The Hidden Assassins (24 page)

‘We know he committed suicide,’ said Felipe. ‘All the doors were locked from the inside and the prints on the water glass next to the paracetamol trays match the body’s. So what are we looking for?’

‘Anything that might give us a lead to the person he met in his lunch break,’ said Falcón. ‘A business card, a scribbled number or an address, a note of a meeting…’

Falcón sat at the table in the kitchen with Gamero’s wallet and the museum ticket. The tendons of his hands rippled under the cloudy membrane of the latex gloves. He felt sure that there were connections to be made out there, which he was just missing. Every lead they were pursuing failed to unfold into the greater narrative of what was going on. There were movements, like seismic aftershocks, that brought about casualties such as Ricardo Gamero, a man dedicated to his work and admired by his colleagues, who’d seen…what? His responsibility, or was it just the recognition of his failure?

He teased out the contents of Gamero’s wallet: money, credit cards, ID, receipts, restaurant cards, ATM extracts—the usual. Falcón called Serrano and asked him to get the name and number of the priest of the San Marcos church. He went back to the wallet, turning over the cards and receipts, thinking that Gamero was a man who was used to a high level of secrecy in his life. Vital phone numbers would not be written down or stored in his mobile but either memorized or encoded in some way. He wouldn’t have, or couldn’t have, made contact with the person he saw in the museum on the day of the bomb. His department was being watched and they were all being kept in the office. He could have called at night after they were released from work. He would probably have used a public phone. The only chance was that he might not have remembered an infrequently used mobile number. He turned over the last ATM extract in the wallet. Nothing. He thumped the table.

‘Have you got anything out there?’ asked Falcón.

‘Nothing,’ said Jorge. ‘The guy’s in the CGI, he’s not
going to leave anything hanging around unless he wants us to find it.’

A call came through from Cristina Ferrera. She gave him the name and number of another Spanish convert, who would normally have been in the mosque at that time in the morning but had gone to Granada on the Monday evening. He was now back in Seville. His name was José Duran.

A few minutes later Serrano called with the name and number of the priest of the San Marcos church. Falcón told him to stop what he was doing and come to Calle Butrón, pick up Gamero’s ID and take it to the Archaeological Museum, where he should ask the ticket sellers and security guards if they remembered seeing Gamero and anybody he might have met.

The priest couldn’t see him until after evening Mass at about 9 p.m. It was already 6.30. Falcón couldn’t believe the time; the day almost gone and no significant breakthrough. He called José Duran, who was in the city centre. They agreed to meet in the Café Alicantina Vilar, a big, crowded pastelería in the centre.

Serrano still hadn’t showed up. Falcón left the ID with Felipe and decided it was quicker to walk to the pastelería than get stuck in evening traffic. As he walked he put a call through to Ramírez and gave him a quick report on Ricardo Gamero, and told him he’d stolen Serrano for a few hours.

‘We’re not getting anywhere with these fucking electricians,’ said Ramírez. ‘All this manpower to find something that doesn’t exist.’

‘They do exist, José Luis,’ said Falcón. ‘They just don’t exist in the form we expect them to.’

‘The whole world knows we’re looking for them and
they haven’t come forward. To me that means they’re sinister.’

‘Not everybody is a perfect citizen. They might be frightened. They probably don’t want to get involved. They couldn’t care less. They might be implicated,’ said Falcón. ‘So
we
have to find
them,
because they are the link from the mosque to the outside world. We have to find out how they fit into this scenario. There were three of them, for God’s sake. Somebody, somewhere, knows something.’

‘We need a breakthrough,’ said Ramírez. ‘Everybody’s making breakthroughs except us.’

‘You found the biggest breakthrough of all, José Luis—the Peugeot Partner and its contents. We have to keep up the pressure and then things will start to give way,’ said Falcón. ‘And what are all these other breakthroughs?’

‘Elvira’s called a meeting for 8 a.m. tomorrow. He can’t talk until then, but it’s international. The web’s spreading wider by the hour.’

