The Spanish Game

19. Middlegame

In the old days, working against Katharine and Fortner, I didn’t have to do any snooping around. The relationship was stable; I knew what to expect. They wanted something out of me and I wanted something out of them. There was the odd nose around their bedroom – a time I almost got caught – but otherwise the work was mainly psychological. It was purely about trust and lying. And the longer I spend following Rosalía in Madrid, the more I realize that I am not cut out for the legwork of surveillance, for the patience and the wait. There’s too little excitement in it, no buzz.

She’s at home by the time I make it north in a new hire car on Tuesday afternoon. Hertz at Atocha had a Citroën Xsara going for forty-four euros a day, and I picked it up as soon as the meeting with Mar had ended. Though clearly something could have happened in the past eight hours, it’s now the same old story as the weekend – gym visits and meals, coffee and Gael. Doesn’t this woman do anything with her life? Surely there must be something going on?

I track her for three more days, waiting for a report from Bonilla. Now and again Mar will call up, wondering if I know Rosalia’s email address, her phone number or DNI. None of these questions exactly fills me with confidence – if she can’t find out that kind of information, what hope is there of her uncovering anything useful? – but no other option appears to exist. Access to a Spanish intelligence database would, of course, dramatically accelerate the investigation, but I have long grown used to the frustrations of private citizenship.

So Rosalía goes swimming. Rosalía buys herself a nice new pair of shoes. Rosalía meets the same girlfriend twice for lunch and reads Pérez-Reverte thrillers on the metro. She is shy and physically inexpressive, but clearly very fond of Gael and noticeably attentive to the older members of her family. On Wednesday afternoon, for example, she took the train back to Tres Cantos and spent most of the time with the same elderly woman whom she visited at the weekend. I assume that this is her mother – a widow, dressed head-to-toe in black – because they hugged for a long time on the doorstep when Rosalía finally left. In spite of all the frustration and the boredom, I begin to understand what Arenaza saw in her, besides an obvious physical appeal. There is something melancholy about Rosalía, an absence, as if to break down the defence of her self-possession would yield access to a full and tender spirit.

The second meeting with Cetro, scheduled for Thursday afternoon, is cancelled on the basis that Bonilla (who has now taken ‘personal responsibility’ for the investigation) is waiting to hear back from two ‘extremely important’ contacts. Instead I spend the afternoon trailing Rosalía around the Retiro, where she goes to an exhibition and buys an ice cream near the lake. At one point, twisting her head out of a sudden gust of wind, she turned and looked directly at me, our eyes meeting for the first time. This was over a distance of perhaps eighty or ninety feet, but there was something in it, a momentary flicker of surprise. It was the worst possible outcome, and in normal circumstances would have been sufficient to pull me off the case. A watcher who has been observed by the subject is considered ineffective and blown. But I am working alone and can only take off my jacket and put on a baseball cap in a feeble attempt to effect a short-term change in my appearance. She does not appear to look for me again, but until Rosalía leaves the park I follow her using parallel paths, tracking her progress through screens of buildings and trees. It’s a mug’s game.

Then Friday comes. Somehow I always knew something was going to happen on Friday.

Gael leaves on what looks like a business trip at 6.55 a.m. He’s carrying the same red rucksack and a large suitcase and they wave goodbye to one another with the quiet sadness of parted lovers. Standing at the sixth-floor window as he drives off, Rosalía looks lost and appears to wipe tears – or is it sleep? – out of her eyes. How long is he going for? The suitcase looked big enough for at least a week. Is this the moment? Is this when Arenaza comes?

Nothing happens until the early evening. Rosalía doesn’t go anywhere, not even to buy a newspaper. It feels like the longest day of the week and I break a golden rule of surveillance by going for a five-minute walk to lessen the searing pain in my back. Her front door was never out of sight, but it’s becoming clear to me that I can only cope with two or three more days of sandwiches and observation. I’m becoming sloppy and will soon have to hand things over to the police.

