The Galician Parallax (32 page)

‘So much for Bush and his predictions,’ said Jeff as they boarded their broken-down Volkswagen van.

‘Two hotels, the United Nations HQ and dozens of other spots blown to bits in the last couple of months; there’ll be more of this, I’m sure,’ added Joshua. ‘The whole place is a can of worms.’

The Iraqi driver started up the “banger” and was about to drive off just as the interpreter, who was the last member of the group, jumped in beside him.

‘Bloody nutcases,’ muttered Jaime.

He still had a vivid memory of the death of one of his Spanish colleagues, Jose Couso in the unfortunate “friendly fire” of an American tank commander on the Hotel Palestine right at the beginning of the conflict. A court case was opened in Madrid accusing the officer of the murder of an innocent civilian. Despite the tragedy, Jaime kept on firing his camera at the continued bloodshed in Iraq; it was his daily bread and butter.

It took the team about half an hour to reach the site around ten miles on the other side of the River Tigris. When they finally arrived, the scene was yet another reminder of the continuing human destruction resulting from the weekly bombing events causing indescribable suffering for the Iraqi population, not to mention the coalition forces, authorities and press representatives in the country. Although the casualties were low, twelve Iraqis and two workers, the mere fact that a vital medical centre had been attacked was tragic in itself.

‘The feeling of helplessness is everywhere,’ said a bleeding doctor as he made his way through the devastated building.

When they had completed their coverage, the press team got back in their van and began making their way to the hotel. No sooner had they left the scene and were about to turn into one of the side streets of the city when a group of armed men approached their slow-moving vehicle. Jaime was sitting at the back next to one of the sliding doors. He didn’t give it a second thought as his survival instinct took over. He shouted at the others to get out as he opened the door and ran for cover away from the menacing bunch. The driver and the translator were in the front seat and were unable to move. Jeff got out from the other side and ran in the opposite direction whilst Joshua just stayed put. Hours later, Jaime and Jeff had made it back to the hotel. There was no sign or news of the other members of the group.

A week later, Joshua Bell was pleading for his life on an al-Qaeda web page. The ten-minute video showed him robed in an orange gown kneeling before at least five hooded Islamic warriors each with a scimitar in their hand.

Jaime Falcon took less than a week to skedaddle out of Baghdad. He hadn’t heard about the beheading the day before of his friend and working partner, Joshua Bell, until he debarked for a stopover at Frankfurt airport. It was all over the German press as well as the television news flashes of the day; the scene being cut the instant the sword was about to slice off the reporter’s head. When he eventually arrived back in Madrid on an Iberia flight, a fleet of press reporters and other anti-war groups in Spain were waiting for him. Tears were in his eyes as his girlfriend greeted him amongst flashing cameras and protruding microphones trying to capture any statements the young cameraman wished to make. Demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq followed during the next day in the centre of Madrid with Jaime at the head of the marchers.

The gruesome and brutal murder of the young journalist in Iraq had a knock-on effect for Lieutenant Sergio Quiroga. It’s as if the Iraq war suddenly took on a new meaning in his own internal battle against the evils of his small world in Galicia. Sergio’s adrenalin was playing tricks with his brain as the key words kept humming around in his head: drugs, Arabs, terrorists, all criminals, what next? His bottled-up frustrations over the past two years had climaxed yet he sensed that he couldn’t go on without some sort of counselling, advice or just chit-chat with a trusted person or colleague. In a moment of calm it came to him. He decided to take Gloria’s advice and talk to his old boss down in Santiago, Colonel Pedro Lobeira. He had no idea what he was going to talk about.

Three years had gone by since Sergio last spoke to him. His departure wasn’t on too amicable terms either, yet he always had a deep respect for the one officer that recognised his unique abilities very early on and had allowed him to do his own thing both inside and outside the office. Before taking time off from his work, Sergio called the Santiago office to make sure that the colonel was in. Rather than any formal request for a meeting, he was just going to turn up. Two hours later he was walking up the steps of the Civil Guards’ HQ in the Galician capital.

‘You’ve got some nerve bursting in like this,’ said Colonel Lobeira in a half-greeting manner.

Sergio said nothing. The colonel changed his tone.

‘Somehow I thought you’d be turning up some day.’

He didn’t move from behind his desk nor did he usher Sergio to sit down. ‘OK, I’ll give you fifteen minutes.’

