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

33. Reina Victoria

I go back to Calle Princesa. Perhaps it would have been best to pack everything up, to find a new apartment in Madrid, even to move to a different city, but that would have felt too much like defeat. I would rather suffer the final humiliation of witnessing the plot’s success, of seeing the look of triumph in Katharine’s eyes, than give up now. It is more important to me to do my best for Kitson, to see this thing through, than to cut and run. In any case, he has said that he still needs me, and with our knowledge of Sofía’s involvement in the conspiracy we now have a crucial advantage. We can turn the tables. I can start using her.

‘See her, sleep with her, habla con ella,’ Kitson advised. ‘Act like nothing has changed. You haven’t seen the photograph, you haven’t any knowledge of any dirty war. And don’t for God’s sake start telling her about Patxo Zulaika and ETA. If she knows about them, she knows. If she’s in on the conspiracy, she’s in on the conspiracy. Far as you’re concerned, the marks on your body came about as the result of a punch-up. Real-estate deal turned sour. A bunch of Zaragoza estate agents taking the phrase “two up, two down” a bit literally. Next thing you knew, you were in hospital.’

So I keep to our meeting at the Reina Victoria. I did not sleep on Sunday night because the Danish boy upstairs began his banging, his toy-hammering, just as I was dropping off at dawn. As a result, I feel obliterated by tiredness. I can no more pretend to Sofía’s face that nothing has happened between us than I can make the bruises and the cuts on my body disappear. This is rage, as much as anything else: it is what Katharine must have felt when she discovered that I had lied to her for the best part of two years. In all probability, my deceit ruined her career, yet the knife in the back of her self-respect would have been far worse. In this sense, it’s possible to see my pain as a kind of moral payback. Only I never kissed Katharine. I never slept with her.

Sofía is in a room on the third floor facing away from the square. It’s too late to try to change it and, in any case, I don’t want to make her suspicious about my motives.

Things seem wrong from the moment we first set eyes on one another. When I knock on the door, she answers it fully dressed. No negligee, no suspenders. No pigtails, no perfume. None of the visual paraphernalia of an affair. Instead, Sofía looks anxious and washed-out, a sheen of tears in her eyes, and I feel immediately wrong-footed.

‘What’s the matter?’

I follow her into the room and sit down next to her on the bed. Straight away she stands up and crosses to an armchair by the window. I worry that Julian has found out about us, even though such concerns are no longer plausible nor even relevant. Christ, perhaps she is pregnant. Then she wipes her eyes on a Kleenex and stares at me. Can this be part of an act? She has not yet spoken, but I feel a wall between us which I cannot breach. She starts sobbing and, in spite of everything, there is still the desire to protect her.

‘Sofía, what’s going on? Why are you crying? Why are you upset?’

Her eyes are black as she looks back at me through the tears. Then she says, ‘Who are you, Alec?’

The question is like a curse.

‘What?’

‘Who are you?’

She stops sobbing. I do not know how to respond. Kitson didn’t prepare me for this, nor could I have anticipated that she would be feeling this way. It has been so long since I played the professional game of lie and counter-lie that I feel ring-rusty and bewildered by what is happening. I can’t see the angles. She must be playing me, but why the anger? I was expecting a routine evening of sex and champagne, of faked orgasms and room service, not the double bluff of a woman’s tears.

‘What do you mean, “Who am I”? Why are you crying? Sofía, please…’

‘I mean what I say’ She discovers a new strength in her voice. ‘Who is Alec Milius?’

‘Well, I could ask you the same question. Who is Sofía Church?’

Her neck seems to slip here, her face a desperate mask. ‘What?’ Something is terribly wrong or I am simply not reading this correctly. ‘What do you mean by that?’ she says.

‘I mean I want you to tell me what’s going on. Let me help you.’ I pass her a tissue from the box beside the bed but she swipes wildly at my arm. This angers me, perhaps because I am so tired, and I lose my temper. ‘Well, what then? What is it that you want?’

And she starts screaming at me, as crazed as I have ever seen a woman. The change in her mood is terrifying and I wonder if the frenzy is designed to cover something up. Standing out of the chair, she comes towards me and lands a pathetic fist on my chest, then slaps me repeatedly around the face. Words are blazing out of her mouth, few of which make any sense to me. It is as if she has lost her mind. I try to envelop her body in my arms in an attempt to control her physically, but she merely screams, ‘Let go of me, you fucking liar!’ and the insults continue like poison. A part of me worries that we will be heard in next-door rooms, but my hands are too busy up around my head, protecting my face from her rage. Then I lose all patience.

‘Why the fuck are you hitting me?’ I am on the point of pinning her against the wall. ‘Why are you angry with me when you’re the one doing the lying? Why were you in the Hotel Carta this morning? Why?’

That stops her. I had not meant to betray Kitson, but it was necessary. Sofía is suddenly calm. In fact she looks stunned.

‘You know about this? How? How do you know?’

Is this a confession of guilt on her part or more of the masquerade? If only I was not so exhausted. I took a triple shot of vodka before leaving the flat but it has done me no good. Are we being recorded? Is this little scene another element in Katharine and Former’s grand plan?

