‘No,’ he says, as if in sorrowful agreement. With my pawn on h6, he plays bishop b2 and I castle on the king’s side. The clock sticks slightly as I push the button and both of us check that the small red timer is turning. ‘What about work?’ he asks.
‘That’s also solitary.’
For the past two years I have been employed by Endiom, a small British private bank with offices in Madrid, performing basic due diligence and trying to increase their portfolio of expat clients in Spain. The bank also offers tax-planning services and investment advice to the many Russians who have settled on the south coast. My boss, a bumptious ex-public schoolboy named Julian Church, employed me after he heard me speaking Russian to a waiter at a restaurant in Chueca. Saul knows most of this from emails and telephone conversations, but he has little knowledge of financial institutions and precious little interest in acquiring any.
‘You told me that you just drive around a lot, drumming up clients in Marbella…’
‘That’s about right. It’s mostly relationship driven.’
‘And part-time?’
‘Maybe ten days a month, but I get paid very well.’
As people grow older they tend to display an almost total indifference to their friends’ careers, and certainly Saul does not appear to be concentrating very intently on my replies. A few years back he would have wanted to know everything about the job at the bank: the car, the salary, the prospects for promotion. Now that sense of competition between us appears to have dissipated; he cares more about our game of chess. Stubbing out his cigarette he slides a pawn to C4 and nods approvingly at the move, muttering ‘here it comes, here it comes’ under his breath. The opening has been played at speed and he now looks to have a slight advantage: the centre is being squeezed up by white and there’s not much I can do except defend deep and wait for the onslaught.
‘I’ll have that,’ he says, seizing one of my pawns, and before long a network of threats has built up against my king. The clock keeps sticking and I call for time.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks, looking at my hand as though it were diseased.
‘I just need a drink,’ I tell him, balancing the timer buttons so that the mechanism stops working. ‘There’s never a waiter up here when you need one.’
‘Let’s just finish the game…’
‘…Two minutes.’
I spin round in my seat and spot Felipe serving a table of players. Behind me Saul clicks alight another cigarette and exhales his first drag with moody frustration.
‘You always do this, man,’ he mutters. ‘Always…’
‘Hang on, hang on…’
Felipe catches my eye and comes ambling over with a tray full of empty coffee cups and glasses. ‘Hola, Patrick,’ he says, slapping me on the back. Saul sniffs. I order a beer for him and a red vermouth for me and then we reset the clock.
‘Everything all right now?’
‘Everything’s fine.’
But of course it’s not. The position on the board has become hopeless, a phalanx of white rooks, bishops and pawns bearing down on my defences. I hate losing the first game; it’s the only one that really matters. For an instant I consider moving one of my pieces when Saul is not looking, but there is no way that I could get away with it without risking being caught. Besides, my days of cheating him are supposed to be over. He was always the better player. Let him win.
‘You’re resigning?’
‘Yeah,’ I tell him, laying down my king. ‘It doesn’t look good. You did well. Been playing a lot?’
‘But you could win on time,’ he says, indicating the clock. ‘That’s the whole point. It’s a speed game.’
‘Nah. You deserved it.’
Saul looks bewildered and essays a series of lopsided frowns.
‘That’s not like you,’ he says. ‘I’ve never known you to resign.’ Then, with mock seriousness, ‘Maybe you have changed, Patrick. Maybe you have become a better person.’
6. The Defence
Whenever I’ve thought about Saul in the last few years, the process has always begun with the same mental image: a precise memory of his face as I confessed to him the extent of my work for MI5. It was the morning of a summer’s day in Cornwall, Kate and Will not twelve hours dead, and Saul drinking coffee from a chipped blue mug. By telling him, I was placing his life in danger in order to protect my own. It was that simple: my closest friend became the guardian of everything that had happened, and the Americans could not touch me as a result. To this day I do not know what he did with the disks that I gave him, with the lists of names and contact numbers, the Caspian oil data and the sworn statement detailing my role in deceiving Katharine and Fortner. He may even have destroyed them. Perhaps he handed them immediately to Lithiby or Hawkes and then hatched a plot to destroy me. As for Kate, the grieving did not properly begin for days, and then it followed me ceaselessly, through Paris and St Petersburg, from the apartment in Milan to the first years in Madrid. The loss of first love. The guilt of my role in her death. It was the one hard fact that I could never escape. Kate and Will were the ghosts that tied me to a corrupted past.
