I’ve been in London or something. But it’s not that. I had business, OK? That’s all. Don’t be angry.’
‘I am not angry. I am glad you are all right.’
There is a long pause. She wants to bring the conversation to an end. I draw my knees up tight against my chest and find that I begin to shiver as I talk.
‘Sofia?’
She moves the receiver away from her mouth and takes a deep, stagey breath.
‘Yes?’
‘Can you meet me? When I get back to Madrid? In two days? Can we go to the Reina Victoria?’
‘On Monday? This is when you are coming back?’
There is mild criticism even in this simple question.
‘Yes.’
‘And that’s what I am to you now? Just hotels? You don’t telephone me for more than a week and now you want to fuck me? Is that it?’
‘You know that’s not true. Don’t do this. I’ve been through hell.’ My voice cracks here but she does not react.
‘What do you mean, you’ve been through hell? I have been through hell. I am sick of this, Alec, I am sick of it.’
‘I got into a fight.’
A tiny beat of shock. ‘What kind of a fight?’
It’s strange. All I want now is to win the argument, to make her ashamed of her churlishness.
‘I was beaten up. Here in Zaragoza. That’s why I wasn’t able to go south for Julian. He’s left messages wondering where I am. I was unconscious for a while.’
It is an awful lie, one of the worst I have ever told her, but necessary in that it works to bring her round. She is instantly distraught.
‘ Unconscious? You got into a fight? But you don’t fight, Alec. Where did this happen? Lo siento, como estas mi vida? ’
‘Here in Zaragoza. I was looking at some property. Saul is thinking of buying a place up here. I said I’d help him while he was back in England. Some men attacked me when I went to my car.’
‘Saul was with you?’
‘No. No. He was coming out from London later on. I just left the hospital today. Tell Julian, all right? I don’t want him to be angry.’
It feels bad to be doing this, but I don’t have any choice.
‘Alec,’ she says sweetly, touching my heart with her voice. I think of the barn, of that blackness under the hood, and squeeze my eyes tight to reply.
‘I’m all right now. It’s just some bruises. But I’m so angry, you know? I think if I saw those men again, I would kill them.’
‘I know, I know…’ She is crying.
‘I long to touch you,’ I tell her. ‘I miss you so much.’
‘Me too,’ she says. ‘I will book the hotel. We can talk about it then.’
‘Yes. But don’t cry, OK? Don’t be upset. I’m fine.’
‘I just feel so bad…’
There is a knock at the door. This startles me perhaps more than it might once have done, but it’s just room service. Saying goodbye to Sofia I stand up slowly off the bed, securing my dressing gown as I look through the fish-eye lens in the door. There’s a waitress on the other side, very pretty and alone. She seems struck by me when she walks in, a reaction that may be sexual, which may be shock. I cannot tell. She places a tray on the bed.
‘ Buenas tardes. Senor Milius.’
Out of nothing, a dream of sex pulses inside me. I would gladly lie down with this girl on my bed and sleep next to her for days. Anything just for the gentleness and peace of a woman’s touch. I hand her a five-euro tip and wish she wouldn’t leave.
‘Thank you, it was my pleasure,’ she says, and I am on the point of asking her to stay when my head suddenly splits with pain. She has gon
e, closing the door behind her, and I drop like a stone on the bed, wondering how many more pills, how much more water and whisky I will have to drink before this all goes away. I am angry as I look at my broken body, knowing that it was wrong to have arranged to meet Sofia so soon. The bruising on my legs and stomach will terrify her. I wish the girl had stayed. I wish I was not alone.
Like an invalid, I manage to eat only half of the sandwich before vomiting its contents into the toilet. Something is wrong with me, something more than just shock and exhaustion. It’s as if they poisoned me back at the farmhouse, as if they put something into my blood. I fall into a hopeless sleep, waking up wired and distraught at four in the morning. I leave the lights on in the room for comfort and get dressed slowly, taking a walk around the centre of Zaragoza for more than an hour. Then, back at the hotel, unable to sleep again, I check out at six, eat breakfast, and head back on the road to Madrid.
