The Spanish Game

The Spanish Game
Charles Cumming

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…

Charles Cumming

The Spanish Game

Copyright

Harper

An imprint of HarpercollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

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.

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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

Cover (#ulink_fa5b0dbf-3381-5fea-a7a9-621c78b98b38)

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