Plaza de Colón is a vast square on the eastern side of the Castellana about a kilometre north of the Museo del Prado. A vast Spanish flag flies in the centre of the square beside a statue of Christopher Columbus. At its base, run-off from an elaborate fountain system forms a waterfall which pours down across the façade of a hidden, subterranean museum. The entrance to the museum can be reached only by walking beneath the waterfall via a set of stairs at either end. It is thus a natural environment for counter-surveillance, a long, narrow corridor with a wall of water on one side and a public building on the other, invisible to outsiders. Our meeting can proceed unmolested.
When I appear at the bottom of the southern staircase Kitson looks up but does not react. He is sitting towards the far end of the corridor on a low brick wall which runs beneath the waterfall. Water roars in a smooth, viscose arc behind his back, gathering in a shallow pool. Opposite his position is a map of Columbus’s journey to America sculpted in high relief on the museum wall. I consult it for some time before turning round to join him. When I sit down he offers me a pellet of chewing gum from a packet of Orbit menthol.
‘Do I need it?’
He laughs and apologizes for breaking last week’s engagement.
‘It didn’t matter. I couldn’t have come anyway.’
‘Now why was that?’
I take a deep breath. I have made a decision, against all my instincts for self-preservation, to tell Kitson the truth about what happened after Valdelcubo. It was a paralysing choice. To lie to him might have worked in the short term, but if he were to discover at a later date that I had been kidnapped and tortured by ETA, all trust between us would break down. That would mean the end of any future career with Five or Six, not to mention the personal cost of failing our intelligence services a second time. And I need Kitson for what I have to do; I need Kitson for revenge. Yet if I confess what happened, he will be concerned that I might have told my captors about his operation in Spain. Buscon’s name came up several times in the barn, where I was repeatedly accused of being a British spy. I am almost certain that I did not mention anything about Kitson or MI6, nor the consignment of arms Buscon procured for the Real IRA in Croatia. Had I done so, they would surely have killed me. I cannot be certain about this. I may have told them everything; there are patches of the torture that I simply do not remember, as if they wiped my memory clean with some mind-warping chemical.
‘I did what you asked me not to do.’
‘You went to Arenaza’s grave,’ he says quietly.
‘I’m afraid so.’
The water behind us is like the roar of an applause which never dies. It almost drowns out his words. In a calm voice, he says, ‘And what happened? Why are you limping, Alec?’
So I tell him. I sit there for half an hour and describe the horror of the farmhouse. By the end I am shaking with anger and shame and Kitson rests a hand on my shoulder to try to calm me. This may be the first time that we have made actual physical contact with one another. Not once does his face betray his true feelings; his eyes are as gentle and contemplative as a priest’s. He is shocked, of course, and expresses his sympathy, but the professional reaction remains obscure. I have the sense that Richard Kitson understands exactly what I have been through because he has been unfortunate enough to have encountered it in his career many times before.
‘And how do you feel now?’
‘Tired. Angry.’
‘Have you been to see a doctor?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Guardia Civil?’
‘Do you think I should?’
This gives him pause. He lights a Lucky Strike and hesitates over his answer.
‘You’re still a private citizen, Alec, so you should do what you feel is right. I would expect you to go to the police. The men – the woman – who did this to you will be waiting for you to go to the police. In fact it might look suspicious if you don’t. From a personal point of view, however, we would prefer it if you didn’t go public. The blowback problem, etcetera. Yet the choice is absolutely yours. I don’t want you to feel that we have any control over that decision.’
‘And if I don’t go? What then?’
I want him to reassure me that his offer of co-operation still stands. I don’t want what has happened to affect our professional relationship.
‘The Office can certainly find you somewhere secure to live in the short term. We can relocate you.’
‘That’s not going to be necessary. If ETA had wanted me dead, they would have killed me at the farm.’
‘Probably,’ he says, ‘but it’ll be safer, none the less.’
‘I’ll be careful. And what about my job?’
‘With me or with Endiom?’
I was not expecting that. I was thinking purely about Julian. It may be that Kitson sees no reason that the kidnapping should affect my links with SIS; indeed, he may assume that it will motivate me to pursue Buscon and ETA with an even greater intensity. He is right about that.
‘I was only thinking about Endiom. Why? Do you still think that I’ll be useful to you?’
‘Absolutely.’ He reacts as if the question were naïve, tilting back his head and blowing smoke up into the air. ‘But I need to know more about the dirty war. I need to know exactly what was said. The parameters within which my team are operating out here would be significantly widened by something like this. We need to get a full statement that I can telegram to London a.s.a.p. You’re going to have to try to remember everything that went on.’
To that end, we go immediately to the nearest decent hotel – the Serrano on Marqués de Villamejor – booking a room using one of Kitson’s passports. He sets up a digital voice recorder which he produces from his jacket. I give him names and theories, chief among them that Luis Buscon has a long-term association with a high-level figure in the Interior Ministry named Javier de Francisco. Kitson takes extensive notes and drinks Fanta Limón from the mini-bar. From time to time he asks if I’m all right and I always say, ‘I’m fine.’
‘So what’s the long-term picture?’
‘If there’s another dirty war, if there are men in Aznar’s government who are covertly funding attacks on ETA, that’s catastrophic for Blair and Bush. How can you fight terror if it is the tactic of your allies to brandish terror themselves? Do you see? The whole relationship gets blown out of the water.’ These are the first heartening moments that I have known for days. It gives me a feeling of satisfaction that I should be able to articulate a view on the plot against ETA which will be listened to at Vauxhall Cross and perhaps even passed on to Downing Street and Washington. ‘The British and the Americans are either going to have to stop the conspiracy using covert means, or abandon Aznar as an ally. Now I don’t know how they do that.’ Kitson exhales heavily. ‘The biggest problem, as far as I’m concerned, is Patxo Zulaika.’ My knees start to ache as I say this and I rub them, a movement which catches his eye. ‘He’s a fervent Basque nationalist, he understands this dirty war as a hard fact. Before long he’s going to have enough evidence to publish the whole story in Ahotsa and then the dam is going to burst.’