I do not know whether my words have any effect. I do not care. I think that I pass out and then return to consciousness. I think that the gas is switched off. My knees throb with pain. It is as if my bones pulse. I cannot stop coughing. At last, eventually, the woman says, ‘What do you mean by that?’ and her voice, for the first time, bears a trace of anxiety. ‘Qué significa la otra GAL? What do you mean, Alec?’
The use of my first name feels like a blessing. I have a chance to stop this nightmare. Sitting straighter, risking another blow from one of the men, I speak very slowly, with as much truth and care as I can summon.
‘I was sent to San Sebastián. I was sent to Donostia by the bank. I met Mikel Arenaza and I interviewed him. I had to ask him questions for my work. He was kind to me. He said we should meet in Madrid and he telephoned me the day he disappeared. He called from the airport and we arranged to meet.’ Somebody moves away from the chair and leans up against the stove. I hear it shift very slightly on the stone floor. I try desperately to remember details and it helps that I do not have to lie. ‘Mr Arenaza did not come to the meeting. I waited for him in a bar in Gran Vía. The Museo Chicote. It’s a famous bar. I thought he was with his girlfriend and that’s why he was in Madrid. He had a mistress. I want to make sense. You need to know this. Am I making sense?’
‘Who?’ the woman asks.
I pause, trying to get a clean, steadying breath under the hood. What is she referring to? Does she want to know about Rosalía? Why did the leader say ‘Who?’ I have lost my train of thought. I want to ask one of the men to take off the hood and to give me a glass of water, but that would be to risk another blow.
‘Her name is Rosalía Dieste. Her step-father was murdered by ETA at Chamartín station. One of your operations a long time ago. She seduced him because he was Batasuna. She wanted him dead. It was revenge. I followed her because I liked Mikel. I was trying to find him.’
Something happens. I feel the touch of metal on the skin of my biceps. A knife. The string tying the sack has been cut. Then they rip off the hood and immediately tie a blindfold very tightly around my eyes. I register nothing but a blast of light. I gasp at the air in the barn and cry out pathetically, as if freed from a black hole. Then the woman says, ‘Keep going.’
‘I am a banker, a private banker. I am not a spy. Please don’t burn me. Please don’t put me on the gas.’ It is so hard to think. ‘I followed her because I was interested. I knew about the girl and I didn’t want to tell the police or the journalists who rang me because it was a secret. You see? Mikel told me not to tell anybody. He was my friend. Then I saw Rosalía with Luis Buscon. Do you know Luis Buscon? He is the GAL. I’m sure of it. There’s a journalist, Patxo Zulaika, who knows all about this. Maybe you know him. I think you know him. He works for Ahotsa. He doesn’t know about Buscon because I don’t trust him. But he knows about the GAL. He told me at lunch. You need to believe me. You need to talk to him.’
Nothing is said. There is absolute silence, a minute for the dead. Then suddenly, heatedly, as if the volume had been turned up on a television, I hear them arguing in Basque. Even in my demented state I can tell that I have said something to unnerve them, something that might keep me alive. I may not have to tell them about Kitson. If they put me on the stove I would tell them about Kitson. I don’t think I’d be able to stop myself. I like Richard. He is what I wanted to be. But if they put me on that stove and they light the gas under my naked thighs, God knows I do not know what I will tell them.
‘Say that name again,’ she says. ‘Did you say the name Luis Buscon?’
‘Yes, yes.’ I seize on this like food. ‘Luis Buscon. He is also called Abel Sellini. He was working with Dieste. He murdered Arenaza and took the body to Valdelcubo. That’s why I was there today. Buscon is a Portuguese mercenary. Juan Egilan… I can’t remember his name. The one who was kidnapped…’
‘Juan Egileor.’
‘Yes. He has been kidnapped by the Spanish. And Otamendi too. He was shot because he is one of you. They hate you. They think you are terrorists. They are fascists who do not believe in the cause.’
Again they go back to their conversation. All I want is half an hour to rest and gather my strength. I would give anything for that. I would give anything just to hold Sofía and to go back to our hotel in Santa Ana. If they stop hitting me, if they let me go, I will tell her that I love her. If they take away the gas, I will tell her that I love her.
‘Luis Buscon is somebody that we know about. How did you know his name?’
‘I bribed the concierge at the hotel.’
‘Which hotel?’
‘The Villa Carta in Madrid.’
‘And how do you know that he is a Portuguese mercenary? How does a private English banker know something like that?’
How do I answer this? It is as if I can feel all three of them moving towards me, shutting down the space. It should be easier to lie because they cannot see my eyes, but I cannot think of what to say.
‘The concierge told me. Alfonso told me.’ The found deceit is like a miracle. ‘He said Buscon always stays at the hotel and the staff had gone through his belongings. The hotel knows about fake passports, all the money he keeps in his safe. He books into the room under the name Abel Sellini. The police are keeping him under surveillance, but they don’t arrest him because of what he is doing to ETA. Don’t you see? They want him to carry on. He is leading the GAL.’
‘That is unlikely.’ The woman’s reply is very abrupt and I feel the dread fear of another beating. If they do not believe me they will light the gas. Then it’s over, all of this. They speak in Basque and one of them moves back to the stove. If I hear the click of the cigarette lighter again I think I will scream.
Say something. Do something.
‘Why is it unlikely?’
‘Because we have known about Señor Buscon for a long time.’ The woman’s voice is directed away from me, as if she is looking towards the door. I wonder if there is now somebody else, a fourth person, in the room. I wish that one of the men would say something. ‘He is an associate of the Interior Ministry. One of his oldest friends is second to the minister himself. Have you met these men?’
‘No, of course I haven’t. Of course not.’
‘Then why are you involved?’
‘I’ve already told you. I am not involved.’
‘You do not know Javier de Francisco?’
‘No.’ And this is the truth.
‘If there is another GAL, it will be Francisco controlling it. He is the scum. You know that he was a soldier in the days of Franco?’
‘I told you, I know nothing about him.’
‘Then let me educate you. A young Basque confronted him, a brave boy from Pamplona. And de Francisco took the boy, who had done nothing, and with two of his men they went into the countryside and they beat him with shovels until he was dead. So this man knows what it is to kill like a coward. He is the black viper of the government in Spain. And it has all been concealed by the corrupt government that you serve.’
‘That’s not true.’ I do not understand the link she is making between Francisco and Buscon, between a murdered boy and soldiers of long ago. I know that I will get out of this place alive if I can just prove the authenticity of what Zulaika told me. And yet he must already have shared his theory with my captors. Great waves of pain pulse across the left side of my head, making it impossible to think. Is this what Kitson wanted all along? Did he set me up? I cannot work it out. If Julian walked in now, or Saul or Sofía, it would somehow make more sense. I cannot seem to reason. ‘I’ve told you. I’m a private banker. I live on my own in Madrid.’ I am saying things now that they have already heard, but there is nothing left. ‘I became interested in what happened to Mikel. I liked him, I really did. I shouldn’t have followed Buscon. I shouldn’t have followed the girl. I was just bored. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I am not a spy.’