‘I’ve been doing some thinking,’ he says. ‘You’re not going to like it.’
I see that his expression is very serious. This is the thing I have dreaded. He has brought me here to cut me out. SIS has reflected on events and decided that I have made too many mistakes.
‘Go on.’
‘I think it would be best if you stopped seeing Sofía. Monday night was your last night together. OK? You work for us now. No more off-piste activities. It’s just too dangerous.’
I agree immediately. If that’s all he wants, if that’s all it takes to win this thing, I’ll do it.
‘It also makes sense in the light of what I’m about to discuss with you, but we need Anthony in here before I can do that.’
Right on cue there’s a knock at the door. Kitson says, ‘Yes,’ and Macduff enters the room. I had no idea he was even in the flat. When I came in, Geoff and Michelle were on their own in the sitting room eating bowls of cereal and watching Friends on DVD. How did Macduff know to come in at exactly that moment? Was he listening from another room?
‘That’s odd,’ Kitson tells him, voicing my own doubt. ‘I was just coming to get you. Been eavesdropping, Anthony?’
‘No, sir.’
He sits on the bed. He is slimmer than I thought, about five feet ten. Strange to hear a man in his late forties refer to Kitson as ‘sir’. What are perceived as his weaknesses that he should have been overlooked for promotion?
‘Have you seen the news?’
It takes me a beat to realize that Kitson is talking to me. ‘No,’ I reply, and he leans over and switches on the television. Macduff mutes the sound with a remote control which he has picked up off the floor. A gameshow is ending on Telemadrid.
‘Two bars in the Basque country were shot up at dawn today,’ he says, ‘one in Bayonne, the other in Hendaye. On the French side.’
I can feel Macduff’s eyes studying me as he waits for my reply. In the absence of a specialist, am I regarded as the resident expert on ETA and the GAL? He wants to know how good I am, how quickly I can analyse and react to this new development. For the first time I feel a sense of pressure from one of Kitson’s team and realize that I have something to prove.
‘Bars used by ETA?’
‘That’s what they’re saying,’ Kitson replies.
The link is obvious. ‘Then it’s a new front in the dirty war. The GAL regularly shot up bars and restaurants on the French side in the 1980s, targeting terrorist exiles. They’re employing the same tactics. Anybody hurt?’
‘Nobody. It was pre-breakfast.’ Kitson has one eye on the television, waiting for the evening news. ‘An old man drinking coffee got a shard of glass in his hand, the barman in Hendaye felt a bullet buzz past his head.’
‘Sounds nasty. Who speaks Spanish?’
Neither of them understands my question.
‘I mean, where are you getting your information? Who speaks Spanish well enough to understand the news?’
‘Geoff,’ Macduff replies. They both look a little sheepish, as if it’s embarrassing that the two most experienced members of an SIS task force in Spain are not fluent in the local language. ‘A Basque journalist went on TV claiming that one of the cars involved in the shooting had Madrid number plates.’
‘Did you get his name?’
Kitson has to flick through the pad. He has trouble reading his own handwriting. ‘Larzabal,’ he says finally. ‘Eugenio Larzabal.’
‘And you say he was a Basque journalist?’
‘For Gara, yes.’
I say that I have never heard of him and take the name down in some notes of my own, trying to look professional. ‘What about Zulaika?’
‘What about him?’ Kitson asks.
‘Have you been following him? Do you know if he plans to go into print with the dirty-war story?’
‘Zulaika is going to keep his mouth shut for a week or two. That’s been arranged.’ So they did get to him. ‘But he’s not the only journalist in Euskal Herria. A kidnapping, a murder, a car with Madrid plates. It all starts to add up. Somebody somewhere is going to make the same sort of links. And once that happens, we’ll be playing catch-up.’
‘You mean you’ll have to tell the Spanish authorities what you know?’
‘I mean they’ll probably already know as much as we do.’
I try to gauge the operation from a political perspective. How does SIS gain from failing to report the existence of the new GAL to the Aznar government right away? Perhaps Kitson’s superiors care nothing for the legitimacy of the Spanish state, only for the terrorist networks that can be traced by pursuing Buscon. The dirty war is a sideshow in which I am a bit-part player. But then Kitson says something to challenge that assertion.
‘Over the past few days we’ve been looking into Javier de Francisco’s background, trying to get a fix on his motives. Anthony’s come up with a plan.’
This is Macduff’s cue. He’s more deferential in front of Kitson, less self-assured than he was on Tuesday with the others. Sitting up straighter on the bed, he gets the nod from his boss and embarks on a well-rehearsed monologue.
‘As you know, Alec, Mr de Francisco is the secretary of state for security here in Spain, to all intents and purposes the number two at the Interior Ministry under his old friend Félix Maldonado. Now if what you were saying last time is correct, senior figures in ETA believe he may be organizing this dirty war against them.’ Kitson sniffs and turns in his chair. As I think was explained to you last time, we don’t have the manpower here to embark on a full-scale investigation of whatever elements in the Spanish government may or may not be up to.’
‘Not yet, anyway,’ Kitson says, an interjection which would suggest that discussions are ongoing in London over the possibility of ramping up the size of his operation. That can only be good for my career.
‘Now, it may come as a shock to you to learn that, as a result of their work at G8 summits, EU delegations and so forth, SIS keep files on all senior government personnel with an impact on British affairs.’ Macduff lets this sink in, and seems confused when I do not appear more surprised. ‘I’ve developed what I think is a good idea of how we might gain access to some of the information flowing into and out of the Interior Ministry.’
‘You mean blackmail? You mean you have biographical leverage with de Francisco?’
‘Not as such.’
There’s a short pause while both men look at one another. I can feel myself being dragged into something amoral.
‘How are you feeling, Alec?’ Kitson asks. ‘What do you think you’re capable of?’
The question wrong-foots me. Why would Kitson ask something like that in front of a colleague? He must know that I’m still not properly recovered from the kidnapping.
‘What do you mean?’
I look at Macduff. He looks at me. Kitson lights a Lucky Strike.
‘Here’s the situation. There are any number of ways we can find out information about an individual or group of individuals from an intelligence perspective. I don’t need to list them for you. However, mounting an operation of any scale against a government minister is fraught with difficulty. As of this moment, not even our own station here in Madrid is aware of my team’s presence on Spanish soil. In order to get comprehensive technical coverage of de Francisco we would have to alert the embassy in order to get the right kit smuggled out to us in a diplomatic bag.’
‘And you don’t want to do that?’
‘I don’t want to do that.’
It’s obvious where this is going. They want to get me on the inside. But how? ‘So what are the alternatives?’ I ask.
Kitson takes a long drag on the cigarette. ‘Well, if we had Francisco’s phone numbers we could call Cheltenham and get them on a hot list, but that would alert GCHQ…’
‘… which you don’t want to do…’
‘Which we don’t want to do. Yet. So that’s where you come in. That’s why I need to know how you’re feeling.’