The colonel recalled his protégé’s early prowess in IT technology as well as his impatience to join the action teams within the force ever since he arrived at the HQ from the training college as a graduated junior officer. Sergio’s over-reactive eagerness to be involved directly in “hands on” criminal investigations had ended in a certain degree of embarrassment for the civil guards. He eventually overstepped the boundaries during the unauthorised break-in with Gloria on the sealed-off Ordes bungalow back in April of 2002 even if the episode had been brushed under the carpet. Despite his record, Colonel Lobeira couldn’t help recognising that this young upstart was a brilliant analyst that could put together hundreds of pieces of evidence with no apparent connection in the case and somehow see through the fog of uncertainty and come up with the right answer. He was also quick off the mark.

‘Sir, do you remember the Ordes surveillance…’

Colonel Lobeira raised his hand and interrupted Sergio.

‘No need to go over that again. Your snooping nearly cost you your job.’

Sergio composed himself, took his time and moved up to the edge of the colonel’s desk.

‘Those goons that were murdered two years ago; it’s still a mystery, right?’

‘Go on.’

Sergio retracted and almost stood to attention. ‘A bunch of Arab undesirables were sniffing around Galicia at the time and I can’t help feeling there was a link, sir.’ He started to laugh. ‘I’m not quite sure who screwed up, us or them?’

The colonel was well aware of the fiasco in Ordes and was glad it had been filed away, yet Lieutenant Quiroga had now renewed his own inquisitive appetite to know exactly what was behind the bizarre event two years earlier.

‘OK, Lieutenant, why don’t you start from the beginning?’

For the next half-hour Sergio poured his heart out. His own ego had led to unnecessary frustration at not achieving what in his mind were the goals of his assignments. Few professionals undertook their workload to extremes. Sergio was one of them. Nevertheless, in doing so he had upset many sectors of the civil guard hierarchy and had even implicated a senior member of the civil service at the law courts by tagging Gloria along in his escapade at Ordes. Colonel Lobeira listened carefully without interruption, unusual for a superior in the Spanish system of police authority. Sergio’s verbal spouting once again harped on about undesirable Arabs snooping around Galicia that in his mind were beyond the usual North African lot that were simply looking for drugs. As he ended his dissertation he finally came out with it; he broke his silence.

‘They broke into my girlfriend’s apartment three months ago. What were they looking for?’ He confirmed his suspicion based on the garlic peels found in the apartment.

An experienced officer, Colonel Lobeira didn’t flinch. He took his time.

‘Why do you think some individual or individuals from the Middle East were behind the break-in? Garlic peel is no proof, Lieutenant.’

Sergio replied without hesitation, ‘Nobody gobbles garlic whole that I know of; some country folk in Galicia might, but then they’re not the kind that would commit felonies of this nature. Besides, we’re convinced this bunch must’ve known about our snooping around the bungalow and came looking for something. Agree, sir?’

The lieutenant had a point, thought the colonel, yet he couldn’t relent to the argument, as it would appear to condone Sergio’s actions. The colonel chose his words carefully.

‘Lieutenant, you’ve been in the force just over seven years now and in that time you’ve managed to set off an international incident when you uncovered the wreck-seekers scam. You caused a rumpus in Villagarcia that had to be hushed up by our internal network. You then followed up with a totally uncalled for intrusion in a bungalow in Ordes that most in the force who knew about it considered a wild goose chase… and yet…’ The colonel picked up a ballpoint pen and started sucking on it.

‘What do you really think that these “undesirable Arabs” as you call them were up to?’

Sergio was suddenly caught out. The colonel had asked the key question. Too obsessed with their presence and unusual behaviour, Sergio’s mind had reached a stop signal as to the reasons why. He had very strong hunches but then how to express them to a superior without sounding as mere unfounded assumptions leading nowhere or sounding preposterously outrageous. He took his time.

‘I believe that there is a link between these weirdos and the al-Qaeda network and that drug money is behind it. As to what purpose…’ Sergio paused for a second as he entered the intuition stage. ‘Perhaps an attack on our country?’

He never mentioned the train schedule that had been left behind at the Ordes bungalow with pencilled circles drawn round some of the timetables.

‘Thought you’d forgotten how to do it,’ said Yolanda.

It was the first time that they’d made love since the birth of young Sonia Maria a few weeks earlier. Stan got up from the bed and began looking around the room.

‘I wonder where I left them.’

Yolanda burst out laughing. ‘Yes, Professor Higgins. No, Professor Higgins.’