‘Of course I know about that. And I know about Luis Buscon. So I want to know why you were picking up packages from him. Are you working together?’

She steps further away from me, shaking her head. She appears to lack the strength to cry again. Indeed she looks, to my eyes, like somebody who is going slowly mad. It is awful to see this in a woman whom I once cared about.

‘Who is Luis Buscon?’ she asks, trying to breathe deeply, trying to control herself. ‘Who is Luis Buscon?’ I am about to answer her when she adds, ‘I get a phone call at work last night telling me to come to the Hotel Carta this morning to pick up a box of samples left by somebody called Abel Sellini. He says that he represents an Italian designer. I didn’t know who he was. He said it was important. Who is Luis Buscon? Alec, what is this about?’

It starts to make sense. ‘What was in the package?’ I ask. ‘Tell me. What was in it, Sofía?’ I am hurrying her as she stares at me, desperate to have her betrayal disproved. She watches every tic of my face as she retrieves her handbag from the floor. Inside there is a letter which she takes out of an envelope, thrusting the single page into my hands like evidence of an adultery.

‘What is this?’

‘Léelo,’ she says.

Read it.

The letter is unsigned and badly typed. It consists of one simple sentence, written in Spanish:

Tell your boyfriend to stop what he is doing or your nice English husband will find out that he is married to a Spanish whore.

‘There were photographs as well,’ Sofía says, beginning to cry again, and suddenly it all makes sense. None of what has happened has anything to do with Katharine or Fortner, with Nicole or Julian. Sofía hasn’t betrayed me. But my immediate elation is checked by the knowledge that Buscon knew about our affair. He and his colleagues must have been following me for weeks. ‘I destroyed them,’ Sofía is saying. ‘There were pictures of you and me in Argüelles, Alec, photographs taken through the window of your apartment when we were kissing, pictures of me walking beside you in Princesa. Who are you? Who would blackmail us like this? Is it something to do with your work for Julian? How do you know that I went to the hotel this morning? Have you been following me?’

I have to construct a lie even as I am putting together the final pieces of the jigsaw. It has all been a terrible misunderstanding. I have to find a way of protecting Kitson’s operation.

‘It’s to do with the men in Zaragoza,’ I tell her. ‘I can’t tell you any more than that.’

‘The men that fought you?’

‘The men that attacked me, yes.’

‘Eres un mentiroso.’ She shakes her head and looks away towards the window. ‘You lie all the time. I want to know the truth.’

‘I am telling you the truth. This is something private that I’m involved in. It’s a big real-estate deal. I’ve saved a lot of money since my parents died and if I invest it in this project I could make hundreds of thousands of euros. But there are people who are trying to stop me.’

‘This Luis Buscon? This Abel Sellini?’

‘Exacto.’

‘Who are they?’

‘They are businessmen, Sofía. Sellini and Buscon work for a Russian company in Marbella.’

‘For the mafia?’ She looks aghast. I have dragged her into a nightmare.

‘I don’t know if they’re mafia. I suppose they are. I met them as part of my work for Endiom. But Julian doesn’t know anything about it. You can’t tell him.’

‘I’m not going to tell him,’ she spits. ‘You think I am going to tell my husband about us? You think so, Alec? Is this what you would do? Show me what these men did to you. Show me the marks on your body.’

‘There are no marks.’

But she is tearing at my clothes, tugging at the buttons so that one of them falls loose and flies free of my shirt. It is quite dark in the room and her reaction to the bruising on my chest is not as awful as it might have been. She just bites her lip and juts out her chin, eyes stung by shock.

‘Dios mío, qué te han hecho?’ Sofía arrives at an immediate decision, shaking her head. ‘You have to stop this thing now, Alec. These people are very serious. I do not want any more letters. I do not want any more photographs. I do not want them to hurt us. They will kill you next time, no? I want you to promise me that you will stop this.’

‘I promise you that I will stop this.’

And we are finished. It is over between us. I cannot see you any more.’

I suppose I am touched by the fact that she trips on these words, but a stubborn part of me won’t let her leave. I need her now, more than I have ever done, if only to be comforted by her. I cannot be alone any longer.

‘Don’t say that. Please don’t overreact. If I pull out of the deal they’ll leave us alone.’ I attempt to hug her, but she twists her body away from mine as if I am still hateful to her. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Don’t touch me!’ She looks at me with such contempt. ‘You think I want to touch you after you involve me with this? You have never told me the truth about anything.’

But in the same movement she returns to me, placing her arms around my back so that I can pull her towards me. She is suddenly beautifully still, defeated, her face turned against my chest. Her hair smells so beautiful as she tries to find her breath. I kiss her head, breathing in the sweet caress of her forgiveness, saying, ‘Lo siento, mi amor, lo siento. Por favor perdóname,’ but wondering all the time if this woman is still playing me for a fool. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you,’ I tell her. ‘I had no idea that they would threaten you.’

And she says, ‘I need you, Alec. I hate you. I cannot leave,’ and tilts her head to kiss me.