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floating rumours attached to my name. Then my death will be accepted as accidental. Now you understand why I don’t walk into your Embassy and ask for help? Or make contact with old friends who are left alive in Spain?”
    “By ‘friends’ you mean communists?”
    “The others were never my friends,” the man said contemptuously.
    “Then why did you make contact with Tavita?” And what worries me, Reid was thinking, is that this man has involved her in helping an enemy of the state; what worries me is that she may be in additional danger if any of his friends connect her with him.
    “She never had any politics that mattered. She was only a child—seven or eight years old when I was last in Málaga. No one will connect me with Tavita. That is what worries you? I assure you, it is as much in my interest as it is in hers that we remain unconnected.”
    “But her brother—”
    “Yes, I was a close friend of her brother. He was many years older than she was, the head of her family. I helped him to escape to Madrid in 1937 when Franco’s troops took Málaga. I helped him to escape again in 1939. Then we followed different roads. I was sent to Moscow. He went to Mexico, then to Cuba. And there he changed. He was one of those socialists who like to feel they have been betrayed: it nourishes their sense of martyrdom.”
    Reid glanced at his watch. Outside, the song had ended. A dance was beginning. “Did you have contact with him in Cuba?”
    “No. I watched him closely. But we never met.”
    “When did you arrive in Cuba?”
    “1963.”
    “Why?”
    “In order to take charge of one of our departments there that had become—well, let us say it was careless, inept. It needed reorganisation.”
    “You were an agent for the KGB?”
    “I am a member of the KGB.”
    Reid noted the correction and was impressed. He also noted the use of the present tense, and was disturbed. In another session, he thought, I’ll have that clarified. But now—he glanced again at his watch—now he must get the essentials. “Name?”
    “Which of them?” The man was amused by the increased tempo. Perhaps he was taking it as proof that he was accepted. “To Tavita, I am Tomás Fuentes.”
    “Why was there an attempt on your life?”
    “There have been procedural disagreements within the department. I lost the argument. Meanwhile.”
    Meanwhile... A revealing word, thought Reid, when spoken with such bitterness. Was this man a defector in the real sense? Or was he simply playing for time—some months, perhaps even a year—until he was proved right? If he actually hoped for some kind of reinstatement, then he would give nothing away that was of any importance. Let’s keep talking, decided Reid, and see how much he is willing to tell. He asked, “Disagreements? Between orthodox and revisionist factions in your department?” And the answer to that would at least indicate just where this man stood.
    Perhaps Fuentes guessed the reason for Reid’s question. Or he welcomed a chance to cut the American down a little. “That is being much too simplistic. There are no revisionists in the department. There cannot be. Or it would cease to exist. And that’s the reason that made my position extremely insecure: I was represented as revisionist. Not true. But my chief opponent was a Cuban, and we were, after all, in Cuba. Also, he had been most helpful to Moscow in the death of Che Guevara, while I had advised Guevara—privately, of course—not to go to Bolivia. Oh, I had no illusions about the man. He had veered far left, toward the Chinese faction; he did not believe that we could achieve our ends quickly enough by peaceful coexistence. He was too much of an anarchist, and therefore unreliable. But there were safer ways of dealing with him. So, I was against the Bolivian project. I insisted on the realities: it was not possible at that time to open another Vietnam. My mistake was that I overestimated world opinion, Señor Reid. I had