‘That’s certainly what I was hinting at.’
‘And she believed you?’
‘Yes.’
At this point a phone rings in Kitson’s pocket. He checks the read-out and frowns.
‘I have to take this,’ he says, and leaves the room in order to do so. Ellie comes in after a minute, ostensibly to offer me more tea, although I suspect that she has been asked by Kitson to make sure that I don’t snoop around. There’s a framed photograph next to the bed, shot in middle-class black-and-white, a sharp-eyed woman whom I take to be Kitson’s wife holding two small children. This must be where he sleeps. The shirt he wore to our last meeting at Colon has been dry-cleaned and is hanging near the window and there’s a carton of Lucky Strike lying on the floor. I’m rubbing the bruise on my knee when he returns to the room and asks me to come back in the morning.
‘Something’s come up. I’m sorry, Alec. A lead on de Francisco. We’ll have to finish this thing tomorrow.’
But it’s another seventy-two hours before we are able to meet again. I go back to the safe house the next day, only to be told that Kitson has been ‘unavoidably detained’ in Lisbon. Geoff and Michelle are the only members of the team at home and we share a genial cup of instant coffee at the kitchen table while I recommend bars in La Latina and an Indian restaurant where they can get a half-decent chicken dhansak.
‘Thank God for that,’ Geoff says. ‘Christ I miss a good curry.’
That night, doubtless while the two of them are flirting over sag aloo at the Taj Mahal, I join Julian in an Irish pub near Cibeles, at his invitation, to watch a football match between Real Madrid and Manchester United. United lose and I find that I am pleased for Real, consoling Julian with an expensive shellfish dinner at the Cerveceria Santa Barbara in Alonso Martinez. Otherwise the time passes slowly. I try to rest as much as possible, to go to the cinema and relax, but my sleep is corrupted by nightmares of capture, vivid small-hour screenings of torture and abuse. A private doctor in Barrio Salamanca prescribes me some sleeping pills and I have blood work done for peace of mind, the results of which come through as clean. It’s noticeable over this period that Zulaika has not published anything in Ahotsa about the dirty war and I wonder if SIS have silenced him, with either threats or a bribe. Nor is there news about Egileor, or any fresh developments in the killing of Txema Otamendi.
Finally Kitson calls and pulls me in at lunchtime on the 25th. We go immediately to his bedroom and it is just as if nothing has changed in three days. He is wearing the same clothes, sitting in the same chair, perhaps even smoking the same cigarette.
‘I’ve been doing some thinking,’ he says. ‘You’re not going to like it.’
I see that his expression is very serious. This is the thing I have dreaded. He has brought me here to cut me out. SIS has reflected on events and decided that I have made too many mistakes.
‘Go on.’
‘I think it would be best if you stopped seeing Sofia. Monday night was your last night together. OK? You work for us now. No more off-piste activities. It’s just too dangerous.’
I agree immediately. If that’s all he wants, if that’s all it takes to win this thing, I’ll do it.
‘It also makes sense in the light of what I’m about to discuss with you, but we need Anthony in here before I can do that.’
Right on cue there’s a knock at the door. Kitson says, ‘Yes,’ and Macduff enters the room. I had no idea he was even in the flat. When I came in, Geoff and Michelle were on their own in the sitting room eating bowls of cereal and watching Friends on DVD. How did Macduff know to come in at exactly that moment? Was he listening from another room?
‘That’s odd,’ Kitson tells him, voicing my own doubt. ‘I was just coming to get you. Been eavesdropping, Anthony?’
‘No, sir.’
He sits on the bed. He is slimmer than I thought, about five feet ten. Strange to hear a man in his late forties refer to Kitson as ‘sir’. What are perceived as his weaknesses that he should have been overlooked for promotion?
‘Have you seen the news?’
It takes me a beat to realize that Kitson is talking to me. ‘No,’ I reply, and he leans over and switches on the television. Macduff mutes the sound with a remote control which he has picked up off the floor. A gameshow is ending on Telemadrid.
‘Two bars in the Basque country were shot up at dawn today,’ he says, ‘one in Bayonne, the other in Hendaye. On the French side.’
I can feel Macduff’s eyes studying me as he waits for my reply. In the absence of a specialist, am I regarded as the resident expert on ETA and the GAL? He wants to know how good I am, how quickly I can analyse and react to this new development. For the first time I feel a sense of pressure from one of Kitson’s team and realize that I have something to prove.
‘Bars used by ETA?’
‘That’s what they’re saying,’ Kitson replies.
The link is obvious. ‘Then it’s a new front in the dirty war. The GAL regularly shot up bars and restaurants on the French side in the 1980s, targeting terrorist exiles. They’re employing the same tactics. Anybody hurt?’
‘Nobody. It was pre-breakfast.’ Kitson has one eye on the television, waiting for the evening news. ‘An old man drinking coffee got a shard of glass in his hand, the barman in Hendaye felt a bullet buzz past his head.’
‘Sounds nasty. Who speaks Spanish?’
Neither of them understands my question.
‘I mean, where are you getting your information? Who speaks Spanish well enough to understand the news?’
‘Geoff,’ Macduff replies. They both look a little sheepish, as if it’s embarrassing that the two most experienced members of an SIS task force in Spain are not fluent in the local language. ‘A Basque journalist went on TV claiming that one of the cars involved in the shooting had Madrid number plates.’
‘Did you get his name?’
Kitson has to flick through the pad. He has trouble reading his own handwriting. ‘Larzabal,’ he says finally. ‘Eugenio Larzabal.’
‘And you say he was a Basque journalist?’
‘For Gara, yes.’
I say that I have never heard of him and take the name down in some notes of my own, trying to look professional. ‘What about Zulaika?’
‘What about him?’ Kitson asks.
‘Have you been following him? Do you know if he plans to go into print with the dirty-war story?’
‘Zulaika is going to keep his mouth shut for a week or two. That’s been arranged.’ So they did get to him. ‘But he’s not the only journalist in Euskal Herria. A kidnapping, a murder, a car with Madrid plates. It all starts to add up. Somebody somewhere is going to make the same sort of links. And once that happens, we’ll be playing catch- up.’
‘You mean you’ll have to tell the Spanish authorities what you know?’
‘I mean they’ll probably already know as much as we do.’
I try to gauge the operation from a political perspective. How does SIS gain from failing to report the existence of the new GAL to the Aznar government right away? Perhaps Kitson’s superiors care nothing for the legitimacy of the Spanish state, only for the terrorist networks that can be traced by pursuing Buscon. The dirty war is a sideshow in which I am a bit-part player. But then Kitson says something to challenge that assertion.
‘Over the past few days we’ve been looking into Javier de Francisco’s background, trying to get a fix on his motives. Anthony’s come up with a plan.’
This is Macduff’s cue. He’s more deferential in front of Kitson, less self-assured than he was on Tuesday with the others. Sitting up straighter on the bed, he gets the nod from his boss and embarks on a well-rehearsed monologue.
‘As you know, Alec, Mr de Francisco is the secretary of state for security here in Spain, to all intents and purposes the number two at the Interior Ministry under his old friend Felix Maldonado. Now if what you were saying last time is correct, senior figures in ETA believe he may be organizing this dirty war against them.’ Kitson sniffs and turns in his chair. As I think was explained to you last time, we don’t have the manpower here to embark on a
