The Spanish Game am-3

by Charles Cumming

  ‘Well, it’s pretty obvious. You’re involved in this thing, Alec. You had information about Rosalia Dieste that you failed to give to the Spanish police. You turn up at the graveside, people might wonder who you are. There might be photographs in the press. The Guardia Civil will certainly want to ask questions.’

  Why would Kitson care about that? ‘I’ll take my chances,’ I tell him.

  ‘Look, I’m going to be frank. Buscon has gone to ground in Oporto and we’re keeping an eye on him. Thanks to you, we’ve got people digging around in new areas of his background, trying to put the pieces together in relation to the girl. You could become essential in that task later on. London might need you. So I can’t afford to have you as a visible presence at something as significant as Valdelcubo.’

  He uses the name of the village as though he were already familiar with it. I wonder if Kitson is hiding something. It’s possible that he learned about the location of the body before I called him. In any event, what possible role could I play in any SIS investigation? I’m blown. London doesn’t need me. Kitson is just worried that I’ll spill the beans about his op if I start getting heat from local liaison.

  ‘Richard, I don’t really get this. I’ve told you what I know. I’ve written it all down. What else do you need me for? I just want to go to the village and see the situation for myself. Call it a personal quest. Call it closure.’

  There is a long silence while he gathers his thoughts. I pull the Audi over to the side of the motorway and switch on the hazard lights.

  ‘O?,’ he says. ‘It’s clearly time to spell this out.’ Over the roar of the traffic it is difficult to tell whether or not he is alone. ‘Everybody was very impressed by the quality of your product on Rosalia, Alec. Very impressed. Now there are people in London who don’t want me to have anything to do with you, and I’m sure that doesn’t come as much of a surprise. But at the same time there are those of us who feel we should let bygones be bygones and get you back on board as soon as possible. There aren’t too many people of your age and experience who aren’t working flat out on other projects. You understand me? We’re stretched. You know the territory out here, you speak the language, you’re coming at this thing from an angle that has already proved very useful. I’m anxious you shouldn’t jeopardize that by doing something stupid.’

  It is certain that there are men working at Thames House and Vauxhall Cross who know exactly how Alec Milius thinks. John Lithiby, for one. Michael Hawkes, for another. They know that in order to cause me to abandon any misgivings I might have about working for Five and Six, and to secure my renewed loyalty to the Crown, it would be necessary to say more or less exactly what Richard Kitson has just said. There are those of us who feel we should let bygones be bygones and get you back on board. We were very impressed by the quality of your product, Alec. Very impressed. These are the buttons that would need to be pushed. Flatter him, make him feel special. Cast out the lure of the secret game. Kitson performs the task so perfectly that I experience an almost giddy sense of excitement, something close to a miraculous feeling of relief at the possibility of being accepted back into the fold. It is no exaggeration to say that his words act as a balm which momentarily wipes out all feelings of despair and guilt that I might be feeling over Arenaza’s death. But surely I have to be cautious; that is how they want me to feel. I have to hold on to my cynicism, to my memories of Kate and Saul. Don’t let these guys crawl under your skin again. Don’t let them back into your life.

  ‘You want me to work for you? You’re saying that you think I’d be useful again?’

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.’ Kitson sounds quite disengaged by the whole thing. He might be telling me about a film he watched last night, a meal he ate. The notion of my rehabilitation is as logical and as predictable to him as the sun coming up tomorrow morning. ‘Don’t you think so yourself? Wouldn’t you like to see this thing through?’

  ‘Well, you can understand that I’m a bit cynical when it comes to trusting people in your line of work. I have a problem with motive.’

  Kitson does that laugh again, the one through his nose, and says, ‘Of course.’ Then there’s another pause before he adds, ‘Because of Kate?’

  It’s the smart question. He has already given me the formal position on Kate’s accident. Either I accept his word or we have a fundamental breach of trust. If that is the case, then the relationship between us might as well be over before it has started. No officer will work with a source who doubts him. Scepticism is the cancer of spies.