He turned round, paused for a moment and then jumped right back on top of her, grabbing her by her long blonde hair and twisting her head towards his. For a second he just stared at her. Whether it was the weeks of sexual absenteeism or simple spur of the moment desire, Stan soon had a hard erection that began finding its way to her goalpost whilst his hands and lips kept the rest of her team on fire.

Stan leaned across to her side of the bed and picked up the small towel. As he wiped the remains of their passion he muttered, ‘Sex is a messy business really.’

‘Oh, you English… so romantic.’

Still stark naked he got up and walked round the bed towards the bathroom.

As he was about to go for a shower she asked jokingly, ‘What was on your mind,
amor
, before you attacked me?’

Stan paused for a minute. He went back and sat on the bed.

‘I didn’t tell you, love. When the ambassador was here, among other matters he asked me what I knew about the Galician drug trade. I told him that apart from what appears in the papers, bugger all.’

Yolanda didn’t answer, just stared quizzically into space.

‘He then asked me if I recalled the sinking of the
Maruxa
years ago when I was at the coastguards in Cornwall and did I know that it was suspected of carrying a shipload of drugs before it was scuttled.’

‘I don’t remember…’

‘Of course not; you were too busy rocking at the Cheshire Cat.’

She tried to hit him with a pillow. With a look of sarcasm, Yolanda recapped. ‘You still haven’t answered my question. What were you looking for earlier on?’

‘It’s a folder where I’ve been keeping some local press cuttings on drug hauls and other items…’

He was looking around the bedroom. ‘I thought I left them on one of the chairs.’

Yolanda got up and went over to the chest of drawers, displaying her natural beauty as she bent down to open the bottom one. She pulled out the folder.

‘Is this it?’

As she walked back to the bed to hand him the folder, Stan just leaned on his elbow and soaked in the vision of her naked body.

‘Can you do that again? Please.’

Donald was on his own savouring a typical pub lunch of bangers and mash with a full pint of “Best”. Being a Saturday, the pub was full of customers. Seated at the windowsill table and halfway through his second sausage, he once again sheepishly read his statement from the Swiss bank. He’d opened up a private letter box at the post office to make sure no one else was aware of any correspondence related to his extra-curriculum activities in Galicia. Sr Perez had not only kept his word but had agreed four more monthly deliveries before the yachting season began and Maiden Voyages commenced their tourist programme. Apart from the heavy risks of drug trafficking Donald was also concerned that his partners would find out about his escapades to Spain. He’d excused his absence as visits to a sick relative up north.
After all, I’ll only be gone for a few days each month
, he thought.

The early train from Penzance would get him into London with enough time to board the afternoon flight from Heathrow to Santiago. A couple of days later he’d be back at the wharf sprucing up
Serene Maiden
as usual readying it for the summer season. He’d also made up his mind to disappear for good before the season as he reckoned he’d have enough money stacked away in offshore banks to start up his own yachting business far enough away from prowling drug enforcement agents or secretive tax inspectors in Europe.

‘To hell with the rest,’ he muttered to himself as he walked over to the bar to ask for a second pint.

Teixugo and Sr Perez were commemorating their tenth anniversary as partners and friends in the illicit cocaine trade of Galicia. The set-up was no different to any other business transactions that dealt with the wholesale and distribution of goods. Teixugo’s organisation controlled the import of the substance from overseas with a network of contacts abroad, mainly Colombia. His only exception was a unique relationship with the United Kingdom that had been set up at the specific insistence of Mr Billson. Sr Perez managed the redistribution to the multitude of retailers in Spain as well as the rest of Europe. He had a well-organised network of cover-up warehouses that were used for the breakdown of each cocaine lot sent in from abroad and made sure that his employees were not only well “oiled” with extra “pocket money” but that they kept clean and well away from any drug-indulging activity. All money transactions were carried out through a range of legitimate cover-up international transport and other merchandising means on an import/export basis. They were therefore able to move money around the world without any problems or interference from tax authorities. Two sets of books were kept to keep the auditing reports within reasonable legal presentation to the authorities. There was a vast array of payroll expenses on the books and another “confidential” sector listing charitable “donations” to dubious public officials masquerading as non-governmental agency collaborators. The system also had a built-in safety net that kept both the wholesale and distribution accounts completely separate should any criminal investigation take place on either sector. All money exchanges between them were carried out in the multitude of offshore tax-haven bank accounts that had been set up over the years.