Patrick.
Just to be on the safe side.
Saul shakes his head with bewildered, slow-motion amusement, turns, and climbs the remaining few steps. You can already hear the snap and rattle of dominoes, the rapid punch of clocks. Through the doorway opposite the landing I spot Ramon and a couple of the other, younger players who show up from time to time at the club. As if sensing me, Ramon looks up, raises his hand and smiles through a faint mist of cigarette smoke. I fetch a board, a clock and some pieces and we settle down at the back of the room, some way off from the main action. If Saul wants to talk about his marriage, or if I feel that the time is right to discuss what happened to Kate, I dont want any of the players listening in on our conversation. One or two of them speak better English than they let on, and gossip is an industry I can ill afford.
You come here a lot? he asks, lighting yet another Camel Light.
Twice a week.
Isnt that a bad idea?
I dont follow.
From the point of view of the spooks. Saul exhales and smoke explodes off the surface of the board. I mean, arent they on the look-out for that sort of thing? Your pattern? Wont they find you if you keep coming here?
Its a risk, I tell him, but the question has shaken me. How does Saul know a tradecraft term like pattern? Why didnt he say routine or habit?
But you keep a look-out for new faces? he says. Try to keep a low profile?
Something like that.
And its the same thing in your normal life? You never trust anybody? You think death is lurking just round the corner?
Well, thats putting it a bit melodramatically, but, yes, I watch my back.
He finishes arranging the white pieces and my hand shakes slightly as I set about black. Again the nonsensical idea arises that my friend has been turned, that the breakdown of his marriage to Heloise is just a fiction designed to win my sympathy, and that Saul has come here at the behest of Lithiby or Fortner to exercise a terrible revenge.
What about girlfriends? he asks.
What about them?
Well, do you have one?
I do OK.
But how do you meet someone if you dont trust her? What happens if a beautiful girl approaches you in a club and suggests the two of you go home together? Do you think about Katharine? Do you have to turn the woman down on the off-chance she might be working for the CIA?
Sauls tone here is just this side of sarcastic. I set the clock to a ten-minute game and nod at him to start.
Theres a basic rule, I reply, which affects everyone I come into contact with. If a stranger walks up to me unprompted, no matter what the circumstances, I assume theyre a threat and keep them at arms length. But if by a normal process of introduction or flirtation or whatever I happen to get talking to somebody that I like, well then thats OK. We might become friends.
Saul plays pawn to e4 and hits the clock. I play e5 and were quickly into a Spanish Game.
So do you have many friends out here?
More than I had in London.
Who, for instance?
Is this for Lithiby? Is this what Saul has been sent to find out?
Why are you asking so many questions?
Jesus! He looks at me with sudden despair, leaning back against his seat. Im just trying to find out how you are. Youre my oldest friend. You dont have to tell me anything if you dont want to. You dont have to trust me.
Theres genuine pain, even disgust in this single word. Trust. What am I doing? How could I possibly suspect that Saul has been sent here to damage me?
Im sorry, I tell him, Im sorry. Look, Im just not used to conversations like this. Im not used to people getting close. Ive built up so many walls, you know?
Sure. He takes my knight on c6 and offers a sympathetic smile.
The truth is I do have friends. A girlfriend even. Shes in her early thirties. Spanish. Very smart, very sexy. It wouldnt, given the circumstances, be politic to tell Saul that Sofia is married. But thats enough for me. Ive never needed much more.
No, he says, as if in sorrowful agreement. With my pawn on h6, he plays bishop b2 and I castle on the kings side. The clock sticks slightly as I push the button and both of us check that the small red timer is turning. What about work? he asks.
Thats also solitary.
For the past two years I have been employed by Endiom, a small British private bank with offices in Madrid, performing basic due diligence and trying to increase their portfolio of expat clients in Spain. The bank also offers tax-planning services and investment advice to the many Russians who have settled on the south coast. My boss, a bumptious ex-public schoolboy named Julian Church, employed me after he heard me speaking Russian to a waiter at a restaurant in Chueca. Saul knows most of this from emails and telephone conversations, but he has little knowledge of financial institutions and precious little interest in acquiring any.
You told me that you just drive around a lot, drumming up clients in Marbella
Thats about right. Its mostly relationship driven.
And part-time?
Maybe ten days a month, but I get paid very well.
