45. Endgame
Two innocent women.
Two.
I am on a third glass of Bushmills in a bar in Chueca when this phrase begins to repeat. I can’t shake it. It feels like the clue to the game, the counterplay.
Two innocent women.
The Americans don’t know about Carmen. The Yanks stopped looking. The subtlety of ETA’s plan defeated them. As we all did, they chose only to see what was in front of them. The CIA have no idea that the dirty war wasn’t real.
The barman must see the light of hope in my eyes because he smiles at me, drying glasses with a white cloth. Half an hour ago he poured a whiskey for this dejected, sad-sack foreigner and now things are looking up.
‘You OK?’ he asks in English, and I even manage a smile.
‘I think I might be,’ I tell him. ‘I think I might be.’
It isn’t clear if he has understood. Another customer has come into the bar and he has to serve him. I buy a packet of cigarettes – Lucky Strike, in honour of the brilliant, deceiving Kitson – and light one as the hope of an unlikely redemption glows in my heart. For a British intelligence officer to have uncovered a network of Basque spies in the Spanish government represents a major coup for SIS. Madrid would owe London for years. At the same time, the CIA’s apparent triumph would be rendered meaningless.
So I still have a move, an opportunity to recover. I still have a chance for mate.
The British embassy is on Calle de Fernando el Santo, about half a mile north of Bocaito. It would take longer in late-night traffic to hail a cab, so I walk through Chueca and arrive outside the entrance within thirty minutes, checking my tail for watchers and dumping any possible surveillance using two bars on Alonso Martinez. There’s a small red buzzer beside a metal door and I push it. Seconds later a uniformed guard emerges from a Portakabin inside the gates, walking down a short flight of steps to address me. He is tall and well built, speaking through the bottle-green bars.
‘ Si?’
‘I am a British citizen. I need to speak to a senior member of the embassy staff as a matter of urgency.’
He juts out his thick lips and chin. He doesn’t understand English. I repeat my request in Spanish and he shakes his head.
‘The embassy is closed until tomorrow’ He has a low, flat voice and this is his moment of power. ‘Come back at nine.’
‘You don’t understand. It is a matter of great importance. I haven’t had my passport stolen, I’m not looking for a visa. I am talking about something far more serious. Now you need to go into your cabin and contact the ambassador or first secretary.’
The guard, perhaps unconsciously, touches the sidearm attached to his belt. An elderly couple walk behind me on the street and I see a light switching off about fifty metres away inside the building.
As I told you, we are closed for the night. You will have to come back in the morning. Otherwise, read the sign.’
He indicates a board above my head listing a telephone number to call in the event of an emergency. Perhaps it’s the whiskey, perhaps it’s the anger engendered by Kitson’s betrayal, but I lose my temper now. I start shouting at the guard, demanding that he let me in. There is a bouncer’s contempt in his manner and the strong physical grace of a trained, bored soldier. He looks primed to strike.
‘I advise you to go home and sleep,’ he says, doubtless catching the smell of alcohol on my breath. ‘If you remain here I will call the police. You have been warned now.’
Then, a miracle. A moat of light as a door opens in the concrete building behind him. A young diplomat, no older than twenty-eight or twenty-nine, emerges into the forecourt. He seems to sense the commotion at the gate and looks up, meeting my gaze. He has brown, uncombed hair, intelligent eyes and a way of moving that’s so relaxed it’s as if his whole body is chewing gum. He comes towards us. Dark suit trousers, brogues, a long, antique British overcoat.
‘ Algun problema, Vicente?’
‘ Si, senor.’
‘There’s no problem,’ I interrupt, and he looks almost startled to hear the language of the old country. ‘I apologize. I’ve been standing out here shouting because I have something of great importance to tell the ambassador. I’m not a madman, I am not a fake. But you need to take me very seriously. You need to let me in.’
Very cool, very reserved, the diplomat conducts a rapid up-and-down analysis of my appearance. Shoes to face. Lunatic or messiah?
‘Can it not wait until the morning?’ he says. ‘I’m the last to leave.’
‘No, it can’t wait. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s about the government here, the financial scandal.’ The guard takes a step back, letting the diplomat get closer. ‘My name is Alec Milius. I am a British citizen. I am a former support agent of the Secret Intelligence Service and I have lived here for a number of years. I can’t tell you anything more than that without breaking the Official Secrets Act. But I need to speak to a senior member of the embassy staff as a matter of urgency.’
‘Do you have any form of identification?’
With that simple question I know that he is taking me seriously. I reach into my jacket pocket and take out the Paris-issued Lithuanian passport. It’s not ideal, but it will do. The diplomat pulls it through the bars as the guard scuffs his feet.
‘This is a Lithuanian passport. It says here that you were born in Vilnius.’
‘That part of it is fake,’ I tell him, and it looks as though this seemingly crazy revelation serves only to cement his belief in my authenticity. ‘I haven’t been to the United Kingdom since 1997. My situation is complicated. I have information for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office which will be of immense importance to -’
He interrupts. ‘You’d better come inside.’
I feel a great surge of affection, of victory. The diplomat turns to the guard and instructs him to buzz the metal door on the right of the fence. I walk towards it and step onto British soil for the first time in seven years.
‘And you said your name is Alec Milius?’ he says, offering me a hand to shake.
‘Alec Milius, yes.’
It is a sort of homecoming.
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The Spanish Game am-3 Page 34