‘That’s the way these things go now,’ said Falcón. ‘Remember London? They were rounding up suspects in Pakistan inside a week. But I tell you, José Luis, there’s something homegrown about this, too. The intelligence services are equipped to deal with all that worldwide web of international terrorism. What we do is find out what happened on our patch. Have you read the file on the unidentified body found at the dump on Monday morning?’

‘Fuck, no.’

‘Pérez wrote a report on it and there’s an autopsy in there, too. Read it tonight. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.’

The waiter brought him a coffee and some sort of sticky pastry envelope with pus-coloured goo inside. He needed sugar. He had to wait half an hour for José Duran, in which time he took calls from Pablo of the CNI, Mark Flowers from the US Consulate, Manuela, Comisario Elvira and Cristina Ferrera. He turned his mobile off. Too many of them wanted to see him tonight and he had no more time to give.

José Duran was pale and emaciated, with hair plastered close to his head, round glasses and a fluffy beard. Deodorant was a stranger to his body and it was still 40°C outside. Falcón ordered him a camomile tea. Duran listened to Falcón’s introduction and twizzled his beard into a point on his chin. He breathed on his glasses and wiped them clean with his shirt tail. He sipped his tea and gave Falcón his own introduction. He’d been to the mosque every day of last week. He’d seen Hammad and Saoudi talking to the Imam in his office on Tuesday, 30th May. He hadn’t heard their conversation. He’d seen the council inspectors on Friday, 2nd June.

‘They must have been from Health and Safety, because they looked at everything: water, drains, electricity. They even looked at the quality of the doors…something to do with fire,’ said Duran. ‘They told the Imam he was going to have to get a new fuse box, but he didn’t have to do anything until they issued their report and then he had fifteen days to put it right.’

‘And the fuse box blew on Saturday night?’ said Falcón.

‘That’s what the Imam told us on Sunday morning.’

‘Do you know when he called the electricians?’

‘On the Sunday morning after prayers.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I was in his office.’

‘How did he find their number?’

‘Miguel Botín gave it to him.’

‘Miguel Botín
gave
the Imam the number of the electricians?’

‘No. He reminded the Imam of the card he’d given him earlier. The Imam started to search the papers on his desk, and Miguel gave him another card and told him that there was a mobile number he could call any time.’

‘And that was when the Imam called the electricians?’

‘Isn’t this sort of detail just a bit ludicrous in the light of…?’

‘You’ve no idea how crucial this detail is, José. Just tell me.’

‘The Imam called them on his mobile. They said they’d come round on Monday morning and take a look and tell him how much it was going to cost. I mean, that’s what I assume from the questions the Imam was asking.’

‘And you were there on Monday morning?’

‘The guy turned up at eight thirty, took a look at the fuse box—’

‘The guy was Spanish?’

‘Yes.’

‘Description?’

‘There was nothing to describe,’ said Duran, searching amongst the empty tables and chairs. ‘He was an average guy, about 1.75 metres tall. Not heavy, but not thin either. Dark hair with a side parting. No facial hair. There was nothing particular about him. I’m sorry.’

‘You don’t have to try to tell me everything now, but think about it. Call me if anything occurs to you,’ said Falcón, giving him his card. ‘Did the guy say hello to Miguel Botín?’

Duran blinked. He had to think about that.

‘I’m not sure that Miguel was there at that point.’

‘And later, when he turned up with the other guys?’

‘That’s right, he needed help. The Imam wanted a socket in the storeroom and he had to cut a channel from the nearest junction box which was in the Imam’s office,’ said Duran. ‘Miguel was with him in the office. I presume they said hello.’

‘What about the other guys, the labourers—were they Spanish, too?’

‘No. They spoke Spanish, but they weren’t Spaniards. They were from those Eastern bloc countries. You know, Romania or Moldavia, one of those places.’

‘Descriptions?’

‘Don’t ask me that,’ said Duran, running his hands down his face in frustration.

‘Think about them, José,’ said Falcón. ‘Call me. It’s important. And have you got the Imam’s mobile phone number?’

