‘The problem is straightforward.’ It is suddenly difficult to articulate, to defend, one of my deepest convictions. ‘I worked for the British government in a highly secret operation designed to embarrass and undermine the Yanks. I was caught and I was fired. I threatened to spill the beans to the press and told two of my closest friends about it. In the corridors of Thames House and Vauxhall Cross, I’m not exactly Man of the Year.’
‘You think they still care?’
The question is like a slap in the face. I pretend to ignore it but Saul looks pleased with himself, as if he knows he has landed a blow. Why the hostility? Why the cynicism? Short of something to say, I pick up the menu and decide, more or less at random, what both of us are going to eat. I don’t consult Saul about this and gesture at the waiter with a wave of my hand. He comes over immediately and flicks open a pad.
‘Sí. Queremos pedir pimientos de padrón, una ración de jamón ibérico, ensalada mixta para dos y el plato de gambas y cangrejos. Vale?’
‘Vale.’
‘And don’t forget the chips,’ Saul says, the sarcasm drifting away.
‘Look.’ Suddenly the absurdity of my situation in a stranger’s eyes has become worryingly clear. I need to get this right. ‘We’re America ’s only friend in the world, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. They do what they like, we do what they tell us. It’s a one-way friendship which nevertheless needs to look rock solid or Europe will be singing the “Marseillaise”. So having somebody like me at large is potentially a huge embarrassment.’
Saul actually smirks. ‘You don’t think you’re slightly overestimating your importance?’
It’s pure goading, poking around for a reaction. Don’t rise to it. Don’t bite.
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning things have moved on since 1997, mate. Men have flown large planes into very tall buildings. The CIA is looking for anthrax in downtown Baghdad. They’re not worrying about whether Alec Milius is getting cleared through customs at Gatwick airport. We’re days away from invading Iraq, for Christ’s sake. You think your average MI5 officer is concerned about a tiny operation that went wrong five years ago? You don’t think he’s got other things on his mind?’
I drain my glass and refill it without saying a word. Saul breathes a funnel of smoke at a fishing net tacked erratically to the wall and I am on the point of losing my temper.
‘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 naïve 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.’