The Hidden Assassins (28 page)

Ramírez called just as he was leaving.

‘I’ve spoken to the vascular surgeon at the hospital,’ he said. ‘He’s identified the hernia mesh taken from the body as one known by the trade name SURUMESH, made by Suru International Ltd of Mumbai in India.’

‘Does he use them?’

‘For inguinal hernias he uses a German make called TiMESH.’

‘You’re learning stuff, José Luis.’

‘I’m completely fascinated,’ said Ramírez, drily. ‘He tells me Suru International would probably supply hospitals through medical supplies wholesalers.’

‘I’ll speak to Pablo. The CNI can get a list from Suru International.’

‘Then they’ve got to contact the hospitals supplied
by those wholesalers. It’s quite possible that a hospital takes meshes made by a number of different manufacturers. Then there are the specialist hernia clinics. This is going to take time.’

‘We’re moving on a lot of fronts,’ said Falcón. ‘I have a face to work with now. We have dental X-rays. I’m thinking more about America. He had orthodontic work done—’

‘Most inguinal hernias occur over the age of forty,’ said Ramírez. ‘Dr Pintado estimates the guy’s hernia op as three years old. So we’re only looking at, say, the last four, maximum five years of hernia operations. Maybe two and a half million ops worldwide.’

‘Keep thinking positively, José Luis.’

‘I’ll see you next year.’

Falcón told him about the meeting with Juez del Rey at midday and hung up. He sent another email about Suru International to his contact in the CNI. He got up to leave again. His personal mobile vibrated, no name came up on the screen. He took the call anyway.

‘
Diga
,’ he said.

‘It’s me, Consuelo.’

He sat down slowly, thinking, my God. His stomach leapt, his blood came alive. His heart beat loudly in his head.

‘It’s been a long time,’ he said.

‘I saw the news about Inés,’ she said. ‘I wanted to tell you how sorry I am and to let you know that I’m thinking of you. I know you must be very busy…so I won’t keep you.’

‘Thank you, Consuelo,’ he said, willing something else to come to mind. ‘It’s good to hear your voice again. When I saw you in the street…’

‘I’m sorry for that, too,’ she said. ‘It couldn’t be helped.’

He didn’t know what that meant. He needed something to keep her on the phone. Nothing seemed relevant. His mind was too full of the corpse, hernia meshes and two and a half million ops world-wide.

‘I should let you go,’ she said. ‘You must be under a lot of pressure.’

‘It was good of you to call.’

‘It was the least I could do,’ she said.

‘I’d like to hear from you again, you know.’

‘I’m thinking of you, Javier,’ she said, and it was all over.

He sat back, looking at the phone as if her voice was still inside it. She’d kept his number for four years. She was thinking of him. Do these things have meaning? Was that just social convention? It didn’t feel like it. He saved her number.

The car park at the back of the Jefatura was brutally hot, the car windscreens blinded by the sun in the clear sky. Falcón sat in the car with the air conditioning blasting into his face. Those few sentences, the sound of her voice, had opened up a whole chapter of memory which he’d closed off for years. He shook his head and pulled out of the Jefatura car park. He headed for El Cerezo the back way, via the Expo ground, crossing the river at the Puente del Alamillo. He arrived at the bombsite at the same time as Ramírez.

‘Any news about the electricians?’ asked Falcón.

‘Pérez called. They’ve been through seventeen building sites. Nothing.’

‘What’s Ferrera doing?’

‘She’s chasing down witnesses who might have seen
our friend with the hernia being dumped in the bin on Calle Boteros.’

They went into the pre-school. Juez del Rey was alone, waiting for them in the classroom. They sat down on the edges of the school desks. Del Rey folded his arms and stared into the floor. He gave them a perfect recap of the major findings of the investigation so far. He didn’t use notes. He got all the names of the Moroccan witnesses correct. He had the whole timetable of what had happened in and around the mosque, in his head. He’d decided to make an impression on the two detectives and it worked. Falcón felt Ramírez relax. Calderón’s replacement was no fool.

‘The two most significant recent developments in the investigation concern me the most,’ said del Rey. ‘Ricardo Gamero’s suicide and the belief that his source was working as a double agent.’

‘We had a sighting of Gamero by a security guard in the Archaeological Museum in the Parque María Luisa,’ said Falcón. ‘We’ve got a police artist working on some sketches of the older man he was seen talking to.’

‘I’ll call Serrano,’ said Ramírez, ‘see how that’s going.’