Seville—Wednesday, 7th June 2006, 20.30 hrs

Falcón called Inspector Jefe Barros to see if anybody had searched Miguel Botín’s apartment. Nobody from the CGI had been there. He called Ramírez, gave him Botín’s address, told him to get round there and look for the electrician’s card. He called Baena, gave him the Imam’s mobile number and told him to get the phone records. He called Esperanza, Miguel’s partner, she’d never heard of any friends of his who were electricians. By the time he’d made these calls he was at the doors of the Iglesia de San Marcos. It wasn’t quite 9 p.m. He flicked through his messages to see if Serrano had called. He had. At the museum they’d remembered Ricardo Gamero at the ticket desk. Two security guards had seen him speeding through rooms taking no notice of the exhibits. A third security guard had seen Gamero talking to a man in his sixties for some twenty minutes. The guard was now at the Jefatura with a police artist working up a sketch of the older man.

Father Román was in his early forties. He was out of the robes of office and in an ordinary dark suit with
the jacket folded over his arm. He was standing in the nave of the brick interior of the church, talking to two women dressed in black. On seeing Falcón he excused himself from the conversation, went over to shake hands, and led him up to his office.

‘You look exhausted, Inspector Jefe,’ he said, sitting at his desk.

‘The first days after something like this are always the longest,’ said Falcón.

‘My congregations have doubled since Tuesday morning,’ said Father Román. ‘A surprising number of young people. They’re confused. They don’t know when this will end or
how
it can possibly end.’

‘Not just young people,’ said Falcón. ‘But I’m sorry, Father, I must press on.’

‘Of course you must,’ said Father Román.

‘You may know that one of your congregation committed suicide today—Ricardo Gamero. Did you know him?’

Father Román blinked at the swift devastation of this news. It left him dumb with shock.

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t able to break it to you more gently,’ said Falcón. ‘He took his life this afternoon. Obviously you knew him. I understand he was a very…’

‘I met him when my predecessor was taken ill,’ said Father Román. ‘They were very close. My predecessor had helped him resolve a number of issues to do with his faith.’

‘How well did
you
know Ricardo?’

‘He didn’t appear to be seeking the same sort of relationship with me as he’d had with my predecessor.’

‘Did you know what these issues to do with his faith were?’

‘That was between them. Ricardo hasn’t spoken to me about them.’

‘When was the last time you saw Ricardo?’

‘He was here on Sunday for Mass, as always.’

‘And you haven’t seen him since?’

Silence from Father Román, who looked as if he was coping with a distressing nausea.

‘Sorry,’ he said, snapping out of it. ‘I’m just trying to think of the last time we spoke…and if there was any indication that he was still troubled to the same extent as he had been in my predecessor’s time.’

‘You didn’t happen to see him today, did you, Father?’

‘No, no, not today,’ he said, distracted.

‘Have you heard of a company called Informáticalidad?’ asked Falcón.

‘Should I have done?’ asked Father Román, frowning.

‘They actively recruit personnel from amongst your congregation,’ said Falcón. ‘Is that without your knowledge?’

‘Forgive me, Inspector Jefe, but I find it rather confusing the way this conversation has developed. I’m feeling the pressure of your suspicion, but I’m not sure about what?’

‘It’s better just to answer the questions rather than trying to understand what they’re about. This has become a very complicated situation,’ said Falcón. ‘Have you ever met a man called Diego Torres?’

‘It’s not such an unusual name.’

‘He happens to be the Human Resources Director at Informáticalidad.’

‘I don’t always know the profession of the members of my congregation.’

‘But you have someone of that name who attends this church?’

‘Yes,’ said Father Román, squeezing it out like a splinter. Falcón went through the list of board members of Informáticalidad. Four out of the ten were members of Father Román’s congregation.

‘Would you mind telling me what exactly is going on here?’ said Falcón.

‘Nothing is “going on here”,’ said Father Román. ‘If, as you say, this company is using my church as an informal recruiting agency, what can I do? It is the nature of people that they will meet at a church and that there will be a social exchange. Quite possibly invitations are made and it’s conceivable that jobs might be offered. Just because the Church seems to have less influence in society, doesn’t mean that some churches don’t perform in the way that they used to.’

Falcón nodded. He’d overreached himself in his excitement at finally realizing a connection, only to find it a little too loose.