31. Plaza de Colon
Kitson is awake at seven when I call him from a petrol-station landline. He does not sound surprised to hear from me.
‘Been away, Alec?’
‘Something like that.’
I tell him that we need to get together as soon as I return to Madrid and suggest a two o’clock meeting under the waterfall at Plaza de Colon. He does not know the place, but I describe it to him in detail and ask him to come alone.
‘Sounds intriguing.’
The drive takes about seven hours. I have to rest repeatedly because my eyes ache with a persistent migraine. Painkillers have numbed my reflexes and I feel foggy with the consequences of what I am about to do. Back in the city, aware that ETA will now almost certainly know where I live, I drop the Audi in Plaza de Espana, take a quick shower at the flat and follow the counter-surveillance route around the barrio up to El Corte Ingles. It’s vital that I am not observed meeting Kitson, who will demand assurances that I have not been followed. There’s no visible tail at the bank on the corner of Martin de los Heros, and nobody follows me into the trap on the first floor at the post office. At Corte Ingles I use the switchback escalators and try on several items of clothing while checking for surveillance. Again, nothing. As a final safeguard, I limp downstairs into the metro at Arguelles, get onto Line 4 and step off at the last moment at Bilbao station, waiting for a second train in case I was followed onto the first. For three minutes I have the platform to myself, then a schoolgirl of thirteen or fourteen comes down the stairs with a friend. Both of them are clutching satchels. ETA have either lost me or decided not to plant a tail. If they have put a tracer in the car it will lead them only as far as the garage. If they have triangulation on the mobiles that will only pin-point my apartment.
Plaza de Colon is a vast square on the eastern side of the Castellana about a kilometre north of the Museo del Prado. A vast Spanish flag flies in the centre of the square beside a statue of Christopher Columbus. At its base, run-off from an elaborate fountain system forms a waterfall which pours down across the facade of a hidden, subterranean museum. The entrance to the museum can be reached only by walking beneath the waterfall via a set of stairs at either end. It is thus a natural environment for counter-surveillance, a long, narrow corridor with a wall of water on one side and a public building on the other, invisible to outsiders. Our meeting can proceed unmolested.
When I appear at the bottom of the southern staircase Kitson looks up but does not react. He is sitting towards the far end of the corridor on a low brick wall which runs beneath the waterfall. Water roars in a smooth, viscose arc behind his back, gathering in a shallow pool. Opposite his position is a map of Columbus’s journey to America sculpted in high relief on the museum wall. I consult it for some time before turning round to join him. When I sit down he offers me a pellet of chewing gum from a packet of Orbit menthol.
‘Do I need it?’
He laughs and apologizes for breaking last week’s engagement.
‘It didn’t matter. I couldn’t have come anyway.’
‘Now why was that?’
I take a deep breath. I have made a decision, against all my instincts for self-preservation, to tell Kitson the truth about what happened after Valdelcubo. It was a paralysing choice. To lie to him might have worked in the short term, but if he were to discover at a later date that I had been kidnapped and tortured by ETA, all trust between us would break down. That would mean the end of any future career with Five or Six, not to mention the personal cost of failing our intelligence services a second time. And I need Kitson for what I have to do; I need Kitson for revenge. Yet if I confess what happened, he will be concerned that I might have told my captors about his operation in Spain. Buscon’s name came up several times in the barn, where I was repeatedly accused of being a British spy. I am almost certain that I did not mention anything about Kitson or MI6, nor the consignment of arms Buscon procured for the Real IRA in Croatia. Had I done so, they would surely have killed me. I cannot be certain about this. I may have told them everything; there are patches of the torture that I simply do not remember, as if they wiped my memory clean with some mind-warping chemical.
‘I did what you asked me not to do.’
‘You went to Arenaza’s grave,’ he says quietly.
‘I’m afraid so.’