‘I’m not convinced that a sense of failure at preventing this bomb attack from taking place was enough to drive a man like Gamero to suicide,’ said del Rey. ‘There’s something more. Failure is too general. Feeling personally responsible is what drives people to kill themselves.’

‘The police artist didn’t have much luck with the security guard last night,’ said Ramírez, coming back from his call. ‘He’s been with him again this morning. They should have something by lunchtime.’

‘I’m not convinced by Miguel Botín as a double, either,’ said del Rey. ‘His brother was maimed by an Islamic terrorist bomb, for God’s sake. Can you see someone like that being turned?’

‘He was a convert,’ said Falcón. ‘He took his religion very seriously. It’s difficult to know what sort of impression a charismatic radical preacher could make on someone like that. We have the example of Mohammed Sidique Khan, one of the London bombers, who was transformed from a special needs teacher into a radical militant.’

‘We don’t know what the relationship between Miguel Botín and his injured brother was like, either,’ said Ramírez.

‘I’m also uncomfortable about the electricians and the fake council inspectors. I don’t buy the CNI line that they were a terrorist cell. The CNI seem to me to be trying to cram square information into a round hole.’

There was a knock at the door. A policeman put his head round.

‘The forensics have been working their way through the rubble above the storeroom in the mosque,’ he said. ‘They’ve found a fireproof, shock-proof metal box. It’s been taken to the forensic tent and they thought you might like to be there when they open it.’

Seville—Thursday, 8th June 2006, 12.18 hrs

Outside the pre-school everybody was wearing masks against the stench and Falcón, Ramírez and del Rey walked with their hands clasped over their mouths and noses. There was an anteroom to the main body of the forensics’ tent, where they all dressed in white hooded boiler suits and put on masks. The interior of the tent was air conditioned down to 22°C. Five forensic teams were currently working at the site. All of them had stopped for the opening of the box. Something within the human psyche making it impossible, even for forensics, to resist the mystery of a closed, secure container.

A dictaphone was tested and set in the middle of the table. The leader of the forensic team nodded to the judge and detectives as they gathered around. His hands, in latex gloves, were spread on either side of a red metal box. Next to him was a shallow cardboard evidence box, dated and with the address of the Imam’s apartment on the lid. Inside were three small plastic bags containing keys. A white-suited figure nudged into Falcón. It was Gregorio.

‘This could be interesting if those keys open that box,’ he said. ‘Two sets came from the desk and one from the kitchen of the Imam’s apartment.’

‘Are we ready?’ asked the forensics team leader. ‘Here we are on Thursday, 8th June 2006 at 12.24 hours. We have a sealed metal box, which has sustained some blast damage to the lid, although the lock still appears to be sound. We are going to attempt to open this box, using keys taken from the Imam’s apartment during a search of those premises on Wednesday, 7th June 2006.’

He rejected the first sachet of keys but selected the next one and poured the two keys into his hand. He fitted one of the identical keys into the lock, turned it, and the lid sprang open.

‘The box has been successfully opened by a key found in the kitchen drawer of the Imam’s apartment.’

He opened the lid and lifted out three coloured plastic folders, thick with folded paper. This emptied the box, which was removed to another table. He opened up the first green folder.

‘Here we have one sheet of writing in Arabic script, which has been paper-clipped to what appears to be a set of architect’s drawings.’

He opened out the drawings, which proved to be a detailed plan of a secondary school in San Bernardo. The other two folders followed the same pattern. The second set of drawings featured the plan of a primary school in Triana, and the third, the biology faculty on Avenida de la Reina Mercedes.

Silence, while the men and women of the forensic teams contemplated their find. Falcón could feel the minds in the room working their way towards more and more uneasy conclusions. Each Islamic terrorist
atrocity had released new viral strains of horror into the body of the West. No sooner had the West become reconciled to men as bombs, than they had to accept women as bombs, and even children as bombs. It seemed sickeningly obvious now that car bombs would transmute to boats as bombs, and then planes as bombs. Finally the atrocities would no longer remain at a distance in the Middle East, Far East or America, but come to Madrid and London. Then there was the unimaginable. The stuff that would make a horror novelist tremble at night: executions beamed around the world of men and women being beheaded with kitchen knives. And finally Beslan: children held hostage, given no food or water, explosives hung over their heads. How is an ordinary mind supposed to work under these conditions of easy contagion?

‘Were they going to blow these places up?’ asked a voice.

‘Take hostages,’ said a woman. ‘Look, they’re after kids from five years old up to twenty-five years old.’

‘Bastards.’

‘Is there nothing these people won’t do? Are there no fucking boundaries?’

