‘I advise you to go home and sleep,’ he says, doubtless catching the smell of alcohol on my breath. ‘If you remain here I will call the police. You have been warned now.’

Then, a miracle. A moat of light as a door opens in the concrete building behind him. A young diplomat, no older than twenty-eight or twenty-nine, emerges into the forecourt. He seems to sense the commotion at the gate and looks up, meeting my gaze. He has brown, uncombed hair, intelligent eyes and a way of moving that’s so relaxed it’s as if his whole body is chewing gum. He comes towards us. Dark suit trousers, brogues, a long, antique British overcoat.

‘Algún problema, Vicente?’

‘Sí, señor.’

‘There’s no problem,’ I interrupt, and he looks almost startled to hear the language of the old country. ‘I apologize. I’ve been standing out here shouting because I have something of great importance to tell the ambassador. I’m not a madman, I am not a fake. But you need to take me very seriously. You need to let me in.’

Very cool, very reserved, the diplomat conducts a rapid up-and-down analysis of my appearance. Shoes to face. Lunatic or messiah?

‘Can it not wait until the morning?’ he says. ‘I’m the last to leave.’

‘No, it can’t wait. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s about the government here, the financial scandal.’ The guard takes a step back, letting the diplomat get closer. ‘My name is Alec Milius. I am a British citizen. I am a former support agent of the Secret Intelligence Service and I have lived here for a number of years. I can’t tell you anything more than that without breaking the Official Secrets Act. But I need to speak to a senior member of the embassy staff as a matter of urgency.’

‘Do you have any form of identification?’

With that simple question I know that he is taking me seriously. I reach into my jacket pocket and take out the Paris-issued Lithuanian passport. It’s not ideal, but it will do. The diplomat pulls it through the bars as the guard scuffs his feet.

‘This is a Lithuanian passport. It says here that you were born in Vilnius.’

‘That part of it is fake,’ I tell him, and it looks as though this seemingly crazy revelation serves only to cement his belief in my authenticity. ‘I haven’t been to the United Kingdom since 1997. My situation is complicated. I have information for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office which will be of immense importance to -’

He interrupts. ‘You’d better come inside.’

I feel a great surge of affection, of victory. The diplomat turns to the guard and instructs him to buzz the metal door on the right of the fence. I walk towards it and step onto British soil for the first time in seven years.

‘And you said your name is Alec Milius?’ he says, offering me a hand to shake.

‘Alec Milius, yes.’

It is a sort of homecoming.

Paddy Woodworth’s superb book Dirty War, Clean Hands (Yale Nota Bene, 2002) offers a comprehensive history of ETA and the GAL, and was indispensable in the writing of The Spanish Game. My thanks also to the incomparable Isambard Wilkinson, who guided me through the complexities of Basque politics on an eye-opening visit to Alava and Guipúzcoa. Lucy Wadham, author of the fine novel Castro’s Dream, helped to inspire the character of Luis Buscon. Jamie Maitland Hume played a crucial role in the development of the plot. Nothing, however, would have been written without the love and support of my wife, Melissa, who makes everything possible.

I am also very grateful to everybody at The Week, to Joshua Levitt, Juan Pablo Rodríguez, C. Hunter Wright, Liz Nash, Ken Creighton, Bathurst’s of Savile Row, Mercedes Baptista de Ybarra, Kim Martina, Bill Lyon, Ana-María Rivera, Trevor Horwood, David Sharrock, Lourdes García Sánchez-Cervera, Juliane von Reppert-Bismarck, Jamie Owen, Emily Garner, Gonzalo Serrano, Carolyn Hanbury, the Petrie family, the Mills family, Alexa de Ferranti, Ian Cumming, Richard Nazarewicz, and to Laura and all the Johns at Finbar’s.

Samuel Loewenberg, Rupert Harris, Smriti Belbase, Sid Lowe, Henry Wilks, Boris Starling and Natalia Velasco read early drafts of the novel and offered invaluable comments and observations. My baby son, Stanley, ate several pages of the manuscript. Then the usual suspects took over: Tif Loehnis at Janklow and Nesbit; Rowland White at Michael Joseph. My thanks also to Rebecca Folland, Christelle Chamouton and Molly Beckett, and to Georgina Atsiaris, Sarah Hulbert, Clare Pollock and Tom Weldon.

As I was putting the finishing touches to the manuscript, I learned that my close friend Pierce Loughran, who had helped so much in the creation of both The Hidden Man and The Spanish Game, had died suddenly. He was 36. Pierce was a man of great kindness and astonishing erudition, and I was lucky to know him. He will be greatly missed.

C.C.

London, October 2005

Charles Cumming was born in Scotland in 1971. He is the author of the bestselling thrillers A Spy by Nature and The Hidden Man. The Spanish Game in his third novel. He lives in London.