"The Spanish Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cumming Charles)

25. Our Man in Madrid

‘Before I get into anybody’s car, I want to know who the hell I’m talking to.’

‘Let’s just say that you’re talking to a Friend,’ he says, employing a standard SIS euphemism. A woman walks past us and looks at me with a twist of worry in her face. ‘Better if you keep your voice down, no? Now let’s get in the car and head off.’

Once inside he frisks me – shins, calves, back of the waist – and seems to take a perverse pleasure in asking me to fasten my seatbelt. I try to summon a suitably hostile look to meet this request, but the heat of sweat and panic I can feel in my face has stripped me of any authority. I drag the seatbelt down and clunk it into place.

‘My name is Richard Kitson.’ On closer inspection he looks closer to forty than thirty, with a face that I would struggle to describe: neither ugly nor good-looking, neither smart nor stupid. A vanishing Englishman. ‘Why don’t we head up to the M30 and drive around in circles while you tell me what’s on your mind?’

For the first couple of minutes I say nothing. Occasionally Kitson’s eyes will slide towards mine, a sudden glance in traffic, a more steady gaze at lights. I try to stare back, to meet these looks man to man, but the shock of what has happened appears to have robbed me of even the most basic defensive reflexes. After six years on the run, it has finally come to this. I am shaking. But why was Sellini involved? What did he have to do with it?

‘What’s your interest in Abel Sellini?’ Kitson asks, as if reading my mind. ‘You buying drugs, Alec? Acquiring some weapons?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You don’t know who he is?’

‘I know that he probably killed a friend of mine.’

‘Well, you see, that’s exactly the sort of thing you and I need to talk about.’

‘You first. What are you doing here? How do you know who I am? How do you know about JUSTIFY?’

‘One thing at a time, one thing at a time.’ A black BMW overtakes us on the blind side, gliding past my window. Kitson mutters, ‘Bloody Spanish drivers.’

‘OΚ. One: how do you know my name?’

‘Took a photo. Pinged it back to London. You were recognized by a colleague.’

Jesus. So I was right about the surveillance. In a simultaneous instant of horrifying clarity I recall exactly where I saw the man in the pin-striped suit who got into the cab. At the Prado. With Sofía. Lead on, Macduff.

‘How long have you been following me?’

‘Since Friday last week.’

The night I tailed Rosalía to the Irish Rover.

‘And this colleague who recognized me, what was his name?’

If Kitson doesn’t come up with something I recognize, I can assume he’s an impostor.

‘Christopher Sinclair. Chris to his friends. Happened to be passing a desk in Legoland when your JPEG popped up. Nearly dropped his cappuccino. Sends his regards, by the way. Sounded very fond of you.’

Sinclair was Lithiby’s stooge. The one who drove me to the final meeting at the safe house in London on the night they killed Kate. Said that he admired me. Said that he thought I was going to be all right.

‘So you’ve read my file? That’s how you know about JUSTIFY?’

‘Of course. Ran your name through the CCI and got War and Peace. Well, Crime and Punishment, anyway.’ Kitson seems to have a supercilious sense of humour, as if he would be incapable of taking anyone, or anything, too seriously. ‘Quite a story, hadn’t heard it before. You had them in knots for a while, Alec, and then you did the runner. Nobody knew where the hell you’d gone. There were rumours of Paris, rumours of Petersburg and Milan. Nobody pinned you to Madrid until last Tuesday.’

I do not know whether to be offended that Kitson had never heard of me or delighted that six years of anti-surveillance has paid off. I am generally too shaken and confused. ‘And that’s why you’re here? To bring me in?’

Kitson frowns and glances in the rear-view mirror.

‘What?’

‘I said, is that why you’re here? To bring me in?’

‘Bring you in?’ He takes the first exit onto the M30, heading clockwise towards Valencia, looking at the road ahead as if I am delusional. ‘Alec, that was all a long, long time ago. Water under the bridge. You haven’t made any waves, you haven’t been a problem. You kept your end of the bargain, we kept ours.’

‘You mean you had Kate Allardyce murdered?’

There is a moment of silence as he weighs up his options. He must know about Kate, unless they covered it up. It occurs to me that our conversation is almost certainly being recorded.