‘I think,’ said Juez del Rey, quick to put a lid on the mounting hysteria, ‘that we should wait until we have translations of the Arabic script in our hands before we jump to conclusions.’

It was not the voice of reason that people wanted to hear. Not just yet, anyway. They’d been waiting a long time to get their hands on solid evidence and now they’d found something spectacular they wanted to vent some of their anger. Del Rey sensed this. He moved things along once more.

‘As a precaution, these three buildings should be searched. If there was a plan to seize them it’s possible that weaponry has been stored there.’

Everybody nodded, glad to see that even the man from Madrid suffered the same paranoia, the same corrupted brain circuit as themselves.

‘Let’s get these drawings and the Arabic texts through the forensic process as soon as possible. We need those translations fast,’ he said.

‘There’s something else,’ said the forensics team leader. ‘The bomb disposal people have come across something interesting on the explosives front.’

An army officer in white overalls with a green armband pushed his way through to the table.

‘So far we’ve only had full access to the area above the storeroom, because there’s no evidence of bodies or human tissue. We still believe that the main destructive explosion was caused by a large quantity of hexogen being detonated, but we have also found trace evidence of Goma 2 Eco, which is the mining explosive that was used in the Madrid bombings.’

‘Did one set off the other?’

‘It’s certainly possible, but we have no way of proving it.’

‘Is there any reason why two types of explosive would be used?’

‘Goma 2 Eco is industrial quality, whereas hexogen is military. If you have a large quantity of hexogen, which has greater brisance than Goma 2 Eco, I don’t see why you’d use a lower grade explosive, unless your intention was to cause other distracting explosions, or to hold people in a state of fear.’

‘You estimated the hexogen stored in the building to be in the region of 100 kilos,’ said del Rey.

‘Conservative estimate.’

‘What sort of damage would 100 kilos do to these schools and the university faculty on these drawings?’

‘A real expert, who understood the architecture of the buildings, could probably raze them to the ground,’ said the army officer. ‘But it would be a demolition job. They would have to drill into the reinforced skeleton of the building and wire the charges together for a simultaneous explosion.’

‘And what about people?’

‘If everyone was herded into one or two rooms of each building, with 30 kilos of hexogen there would be no, or only very few, survivors.’

‘Is it possible for you to tell how much Goma 2 Eco exploded in the storeroom of the mosque?’

‘Personally, I would say 25 kilos or less, but I wouldn’t be able to stand up in court and say that, because the hexogen trace is too dominant.’

‘Is hexogen manufactured in Spain?’

‘No. The UK, Italy, Germany, USA and Russia,’ he said. ‘They probably make it in China, too, but they’re not telling us if they are.’

‘Why go to the trouble of importing it?’

‘Its availability,’ said the army officer. ‘Wherever there’s conflict in the world, there’s ordnance, and hexogen can easily be extracted from it. You end up with low-volume high explosive which is untraceable, easy to transport, hide and disguise. Domestic gunpowder magazines are more tightly controlled since 11th March, although there have been thefts—for instance in Portugal last year. I would also say that the
chances of hexogen being spotted in an open European transport system are slim. Whereas mounting a robbery of a gunpowder magazine in this country would get you lower grade explosive, and draw the immediate attention of the authorities.’

‘What about the home-made variety, used in the London bombings?’ asked del Rey. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to mix up easily available ingredients than go to the trouble and risk of bringing in hexogen, or stealing Goma 2 Eco?’

‘You’re right, triaceton triperoxide can be made quite easily, but I wouldn’t like to be around someone dealing with it, unless he had a chemistry post-graduate degree and we were operating in temperature-controlled laboratory conditions. It’s volatile,’ he said. ‘Also it depends on what sort of atrocity you want to commit. TATP is fine if you’re intent on killing people, but if you want a spectacular explosion, with serious destruction and loss of life, then hexogen is much more capable of doing that. Hexogen is also stable and not temperature sensitive, something that’s important at this time of year in a place like Seville, where daytime temperatures can vary by as much as twenty degrees.’

The work rate was increasing. Material was coming in at a constant rate from the bombsite. Bits of credit card, scraps of ID, driving licences, strips of clothing, shoes. The more macabre findings, such as body parts, were taken to the tented morgue next door. While del Rey watched the forensic work, Falcón briefed Elvira, who’d just arrived from a meeting in the town hall with the Mayor, Comisario Lobo and Magistrado Juez
Decano Spinola. Elvira ordered searches of the three buildings immediately. Evacuation would be carried out by the local police and searches conducted by the bomb squad in case of booby traps. Elvira was concerned that other terrorist cells might have become active, preparing to take over the buildings. The CGI had to be alerted. Gregorio of the CNI was already in touch with Pablo, who was asking for the translations to be sent to him by secure email as soon as they were ready.