As people grow older they tend to display an almost total indifference to their friends careers, and certainly Saul does not appear to be concentrating very intently on my replies. A few years back he would have wanted to know everything about the job at the bank: the car, the salary, the prospects for promotion. Now that sense of competition between us appears to have dissipated; he cares more about our game of chess. Stubbing out his cigarette he slides a pawn to C4 and nods approvingly at the move, muttering here it comes, here it comes under his breath. The opening has been played at speed and he now looks to have a slight advantage: the centre is being squeezed up by white and theres not much I can do except defend deep and wait for the onslaught.
And part-time?
Maybe ten days a month, but I get paid very well.
As people grow older they tend to display an almost total indifference to their friends careers, and certainly Saul does not appear to be concentrating very intently on my replies. A few years back he would have wanted to know everything about the job at the bank: the car, the salary, the prospects for promotion. Now that sense of competition between us appears to have dissipated; he cares more about our game of chess. Stubbing out his cigarette he slides a pawn to C4 and nods approvingly at the move, muttering here it comes, here it comes under his breath. The opening has been played at speed and he now looks to have a slight advantage: the centre is being squeezed up by white and theres not much I can do except defend deep and wait for the onslaught.
Ill have that, he says, seizing one of my pawns, and before long a network of threats has built up against my king. The clock keeps sticking and I call for time.
What are you doing? he asks, looking at my hand as though it were diseased.
I just need a drink, I tell him, balancing the timer buttons so that the mechanism stops working. Theres never a waiter up here when you need one.
Lets just finish the game
Two minutes.
I spin round in my seat and spot Felipe serving a table of players. Behind me Saul clicks alight another cigarette and exhales his first drag with moody frustration.
You always do this, man, he mutters. Always
Hang on, hang on
Felipe catches my eye and comes ambling over with a tray full of empty coffee cups and glasses. Hola, Patrick, he says, slapping me on the back. Saul sniffs. I order a beer for him and a red vermouth for me and then we reset the clock.
Everything all right now?
Everythings fine.
But of course its not. The position on the board has become hopeless, a phalanx of white rooks, bishops and pawns bearing down on my defences. I hate losing the first game; its the only one that really matters. For an instant I consider moving one of my pieces when Saul is not looking, but there is no way that I could get away with it without risking being caught. Besides, my days of cheating him are supposed to be over. He was always the better player. Let him win.
Youre resigning?
Yeah, I tell him, laying down my king. It doesnt look good. You did well. Been playing a lot?
But you could win on time, he says, indicating the clock. Thats the whole point. Its a speed game.
Nah. You deserved it.
Saul looks bewildered and essays a series of lopsided frowns.
Thats not like you, he says. Ive never known you to resign. Then, with mock seriousness, Maybe you have changed, Patrick. Maybe you have become a better person.
6. The Defence
Whenever Ive thought about Saul in the last few years, the process has always begun with the same mental image: a precise memory of his face as I confessed to him the extent of my work for MI5. It was the morning of a summers day in Cornwall, Kate and Will not twelve hours dead, and Saul drinking coffee from a chipped blue mug. By telling him, I was placing his life in danger in order to protect my own. It was that simple: my closest friend became the guardian of everything that had happened, and the Americans could not touch me as a result. To this day I do not know what he did with the disks that I gave him, with the lists of names and contact numbers, the Caspian oil data and the sworn statement detailing my role in deceiving Katharine and Fortner. He may even have destroyed them. Perhaps he handed them immediately to Lithiby or Hawkes and then hatched a plot to destroy me. As for Kate, the grieving did not properly begin for days, and then it followed me ceaselessly, through Paris and St Petersburg, from the apartment in Milan to the first years in Madrid. The loss of first love. The guilt of my role in her death. It was the one hard fact that I could never escape. Kate and Will were the ghosts that tied me to a corrupted past.
But I remember Sauls face at that moment. Quiet, watchful, gradually appalled. A young man of integrity, someone who knew his own mind, recognizing the limits of a friends morality. It was perhaps naive to expect him to be supportive, but then spies have a habit of overestimating their persuasive skills. Instead, having tacitly offered his support, he took a long walk while I packed up the car and then left for London. It was almost four years before he contacted me again.
So, do you miss London? he asks, pulling on his coat as we swing back out through the revolving doors, heading south down Calle Fuencarral. Its approaching ten oclock and time to find somewhere to eat.
All the time, I reply, which is an approximation of the truth. I have come to love Madrid, to think of the city as my home, but the tug of England is nagging and constant.
What do you miss about it?
I feel like Guy Burgess being interviewed in Another Country. What does he tell the journalist? I miss the cricket.
Everything. The weather. Mum. Having a pint with you. I miss not being allowed to be there. I miss feeling safe. It feels as though Im living my life with the handbrake on.