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‘So you think I’m delusional? You think the fact that five years ago my apartment in Milan was ransacked by the CIA is just a product of a fertile imagination?’
‘When were you living in Milan?’
‘For six months in ‘98.’
Saul looks stunned. ‘Jesus.’
‘I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t tell anyone.’
He recovers almost immediately. ‘But that could have been just a burglary. How do you know it was the Yanks?’
I actually enjoy what comes next, wiping the smug look off his face. ‘I know because Katharine told me about it on the phone. She said that Fortner, the man who taught her everything, her mentor and father figure, had lost his job as a result of what I’d done and that he still hadn’t found work two years later. A veteran CIA officer hoodwinked by a 25-year-old rookie selling fake research data for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Both of them were made to look a laughing stock by what I did to them. She said that her own career was as good as over. Back to desk work in Washington, blown for all European operations. And all because of Alec Milius. Katharine spent two years after I disappeared trying to discover where I’d gone. I think she went a bit crazy. Eventually she tracked me to my apartment in Milan, got my phone number, address, everything. I’d been sloppy. The CIA broke in, took my computer, passport, even my fucking car that was parked outside. I had nine thousand dollars cash under a mattress. That went as well. Katharine said it was just payback for what I stole from her “organization”. Hence the need to get the hell out of Italy. Hence the reason why I’ve been just a little bit paranoid ever since I got to Madrid.’
‘They don’t know you’re here?’
‘Somebody knows I’m here.’
‘What do you mean, “Somebody knows I’m here”?’
I am aware that what I’m about to tell Saul may sound over-the-top, but it’s important to me that he should understand the seriousness of my predicament.
‘My letters have been tampered with, my car has been followed, one of my mobile phones was tapped–’
Saul interrupts. ‘When did this happen?’
‘It happens all the time. You haven’t seen me since I moved here. You don’t know what Spain is like. Just realize that they keep an eye on me, OK, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘Even now? Nearly six years on?’
‘Five years, two hundred and thirty-eight days. Look. I have five bank accounts. When I call one of them and they put me on hold, I think it’s because there’s a note against my name and they’re checking me out. I have to change my phone every three weeks. If someone is listening to a Walkman next to me on the metro, I make sure they’re not wearing a wire. The other day I was driving to Granada and the same car followed me from Jaén for an hour.’
‘So? Maybe they were connected to Endiom. Maybe they were lost. You know how someone very high on coke will ask you the same question over and over again?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well that’s what you sound like. Somebody very high. Somebody very paranoid. Your emails, talking to you on the phone, listening to you now. OK, five years ago, as a one-off, Katharine tracked you down and gave you a scare. She was pissed off, she had a right to be. But she’s a big girl, she would have got over it by now. The rest of this is not happening, Alec. You’re living in cloud cuckoo land. For once in your life, try to see beyond your own ego. Christ, you wouldn’t even come to my wedding. Believe me, if the CIA or Five or Six had really wanted to make your life difficult, they would have done it by now. Somebody could have planted drugs on you, got you thrown in jail. Not just turned over your flat. You get people on the run like Tomlinson or Shayler and they make it impossible for them to move. No work, no residency, threats and broken promises. You’re a fucking footnote, Alec.’
Food suddenly arrives in waves: a flat pink plate of jamón wedged in near my elbow; a deep metal bowl of salad tossed with carrot and canned tuna; the house speciality of prawns piled eight inches high on a rock of boiled crab and razor fish; a platter of pimientos de padrón, charred and salted to perfection.
Saul asks quietly what we’re eating.
‘They’re grilled peppers. One in ten is supposed to be hot. As in spicy. You’ll like them.’ He bites at one and nods approvingly. ‘Look, there’s one thing you should understand.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘I am not delusional. I am not paranoid.’ I’m not a fucking footnote, either.
‘Fine,’ he says.
‘I’m just trying to live my life…’
‘…with the handbrake on.’
Silence. It is as if the whole notion of my exile is a joke to him.
‘Why are you being like this? Why are you trying to goad me?’
Saul has been piling salad onto his plate but he stops and fixes my gaze.
‘Why? Because I no longer have any idea who you are, what you stand for. A person changes, of course they do, it’s a natural process. They find work, they find something that fulfils them, they meet the right girl, blah blah blah. At least that’s the idea. And as you get older you’re supposed to work out what’s important to you and dump what isn’t. It’s naive to think that at thirty a person is going to be the same animal that they were at twenty. Life has an impact.’