‘You were wrong about that,’ he says finally. His voice is very quiet, very firm. ‘Quite wrong. John Lithiby wanted me to make it clear. What happened to your girlfriend was an accident, end of story. The driver was drunk. The Office, the Cousins, neither one of us had anything to do with it.’

‘Total bullshit.’ I stare outside as an endless sequence of concrete apartment blocks, road bridges and trees flick past. Someone has hung a banner over the motorway scrawled with the black slogan ‘ETA – Non!’. ‘You don’t know the full story. They don’t want you to know the full story. The Yanks had her killed and Elworthy was told to cover it up.’

‘Peter Elworthy is dead.’

‘Dead? How?’

‘Liver cancer. Two years ago.’

I have been away so long.

‘Then ask Chris Sinclair. He knows what really went on.’

‘I don’t need to. I have the proof.’ Kitson’s response here is quick and well rehearsed. He moves into a slower lane of traffic as if to emphasize the seriousness of what he is about to tell me. ‘When we have the opportunity I can show you the accident report. There were people at the party who urged Kate not to get into the car. Her friend – William, was it? – had done a lot of Colombian marching powder and drunk his way through the best part of two bottles of wine. He was a 23-year-old idiot, pure and simple, and he got the girl killed.’

‘Don’t talk about Kate like that, OK? Don’t even begin. If there was alcohol or drugs in Will’s bloodstream, they were put there by the CIA. It was a standard cover-up operation to protect the special fucking relationship. They tampered with the brakes and a car drove Kate and Will off the road. End of story.’

Kitson remains silent for a long time. He knows that what he has said has both angered and upset me. He probably knows, too, that I want to believe him. Alec Milius was once a patriot who thought that his government didn’t kill people for political convenience. Alec Milius wants to be brought back in.

‘So why are you interested in Sellini?’ We are south of Las Ventas by now, the sky beginning to darken and headlights coming on all around us. I don’t want the conversation to founder on Kate’s death. Not yet. ‘What’s this about him selling drugs and weapons?’

‘Abel Sellini doesn’t exist.’ Kitson takes a cigarette from a packet of Lucky Strike on the dashboard and invites me to help myself, lighting his own as I decline. ‘It’s a nom de guerre. Sellini’s real name is Luis Felipe Buscon. He was a former fighter for the Portuguese Secret Service, served in Angola, now an international hired hand with more pies than fingers. Mr Big of no fixed address, operates as a middleman for any criminal or terrorist organization that can afford to put him up in nice hotels like the Villa Carta. We’ve been tracking him ever since we were tipped off about a consignment of illegal arms he’d purchased from an organized crime group operating out of Croatia.’

For Six to be involved, that consignment must be on its way to the British Isles. But how does Rosalía fit in?

‘Tipped off by whom?’

Kitson glances across at me and says, ‘That information was brought to us by a protected source. Now, what’s your interest in him?’

‘Not yet. I need to know more. I need to know why I was being followed and why you’ve pulled me in.’

It is hard to tell if Kitson is impressed by this show of stubbornness, but he answers the question with a candour which would suggest that he trusts me and knows that I’m instinctively on the side of the angels.

‘I’m here as part of an undeclared SIS op tracking Buscon. Local liaison knows nothing about it, so if they find out, I’ll know who to blame.’ I get a scolding, smoke-exhaling stare with this remark, a switch in Kitson’s demeanour which is actually frightening. ‘The Mick and the Croat get along like a house on fire. Always have. Call it a shared antipathy towards their neighbours. For the Irish, the bloody Brits, for the Croats, the murdering Serbs. So they have lots in common, lots to talk about over a pint of Guinness. We had a tip-off that Buscon had become involved in what was euphemistically described as a humanitarian project in Split. Only Luis wasn’t interested in feeding the poor. What he was interested in was the consignment of weapons sitting in a hayshed in the ultra-nationalist hinterland that wasn’t being put to suitably romantic use. So, on behalf of the Real IRA, he ordered a takeaway.’

‘And now the weapons are here in Spain? In Madrid? They’ve gone missing?’

‘Again, I’m not at liberty to discuss that. All I can say is that Buscon has contacts in organized crime groups with structures all over Europe. These weapons could be on their way to the Albanian mafia, the Turks in London, the Russians, the Chinese. Worst case scenario, we’re talking about an Islamist cell with enough high explosive to blow the door of 10 Downing Street into Berkshire.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Quite. Which is why we need to know what you were doing listening in on Mr Buscon’s conversation with Rosalía Dieste at the Irish Rover last Friday.’