  ‘What happened to Kate was certainly the principal reason I lost the faith.’ A lorry at high speed passes close to my door and shakes the Audi in a sudden gust of wind. I think about Saul and imagine what he would say if he could hear me having this conversation. ‘Because of what happened, because of everything going wrong, I’ve had to live in exile for six years.’ I’m trying not to sound too pompous, too melodramatic. ‘That’s had an effect on the way I see things, Richard. I’m sure you can understand.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ he says, and perhaps this reply is too quick, too easy. ‘Still, it would be dishonest of me not to say that I have some thoughts of my own on that.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning why don’t we meet for lunch and talk it all out? I have to fly to Portugal this afternoon and won’t be back in town for a couple of days.’

  He thinks I overreacted. Kitson thinks I’ve wasted six years of my life worrying about a problem that never existed. He’s another Saul. I say, ‘That sounds like a good idea, let’s have lunch,’ and let him end the conversation.

  ‘Just turn your car round and head back to Madrid, OK? We’ll catch up on Wednesday. Just sit tight until then.’

  He gives me an address in Tetuan, which I assume to be the SIS safe house, and a time – two o’clock on the afternoon of the 16th. Then we say goodbye and, against his express wishes, I pull the car back onto the motorway and continue into Castilla-La Mancha. The village lies about eight miles north of Siguenza, a cathedral city which was once a front line for nationalist troops in the Civil War. This is Cervantes country, the bare plains and rolling hills and ruined forts of Quixote and Sancho Panza. Two thousand years ago there was a Roman presence here and the road runs in a pure straight line all the way to Valdelcubo, which turns out to be an archetype of the rural Spanish pueblo: crumbling, deserted, dusty. Boys are kicking a football against the wall of a pelota court in the centre of the village, but so many strangers have passed through today that they no longer bother to look up when I drive past. At a cafe just off the main square, television crews from TVE, Telemadrid and Euskal Telebista are eating bocadillos and slices of tortilla in the window and I worry that the Audi might draw their attention. Kitson’s words are echoing in my ears and he might have a source here who will report back if my car is sighted.

  Driving out of the square I head down a narrow street barely wide enough for a single car and simply follow the scent of the story. A steady, ant-like stream of cops and hacks are funnelling back and forth from the countryside, although by the time I reach the scene only a sprinkling of bystanders remains. Parking the Audi next to a pile of timber and encrusted manure, I walk to a high point from which it is possible to observe the entire area through 360 degrees. The landscape is breathtakingly beautiful and, before my gaze falls on the horror of Mikel’s impermanent grave, I find myself regretting the fact that I have spent so little time in this region over the past six years. Whatever happens, these will be my final weeks in Spain. When it’s over, when Arenaza’s killer has been jailed and Kitson moved on to pastures new, I will be obliged to leave, either to take up his offer of a renewed career with SIS, or to live in some as yet undisclosed location, there to rebuild the lies and the paranoia of Madrid, to discover new haunts and safe houses, to find another Sofia.

  Arenaza’s body has been completely removed. That much is immediately clear. A lone forensic scientist is examining the scene, planting her
legs awkwardly as she encircles the grave, like someone walking through deep snow. When did they bring him here? Was Rosalia waiting near by? It’s hard to imagine that the woman I followed and observed day after day could have involved herself in something as diabolical as murder. Why jeopardize her career, her relationship, for vengeance? Why involve herself with a man like Luis Buscon? Perhaps Gael played a part in the entrapment. Perhaps that’s where Kitson should be looking. An old man, clearly local, with age lines cut through his cheeks like scars from the sun, comes and stands beside me, muttering something about Batasuna being ‘the enemy’. I move away from him with a nod and get back in the car.

  One of the tracks leading back to the main road passes beside an old wall that is in the midst of being rebuilt. Fresh blocks of grey stone have been placed next to a hut in a small clearing, and there’s a freshly constructed wooden cross planted at the top of a low summit looking out over the western side of the village. I put out my indicator and wait for a car to pass before making the turn back into Valdelcubo. Just as I am preparing to pull out, Patxo Zulaika walks past the passenger window, holding a small baby in a harness attached to his chest. His eyes ignite. Peering through the window, he stares at my face, fingers raised to tap on the glass.

  I manage to say, ‘Patxo, I thought I might see you here,’ before my throat blocks and dries up in panic.

