The Spanish Game
A vivid and gripping novel from ‘the master of the modern spy thriller’ (Mail on Sunday) which sees Alec Milius coaxed back into the secret world to face the uncontainable danger of 21st century terrorism…For six years, Alec Milius has escaped the past. In Madrid, he has rebuilt his life, but remains in exile and in danger.Slightly older, and much wiser, than the young spy who first impressed MI6, he has kept his fatal attraction to secrets. So when a prominent politician mysteriously disappears, Alec is lured back into the spying game.Only this time he operates without the protection of any official agency – isolated and expendable, with nobody to turn to if things go wrong. And they soon do.But when Alec is confronted with the nightmare of modern terrorism, he is given one last chance for redemption…
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Charles Cumming
The Spanish Game
Copyright
Harper
An imprint of HarpercollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Penguin Books Ltd. 2006
THE SPANISH GAME
Copyright © Charles Cumming 2006.
Extract from The Talented Mr Ripley by Anthony Minghella
(screenplay copyright © The Ant Colony Ltd., 2000) reproduced by kind permission of Methuen Publishing Ltd.
Charles Cumming asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007416936
Ebook Edition © JULY 2011 ISBN: 9780007416929 Version: 2018-09-27
Dedication
For my mother and Simon, my step-father
Epigraph
‘Madrid is a strange place anyway. I do not believe anyone likes it much when he first goes there. It has none of the look that you expect of Spain…Yet when you get to know it, it is the most Spanish of all cities, the best to live in, the finest people, and month in and month out the finest climate. While other big cities are all very representative of the province they are in, they are either Andalucian, Catalan, Basque, Aragonese, or otherwise provincial. It is in Madrid only that you get the essence…It makes you feel very badly, all question of immortality aside, to know that you will have to die and never see it again.’
Ernest Hemingway
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Author’s Note
Map
One
Exile
Two
Baggage
Three
Taxi Driver
Four
The Keeper of the Secrets
Five
Ruy Lopez
Six
The Defence
Seven
Churches
Eight
Another Country
Nine
Arenaza
Ten
Level Three
Eleven
California Dreaming
Twelve
Pillow Talk
Thirteen
Development
Fourteen
Chicote
Fifteen
The Disappeared
Sixteen
Peñagrande
Seventeen
The Lost Weekend
Eighteen
Atocha
Nineteen
Middlegame
Twenty
Dry Cleaning
Twenty-One
Ricken Redux
Twenty-Two
Barajas
Twenty-Three
Bonilla
Twenty-Four
El Cochinillo
Twenty-Five
Our Man in Madrid
Twenty-Six
Sacrifice
Twenty-Seven
Shallow Grave
Twenty-Eight
Dirty War
Twenty-Nine
Taken
Thirty
Out
Thirty-One
Plaza de Colón
Thirty-Two
Black Widow
Thirty-Three
Reina Victoria
Thirty-Four
House of Games
Thirty-Five
La Bufanda
Thirty-Six
Blind Date
Thirty-Seven
The Raven
Thirty-Eight
Columbia
Thirty-Nine
Product
Forty
Line 5
Forty-One
Sleeper
Forty-Two
La Víbora Negra
Forty-Three
Counterplay
Forty-Four
The Vanishing Englishman
Forty-Five
Endgame
About the Author
Other Books by Charles Cumming
About the Publisher
Author’s Note
The Spanish Game is a work of fiction inspired by real events. With one or two obvious exceptions, the characters depicted in the novel are products of my imagination. The book has been written with respect for opinions on both sides of the Basque conflict.
The story takes place in Madrid in the first half of 2003, many months before the events of 11 March 2004 which left 192 people dead and more than 1,700 injured. At the time of writing, no evidential link between the perpetrators of the Atocha bombings and Basque terrorist groups has ever been established.
C.C.
London, October 2005
Map
ONE
Exile
The door leading into the hotel is already open and I walk through it into a low, wide lobby. Two South American teenagers are playing Gameboys on a sofa near reception, kicking back in hundred-dollar trainers while Daddy picks up the bill. The older of them swears loudly in Spanish and then catches his brother square on the knot of his shoulder with a dead arm that makes him wince in pain. A passing waiter looks down, shrugs and empties an ashtray at their table. There’s a general atmosphere of listless indifference, of time passing by to no end, the pre-rush lull of late afternoons.
‘Buenas tardes, señor.’
The receptionist is wide shouldered and artificially blonde and I play the part of a tourist, making no effort to speak to her in Spanish.
‘Good afternoon. I have a reservation here today.’
‘The name, sir?’
‘Alec Milius.’
‘Yes, sir.’
She ducks down and taps something into a computer. Then there’s a smile, a little nod of recognition and she writes down my details on a small piece of card.
