‘Yes I do.’ The accent takes me by surprise. British public school with the privilege stripped out of it. BBC. Foreign Office.
‘I think this is your car. I think you blocked me in.’ We are facing one another on the pavement just a few feet apart, and something about the man’s level gaze and apparent lack of concern for my predicament serves only to deepen my sense of anger.
‘What seems to be the problem?’ he says. The question is just this side of sarcastic.
‘The problem is that you blocked me in. The problem is that you prevented me from doing my job.’
‘ Your job?’
He says the word with a slight edge of ridicule, as if he knows that it’s a lie.
‘That’s right. My job. So do you want to move? Can you get your car the fuck out of my way? What you did was illegal and stupid and I need to get going.’
‘Why don’t you calm down, Alec?’
He might as well have dropped a low punch into my stomach. I feel winded. I look into the man’s face for some distant trigger of recognition – Was he a student at LSE? Did we go to school together? – but I have never seen this person before in my life.
‘How do you know that? How do you know who I am?’
‘I know a lot of things about you. I know about JUSTIFY, I know about Abnex. I know about Fortner, I know about Katharine. What I don’t know is what the hell Alec Milius is doing in Madrid. So why don’t we hop in the back of my car, go for a little drive, and you can tell me all about it.’
25. Our Man in Madrid
‘Before I get into anybody’s car, I want to know who the hell I’m talking to.’
‘Let’s just say that you’re talking to a Friend,’ he says, employing a standard SIS euphemism. A woman walks past us and looks at me with a twist of worry in her face. ‘Better if you keep your voice down, no? Now let’s get in the car and head off.’
Once inside he frisks me – shins, calves, back of the waist – and seems to take a perverse pleasure in asking me to fasten my seatbelt. I try to summon a suitably hostile look to meet this request, but the heat of sweat and panic I can feel in my face has stripped me of any authority. I drag the seatbelt down and clunk it into place.
‘My name is Richard Kitson.’ On closer inspection he looks closer to forty than thirty, with a face that I would struggle to describe: neither ugly nor good-looking, neither smart nor stupid. A vanishing Englishman. ‘Why don’t we head up to the M30 and drive around in circles while you tell me what’s on your mind?’
For the first couple of minutes I say nothing. Occasionally Kitson’s eyes will slide towards mine, a sudden glance in traffic, a more steady gaze at lights. I try to stare back, to meet these looks man to man, but the shock of what has happened appears to have robbed me of even the most basic defensive reflexes. After six years on the run, it has finally come to this. I am shaking. But why was Sellini involved? What did he have to do with it?
‘What’s your interest in Abel Sellini?’ Kitson asks, as if reading my mind. ‘You buying drugs, Alec? Acquiring some weapons?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You don’t know who he is?’
‘I know that he probably killed a friend of mine.’
‘Well, you see, that’s exactly the sort of thing you and I need to talk about.’
‘You first. What are you doing here? How do you know who I am? How do you know about JUSTIFY?’
‘One thing at a time, one thing at a time.’ A black BMW overtakes us on the blind side, gliding past my window. Kitson mutters, ‘Bloody Spanish drivers.’
‘O?. One: how do you know my name?’
‘Took a photo. Pinged it back to London. You were recognized by a colleague.’
Jesus. So I was right about the surveillance. In a simultaneous instant of horrifying clarity I recall exactly where I saw the man in the pin-striped suit who got into the cab. At the Prado. With Sofia. Lead on, Macduff.
‘How long have you been following me?’
‘Since Friday last week.’
The night I tailed Rosalia to the Irish Rover.
‘And this colleague who recognized me, what was his name?’
If Kitson doesn’t come up with something I recognize, I can assume he’s an impostor.
‘Christopher Sinclair. Chris to his friends. Happened to be passing a desk in Legoland when your JPEG popped up. Nearly dropped his cappuccino. Sends his regards, by the way. Sounded very fond of you.’
Sinclair was Lithiby’s stooge. The one who drove me to the final meeting at the safe house in London on the night they killed Kate. Said that he admired me. Said that he thought I was going to be all right.
‘So you’ve read my file? That’s how you know about JUSTIFY?’
‘Of course. Ran your name through the CCI and got War and Peace. Well, Crime and Punishment, anyway.’ Kitson seems to have a supercilious sense of humour, as if he would be incapable of taking anyone, or anything, too seriously. ‘Quite a story, hadn’t heard it before. You had them in knots for a while, Alec, and then you did the runner. Nobody knew where the hell you’d gone. There were rumours of Paris, rumours of Petersburg and Milan. Nobody pinned you to Madrid until last Tuesday.’
I do not know whether to be offended that Kitson had never heard of me or delighted that six years of anti- surveillance has paid off. I am generally too shaken and confused. ‘And that’s why you’re here? To bring me in?’
Kitson frowns and glances in the rear-view mirror.
‘What?’
‘I said, is that why you’re here? To bring me in?’
‘Bring you in?’ He takes the first exit onto the M30, heading clockwise towards Valencia, looking at the road ahead as if I am delusional. ‘Alec, that was all a long, long time ago. Water under the bridge. You haven’t made any waves, you haven’t been a problem. You kept your end of the bargain, we kept ours.’
‘You mean you had Kate Allardyce murdered?’
There is a moment of silence as he weighs up his options. He must know about Kate, unless they covered it up. It occurs to me that our conversation is almost certainly being recorded.
‘You were wrong about that,’ he says finally. His voice is very quiet, very firm. ‘Quite wrong. John Lithiby wanted me to make it clear. What happened to your girlfriend was an accident, end of story. The driver was drunk. The Office, the Cousins, neither one of us had anything to do with it.’
‘Total bullshit.’ I stare outside as an endless sequence of concrete apartment blocks, road bridges and trees flick past. Someone has hung a banner over the motorway scrawled with the black slogan ‘ETA – Non!’. ‘You don’t know the full story. They don’t want you to know the full story. The Yanks had her killed and Elworthy was told to cover it up.’
‘Peter Elworthy is dead.’
‘ Dead? How?’
‘Liver cancer. Two years ago.’
I have been away so long.
‘Then ask Chris Sinclair. He knows what really went on.’
‘I don’t need to. I have the proof.’ Kitson’s response here is quick and well rehearsed. He moves into a slower lane of traffic as if to emphasize the seriousness of what he is about to tell me. ‘When we have the opportunity I can show you the accident report. There were people at the party who urged Kate not to get into the car. Her friend – William, was it? – had done a lot of Colombian marching powder and drunk his way through the best part of two bottles of wine. He was a 23-year-old idiot, pure and simple, and he got the girl killed.’
‘Don’t talk about Kate like that, OK? Don’t even begin. If there was alcohol or drugs in Will’s bloodstream, they were put there by the CIA. It was a standard cover-up operation to protect the special fucking relationship. They tampered with the brakes and a car drove Kate and Will off the road. End of story.’
Kitson remains silent for a long time. He knows that what he has said has both angered and upset me. He