  ‘I cannot say the same about you,’ he replies. I slide the window down, erasing my reflection, trying as best I can to look relaxed.

  ‘Well, I saw what happened on TV. Had the morning off so I drove up to see for myself.’

  He looks at me for a long time, drawing out the stare, as if to check the validity of my entire existence. Then his eyes scan the back seat and he purses his lips.

  ‘So, you reporting for Ahotsa?’ I ask, just to break the silence. Zulaika is the kind of man who obliges you to break silences.

  ‘That is right. And you? You are leaving, Alec?’

  I see that the top of his baby’s head is chapped with cradle cap.

  ‘Yes, I have to go back to work.’

  ‘Oh. Well I am also going to Madrid for the night. Perhaps you have time for a coffee?’

  There’s no getting out of it. If I make an excuse and drive off he will only force my hand at a later point. This is exactly what Kitson feared. This is what he was talking about on the motorway.

  ‘Sure. But I can’t be long. I have to drive down to Marbella later on for a few days. Where do you want to go?’

  He suggests that I follow him onto the motorway. There’s a busy roadside garage about fifteen kilometres south of Siguenza where we can talk in private, away from the pricked ears of journalists and Guardia Civil. Now that he needs me, now that he wants some answers, Zulaika has added a courteousness, even a finesse, to his manner. He introduces his baby son – little Xavi – with a proud father’s enthusiasm and excuses himself for five minutes while he retrieves his car. I’m going to have to play this one very carefully. He’s onto me. Zulaika is very smart and very thorough and he will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of whatever it is that he believes I’m concealing.

  He drives fast and we arrive at the petrol station just after 3.30. Inside he selects a table at the rear of the restaurant and obliges me to sit with my back to the room. Zulaika then announces that he’s hungry and orders salad and fabada from the menu del dia. That was sly: now we’ll have to sit here talking until he has finished his food. With nothing to lose, I too order lunch and the first course arrives within three minutes. He has put Xavi in a rocker on the floor and the waitress keeps bending over to coo at him.

  ‘I didn’t know you had children.’

  ‘Well, we don’t know each other,’ he says. ‘Why should you?’

  Now that he has me where he wants me, normal service has resumed. The manner is once again curt and to the point.

  ‘Did you drive down from Bilbao this morning?’

  ‘That is right. My wife had to go to England last night so she left me looking after the baby.’

  ‘She went to England?’

  ‘Yes. She has family there. Her grandmother is very sick.’

  It is illustrative of my incessant paranoia that I briefly forge links in my mind between Zulaika and SIS. The conspiracy goes something like this: Kitson knew that I would not be able to resist coming to Valdelcubo, so he tipped off Zulaika – who is a source for MI6 – and hopes, in the long term, that the Spanish press will frame me for Arenaza’s murder. The theory is completely absurd, and yet it is three or four minutes before I regain my composure, a period in which Zulaika has been talking in Basque on his mobile phone. He may have been checking his copy with the sub-editors at Ahotsa, but it’s impossible to tell.

  ‘Do you understand Euskera?’ he asks.

  ‘Not a word.’ My salad has a lot of raw white onion in it and is otherwise composed of greying shreds of iceberg lettuce and some overripe olives. I set it to one side and watch as Zulaika eats his. ‘So what was it that you wanted to talk about?’

  I time the question so that he has his mouth full of food; it’s a good twenty seconds before he is able to respond.

  ‘Well, I have to say that I was surprised to see you there today, Alec.’

  ‘You were?’

  ‘I did not think the English were a morbid race.’

  On the basis that he would respond haughtily even to the mildest criticism of the Basque temperament, I feign annoyance.

  ‘The English are not morbid. Not in the slightest. I simply became interested in Mikel’s disappearance. It’s not every day that you have a personal link to a man’s murder.’

  ‘Of course. Don’t be offended.’

  ‘Forget it.’

  He continues to eat in silence, pouring more vinegar on his salad as an articulated lorry parks outside the window, completely blocking out the sun. It immediately becomes colder at our table, like the chill between us, and little Xavi begins to cry. Zulaika has to pick him up off the floor and pat him on the back and, to judge by his slightly reddened cheeks, regards this as a loss of face. It’s hard to play the toughened hack when you have dribbles of baby sick splattered on your shoulder.