Rosalía finally leaves the apartment at 7.10 p.m. wearing a pair of thick-rimmed Anna Win tour sunglasses. I haven’t seen them before and it has been a dull, overcast day. She has never struck me as the vain, fashion-conscious type, so I can only assume that she has an allergy or has been crying. She walks quickly out of the front door onto Rodríguez Marín and turns right towards Concha Espina. When she is twenty metres from the corner I switch on the Audi engine in anticipation of her catching a cab. Only she doesn’t stop. Instead she turns right and I lose sight of her for about thirty seconds until I have caught up, on foot, and spotted her fifty metres downhill moving briskly west in the direction of the Bernabeu.

She keeps on walking, crossing Serrano, then the southern end of Paseo de la Habana, past the bank of ticket windows built into the lower section of the stadium. I keep about sixty metres behind her, further than usual, but wary of being sighted a second time after the incident in the Retiro. In any case, it’s fairly certain that this is just a trip to the metro. We’ve been here before: Rosalía hops on Line 10, changes at Tribunal and then goes late-night shopping in Sol.

Only she keeps on walking. She waits for the pedestrian lights on the Castellana and crosses over to the far side of the road. She’s moving more quickly than normal; she’s in a hurry. I hide behind a turquoise bus with German licence plates in the stadium car park and watch as she shrinks into the distance. This is risky. If Rosalía heads immediately into the grid of streets beyond the Castellana, I might lose her for the first time in eight days. We are separated by twelve busy lanes of traffic moving quickly in both directions. It was stupid of me to let her get this far ahead. I should have tucked in close behind and not allowed a gap of such size to open up.

Where has she gone?

Up to the right, about 150 metres away at two o’clock, I spot her on the pavement. Pale jeans, denim jacket, still walking quickly, still alone. There’s a flashing green man at the pedestrian crossing and I take it, sprinting over to the far side of the road and then jogging north to follow her.

I can’t see her any more. She must have turned left at the next street. I take the corner of Calle de Pedro Teixeira at a wide angle, as the pavement artists advise. That way, if Rosalía has stopped for any reason – to double back, to check her tail – there is no danger of us colliding and I can continue in a straight line, as if intending to cross the road. But I can see that she has made the turn. Seventy metres west she is walking hurriedly along Teixeira. I follow from the opposite side of the street. After about forty seconds she makes a second left-hand turn onto a road running parallel to the Castellana. It dawns on me now that I have been here before, for a drink with Sofía about a year ago. There’s a bar on the next block called Moby Dick with an area directly in front of it reserved solely for cars. We had a pint next door, in a prefab Irish pub the size of Dublin. Is that where she’s going? Is that where she and Arenaza are planning to meet? He was always talking about Ireland. Basques love the craic.

She walks inside, so I wait across the street with clear sight of the entrance. It’s a safe bet that she is meeting somebody and will therefore be at the location for at least another fifteen or twenty minutes. To follow immediately behind her would run the risk of being spotted, particularly if she doubles back at the door or pauses in the entrance to take her bearings. Better to wait until she is static at a table. Then I can move more freely and try to ascertain what is going on.

From memory, the Irish Rover is laid out in three sections on the ground floor. You walk into a foyer where tall, wrought-iron street lamps and mocked-up store fronts are meant to give the impression of an Irish village. The bar is thus ‘The Village Pub’, a second structure within the building with its own windows and doors. At the back of the bar are two pool tables and there’s also a cloakroom selling T-shirts. To the right is a raised area large enough to accommodate a live band, with a staircase behind it leading up to a second storey. Rosalía could be anywhere. My best option may be to wait for the next large group of people heading into the building and to make conversation with them as cover. If Rosalía is sitting near the front door she will be less likely to notice me entering in a cluster of five or six people.

Here they come. Spaniards from the business district heading for pre-weekend drinks. Three guys, two girls, all under thirty and coming in from the right. I walk through the cluster of cars and time my arrival at the door to coincide with theirs. One of the girls notices me and I take my chance, directing a general greeting at the five of them.

‘Hola.’

‘Hola. Buenas tardes.’

It’s something I probably couldn’t get away with in the UK, but Spaniards are generally more affable and easygoing.