Falcón, Ramírez and del Rey stripped off their boiler suits in the forensic tent’s anteroom and went back to the pre-school to resume their meeting.

‘What do you make of
that
development, Inspector Jefe?’ asked del Rey.

‘We were asked to keep an open mind in this investigation, especially by the senior CNI man,’ said Falcón. ‘And yet, since we found the Peugeot Partner and its contents, almost all subsequent findings have directed us towards the belief that an Islamic terrorist campaign was being planned in this mosque.’

‘
Almost
all subsequent findings?’

‘We cannot satisfactorily explain the fake council inspectors and the electricians, and yet we are very suspicious of their involvement,’ said Falcón. ‘They seem to be an intrinsic part of the actual explosion. Now that we’ve spoken to the bomb squad officer it seems clear that a smaller device was planted, which set off the stored hexogen. We have a link between Miguel Botín and the electricians. He was seen handing over the card to the Imam. But who was he working for?’

‘You don’t buy the CNI line either?’

‘I would if there was any proof for it, but there’s none.’

‘What about those keys from the Imam’s apartment opening the box?’ said Ramírez. ‘Where does that place the Imam now?’

‘As part of the plot,’ said del Rey.

‘Except that the keys were found in a kitchen drawer,’ said Falcón. ‘I find that strange when all the other keys were kept in his desk. And the two keys were identical. Would you keep them together?’

‘If we are to believe that Botín was a double agent and that he was serving up the Imam to the CGI on behalf of another terrorist commander, as the CNI seem to think, then what are we to make of the drawings in the metal box?’ asked del Rey.

‘The Imam’s keys opened the box, therefore whatever is in that box is an expendable operation,’ said Falcón. ‘The CNI would be forced to admit it was another part of the diversion.’

‘And what do you think, Inspector Jefe?’

‘I don’t have enough information to think anything,’ said Falcón.

‘You said you were keeping an open mind, Inspector Jefe. What does that mean exactly? That you’ve been conducting other enquiries?’

Falcón told him about Informáticalidad, giving the background on Horizonte and I4IT. He gave their reasons for buying the property and how the sales reps used it. He also told him about Informáticalidad’s recruiting procedure.

‘Well, all that sounds strange, but I can’t see anything in particular that’s pointing to their involvement in this scenario.’

‘I’ve never heard anything like it,’ said Ramírez.

‘So far, the only illegal thing I can find is that they used black money to buy the apartment,’ said Falcón. ‘I’ve been trying to find something that links them to what was going on in the mosque.’

‘And you haven’t found it.’

‘The only connection is that one of the churches used in recruiting employees for Informáticalidad was the same one used by the CGI antiterrorist agent Ricardo Gamero—San Marcos.’

‘But you have no proof that Gamero met anyone from Informáticalidad?’

‘None. I spoke to the priest from San Marcos and I would describe some of his responses as extremely guarded, but that’s all.’

‘Are you hoping that the police artist’s drawing of the man Gamero met in the museum is going to provide that link to Informáticalidad?’

‘That’s a tricky process: to extract a likeness from a museum security guard’s view of a person he wasn’t particularly interested in,’ said Falcón. ‘They’re looking for troublemakers, not two adults having a conversation.’

‘Which is why, after five hours, we still have nothing,’ said Ramírez.

‘We’re also pushing forward with an enquiry we started the day before the bomb,’ said Falcón, and described the circumstances of the mutilated corpse.

‘And because of the timing, you think that there might be a link to the bombing?’ asked del Rey.

‘Not just that; after this particularly brutal treatment to hide the victim’s identity, the body had been sewn into a shroud. That struck me as respectful and
religiously motivated. The corpse also had what is known as a Berber genetic marker, which means that he was either from the Iberian peninsula or North African.’

‘You said he was poisoned.’

‘He ingested it,’ said Falcón, ‘which could imply that he didn’t know he was being “executed”. Then they removed his identity but treated him with respect.’

‘And how will this help us to identify the fake council inspectors and the electricians?’

‘I won’t know that until I identify the murdered man,’ said Falcón. ‘I’m hoping that can be done now that an image of the victim’s face and a full set of dental X-rays have been sent out to intelligence services worldwide, including Interpol and the FBI.’

Del Rey nodded, scribbled notes.