The Spanish Game

43. Counterplay

There’s a bar at the southern end of the square with a sign outside, in English, saying, ‘Hemingway Never Ate Here’. I’ve never been inside before, but it feels safe, crowded with oblivious Brits, a place far enough away from the apartment where I can clean up and gather my thoughts.

Nobody looks at me as I make my way towards the bathroom. I wash my face in cold water for a long time and check my shoes for blood. My right fist hurts from the fight but my hands are unmarked and there seem to be no visible signs of the struggle in my appearance. At the bar I order a whisky and sink it in three successive gulps, the sweat cooling on my body all the time, my heart-rate coming down. I keep checking the door for police, for Carmen, but there are just tourists coming in, bar staff, locals.

I can sit here. I can hide. I can work it all out.

The evidence, the tip-offs, were staring us in the face. We were just too stupid to see them.

Carmen’s muted reaction to the marks and bruises on my legs, for example. I had assumed that she was either disgusted by them or simply being polite in an awkward situation. It never occurred to me that she was expecting to find them. It never crossed my mind that Carmen Arroyo already knew about what had happened at the farm.

Then there was her enthusiasm for all things American. That was wildly overplayed. In the two years since 9/11 I have rarely met a Spaniard under the age of forty with a single complimentary thing to say about George W. Bush, yet Carmen was borderline neo-conservative. Her enthusiasm wasn’t born of loyalty to the PP; it was all an exaggerated bluff.

Then, of course, there was the most obvious clue of all. Why would the Spanish government bother to launch a secret campaign of violence against ETA when ETA is on its last legs? Kitson and I talked about this at length, but we never thought simply to turn everything round.

Outside, perhaps a block away, a police siren flashes by on the street. In my mind’s eye there is a clear and precise image of Carmen and the man slumped on the floor and for the first time I wonder if their injuries will be serious. The fight was a frenzy of rage; I seemed to lose all sense of myself in the quest for revenge. Christ, perhaps I even killed a man tonight, left him brain-damaged, paralysed. Yet there must still be some salvageable sense of decency inside me because I feel terrible about having done this.

It’s not possible to get a mobile reception at the bar so I make my way towards the entrance and dial Kitson’s number. His phone has been switched off and I leave as clear and concise a message as I can.

‘Richard, you have to call me.’ Behind me, a customer laughs at just the wrong moment. ‘Something very serious has happened. Did Anthony hear what went on in the flat? Did you get it on the bug?’

Macduff has a number, too, but that is also on voicemail. They’re both probably in the air on their way back to London. They both think that the job is done.

Back inside I order a second whisky, get a cigarette off a girl and begin to piece everything together. It all goes back to the farm. Why didn’t they kill me when they had the chance? Why did they set me free and plant the idea of de Francisco’s involvement in the dirty war in my head? There was no way that ETA could have known, at that stage, that a dirty war was being organized out of the Interior Ministry. In any event, if they had had information of that kind, they would have gone straight to the press.

It’s obvious, too, that Carmen always knew I spoke Spanish. I was meant to overhear her conversation with João last week. Right from the start she knew who I was, why I was coming to her, who was playing whom. I was being used by ETA to feed information back to SIS which they hoped would accelerate the destruction of the Aznar government. Only they didn’t count on the cover-up. They didn’t think it would be possible to obscure a conspiracy of that size. And Carmen shouldn’t have told me the story about the boy from Pamplona. That was her one mistake. Otherwise the simplicity of it was breathtaking. Look at the victims they chose: Mikel Arenaza was, by his own admission, on his way out of politics. He had grown weary of the armed struggle and was looking to start a new life with Rosalía, away from the duplicity and double-standards of terror. Txema Otamendi had also turned his back on the organization. He tried to question the moral and political good sense of military action and paid the price. The others, the two men who survived the so-called dirty war, were the only individuals still of use to ETA: Juan Egileor, a millionaire businessman who had made massive financial contributions to the revolutionary cause, disappeared of his own volition and took a two-month holiday in south-east Asia in the company of a Bangkok rent boy. Tomás Orbé, a functioning etarra, was most probably tipped off that Mohammed Chakor was coming to get him. Why else was he carrying a gun? Only he wasn’t meant to kill him. The wound to the neck was too severe. Had he survived, Chakor would doubtless have sung like a canary, telling the world’s press that he had been hired to shoot a leading etarra on the orders of Sergio Vázquez and his old friend, Félix Maldonado.

Eventually I pay my bill and head out onto the street, sticking to the shadows under the colonnade of the square until I’m out on Calle Mayor. A cab glides past and I hail it, giving directions to Calle de la Libertad. It has occurred to me that I am running late for the meeting at Bocaito, although in Kitson’s absence John Lithiby will be a more than capable replacement. Numbed by whisky, I sit in the back seat, scribbling down notes as my pen jumps with each spring of the suspension. To turn up at the meeting in such a condition is far from ideal, but I have no choice. SIS need to know about these new developments as soon as possible. Lithiby is my sole remaining contact.

There’s only one thing I’m not sure about: the precise nature of the relationship between Maldonado and Javier de Francisco. What seems most likely is that they were simply Basque sympathizers who gradually worked their way up the political ladder, concealing themselves for – what? – fifteen or twenty years while they fed information back to their ideological masters in ETA. It’s Burgess and Maclean, Philby and Blunt all over again, a nest of spies at the heart of the Spanish state. And now they must live out the rest of their lives in a pointless Colombian exile. Two high-level ETA operatives gone to ground after waiting years for their chance to strike from the immaculate camouflage of office. I feel almost sorry for them. Francisco probably recruited Carmen during their love affair, or she was turned during the four-year stint in Colombia. She seemed to confess to a relationship back at the flat. A man I loved, she said. And of course her mother, the ailing Mitxelena, is a Basque married to a man whose father fought against Franco in the Civil War. I was very dumb about that. I should have put two and two together.

As the cab accelerates through Puerta del Sol, I try Kitson again. There’s no answer, so I just hang up, wondering how long it will be before the neighbours break into Carmen’s flat and alert the police. If they track me down, I can always plead self-defence. Christ, if the worst comes to the worst I can probably claim diplomatic immunity. That’s the least SIS can do after what I’ve pulled off tonight. When Lithiby hears about this, about what I’ve done for the Service, everything in my past will be forgotten.