But I remember Saul’s face at that moment. Quiet, watchful, gradually appalled. A young man of integrity, someone who knew his own mind, recognizing the limits of a friend’s morality. It was perhaps naive to expect him to be supportive, but then spies have a habit of overestimating their persuasive skills. Instead, having tacitly offered his support, he took a long walk while I packed up the car and then left for London. It was almost four years before he contacted me again.
‘So, do you miss London?’ he asks, pulling on his coat as we swing back out through the revolving doors, heading south down Calle Fuencarral. It’s approaching ten o’clock and time to find somewhere to eat.
‘All the time,’ I reply, which is an approximation of the truth. I have come to love Madrid, to think of the city as my home, but the tug of England is nagging and constant.
‘What do you miss about it?’
I feel like Guy Burgess being interviewed in Another Country. What does he tell the journalist? I miss the cricket.
‘Everything. The weather. Mum. Having a pint with you. I miss not being allowed to be there. I miss feeling safe. It feels as though I’m living my life with the handbrake on.’
Saul scuffs his shoes on the pavement, as if to kick this sentiment away. Two men are walking hand-in-hand in front of us and we skirt round them. It is becoming difficult to move. I know a good seafood restaurant within three blocks – the Ribeira do Mino – a cheap and atmospheric Galician marisqueria where the owner will slap me on the back and make me look good in front of Saul. I suggest we eat there and get away from the crowds and within a few minutes we have turned down Calle de Santa Brigida and settled at a table at the back of the restaurant. I take a seat facing out into the room, as I always do, in order to keep an eye on who comes in and out.
‘They know you here?’ he asks, lighting a cigarette. The manager wasn’t around when we came in, but one of the waiters recognized me and produced an acrobatic nod.
‘A little bit,’ I tell him.
‘Gets busy.’
‘It’s the weekend.’
Resting his cigarette in an ashtray, Saul unfolds the napkin on his plate and tears off a slice of bread from a basket on the table. Crumbs fall on the cloth as he dips it into a small metal bowl filled with factory mayonnaise. Every table in the place is filled to capacity and an elderly couple are sitting directly beside us, tackling a platter of crab. The husband, who has a lined face and precisely combed hair, occasionally cracks into a chunky claw and sucks noisily on the flesh and the shells. There’s a smell of garlic and fish and I think Saul likes it here. Using his menu Spanish he orders a bottle of house wine and shapes himself for a serious conversation.
‘Out on the street, when you said you missed not being allowed to go home, what did you mean by that?’
‘Just what I said. That it’s not possible for me to go ba
ck to England. It’s not safe.’
‘According to who?’
‘According to the British government.’
‘You mean you’ve been threatened with arrest?’
‘Not in so many words.’
‘But they’ve taken your passport away?’
‘I have several passports.’
The majority of madrilenos do not speak English, so I am not too concerned about the couple sitting beside us who appear to be lost in an animated conversation about their grandchildren. But I am naturally averse to discussing my predicament, particularly in such a public place. Saul rips off another chunk of bread and inhales on his cigarette. ‘So what exactly’s the problem?’
He may be looking for a fight.
‘The problem?’
The waiter comes back. Slapping down a bottle of unlabelled white wine, he asks if we’re ready to order and then spins away when I ask for more time. It is suddenly hot at our table and I take off my sweater, watching Saul as he pours out two glasses.
‘The problem is straightforward.’ It is suddenly difficult to articulate, to defend, one of my deepest convictions. ‘I worked for the British government in a highly secret operation designed to embarrass and undermine the Yanks. I was caught and I was fired. I threatened to spill the beans to the press and told two of my closest friends about it. In the corridors of Thames House and Vauxhall Cross, I’m not exactly Man of the Year.’
