And you believe Zulaika? You think this is really what’s going on? That Otamendi, Egileor and Arenaza are victims of a third dirty war?’

‘Look at the facts, Richard.’ That might sound patronizing on the tape. ‘There haven’t been disappearances and murders of this kind in Spain and southern France for years, then three come along at once. Egileor’s employer, ADN, is an office supply company. Segundo Marey, an innocent man who was kidnapped by the GAL in 1983, also worked for a furniture company that was accused of laundering funds for ETA. It’s like a bad joke. Then there’s Arenaza’s body, found in quicklime in a shallow grave, identical circumstances to Joxean Lasa and Joxi Zabala. The parallels are deliberate. Whoever is doing this thing is taunting the Basques. The organizers of the first two dirty wars, and we’re talking about individuals occupying some of the highest positions in the land, tried to protect themselves from disclosure by knowing very little about what was going on. To that end they hired right-wing foreign extremists to do their dirty work for them. Italian neo-fascists, French veterans of Organisation de l’Armée Secrète, Latin American exiles. These men were fiercely ideological, they hated Marxist groups like ETA, and almost all of them had a military background. Luis Buscon fits this mould precisely.’

‘He does,’ Kitson mutters. ‘Only in this case ETA are claiming that Buscon is a visible element in a conspiracy which goes as high as de Francisco.’

‘Why not higher?’ I suggest.

‘Who’s Francisco’s boss?’

‘Félix Maldonado, the interior minister. Next stop, José María Aznar.’

Kitson expels a low whistle and writes something down. Then, as if the observations are linked, adds, ‘We discovered evidence in Porto that Buscon hired mercenaries for the Croats during the Balkan war, hence his initial links to weapons smuggling.’

‘What’s happened to those, by the way?’

He looks up from his notes. It’s dark in the hotel room and the air is stuffy.

‘The weapons?’

I nod. Tellingly, Kitson reaches across to shut off the digital recorder. He wants to protect his IRA product from ears in London.

‘Situation pending. We have some of the weapons under observation, others appear to have taken flight. Of course, I’ve always thought it possible that the two investigations may be related. If what Zulaika told you is true, the Croat weapons may have fallen into the hands of the Spanish state for the purposes of fighting ETA. Buscon could have diverted them. That’s certainly something I’ll mention to London.’

‘And Rosalía Dieste?’

Something catches in my throat and I cough so violently that my ribs feel as if they will crack. Kitson frowns and offers me a bottle of water.

‘What about her?’ I ask, drinking it in slow, calming bursts. ‘Zulaika said she’s disappeared. Implied she might have been liquidated. Your people have anything on that?’

Kitson switches the voice recorder back on and appears to hide a smirk, perhaps as a reaction to my choice of vocabulary. Then he tips back the last of his Fanta, crushes the can and throws it in a perfect three-metre arc straight into the waste-paper bin.

‘Rosalía Dieste is on holiday,’ he says. ‘Rome. She hasn’t disappeared. Due back with loverboy this evening, no doubt with postcards of the Pope, some fava beans and a nice bottle of Chianti.’

‘Well, that’s good to know.’

‘Your Mr Zulaika must have been mistaken.’ I wonder if this is said for the benefit of Kitson’s superiors in London: he has let me have a good run on the tape; now he wants to remind them who’s boss. ‘Actually we have a different problem. A different problem with a different girl.’

I stand up to relieve some of the stiffness in my body and my left shin sends a cord of searing pain directly under the kneecap. I fall against the wall near the door, gasping. Kitson sees this and almost knocks over the table in an effort to reach me. Taking most of my weight on his shoulders he then leads me into the bathroom and sets me down on the edge of the bath. He is surprisingly strong. I say that I am embarrassed by the sweat that has soaked through my shirt onto his arms.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry.’

But I feel dizzy and take a towel down from a rack above the bath, wiping my neck and face. Only after a couple of minutes do I ask what he meant about the girl.

‘What girl?’

‘You said there was another woman, a new problem. With somebody other than Rosalía.’

‘Oh yes.’ He looks directly at me. ‘Buscon left a package at the Hotel Carta this morning.’

‘Buscon is back in Madrid?’

‘Was. Checked out at eight. A woman came to pick it up about an hour later. Somebody we didn’t recognize. You sure you’re all right, Alec?’

‘I’m fine.’

He goes back into the bedroom and I hear him searching around in his jacket. I am still hot and out of breath, but the pain has mostly passed. ‘Careful,’ he says as he passes me what looks like a photograph that has been colour-photocopied onto a sheet of A4. ‘I had surveillance in the lobby and security faxed this through. Do you recognize her?’

I turn the paper over and it falls limp in my hand. I cannot believe what I am seeing.

‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ he says, registering my reaction. ‘So you know her?’

‘I know her.’

The woman in the photograph is Sofía.

32. Black Widow

‘Sofía Church? Your boss’s wife?’

A nod.

‘You want to tell me more?’

I did not think it was possible to feel angrier and more unsettled than I already do, but Sofía’s treachery is an all-new humiliation. I feel utterly bereft and strung out, as if my heart has been broken and left for years to grieve. Kitson is watching me all the time and I know, at the very least, that we cannot hold this conversation while I am sitting in the bathroom. I ask him to assist me and we walk slowly back into the bedroom. I have to stretch out flat on the nearer of the two beds and prop up my head with a pillow. It must be a pathetic sight. I do not even have the strength to lie about this.

‘She’s Spanish,’ I tell him, as if that’s a start. ‘They’ve been married for five years. That’s all I have, Richard. That’s everything.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

He knows. It’s obvious. All about the affair with Sofía, all about Julian, all about the whole damn thing. They saw us together at the Prado. Kitson’s eyes are telling me to come clean before there’s a breach of trust. Don’t let me down. Don’t keep making the same mistake.

‘Look, switch off the tape.’

‘What?’

‘Just do it.’

He walks over to the table, sits down and appears to shut off the mechanism. I do not have the guts to ask if I can double check this.

‘Sofía and I have been seeing each other for a while. We’ve been having an affair.’

‘OK.’

In the bathroom, a tap drips.

‘Are you married, Richard?’

‘I’m married.’

‘Children?’

‘Two.’

‘What does your wife do?’

‘She does everything.’

I like this answer. I am envious of it.

‘It’s not something that I’m particularly proud of.’

‘It’s not something that I’m particularly here to judge.’ There is a beat of understanding between us. ‘And now you think that she might have played you?’

It is the spy’s deepest fear; to be betrayed by those closest to him. Kitson’s question is in itself a slight; an officer of his calibre would never have allowed himself to be so blatantly manipulated. I am trying to understand what the hell Sofía might have been doing at the Carta picking up an envelope left by Luis Buscon, but all I can think is that she has been using me all this time. It must have something to do with Julian’s past in Colombia, with Nicole. Are they part of the dirty war? Sofía hates ETA, but no more or less than most Spaniards. She disapproved of Arenaza, but not enough to have him killed. Christ, I tasted her, I made her come; there were times when we seemed to vanish into one another, so intense were the feelings between us. If all that was just a game to her, a woman’s ploy, I do not know what I will do. To lie within human intimacy is the greatest sin of all.