‘Parece que tenemos la misma idea,’ I tell them. It looks like we have the same idea.

One of the guys, good-looking and threatened, gives me a slightly puzzled look, but the other girl picks up on my remark and says, ‘Sí, sí, with enthusiasm.

‘Una pinta antes del fin de semana. Un partido de billar, Y a relajarnos.

‘Claro.’

We have walked through the door now and into a small, poster-covered vestibule about the size of a garden shed. A metre in front, the other girl has opened the main door into the pub and is making her way inside. It’s loud and smoky and Van Morrison is blaring out on a music system.

‘Eres americano?’ I make a point of getting ahead of her and turning round as she asks the question.

‘No, irlandés,’ I reply.

‘Sí? Sí?’ The good-looking one loves this. There’s no sign of Rosalía at any of the tables near by. ‘Oye, Xavi,’ he calls ahead to his mate. ‘Fíjate! Este chico es un irlandés de verdad. Cómo te llamas?’

‘Paddy.’

‘Hola, Paddy. Soy Julio. Encantado.’

‘Encantado.’

And job done. Rosalía is either upstairs, gone to the bathroom, or seated at the back near the pool tables. I make conversation with Julio for another couple of minutes and then break off, explaining that I have to look around for a friend.

‘No problems,’ he says, adopting nursery-level English. ‘Very – Nice – To – Meet – You – Mr – Irishman.’

I check the back area, but it’s standing-room only, and filled to capacity with smoke and students. A teenager with smug eyes and a bad shirt is holding court on the nearest table. I’d like to take him on. Back in the ‘village’, a member of staff is coming down from the second floor carrying a tray of dirty plates. He has pale, spot-strewn skin and red hair and I assume – incorrectly – that he’s Irish.

‘Could you help me please?’

‘What’s that?’

Scottish.

‘I’m looking for a friend of mine. Wonder if you’ve seen her. A Spanish woman of about thirty, dark glasses, blonde hair, denim jacket…’

‘No idea, pal,’ he says, moving past me. ‘Try up the top.’

I don’t appear to have any choice. When I came here with Sofía neither of us went upstairs, so I will be walking blind into an unknown location. Employing the same technique as before, I wait for a small group of people to make their way upstairs and fall in behind them. This at least gives me the chance to scope the upper level at the least risk of being observed. The pub is very full, both downstairs and up, and all the tables near the top of the staircase appear to be occupied. Directly ahead there’s a smaller room containing a mock fireplace and some faked-up dusty bookshelves, but the bar is off to the right, beyond a narrow corridor leading into an open area decorated in a maritime theme. There are furled sails on booms suspended from the ceiling and a fat black anchor bolted to one wall. On a hunch, I assume that Rosalía is seated in the smaller room because there’s no sign of her at the bar and she has had enough time by now to go to the ladies. I make my way to the bar, order a pint of lager and then look for a mirror or reflective surface with which to observe what’s going on behind me.

No such luck. Instead I have to turn round, discovering that I can see directly into the smaller room through a narrow doorway. Rosalía is seated with her back to me, about twenty-five feet away at a table beyond the fireplace, talking to a man whom I do not recognize. He is at least fifty years old with combed, jet-black hair, a dark woollen sweater and eyes like stewed teabags. Not her type, in other words: a tough, working-class hombre, maybe a cousin or an uncle. Only she appears upset. Rosalía seems stressed. And there isn’t a trace of sympathy or kindness in the man’s washed-out eyes. Merely irritation. He actually seems drunk with contempt.

This is self-evidently a vital time. There are developments here, links to Arenaza. Somehow I have to manoeuvre myself into a position from which it will be possible to overhear their conversation. But the room in which they are sitting is not as crowded as the rest of the pub and if I stand or sit anywhere near their table, Rosalía will be bound to notice. A man standing next to me at the bar sways onto one leg and I have to catch him to hold his balance.

‘Sorry, mate,’ he says, a Midlands accent, grabbing my arm. One of his friends lets out a hearty laugh.

