“You mean Periclito?”

“That’s right.”

“The bullfighter?”

“And his mother. Go on, tell me.”

Silkleigh looked more uncomfortable than Wavery had seen him. “Truth is, old soul, there you’ve got me. I don’t know much about Periclito. Or his mother.”

Wavery said, “That’s not what I’ve heard, Silkleigh. Marie Amaral tells me she knew you in Algeria.”

“Algeria?” said Silkleigh, his expression changing.

Wavery leaned forward. “What the bloody hell were you doing standing behind those French fascists?”

“It’s not what you think, Mr Wavery.” Silkleigh’s barside manner had vanished. “Technically, I was working alongside the French government. I was supposed to infiltrate the OAS bastards.”

“And then you came here, to Franco’s Spain.”

“Well, I do less and less. Anyway, it was a surveillance job. I didn’t kick anyone in the stomach.”

“What do you mean by that?”

All of a sudden Silkleigh had the steadfast air of a man who is pretending he hasn’t seen an acquaintance in the street. He looked for a place to moor his eyes. He settled on Wavery’s swimming trunks.

“Chapter Nine,” he began. “In which Joseph Silkleigh, author, reveals to Thomas Wavery, the painful and hideous truth of Marie Amaral and in so doing reveals the hideous truth about himself, a confession indeed with far-reaching consequences for Thomas Wavery, whose mind is more preoccupied with the coming weekend.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Listen, old soul . . . I’ll have to come clean.”

“Clean?” said Wavery. “Clean about what?”

For a second Silkleigh the author did not seem aware of how to continue. “The fact is, ambasadoro, you do one job. I do another.”

“What job?” But even as Wavery asked the question, its dreadful answer was taking shape in his mind. “Silkleigh? What job?”

“I had a message from my people. They said to keep an eye on you.”

Wavery looked at him, absorbing the implications of what Silkleigh was saying. He shook his head. He was stunned. Good God Almighty. This was the man he’d been patronising for months. He had made a complete drawing of Silkleigh’s life and got him one hundred per cent wrong. The man he had hired as his foreman was in all probability a senior employee in his own organisation. He felt an explosion of rage. He sprang up. This was Queesal’s doing!

“You bastard. You fucking bastard, Silkleigh. That’s a most disgusting game to play. Why didn’t you come clean before?”

Silkleigh went on. “Kara mia, you’ve been slightly out of earshot of the old on dit. They think you’re unreliable. They thought there was the strong likelihood you might go off your rocker. The fact is they wanted me to put your house in order for this Royal Visit.”

“So Pas de Probléme and Plaisir des Yeux . . . ”

“I found them jobs on the tunnel. If I hadn’t told those sweeties to fuck off they’d have seen in the millennium.”

Wavery’s rage was no sooner expressed than it expired. A year ago, this revelation might have devastated him. Not today. Not now. Silkleigh had offended a pride Wavery no longer took in his profession. Wavery had been reacting with the last vestiges of a Foreign Office man. But he was no longer such a creature. Since leaving Lima he had come to learn a truth fiercer even than pride. When a heart is utterly engaged nothing else matters.