KEVIN LANDED at Aeropuerto de Bilbao—in Basque, Bilboko aireportua—at five in the afternoon, and when they touched down he looked across the tarmac at the wedge, like a wave, that rose from the roof of the terminal. It was a small airport, but its glass-and-steel modernism gave it a magnificent feel. He joined the other passengers on a bus that brought them from the plane to the old customs counter. In some months, the separation of Britain from the European Union would ensure that staff waited behind the counter, but for now there was no one to listen even if he’d wanted to declare something.
He joined a queue leading to a line of white taxis marked by red stripes on the doors. On the short flight he’d decided to take it one step at a time. He’d used the Hushmail account to pass on Alexandra Primakov’s message, and until Rachel replied he was an independent agent. He would head to the city center, check into a room, and then find out if the paperwork for Magellan Holdings had been filed with the local government offices. While finding new names on the paperwork Primakov had drafted was a long shot, it was a place to start before diving into the more daunting task of looking for Sebastián Vivas, about whom he still knew almost nothing.
The taxi was a bubble-shaped economy car, and the driver played Basque music full of flutes and drums as they drove south toward town. The music was loud enough that at first neither of them heard the siren. When the driver noticed, he frowned into the rearview but kept driving at full speed. It wasn’t until the police car was right behind him, blinking its lights, that he finally got the message and slowed down, then pulled to the side of the road, muttering, “Arraioa!”
Kevin didn’t bother asking any questions. He only looked over his shoulder as the driver kept cursing, and watched a tall, dark-skinned man exit the passenger side of the police car while a uniformed policeman behind the wheel stayed where he was. That didn’t look right at all, but they were on the side of a highway with bright, open fields all around, and no matter how fast he ran Kevin wasn’t getting away.
When the man approached the driver’s side window and conversed in Basque a moment, Kevin noticed that the driver relaxed, his tone lightening, and he looked in the mirror at Kevin and raised his hands from the wheel, international sign language for Take him if you want. The man turned to look at Kevin through the window. He had a pencil mustache, a wandering right eye, and excellent English. “Mr. Kevin Moore? Please come with me.” Kevin followed his instructions, getting out of the taxi and walking with him toward the police car.
“Who are you?”
“I work for the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia.”
“You’re an intelligence officer.”
“Just so.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Indeed,” he said. “I am Sebastián Vivas.”
He briefly wondered if this could be a coincidence—was it a common name? Then Vivas said in a friendly tone, “These idiots let you leave the airport. We’re usually more professional.”
“Why pick me up?”
“Because you’ve come here to find me, and I’d like to know why.”
It was the kindest abduction Kevin had ever experienced.
Vivas joined him in the backseat as the mute police officer—had he been reprimanded for his ineptitude?—sped farther down the road and used an access road to cross the median and take them back toward the airport.
“So,” said Vivas. “You have flown from London to Bilbao in search of myself. Am I correct?”
“Have you always worked for the same employer?”
He smiled. “Right to it! Well, yes. For a long time.”
“In 2009?”
“Why do you ask?”
Kevin looked at the dry fields passing them by. “That’s when you helped Martin Bishop, who had just come from Berlin.”
“Did I?”
Kevin couldn’t tell if it was innocence or playfulness, so he just kept going. “At the time, you were part of an underground group connected to the Kommando Rosa Luxemburg. Or were you a plant?”
“Like you and the Massive Brigade?”
Kevin sized him up a moment. Unlike many in their line of work, Sebastián Vivas wasn’t being smug. He was merely establishing what he knew so that Kevin wouldn’t waste time dancing around the facts. “Alexandra Primakov called you?”
Vivas’s smile broadened, but he wasn’t going to verify that. Whoever these people were, this network of individuals in London and Bilbao and perhaps Berlin—they were knowledgeable as hell.
“Nine years ago you were a revolutionary,” Kevin said.
Vivas looked like he might laugh. “Spain was a fascist country until the seventies.”
“I’ve heard.”
“Well, revolutionary is not a bad word in Spain.”
It was a kind of answer. “Were you one of the officers in Magellan Holdings?”
Vivas shook his head. “I was not.”
“How about James Sullivan?”
Kevin’s words seemed to please the Spaniard. He rubbed his scalp and brushed at his mustache and shook his head, a quiet gasp of laughter escaping him. “I haven’t heard that name in a long time.”
“Well?” Kevin asked.
“Perhaps he was.”
“So his name is on the company charter.”
“There is no charter for Magellan Holdings, not anymore. The company was dissolved months ago.”
“After Martin Bishop was killed?”
“Perhaps.”
“There’s no paperwork left?”
He rocked his head. “Sadly, there was a fire.”
“A fire?”
“Just so.”
The cop at the wheel took a turnoff for the airport. Kevin had no idea what awaited him once they arrived, so this might be his last chance to ask questions. “Can you draw the connection for me? Who is James Sullivan?”
“Just a name.”
“A name for whom?”
“That’s all you want? Someone’s name?”
“I could start with that.”
“Okay, Mr. Moore. But once I tell you, you have to promise to leave my country, and myself, alone. Can you do that?”
It was a big ask, but Kevin had nothing on his side but a credit card nearing its limit and a change of clothes that were by now dirty. “Yes, I can do that.”
“Good,” said Sebastián Vivas. “Now, have you ever heard of the CIA’s Department of Tourism?”