I mutter, ‘Of course it does,’ as if to dilute what’s coming, but Saul is shaking his head.
‘Something fundamental shifted in you five years ago, man. You were my closest, my oldest friend. We went to school together, to university. But I had literally no idea that you were capable of doing what you did. One day you were just reticent, ironic, mildly ambitious Alec Milius; the next you’re this creature of the state, a lying, manipulating, barely moral…thing, risking everything in your life for what exactly? To this day I can’t get my head round it. Personal fulfilment? Patriotism? And you used me in that, you used our friendship. Three straight years of lies. Every day it affected me, like the loss of someone, like mourning.’
All of the shame and despair and regret that I have experienced since Kate’s death is crystallized in this instant. Saul’s face is as hard and as unforgiving as I can ever remember seeing it. It is the end of our friendship. With just a few stark sentences he has engendered a violent and sudden cut-off.
‘So that’s it?’
‘That’s what?’
‘The end of things between us? That’s what you came out here to tell me? That it’s better if I don’t contact you any more?’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘You said it yourself. I’m a liar, a manipulator. I’m a footnote.’
‘That doesn’t mean it’s the end of our friendship.’ Saul looks at me in amazement, as if I have completely misjudged both him and the situation. ‘Jesus, we’re not at school any more, Alec. This isn’t a playground.’ I stare down at the table and cradle the back of my neck, bewildered and embarrassed. ‘Short of you developing an all-new fixation with Catalan schoolboys we’re still going to be mates. Things don’t end between people just because they betray them. In fact, that’s probably when they start to get interesting.’ There is a long burst of applause from the next-door room. ‘Let’s face it, we’re always more grateful to the people who have hurt us in life than to the ones who just let things drift by. I learned from you, and that’s what it’s all about. I’m just not going to sit here and let you think that no harm came from what happened…’
‘Believe me, I don’t think that for a second.’
‘Let me finish. It’s important for me to say this to you, face to face. I don’t get the chance on email. I don’t get the chance on the phone.’
‘OK.’
‘What you did was wrong. You didn’t kill Kate or Will, but your work and your lying led to their deaths. And I don’t see you doing anything out here to put that right. I don’t see you making amends.’
Ordinarily I might challenge Saul on this. Make amends? Who is he to speak to me this way? I make amends with my solitude. I pay penance with exile. But he has always believed in the myth of self-improvement; any reasoning I might employ would only burn out in the fire of his moral authority. We find ourselves eating in silence, as if there is nothing left to be said. I could try to defend myself but it would only feel like a tactic, a lie, and Saul would jump on it as quickly as he leaped on my earlier defence. At the next table the grandparents are standing up with considerable effort, having paid their bill and left just a few small coins as a tip. At the base of their receipt it says ‘No A La Guerra’ and the waiter has written ‘Gracias’ in felt-tip pen. The husband helps his wife into a garish fur coat and casts both of us an inscrutable smile. Perhaps he understood English after all. For once, I do not care.
‘Jesus!’
Saul has bitten into a hot padrón and downs an entire glass of wine to kill the heat.
‘You OK?’
‘Fine,’ he says, pursing his cheeks. ‘We need more booze.’
And this small incident seems to break the spell of his disquiet. A second bottle comes and we spend the rest of the meal talking about Chelsea and Saddam Hussein, about Saul’s grandfather–who has lung cancer–and even Heloise, whom he is inclined to forgive in spite of her blatant adultery. I note the double-standard in his attitude to the two of us and wonder if there is something saintly in Saul which actually encourages people to betray him. There has certainly always been an element of masochism in his personality.
With coffee, the waiter brings us two small shots of lemon liqueur–on the house–and we down them in a gulp. Saul is keen to pay (‘as a present, for putting me up’) and I feel mildly drunk as we make our way out past the kitchen and into the bustle of Chueca. It is past midnight and the nightlife is well under way.
‘You know a decent bar?’ he asks.
I know plenty.
SEVEN
Churches
Spaniards dedicate so much of their lives to enjoying themselves that a word actually exists to describe the span of time between midnight and 6 a.m., when ordinary European mortals are safely tucked up in bed. La madrugada. The hours before dawn.
‘It’s a good word,’ Saul says, though he thinks he’ll be too drunk to remember it.