‘You think they still care?’
The question is like a slap in the face. I pretend to ignore it but Saul looks pleased with himself, as if he knows he has landed a blow. Why the hostility? Why the cynicism? Short of something to say, I pick up the menu and decide, more or less at random, what both of us are going to eat. I don’t consult Saul about this and gesture at the waiter with a wave of my hand. He comes over immediately and flicks open a pad.
‘Si. Queremos pedir pimientos de padron, una racion de jamon iberico, ensalada mixta para dos y el plato de gambas y cangrejos. Vale?’
‘Vale.’
‘And don’t forget the chips,’ Saul says, the sarcasm drifting away.
‘Look.’ Suddenly the absurdity of my situation in a stranger’s eyes has become worryingly clear. I need to get this right. ‘We’re America’s only friend in the world, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. They do what they like, we do what they tell us. It’s a one-way friendship which nevertheless needs to look rock solid or Europe will be singing the “Marseillaise”. So having somebody like me at large is potentially a huge embarrassment.’
Saul actually smirks. ‘You don’t think you’re slightly overestimating your importance?’
It’s pure goading, poking around for a reaction. Don’t rise to it. Don’t bite.
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning things have moved on since 1997, mate. Men have flown large planes into very tall buildings. The CIA is looking for anthrax in downtown Baghdad. They’re not worrying about whether Alec Milius is getting cleared through customs at Gatwick airport. We’re days away from invading Iraq, for Christ’s sake. You think your average MI5 officer is concerned about a tiny operation that went wrong five years ago? You don’t think he’s got other things on his mind?’
I drain my glass and refill it without saying a word. Saul breathes a funnel of smoke at a fishing net tacked erratically to the wall and I am on the point of losing my temper.
‘So you think I’m delusional? You think the fact that five years ago my apartment in Milan was ransacked by the CIA is just a product of a fertile imagination?’
‘When were you living in Milan?’
‘For six months in ‘98.’
Saul looks stunned. ‘Jesus.’
‘I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t tell anyone.’
He recovers almost immediately. ‘But that could have been just a burglary. How do you know it was the Yanks?’
I actually enjoy what comes next, wiping the smug look off his face. ‘I know because Katharine told me about it on the phone. She said that Fortner, the man who taught her everything, her mentor and father figure, had lost his job as a result of what I’d done and that he still hadn’t found work two years later. A veteran CIA officer hoodwinked by a 25-year-old rookie selling fake research data for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Both of them were made to look a laughing stock by what I did to them. She said that her own career was as good as over. Back to desk work in Washington, blown for all European operations. And all because of Alec Milius. Katharine spent two years after I disappeared trying to discover where I’d gone. I think she went a bit crazy. Eventually she tracked me to my apartment in Milan, got my phone number, address, everything. I’d been sloppy. The CIA broke in, took my computer, passport, even my fucking car that was parked outside. I had nine thousand dollars cash under a mattress. That went as well. Katharine said it was just payback for what I stole from her “organization”. Hence the need to get the hell out of Italy. Hence the reason why I’ve been just a little bit paranoid ever since I got to Madrid.’
‘They don’t know you’re here?’
‘Somebody knows I’m here.’
‘What do you mean, “Somebody knows I’m here”?’
I am aware that what I’m about to tell Saul may sound over-the-top, but it’s important to me that he should understand the seriousness of my predicament.
‘My letters have been tampered with, my car has been followed, one of my mobile phones was tapped -’
Saul interrupts. ‘When did this happen?’
‘It happens all the time. You haven’t seen me since I moved here. You don’t know what Spain is like. Just realize that they keep an eye on me, OK, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘Even now? Nearly six years on?’
‘Five years, two hundred and thirty-eight days. Look. I have five bank accounts. When I call one of them and they put me on hold, I think it’s because there’s a note against my name and they’re checking me out. I have to change my phone every three weeks. If someone is listening to a Walkman next to me on the metro, I make sure they’re not wearing a wire. The other day I was driving to Granada and the same car followed me from Jaen for an hour.’