‘You were there?’

‘We were there. Had command of Buscon and couldn’t tell if you were liaison or just a lonely tourist who liked Bon Jovi.’

‘Where were you sitting?’

‘Not too far away. We had ears at the table, hours of prep, but the mike failed at the last minute. I was actually rather jealous of your proximity. Not to mention anxious to find out who the hell you were.’

‘And the two guys outside in the green Seat Ibiza? They were A4?’

Kitson accidentally swerves the car here and has to check his steering. ‘Very good, Alec,’ he says. ‘Very good. You’ve done this before.’

‘And the older man who took the second cab at the hotel? Grey hair, pin-striped suit. He was tailing me at the Prado last weekend.’

‘Quite possibly. Quite possibly.’

Kitson likes me. I can sense it. He hadn’t expected such a level of expertise. My file is most probably wretched, Shayleresque, but this is pedigree.

‘So what were you doing there? What’s your relationship with the girl?’

‘I think she might be involved in the murder of a politician from the Basque country. Mikel Arenaza. A member of Herri Batasuna.’

‘The political wing of ETA?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Never heard of him.’ Kitson’s reply is blunt, but you can tell the brain is already running through the implications. ETA. Real IRA. Weapons that have gone missing.

‘Arenaza disappeared on 6 March, a little over three weeks ago.’ Without asking, I help myself to one of the dashboard cigarettes and push the lighter. ‘You didn’t read about it in the papers?’

‘Well, we’ve all been rather busy…’

‘Rosalía was Arenaza’s mistress. As far as I can tell, nobody else knows that piece of information. He was married and didn’t want his wife finding out.’

‘Understandable in the circumstances. So why did he tell you?’

‘Why does anybody tell anyone anything? Booze. Camaraderie. Mine’s bigger than yours.’ The lighter pops and I take the first delicious draw on the cigarette. ‘Mikel and I were supposed to meet for a drink when he was in Madrid visiting Rosalía. Only he never showed up. I found out where she worked, followed her to the Irish Rover and witnessed the conversation with Buscon. It looked important, so I followed him back to the hotel.’

‘Where you bribed Alfonso González.’

‘How do you know about that?’

‘You’re not the only one on his books, Alec.’ Kitson clears his throat to suffocate a smile. ‘Señor González has made enough money out of the pair of us in the past couple of weeks to buy himself a small villa in the Algarve.’

‘So you instructed him to make that call today? You set the whole thing up?’

‘What can I say? Her Majesty had more leverage. Now tell me what you know about the girl.’

I pause briefly, absorbing the fact that Alfonso betrayed me, but it makes no sense to get annoyed. Suddenly my doubts about Arenaza’s disappearance, the long days and nights tailing Rosalía, the money spent on surveillance, all of it appears to have paid off. I am right back at the centre of things. And the feeling is electrifying.

‘Rosalía Dieste is thirty-four. She lives with her boyfriend in an apartment about half a mile east of the Bernabéu…’

‘We know that.’

‘She trained as an industrial engineer, specializing in nuclear energy.’

‘Nuclear energy?’

‘You weren’t aware of that?’

‘No.’

‘You think it might be important?’

‘Possibly. I’m going to need all of this on paper.’ Kitson checks his blindspot and coughs. What I’m telling him is clearly new and useful. ‘We’re going to need you to come in and write everything down. Is that all right?’

So the conversation isn’t being recorded. ‘That’s fine.’ The M30 passes under a ruined stone bridge and we are briefly slowed in traffic. Up to the right I can see the outline of the Vicente Calderón. The night air above the stadium is floodlit; Atlético must be playing at home. ‘Rosalía left her job just a few days after Arenaza arrived in Madrid. There’s no physical evidence linking the two of them, not even a record of any phone calls, but I’m convinced she’s the girl Mikel was talking about.’

‘How do you know about phone records?’