That’s when I see my opportunity. Beyond Rosalía’s table is a second doorway leading out onto a balcony overlooking the chaos of the ground floor. If there’s a chair there, even space in which to stand, I would be concealed and possibly within earshot of the conversation.

Having picked up a discarded newspaper from the bar, I take the pint, make my way back through the crowds and find a narrow bench at which to sit and listen. The music is very loud but I can see the base of the man’s chair and Rosalía’s left hand resting on the table. Both of them are smoking cigarettes. Rosalía never smokes. Ahead of me, built into the breezeblock walls, is a badly fitted window smudged by fingerprints. Through it I can see the fireplace and most of the other tables in the smaller room, as well as the obligatory portraits of Yeats and Beckett and George Bernard Shaw. The man says something, in Spanish, about ‘guilt’. I pick up the specific Spanish word. La culpabilidad. Rosalía’s response is very quiet, or at least inaudible from where I am sitting. Maddeningly, the DJ operating from a booth directly behind me has chosen to play ‘Living on a Prayer’ at deafening volume. Five women on a hen night at the next-door table blare out the chorus, making it impossible to hear.

I have to get closer.

Attempting to look as natural as possible, I pick up the pint and lean against the wall beside the door. If Rosalía leaves through this entrance there is every possibility that she will recognize me, but it is surely worth the risk. I can now hear snippets of their conversation more clearly, and a new Spanish song is fractionally quieter. Words such as time and patience. At one point the man mutters something about loyalty.

‘I don’t care about loyalty,’ Rosalía snaps back. No me importa la lealtad. She is audibly upset. But what about? If only I had a general clue as to the subject under discussion.

‘You don’t have to worry,’ the man replies. Usted no tiene que preocuparse. I heard that very clearly. Then: ‘Just go home for the weekend, relax and wait for your boyfriend.’ Rosalía coughs and her answer is again smothered by the music. But I obtain one vital piece of information. The man’s name. Abel.

A chair scrapes back. It sounds as though one of them is standing up. I pivot away from the door, take the newspaper out of my back pocket and quickly sit down at the bench. Fogged by drink, the other customers on the narrow balcony seem oblivious to my strange behaviour. Looking up through the window I see Abel walking away from the table and out towards the stairs. Rosalía is not going with him. He turns left, perhaps to go to the bathroom, but he is already wearing an outdoor coat. One of the girls on the hen night catches my eye, but I ignore her.

Three minutes later Abel reappears and heads down to the ground floor. Rosalía, as far as I can tell, is staying where she is. I make a split-instant decision to follow her companion. Whoever he is, he must know something about Arenaza. Far better to take a chance on an instinct like this, to seize the opportunity, than to waste even more time at Jiloca.

It is raining outside, the shower which had been threatening all afternoon. Two bouncers are huddled in the vestibule and they bid me goodnight. Abel turns right towards Moby Dick, yet something catches my eye. When I was waiting across the street before entering the pub I saw a bottle-green Seat Ibiza pull up in front of the entrance. It parked a few metres away from me, but the two men inside did not get out. Instead, one of them lit a cigarette and started talking. I thought nothing of this at the time, but it seems unusual that they should still be there. Spanish couples – many of whom live with their parents until they are ready to marry – will use cars as one of the few places in which they can have any kind of physical intimacy, but these are two guys and they are certainly not lovers. Furthermore, although it has clearly been raining for some time, the windscreen of their car is absolutely clear, as if it has been recently swept by wiper blades to give an unobstructed view of the pub. The clincher might be the two cans of Fanta Limón resting on the dashboard. These guys are on a stakeout. But who are they following?

Meanwhile Abel walks down the road as it narrows off into a lane leading into a second car park dotted with pine trees. There’s an empty playground on one side and more bars on the other. The rain has kicked up a smell of dogshit and people have started to run for cover. Rosalía’s contact seems oblivious to it, as if pressed for time, and I cover my head with the newspaper and try to stay in sight of him. Then another strange thing: a woman, without an umbrella, standing off to the right beside a garage selling tyres. She’s talking into a mobile phone but turned towards the wall as if to shield her face from strangers. Am I being paranoid? Why doesn’t she come out of the rain? Is she part of a team assigned to follow Abel? Or has Rosalía finally cottoned on to my surveillance and hired a team to check me out?