The water behind us is like the roar of an applause which never dies. It almost drowns out his words. In a calm voice, he says, ‘And what happened? Why are you limping, Alec?’
So I tell him. I sit there for half an hour and describe the horror of the farmhouse. By the end I am shaking with anger and shame and Kitson rests a hand on my shoulder to try to calm me. This may be the first time that we have made actual physical contact with one another. Not once does his face betray his true feelings; his eyes are as gentle and contemplative as a priest’s. He is shocked, of course, and expresses his sympathy, but the professional reaction remains obscure. I have the sense that Richard Kitson understands exactly what I have been through because he has been unfortunate enough to have encountered it in his career many times before.
‘And how do you feel now?’
‘Tired. Angry.’
‘Have you been to see a doctor?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Guardia Civil?’
‘Do you think I should?’
This gives him pause. He lights a Lucky Strike and hesitates over his answer.
‘You’re still a private citizen, Alec, so you should do what you feel is right. I would expect you to go to the police. The men – the woman – who did this to you will be waiting for you to go to the police. In fact it might look suspicious if you don’t. From a personal point of view, however, we would prefer it if you didn’t go public. The blowback problem, etcetera. Yet the choice is absolutely yours. I don’t want you to feel that we have any control over that decision.’
‘And if I don’t go? What then?’
I want him to reassure me that his offer of co-operation still stands. I don’t want what has happened to affect our professional relationship.
‘The Office can certainly find you somewhere secure to live in the short term. We can relocate you.’
‘That’s not going to be necessary. If ETA had wanted me dead, they would have killed me at the farm.’
‘Probably,’ he says, ‘but it’ll be safer, none the less.’
‘I’ll be careful. And what about my job?’
‘With me or with Endiom?’
I was not expecting that. I was thinking purely about Julian. It may be that Kitson sees no reason that the kidnapping should affect my links with SIS; indeed, he may assume that it will motivate me to pursue Buscon and ETA with an even greater intensity. He is right about that.
‘I was only thinking about Endiom. Why? Do you still think that I’ll be useful to you?’
‘Absolutely.’ He reacts as if the question were naive, tilting back his head and blowing smoke up into the air. ‘But I need to know more about the dirty war. I need to know exactly what was said. The parameters within which my
team are operating out here would be significantly widened by something like this. We need to get a full statement that I can telegram to London a.s.a.p. You’re going to have to try to remember everything that went on.’
To that end, we go immediately to the nearest decent hotel – the Serrano on Marques de Villamejor – booking a room using one of Kitson’s passports. He sets up a digital voice recorder which he produces from his jacket. I give him names and theories, chief among them that Luis Buscon has a long-term association with a high-level figure in the Interior Ministry named Javier de Francisco. Kitson takes extensive notes and drinks Fanta Limon from the mini-bar. From time to time he asks if I’m all right and I always say, ‘I’m fine.’
‘So what’s the long-term picture?’
‘If there’s another dirty war, if there are men in Aznar’s government who are covertly funding attacks on ETA, that’s catastrophic for Blair and Bush. How can you fight terror if it is the tactic of your allies to brandish terror themselves? Do you see? The whole relationship gets blown out of the water.’ These are the first heartening moments that I have known for days. It gives me a feeling of satisfaction that I should be able to articulate a view on the plot against ETA which will be listened to at Vauxhall Cross and perhaps even passed on to Downing Street and Washington. ‘The British and the Americans are either going to have to stop the conspiracy using covert means, or abandon Aznar as an ally. Now I don’t know how they do that.’ Kitson exhales heavily. ‘The biggest problem, as far as I’m concerned, is Patxo Zulaika.’ My knees start to ache as I say this and I rub them, a movement which catches his eye. ‘He’s a fervent Basque nationalist, he understands this dirty war as a hard fact. Before long he’s going to have enough evidence to publish the whole story in Ahotsa and then the dam is going to burst.’
The Spanish Game am-3 Page 24