‘Because I paid somebody to look into her background.’ As if this was an entirely natural course of action, Kitson merely nods and accelerates into a faster lane. He seems to be adjusting to the pace of Spanish roads, growing in confidence even as our own journey progresses. ‘The investigators discovered that Rosalía’s step-father was murdered by ETA in a car-bomb attack in 1983. He was a policeman, she was very fond of him. It’s obvious to me that she lured Arenaza to Madrid…’

‘… to avenge his death, yes.’ Kitson has made the link. ‘So what does that have to do with Buscon?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

‘What does your instinct tell you?’

‘My instinct tells me not to trust my instinct.’ The man from SIS likes this remark and laughs quietly through his nose. ‘All I can assume is that she hired him to kill Arenaza.’

‘Very unlikely.’

‘Why?’

‘Not the sort of thing Luis gets up to. Far too self-important to get his hands dirty. More likely there’s a separate, unrelated link between the two of them, or she’s part of a broader conspiracy. This is all very useful, Alec. I’m very grateful to you.’

It sounds like the brush-off. We’re going to circle back to Plaza de España and I’ll never see him again.

‘I don’t want to be left out,’ I tell him, suddenly concerned that I have spilled too much information too quickly and may have nothing left with which to bargain. ‘I want to pursue this thing, Richard. I think I can help.’

Kitson says nothing. He might be irritated that I have called him Richard.

‘Where are you staying?’

‘I’m here with a team of eight,’ he says.

‘Tech-op boys? Locksmiths?’

I want to show him that I know the lingo. I want to prove my usefulness.

‘Something like that. We’ve rented a property in Madrid for the duration of the op, an RV point well away from the action.’ As if the thought had just occurred to him, he adds, ‘How come the Spaniards don’t know about Rosalía? If this man’s been missing for three weeks, shouldn’t you have gone to the police?’

It is an uncomfortable question, and one designed perhaps to turn the tables. Is he going to use that as a means of guaranteeing my silence?

‘I only found out about the ETA connection on Thursday’ Kitson appears to accept this, despite the fact that I have completely avoided the question. ‘On Monday a Basque journalist who’s working on the disappearance is going to call me and I’m going to give him the whole story.’

‘I wouldn’t recommend that.’ This is said very firmly. ‘I can’t risk a hack digging around Buscon. Host governments don’t take kindly to us lot carving up the local scenery. This journalist calls back, put him off the scent, stall him. The last thing I need is blowback.’

It is the first time that I have sensed Kitson even remotely rattled. He takes an exit signed out to Badajoz and tucks in behind a red Transit van. Here is the stress of the spy, the variables, the constant threat of exposure. To lead a team on foreign soil in such circumstances must be exhausting.

‘Point taken. But Zulaika is pushy, he sniffs around. Of all the newspapers in Spain, Ahotsa is the one that has kept the Arenaza story alive.’

‘Zulaika? That’s his name?’

‘Yes. Patxo Zulaika. Very young, very ambitious. Real tit.’

Kitson smirks. ‘Then ignore him. Just give him denials. You’re clearly a resourceful bloke, Alec. You’ll think of something.’

‘Sure.’

‘Just keep me in the picture when he calls, OK? I’ll leave you my number.’

Thereafter the conversation turns to the affidavit. Kitson needs a written statement detailing my involvement with Arenaza, Buscon and Rosalía. He asks me to type it up overnight and says we’ll meet tomorrow for a handover at the McDonald’s in Plaza de los Cubos.

‘Nine o’clock too early for you? We can enjoy a hearty breakfast.’

I say that will be fine and only as we are pulling into Plaza de España does he return to discussing the operation.

‘There was just one thing, before you vanish into the night.’

‘Yes?’

I am standing outside the Citroën, leaning in through the passenger window. It is the middle of the paseo and there are seemingly hundreds of people passing through the western end of Gran Vía, families walking six-wide on the pavements in order to show off their grandchildren.

‘Does the name Francisco Sá Carneiro mean anything to you?’

‘Francisco Sá Carneiro?’

‘We think there’s some sort of a connection with Buscon. We think he was going to meet him.’

I can’t prevent a smirk wriggling onto my face. To have caught out Six on such a simple technicality. This answer can only work in my favour.

‘Buscon’s not going to meet anybody,’ I tell him.

‘He’s not?’

‘He’s going to Porto. Sá Carneiro was a Portuguese politician. He died about twenty years ago. They named the airport after him. I’ll see you tomorrow, Richard. Make mine an Egg McMuffin.’