Abel, for his part, may be employing anti-surveillance as he reaches a two-way cross-street perpendicular to the Castellana, starting to look around for a cab. This presents me with two problems. If he finds one, it will be virtually impossible in this weather to hail another quickly enough to track his progress. Secondly, by turning constantly through 360 degrees, he is giving himself every opportunity to watch his back for a tail. Is this guy a pro? Who the hell is Rosalía dealing with? He crosses to the opposite side of the road and I follow him as discreedy as possible, the rain letting up only slightly. Within two minutes he has reached the Castellana and immediately spots a taxi heading in a southbound direction. Up goes an arm, in goes Abel. Shit. I jog the last twenty metres to the intersection and look north in desperation. Nothing. The cab is stuck in traffic just a few metres away, but it only requires the lights to change for Abel to disappear for ever. Remember the number plate, Alec. At least remember that.

Then – and every spy needs a bit of luck – a taxi comes shooting across from the southern end of the stadium, hazard lights on, halting immediately beside me. A grey-haired woman breaks from the pavement to hail it, but I step in front of her as the door opens and the passenger steps out. Hurry. Pay the driver. Leave. The lights have changed and Abel’s cab has started to move south. The passenger is Japanese – young and city-quick, thank God – and as he bends to thank the driver, I dive in behind him and slam the door.

‘Vaya al sur! Deprisa, por favor!’ Ahead, at twelve o’clock, I can still see the roof light of Abel’s cab as it disappears down the Castellana. The grey-haired woman raps on the window with her knuckle but I just ignore her. ‘My wife is in a taxi with another man,’ I tell the driver. ‘He’s my business partner. You have to follow that cab.’

‘Claro,’ says the driver. ‘Claro,’ as if this sort of thing happens to him all the time. Engaging first gear, he sets his clipboard to one side and just catches the lights as they turn red.

‘Get closer,’ I tell him. ‘Más cerea,’ and he obliges with a nod and a shrug. Surely Abel is now aware that he is being followed? Will he try to lose me, either by making a series of unnecessary turns, or exit his cab early and continue by bus or on foot?

‘You’re going to have to get nearer,’ I keep telling the driver. ‘It’s very important we don’t lose them.’

‘Muy importante, sí,’ he replies, hawking phlegm in the back of his throat.

And that’s when I see the green Seat Ibiza. Three cars back in the outer lane. Can it be the same vehicle? Using the wing mirror on the passenger side I try to ascertain who is driving, but it’s impossible to tell through the traffic and the drizzle. A moped buzzes past close to my door and the cabbie swears. Up ahead, near Nuevos Ministerios, Abel’s car is already through a set of traffic lights which are switching from green to amber.

‘Quickly,’ I tell the driver again, ‘quickly,’ and thankfully he obliges by shooting through on red.

‘Your business partner?’ he asks, finally taking an interest in my predicament. A horn sounds long and hard behind us.

‘My business partner,’ I reply, trying to look suitably distraught. The Seat didn’t come through the lights, but the traffic ahead is moving slowly. There’s every chance it will catch us.

‘Joder,’ he mutters.

We continue another half-mile south to Rubén Darío, where Abel turns off to the right in the direction of Alonso Martínez. But it’s a U-turn: taking up a position in the left-hand lane, his cab sweeps back across the Castellana as if heading into Barrio Salamanca. We are following at a three-car distance as he makes a second left-hand turn, heading north again, perhaps in an effort to lose us. Very quickly, however, he pulls over to the side of the road and turns into the forecourt of the Hotel Villa Carta. This can’t be where he is staying; Abel dresses like a two-star pimp and the Carta is one of the finest hotels in Madrid.

I instruct the driver to pull over to the side of the road, hand him a ten-euro note and walk the short distance up the ramp towards the entrance. A porter dressed in grey tails and a top hat opens the door and ushers Abel inside. They’ve clearly met before because words are exchanged and Abel puts his hand briefly on the porter’s shoulder.