‘Did you know Ricardo Gamero’s profession?’

‘I knew from my predecessor that he was a member of the police force, but I have no idea what he does, or rather, did. Was he a member of your squad?’

‘He was an agent with the CGI; specifically, the antiterrorism group,’ said Falcón. ‘Islamic terrorism.’

‘I doubt that was something he talked to many people about,’ said Father Román.

‘Did you happen to notice if he mixed with any of the people I mentioned who worked for Informáticalidad?’

‘I’m sure he would have done. When people leave church they go to the two cafés around the corner. They socialize.’

‘Did you notice regular meetings?’

Father Román shook his head.

Falcón sat back. He needed more ammunition for this conversation. He was tired, too. The flight to Casablanca and back seemed to have been from a month ago. The fullness of every minute, with not only his own findings but the ramifications of concurrent investigations under the colossal concentration of manpower rolling out all over Spain, Europe and the world, made hours feel like days.

‘Were you aware that Informáticalidad not only used your church but two others inside the old city for the same purpose?’ said Falcón.

‘Look, Inspector Jefe, it’s quite possible that this company has an unspoken employment policy of only taking on practising Catholics. I don’t know. These days, I believe, you’re not allowed to ask a recruitment agency to discriminate on your behalf. What would
you
do?’

‘They
do
have an unspoken employment policy,’ said Falcón. ‘They don’t take on any women. I suppose that’s not dissimilar to the Catholic Church.’

On the walk back to his car, Falcón called Ramírez, who was still searching Miguel Botín’s apartment.

‘We’re not getting anywhere here,’ said Ramírez. ‘I don’t know what it is about this place, but we’re sure somebody’s been around here before us. It’s a bit tidy. We’ve turned the place upside down and we’re going through his library now.’

‘I have a witness who saw him give a card to the Imam.’

‘Maybe they’re still with him in his bag under the rubble.’

‘What state was the bombsite in when you last saw it?’

‘The heavy work is over. The crane has gone. They’re working by hand now, with just a couple of tippers standing by. They’ve put scaffolding up and sheeted off the remaining rubble. About six teams of forensics are ready to go in. They reckon they’ll get into the mosque itself by mid-morning tomorrow.’

‘When you’ve finished at Botín’s apartment, let everybody go home and get some sleep,’ said Falcón. ‘It’s going to be another big day tomorrow. Have you seen Juez Calderón?’

‘Only on television,’ said Ramírez. ‘He’s been giving a press conference with Comisario Lobo and Comisario Elvira.’

‘Anything we should know?’

‘There’s a job waiting for Juez Calderón as a chatshow host if he gets bored of being a judge.’

‘So he’s not telling them anything, but it looks as if he is.’

‘Exactly,’ said Ramírez. ‘And given that we’ve come up with fuck-all today, he’s making us sound like heroes.’

The drive back home was eerily quiet. At nearly 10 p.m. the streets should have been alive and the bars full of people. A lot of places were closed. There was so little traffic Falcón went through the centre of town. Only a few young people had gathered in the Plaza del Museo under the trees. The mood was sombre and the narrow streets tense with anxiety.

An investigation of his fridge revealed some cooked prawns and a fresh swordfish steak. He ate
the prawns with mayonnaise while drinking a beer direct from the bottle. He fried up the fish, squeezed some lemon over it, poured himself a glass of white rioja and ate, his mind picking over the detail of the day. He went over the dialogue with Father Román. Had the priest been trying to avoid the sin of lying by omission, evasion and ducking the question? It felt like it. He poured himself another glass of white wine, pushed back his plate and folded his arms and had just started to contemplate the big event of the day—the suicide of Ricardo Gamero, when his first visitor arrived.

Pablo had come on business. He refused a beer and they went into the study.

‘You mentioned Yacoub had some conditions before you fell asleep on the plane this morning,’ said Pablo.

‘The first condition is that he will only talk or deal with me,’ said Falcón. ‘He won’t meet any other agents, or take phone calls from anyone but me.’