We leave Chueca and walk west into Malasaña, one of the older barrios in Madrid, still a haunt of drug dealers and penniless students though, by reputation, neither as violent nor as rundown as it was twenty years ago. The narrow streets are teeming and dense with crowds that gradually thin out as we head south in the direction of Gran Vía.
‘Haven’t we just been here?’ Saul asks.
‘Same neighbourhood. Further south,’ I explain. ‘We’re going in a circle, looping back towards the flat.’
A steep hill leads down to Pez Gordo, a bar I love in the neighbourhood, favoured by a relaxed, unostentatious crowd. There’s standing room only and the windows are fogged up with posters and condensation, but inside the atmosphere is typically rousing and flamenco music rolls and strums on the air. I get two cañas within a minute of reaching the bar and walk back to Saul, who has found us a spot a few feet from the door.
‘Do you want to hear my other theory?’ he says, jostled by a customer with dreadlocked hair.
‘What’s that?’
‘I know the real reason you like living out here.’
‘You do?’
‘You thought that moving overseas would give you a chance to wipe the slate clean, but all you’ve done is transfer your problems to a different time zone. They’ve followed you.’
Here we go again.
‘Can’t we talk about something else? It’s getting a little tedious, all this constant self-analysis.’
‘Just hear me out. I think that some days you wake up and you want to believe that you’ve changed, that you’re not the person you were six years ago. And other times you miss the excitement of spying so much that it’s all you can do not to ring SIS direct and all but beg them to take you back. That’s your conflict. Is Alec Milius a good guy or a bad guy? All this paranoia you talk about is just window-dressing. You love the fact that you can’t go home. You love the fact that you’re living in exile. It makes you feel significant.’
It amazes me that he should know me so well, but I disguise my surprise with impatience.
‘Let’s just change the subject.’
‘No. Not yet. It makes perfect sense.’ He’s toying with me again. A girl with a French accent asks Saul for a light, and I see that his nails are bitten to the quick as she takes it. He’s grinning. ‘People have always been intrigued by you, right? And you’re playing on that in this new environment. You’re a mysterious person, no roots, no past. You’re a topic of conversation.’
‘And you’re pissed.’
‘It’s the classic expat trap. Can’t cope with life back home, make a splash overseas. El inglés misterioso. Alec Milius and his amazing mountain of money.’
Why is Saul thinking about the money?
‘What did you say?’
A momentary hesitation, then, ‘Forget it.’
‘No. I won’t forget it. Just keep your voice down and explain what you meant.’
Saul grins lopsidedly and takes off his coat. ‘All I’m saying is that you came here to get away from your troubles and now they’ve passed you by. It’s time for you to move on. Time for you to do something.’
For a wild moment, undoubtedly reinforced by alcohol, it crosses my mind that Saul has been sent here to recruit me, to lure me back into Five. Like Elliott sent to Philby in Lebanon, the best friend dispatched at the state’s request. His angle certainly sounds like a pitch, although the notion is ridiculous. More likely Saul is simply adhering to that part of his nature that has always annoyed me and which I had somehow allowed myself to forget; namely, the moralizing do-gooder, the self-righteous evangelist busily saving others whilst incapable of saving himself.
‘So what do you suggest I do?’
‘Just come home. Just put an end to this phase of your life.’
The idea is certainly appealing. Saul is right that there are times when I look back on what happened in London with nostalgia, when I regret that it all came to an end. But for Kate’s death and the exhaustions of secrecy, I would probably do it all again. For the thrill of it, for the sense of being pivotal. But I can’t state that directly without appearing insensitive.
‘No. I like it here. The lifestyle. The climate.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously.’
‘Well then, at least don’t change your mobile phone every three weeks. And just get one email address. Please. It pisses me off and annoys your mum. She says she still doesn’t know why you’re out here, why you don’t just come home.’
‘You’ve talked to Mum?’
‘Now and again.’
‘What about Lithiby?’
‘Who’s Lithiby?’
If Saul is working for them, they have certainly taught him how to lie. He runs his finger along the wall and inspects it for dust.
‘My case officer at Five,’ I explain. ‘The guy behind everything.’
‘Oh, him. No, of course not.’
‘He’s never been to see you?’
‘Never.’
Someone turns the music up beyond a level at which we can comfortably speak, and I have to shout at Saul to be heard.
‘So where did you put the disks?’
He smiles. ‘In a safe place.’
‘Where?’