‘Alfonso,’ I hear him say.

‘Buenas tardes, señor.’ Alfonso jokes that he is tired but will be finishing work in half an hour. Abel then shakes his hand, steps past him into the hotel and walks towards a bank of lifts on the left of the lobby. I wait a few seconds behind a group of American tourists before following him inside, approaching the reception desk just as the lift doors are closing. It’s almost certain that he has taken a room in the hotel; if he were meeting somebody, he would have waited in the foyer, or turned to the right in the direction of the bar. Abel’s familiarity with the porter would also suggest that he has built up a relationship with the staff over a number of days.

To give legitimacy to my own presence in the hotel, I leave the lobby and walk towards the bar, passing illuminated glass boxes advertising products by Chopard, Gucci and Mont Blanc. Most of the tables are occupied by businessmen and older couples enjoying an evening drink and I effect a brief scan of the room before turning and heading back towards the entrance. A security guard of roughly the same age and appearance as Bruce Forsyth has appeared near the main door wearing an ear-piece and looking self-important. To avoid his eye I take the back exit out past a Chinese restaurant attached to the hotel and head into a passageway running directly behind the building. There’s a branch of El Corte Inglés to one side and an Aeroflot shop to the other. I need a bank for the plan I have in mind.

Five minutes later I have withdrawn €400 from the Paris account and located the hotel’s staff entrance on the corner of Calle de José Ortega y Gasset. Positioning myself across the street, away from the gaze of a fixed security camera bolted to the wall, I wait for Alfonso to leave work. At first it’s hard to recognize him, but the snub nose and slightly bowed legs that were in evidence beneath top hat and tails gradually become apparent in the physical characteristics of a man who emerges shortly after 9.15. He is wearing dark chinos and a black coat and walks slowly south, probably towards one of the two metro stations near Plaza de Colón. It has stopped raining and after 400 metres I make my pitch.

The discussion goes predictably well. Most of the concierges at Europe’s leading hotels are susceptible to bribes from intelligence officials, and there was no reason to suspect that this one would be any different. Henry Paul, after all, was almost certainly an informer for SIS, and Alfonso is small beer by comparison. Having initiated a conversation on the pavement by asking for a light, I quickly persuade him into a nearby bar – in case we are under surveillance – discovering that he is biddable to the point of blatant corruption. Giving a false name, I explain that I work for a private technology company, based in Geneva, that will amply remunerate him for any information he might be able to provide about the identity and purpose of the individual who engaged him briefly in conversation at the entrance of the hotel at 20.35 this evening. To speed things along, I hand Alfonso four fifty-euro notes folded inside a small piece of paper on which I have written my name – Chris Thompson – and a Telefónica mobile telephone number. Should he feel like talking, he should call me within the next twenty-four hours with details of the individual’s surname (‘He invariably uses a pseudonym’), home address, passport origin and number, credit card details, car make and licence, if applicable, as well as any other information that he might consider useful to my enquiries.

‘What’s Mr Sellini done?’ Alfonso asks, already giving up Abel’s surname.

‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to divulge that information,’ I explain, hinting at something shady involving children on the internet. Alfonso looks suitably appalled, but I’m in a position to treble his weekly salary so he won’t be losing any sleep over it. We shake hands and I insist only that he keep our conversation private. Alfonso agrees and looks pleased as he leaves the bar. At Plaza de Colón, he crosses to the Barclays Bank building and disappears into the metro. I then call Bonilla from a phone booth around the corner, pass on Sellini’s name, and ask for an update on Rosalía.

‘It has been very difficult,’ he insists, adopting the evasive style that has become increasingly common in our conversations, ‘not easy to obtain answers, not simple at all.’ Having listened to his excuses for the best part of five minutes, I insist on a full progress report by Monday evening and arrange for a small team of four surveillance operatives to watch Rosalía over the weekend. Bonilla cuts me a deal – €1,600 for three days, with nobody in place, barring exceptional circumstances, between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. After that I hail a cab, go for dinner in Malasaña, and get to bed before midnight for the first time in ten days.