like this, to a woman, in public. The strange, civilizing reflex again kicks in. So that I can speak my mind, I put a ten-euro note on the table and walk out of the restaurant, past the distracted waiters and the legs of jamon, holding the phone by my side as if the Americans’ triumph might somehow drop onto the floor.
‘What about Anthony?’ I ask, out on Calle Libertad in a freezing wind. If I turned through 180 degrees it feels as though they would all be standing behind me.
‘What about him?’ she asks.
‘He was British. They were all British…’
‘It was a house of games.’
A car comes quickly up the narrow street, making me jump. For a moment it’s hard to hear what Katharine is saying. I hold the phone tight against my ear, cold and alone, bitterly angry. She says something about Macduff working in the private sector, being ‘a chameleon, a freelance’. It was a long con, a Spanish prisoner.
‘You spent all that money, all that time, just to get back at me?’
‘It wasn’t so difficult. It wasn’t so expensive.’ Her voice is calm, matter-of-fact. ‘You were a luxury, a convenience. It was just like swatting a fly. And the ends more than justified the means.’
She seems to laugh as I ask about ETA. ‘Did you do that? Did you make the farm happen?’
‘Oh no. We’re not inhumane, Alec’ Again, a commotion in the background, the sound of a man savouring revenge. ‘Our intel at the time pointed to Zulaika, for what it’s worth. Matter of fact we used that to silence him.’ She lets this sink in, the easy cruelty of American power. ‘Like I said, you just dropped into our laps. You were a bonus. We didn’t have plans for you. Matter of fact, after Milan a lot of us felt you’d gotten away. And then it was just like a miracle. Let’s just say that you were a guilty pleasure which none of us in these difficult times could resist.’
I do not reply. I have heard enough. The events of the last two hours have turned me completely inside-out, a switchback of unimaginable complexity, and there is now nothing that I can say to Katharine, no further taunt I can deliver which would improve my situation one bit. Best just to be done with it. Best just to admit defeat and move on.
‘Well, it looks like you’ve got some thinking to do,’ she says, as if going back to the script. Are they watching me, even now? Were the couple in the restaurant part of her team? ‘You should observe the sight of all your hard work gone to waste. You should think about the two innocent women who are suffering tonight because you put your own personal satisfaction before theirs.’
‘Go fuck yourself, Katharine.’
And I hang up before she has a chance to reply. Two more cars come towards me on the street and I step aside, bewildered as a drunk, walking down the hill as they pass. I need a bar. I have to drink. It dawns on me as a desperate, irreversible fact that I must now leave Madrid. I have no choice. I will have to abandon my furniture and my belongings and start a new life away from Spain, still away from England, with just a bag of money hidden behind a fridge. It is what I have always dreaded. I did not know what it was to love a city until I lived in this place. What an idiot I have been. What an amateur. The first thing you should know about people is that you don’t know the first thing about them.
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?