  ‘So where did you go on holiday?’

  ‘To Morocco,’ he replies, putting Xavi back in the rocker and shoving a dummy in his mouth. The waitress clears away the plates and says, ‘Such a beautiful boy’ in Spanish before touching his cheek with her knuckles. Under her jeans she’s wearing a red G-string which rides up on her back as she crouches down.

  ‘I haven’t been to Morocco. Fez nice this time of year?’

  ‘We travelled all over the country. Fez, yes. Also Tangier and Casablanca.’ He pours himself a glass of water. ‘I had no luck finding the Basque restaurant you were talking about in Madrid.’

  It takes me a beat to realize that Zulaika is referring back to the lie I told him about Arenaza. I assume a look of disappointment and say, ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘No.’

  His eyes narrow to suspicious slits. To spite him I stare directly back, two kids in the playground. Zulaika blinks first.

  ‘You know what I have been thinking?’ he says.

  ‘What’s that, Patxo?’

  ‘I think you rang to tell me something the other day. Something important. When you left your message, your voice it sounded tense. Then I think somebody got to you. I think you know what happened to Mikel Arenaza, but for some reason you don’t want to reveal it.’

  I’ll say this for Zulaika: he tests my skills as an actor. Moving my head slightly forward, I bounce my eyebrows into a look of utter consternation and do a Dizzy Gillespie with my cheeks. ‘ What?’

  ‘You have heard me,’ he says. ‘If you want to talk about it, then I will listen. If you don’t, then I understand. I have my own theory about what is beginning to happen now in Spain.’

  He knows that I won’t be able to resist this. As the fabada arrives, Patxo leans over, keeping his eyes on me for as long as he c
an, then wipes snot from Xavi’s nose. The waitress spoons beans into my bowl and I dunk a hunk of bread into the sauce before rising to the bait.

  ‘O?. What’s your theory? What do you think is happening in Spain?’

  He speaks through a mouthful of beans.

  ‘What do you know about the GAL?’ he says.

  At first I don’t think that I have heard him correctly and ask him to repeat the question. He swallows his food, rests his spoon in the bowl, wipes his mouth with a napkin and then, with the utter self-confidence of one who knows that he has stumbled on perhaps the biggest political story of his career, repeats the question with lazy understatement.

  ‘I said, what do you know about the GAL?’

  28. Dirty War

  It is the autumn of 1983. Joxean Lasa and Joxi Zabala are two young men living in exile among the radical Basque community in southern France. Both are attached to the military wing of ETA and have participated some months earlier in a botched bank robbery in Spain. On the night of Saturday 15 October they ask a friend if they can borrow his car in order to attend a fiesta in the village of Arrangoitze, on the French side of the border. The friend, Mariano Martinez Colomo, himself a refugee, agrees to the request. Thirty-six hours later, when Lasa and Zabala have failed to return the keys, Colomo notices that his car, a Renault 4, has not been moved all weekend. Nevertheless, two of the doors are unlocked, Zabala’s anorak is on the back seat and a hank of human hair, as if torn out in a struggle, is lying on the floor. When she opens the glove compartment, Colomo’s wife discovers identification papers belonging to both men.

  It later transpired that Lasa and Zabala had become the first victims of the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberacion, the GAL, a rogue group of vengeful Spanish security officials who would go on to murder twenty-seven people between 1983 and 1987. Most of their victims were exiled members of ETA living across the border in the area around Bayonne, protected by the Mitterrand government as political refugees. Seven, however, were innocent victims who had nothing whatsoever to do with Basque terror. The GAL had two simple objectives: to liquidate key figures in the ETA leadership and to change the French government’s position on terrorist refugees. Subsequent investigations would prove that the GAL was set up and financed by senior figures in the Madrid government using covert funds diverted from the state. Other high-ranking police and military officers, as well as members of the Secret Service, were also implicated. The Socialist prime minister, Felipe Gonzalez, escaped formal censure, yet his government fell, in large part due to the GAL scandal, in the elections of March 1996 that brought Jose Maria Aznar to power.