‘That’s quite normal except, of course, you’ll be in different countries. I’ll talk you through the communication procedure later, but it won’t exactly be direct contact,’ said Pablo. ‘It puts
you
under a lot of pressure.’

‘He also says he’s not making a lifelong commitment,’ said Falcón.

‘That’s understandable,’ said Pablo. ‘But you know, spying can have an addictive effect on certain personalities.’

‘Like Juan,’ said Falcón. ‘He looks like a man with a few secrets. As if he’s running two families that don’t know about each other.’

‘He does. He has his wife and two kids and the CNI,
and they don’t know
anything
about each other. Keep going with the conditions.’

‘Yacoub will not give us any information that could jeopardize the life of any of his family members,’ said Falcón.

‘That was to be expected,’ said Pablo. ‘But does he suspect any of his family members?’

‘He says not. But they’re all devout Muslims and they lead very different lives to him,’ said Falcón. ‘It could be that he finds out that they are closely involved or at some remove, but he will not be an instrument in their downfall if they are. These people have totally accepted him as one of their own and he won’t give them up.’

‘Anything else?’ asked Pablo.

‘My problem: Yacoub doesn’t have any training for this work.’

‘Most spies don’t. They just happen to be in a position where information comes their way.’

‘You make it sound easy.’

‘It’s only dangerous if you’re careless.’

Falcón had to raise his concentration levels to take in Pablo’s briefing about the method of communication with Yacoub. He got him to boil it down to the basics, which were: they would communicate via email, using a secure website run by the CNI. Both Falcón and Diouri would have to load their computers with different encryption software. The emails would go to the CNI website to be decrypted and passed on. The CNI would obviously see all emails and make their recommendations for action. All Falcón had to do this evening was to call Yacoub and tell him to go to the shop in Rabat and pick up a couple of books. These
books would give Yacoub all the information he needed. Falcón made the call and kept it short, saying he was tired.

‘We’ve got to get him working as soon as possible,’ said Pablo. ‘This whole thing is moving fast.’

‘What whole thing?’

‘The game, the plan, the operation,’ said Pablo.

‘We’re not sure which. All we know is that, since the bomb went off yesterday, the level of encrypted emails on the web has gone up fivefold.’

‘And how many of those encrypted emails can you read?’

‘Not many.’

‘So you haven’t cracked the code from the Koran found in the Peugeot Partner?’

‘Not yet. We’ve got the world’s best mathematicians working on it, though.’

‘What do the CNI make of Ricardo Gamero’s suicide?’ asked Falcón.

‘Inevitably we’re thinking that he was the mole,’ said Pablo. ‘But that’s just a theory. We’re trying to work up the logic around it.’

‘If he was the mole, from what I know about him, I’d find it hard to believe he was passing information to an Islamic terrorist movement.’

‘Right, but what about Miguel Botín? What do you know about him?’

‘That his brother was maimed in the Madrid train bombings, giving him good reason to be operating
against
Islamic terrorism,’ said Falcón. ‘That his girlfriend was a school friend of Gamero who remains a devout Catholic, having so far been reluctant to convert to Islam. And it was Botín who followed the Imam and
took shots of Hammad and Saoudi and these other two mystery men, which he handed over to the CGI. He was also prompting Gamero to get the Imam’s office bugged. That’s about it.’

‘He doesn’t sound like a promising candidate as a terrorist, does he?’

‘Have you searched Botín’s apartment?’ asked Falcón.

Pablo cradled his knee, nodded.

‘What did you find there?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘But you found something that makes you think Botín was acting for the terrorists while working for Gamero?’

‘This is what it’s like, Javier,’ said Pablo, shrugging. ‘The Hall of Mirrors. We constantly have to revise what we’re actually seeing.’

‘You found another heavily annotated copy of the Koran, didn’t you?’ said Falcón, sitting back, dazed. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘It means you cannot say a word about this conversation to anybody,’ said Pablo. ‘It means we have to get our counterintelligence up and running as soon as possible.’

‘But it also means that the terrorists, whoever
they
are, were letting Miguel Botín serve up information to the CGI that compromised the Imam, Hammad and Saoudi, along with whatever operation was being planned in the mosque.’