‘So? Maybe they were connected to Endiom. Maybe they were lost. You know how someone very high on coke will ask you the same question over and over again?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well that’s what you sound like. Somebody very high. Somebody very paranoid. Your emails, talking to you on the phone, listening to you now. OK, five years ago, as a one-off, Katharine tracked you down and gave you a scare. She was pissed off, she had a right to be. But she’s a big girl, she would have got over it by now. The rest of this is not happening, Alec. You’re living in cloud cuckoo land. For once in your life, try to see beyond your own ego. Christ, you wouldn’t even come to my wedding. Believe me, if the CIA or Five or Six had really wanted to make your life difficult, they would have done it by now. Somebody could have planted drugs on you, got you thrown in jail. Not just turned over your flat. You get people on the run like Tomlinson or Shayler and they make it impossible for them to move. No work, no residency, threats and broken promises. You’re a fucking footnote, Alec.’
Food suddenly arrives in waves: a flat pink plate of jamon wedged in near my elbow; a deep metal bowl of salad tossed with carrot and canned tuna; the house speciality of prawns piled eight inches high on a rock of boiled crab and razor fish; a platter of pimientos de padron, charred and salted to perfection.
Saul asks quietly what we’re eating.
‘They’re grilled peppers. One in ten is supposed to be hot. As in spicy. You’ll like them.’ He bites at one and nods approvingly. ‘Look, there’s one thing you should understand.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘I am not delusional. I am not paranoid.’ I’m not a fucking footnote, either.
‘Fine,’ he says.
‘I’m just trying to live my life…’
‘…with the handbrake on.’
>
Silence. It is as if the whole notion of my exile is a joke to him.
‘Why are you being like this? Why are you trying to goad me?’
Saul has been piling salad onto his plate but he stops and fixes my gaze.
‘Why? Because I no longer have any idea who you are, what you stand for. A person changes, of course they do, it’s a natural process. They find work, they find something that fulfils them, they meet the right girl, blah blah blah. At least that’s the idea. And as you get older you’re supposed to work out what’s important to you and dump what isn’t. It’s naive to think that at thirty a person is going to be the same animal that they were at twenty. Life has an impact.’
I mutter, ‘Of course it does,’ as if to dilute what’s coming, but Saul is shaking his head.
‘Something fundamental shifted in you five years ago, man. You were my closest, my oldest friend. We went to school together, to university. But I had literally no idea that you were capable of doing what you did. One day you were just reticent, ironic, mildly ambitious Alec Milius; the next you’re this creature of the state, a lying, manipulating, barely moral… thing, risking everything in your life for what exactly? To this day I can’t get my head round it. Personal fulfilment? Patriotism? And you used me in that, you used our friendship. Three straight years of lies. Every day it affected me, like the loss of someone, like mourning.’
All of the shame and despair and regret that I have experienced since Kate’s death is crystallized in this instant. Saul’s face is as hard and as unforgiving as I can ever remember seeing it. It is the end of our friendship. With just a few stark sentences he has engendered a violent and sudden cut-off.
‘So that’s it?’
‘That’s what?’
‘The end of things between us? That’s what you came out here to tell me? That it’s better if I don’t contact you any more?’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘You said it yourself. I’m a liar, a manipulator. I’m a footnote.’
‘That doesn’t mean it’s the end of our friendship.’ Saul looks at me in amazement, as if I have completely misjudged both him and the situation. ‘Jesus, we’re not at school any more, Alec. This isn’t a playground.’ I stare down at the table and cradle the back of my neck, bewildered and embarrassed. ‘Short of you developing an all-new fixation with Catalan schoolboys we’re still going to be mates. Things don’t end between people just because they betray them. In fact, that’s probably when they start to get interesting.’ There is a long burst of applause from the next-door room. ‘Let’s face it, we’re always more grateful to the people who have hurt us in life than to the ones who just let things drift by. I learned from you, and that’s what it’s all about. I’m just not going to sit here and let you think that no harm came from what happened…’
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