‘You mean E-T-A?’
‘Of course I mean E-T-A.’ He tries to drink more whiskey, forgetting that it is finished. ‘There is a younger leadership now, more brutal. And then there is the fear that we all lived with, of reprisals from the families of the victims. We were the spokesmen of the armed struggle, we appear on television, and that always made us a target for revenge.’
‘And now you’re caught in the middle?’
Upon reflection, very quietly, Arenaza agrees. ‘Yes, in the middle.’ U2 pounds on the stereo – A Sort of Homecoming from The Unforgettable Fire – while he stares despondently at the ground. When he stoops, the muscles in his shoulders swell and stretch the fabric of his sweater.
‘And the second thing?’
‘What?’
‘You said two things happened. The bomb and something else.’
‘Oh.’ His head rears up, as if regaled by memory, and for a moment all of the pain and the doubt and the sadness seems to leave him. He looks suddenly happy. ‘The second thing that happened was that I fall in love.’
‘With your wife?’
It is a stupid question and Arenaza laughs in a way that opens up his face, gives it light. ‘No, not with my wife. Not my wife. With Señorita Rosalía Dieste. A young woman. From Madrid, in fact. We meet two months ago, at a conference on new energies here in Donostia, at the Hotel Amara Plaza. She is an industrial engineer, very beautiful. Ever since – how can I say? – we enjoy ourselves.’
He is grinning manically. The ladies’ man.
‘She’s your mistress?’
‘My mistress,’ he says proudly, as if the description pleases him. I feel like giving him advice on not getting caught. Get an email account that your wife knows nothing about. Keep any presents that she gives you in a drawer at work. If you go to her house, leave the loo seat down after using the bathroom.
‘So you’ve been to see her? She comes up here and you try to get away from your wife?’
‘It is not this easy. She also has a man she lives with. A boyfriend. But next week I am coming to Madrid to be with her. On Thursday. So we spend the weekend together at my hotel.’ As an afterthought, he adds, ‘Maybe we should meet for an evening, no? You show me around Madrid, Alec?’
Is this part of the grand plan? Is this what Julian wants?
‘With Julian and Sofía?’
‘Sure. But the two of us as well. Rosalía has to go home at night so I have a lot of time in my hands. We go to Huertas, we go to La Latina. I know a wonderful Basque restaurant in Madrid, the best cooking in the city. Two men with no cares in the world. I would like to leave all of my problems behind. I have no responsibilities for five days. And we find you a girl, Alec. You have a girl?’
His hand slaps onto my biceps as I reply, ‘Nothing regular,’ and shake my head. ‘Julian doesn’t know anything about this?’
‘Julian?’
The idea seemed to take him by surprise.
‘Julian. Julian Church.’
‘I know who you mean. No, he must know nothing. Nobody knows anything, and you must speak to nobody about it.’ He starts grinning again, wagging his finger. ‘Can you imagine telling Julian this, anything that I have told you? He would not understand. He would be English about it and wave his hands in the air, trying to make it all go away. They do not understand sex or politics in your country. You do, Alec, I can see that. Maybe it is because of your family’s history, the suffering in Ireland and the Baltics.’
‘What? That helps me to understand sex?’
He laughs. ‘Of course, of course. But I tell you this. I once shared a room with Julian and he was asleep as soon as he turned out the light. No dialogue in his brain, no conscience or worry. Just a flick of the switch and – Boom!’ – Arenaza chops his hand through the air – ‘Julian Church snores. Can you imagine such a person? So peaceful. No struggle in his soul.’
Why were Julian and Mikel sharing a room?
‘That does sound like him, yes. Yes it does.’
‘But of course it was not always this way. Like all of us, he has also had troubles in his relations.’
‘Yes.’
He obviously thinks that I know Julian far better than I do.
‘For example when he was living in Colombia.’
‘ Colombia.’
‘All the problems with his wife.’
‘Oh yes.’
Sofía has never mentioned anything about living in Colombia. Arenaza looks at me doubtfully, but he’s too drunk to make the connection.
‘You know about his time in South America? You know about Nicole?’
‘Of course.’ I have never heard Julian speak of any woman of that name, nor of any time spent in South America. It certainly didn’t come up when I ran checks on him three years ago. ‘He told me over lunch one day. It must have been difficult for him.’
‘Of course, of course. Your wife runs off with your best friend, this is more than “difficult”. I think it nearly killed him.’
I am grateful for the low light and the din of the taverna, because they help to smother my reaction. Julian had a wife before Sofía?
‘You obviously know him a lot better than I do,’ I respond. ‘You and Julian have a history. I don’t think he would reveal something as personal as that to an employee, no matter how close we are. It’s very private.’
I try to work out the implications. Has Arenaza spoken out of turn? I need to put the pieces together without appearing ignorant of the facts. Yet I cannot even work out whether Sofía knows the truth about her husband’s past. Is she an innocent party in this, or has she been playing me all this time?
‘Another whiskey?’ I ask, assuming that alcohol will help to lower Arenaza’s defences.
‘Sure.’
And the brief respite at the bar allows me time to conceive a strategy, a question designed to discover what Julian was doing in Colombia.
‘I forget,’ I ask, returning with two tumblers of Jameson’s. What was Julian’s job title out in South America?’
‘In Bogotá? His job title?’ He looks perplexed. ‘I think he was just teaching English. That was the whole problem.’
‘The whole problem.’
‘Well, Nicole is the reason they are there, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘I mean, she works at the embassy all day and Julian has nothing to do but teach English to businessmen and students…’
I experience a thump of shock, a tightening through the upper part of my body. ‘The embassy,’ I manage to say.
‘That’s right.’
‘Yes. For some reason I thought Julian was connected to that.’
But which embassy? US or UK?
‘Are you all right, Alec? You look worried.’
‘I’m fine. Why?’
‘You sure?’
‘It must be the drink. We’ve had quite a bit.’
He shrugs. ‘Yes I think so.’
‘So where did they meet?’
‘Julian and Nicole?’
‘Yes.’
He is starting to look uninterested. ‘In the United States. Julian was working for a bank in Washington and they meet through work.’ Does that make Nicole a Yank? ‘But he gives it all up for love. Follows his new wife to Colombia where she falls for this other man. Why?’
‘Well, maybe that’s why Julian prefers marrying foreign girls,’ I suggest, adopting an ambiguity in the hope of discovering Nicole’s nationality. Arenaza duly obliges.
‘Sure. But I don’t think he will marry any more Americans, no? I think one is enough for a lifetime.’
Maybe it’s all coincidence, but at the very least Julian’s wife worked for the State Department. Yet in what capacity? The fact that neither Sofía nor Julian has ever mentioned her would surely suggest a connection with the Pentagon or the CIA – and that means a link to Katharine and Fortner. But why would Julian put me in touch with someone who had access to that information? Is it because he knows that I will not be able to prevent myself from investigating?
‘I’d forgotten all this,’ I tell him. ‘I’d always assumed that Julian had been with Sofía for longer. I guess that explains why they don’t have any children.’