The Hidden Assassins

by Robert Wilson

  ‘We could use some shots of Hammad and Saoudi,’ said Ramírez.

  ‘If they’re into document fraud there’ll probably be a load of photographs in their apartment in Madrid,’ said Falcón. ‘Has there been an update on the demolition work outside yet?’

  ‘They’re still saying forty-eight hours minimum, and that’s if they don’t come across anything to slow them down.’

  Juez Calderón took a call, announced the discovery of another body and left. Falcón made eye contact with Ramírez and he left the room.

  ‘Still no news on the CGI?’ asked Falcón. ‘I expected to be pooling resources and efforts with the antiterrorist unit, and the only person we’ve seen is Inspector Jefe Ramón Barros, who doesn’t say very much and appears humiliated.’

  ‘I’m told that their job is more to do with gathering data at this stage,’ said Comisario Elvira.

  ‘What about some lower level people to help with the interviewing?’

  ‘Not possible.’

  ‘This sounds like something you can’t talk about…’

  ‘All I’m going to say is that since March 11th one aspect of counterterrorism measures has been to check that our own organizations are clean,’ said Elvira.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Falcón.

  ‘The Seville branch is under investigation. Nobody is giving any detail, but as far as I can gather, the CNI ran a test on the Seville antiterrorism unit and did not get the right result. They believe they have been compromised in some way. There are some high-level discussions going on now as to whether they should be allowed to participate in this investigation or not. You’re not going to get any active help from the Madrid CGI either. They’re working flat-out on their own informer network, and they’ve got the whole Hammad and Saoudi mess to sort through.’

  ‘Will we be getting informer feedback from the Seville CGI network?’

  ‘Not for the moment,’ said Elvira. ‘I’m sorry to be so reticent, but the situation is delicate. I don’t know what the members of the antiterrorism unit are being told to make them believe that they are not under suspicion, but the CNI are trying to play it both ways. They don’t want the mole, if he exists, to know that they’re on to him, but neither do they want him endangering the investigation without them knowing who he is. Ideally, they want to find him and then release the CGI into the investigation and give themselves the chance of using him.’

  ‘That sounds like a risky manoeuvre.’

  ‘That’s why it’s taking so long to decide. The politicians are involved now,’ said Elvira.

  Outside, the grind of machinery had become the acceptable ambient noise. Men moved like aliens in a grey lunar landscape over the stacked pancakes of the floors, with snakes of pneumatic hose trailing behind. They were followed by masked men with oxyacetylene torches and motorized saws. Swinging above them was the crane’s writhing cable. The hammering, growling and howling, the clatter of falling rubble, the momentous gonging as sections of floor were dropped into the tippers, kept the curious crowds at bay. Only a few TV crews and photojournalists remained, with their cameras trained on the destruction in the hope of zooming in on a crushed body, a bloodied hand, a spike of bone.

  Another helicopter stuttered overhead and wheeled away to fly over the nearby Andalucían Parliament. As he trotted down Calle Los Romeros, Falcón called Ramírez to get the name of the worshipper mentioned by Sr Harrouch, who used the mosque in the mornings. He was called Majid Merizak. Ramírez offered to join him but Falcón preferred to be alone for this one.

  The reason that Majid Merizak was not one of the casualties in the mosque was that he was ill in bed. He was a widower who was looked after by one of his daughters. She hadn’t been able to prevent her father from heading down the stairs to find out what had happened; only his partial collapse had done that. Now he was in a chair, head thrown back, wild-eyed and panting, with the television on full blast because he was nearly deaf.

  The apartment stank of vomit and diarrhoea. He’d been up most of the night and was still weak. The daughter turned off the television and forced her father to wear his hearing aid. She told Falcón that her father’s Spanish was poor and Falcón said that they could conduct the interview in Arabic. She explained this to her father, who looked confused and irritable, with too much happening around him. Once his daughter had checked that the hearing aid was functioning properly and had left the room, Majid Merizak sharpened up.

  ‘You speak Arabic?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m still learning. Part of my family is Moroccan.’

  He nodded and drank tea through Falcón’s introduction and visibly relaxed on hearing Falcón’s rough Arabic. It had been the right thing to do. Merizak was far less wary than Harrouch had been.

  Falcón warmed him up with questions about when he attended the mosque—which was every morning, without fail, and he stayed there until the early afternoon. Then he asked about strangers.

  ‘Last week?’ asked Merizak, and Falcón nodded. ‘Two young men came in on Tuesday morning, close to midday, and two older men came in on Friday morning at ten o’clock. That’s all.’

  ‘And you’d never seen them before?’

  ‘No, but I did see them again yesterday.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The two young men who’d come in last Tuesday.’

  Merizak’s description fitted that of Hammad and Saoudi.

  ‘And what did they do last Tuesday?’

  ‘They went into the Imam’s room and talked with him until about one thirty.’

  ‘And what about yesterday morning?’

  ‘They brought in two heavy sacks. It took two of them to carry one sack.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘About ten thirty. The same time that the electricians arrived,’ said Merizak. ‘Yes, of course, there were the electricians, as well. I’d never seen them before, either.’

  ‘Where did the two young men put these sacks?’

  ‘In the storeroom next to the Imam’s office.’

  ‘Do you know what was in the sacks?’

  ‘Couscous. That’s what it said on the side.’

  ‘Has anyone made a delivery like that before?’

  ‘Not in those quantities. People have brought in bags of food to give to the Imam…you know, it’s part of our duty to give to those less fortunate than ourselves.’

  ‘When did they leave?’

  ‘They stayed about an hour.’

  ‘What about the men who came in on Friday?’

  ‘They were inspectors from the council. They went all over the mosque. They discussed things with the Imam and then they left.’

  ‘What about the power cut?’

  ‘That was on Saturday night. I wasn’t there. The Imam was on his own. He said that there was a big bang and the lights went out. That’s what he told us the following morning, when we had to pray in the dark.’

  ‘And the electricians came in on Monday to fix it?’

  ‘A man came on his own at eight thirty. Then three other men came two hours later to do the work.’

  ‘Were they Spanish?’

  ‘They were speaking Spanish.’

  ‘What did they do?’

  ‘The fuse box was burned out, so they put in a new one. Then they put in a power socket in the storeroom.’

  ‘What sort of work was that?’

  ‘They cut a channel in the brickwork from a socket in the Imam’s office, through the wall and into the storeroom. They put in some grey flexible tubing, fed in the wire and then cemented it all up.’

  Merizak had seen the blue transit van, which he described as battered, but he hadn’t seen any markings or the registration number.

  ‘How did the Imam pay for the work?’

  ‘Cash.’

  ‘Do you know where he got the phone number of this company?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you recognize the electricians, council inspectors and two young men if you saw them again?’
/>
  ‘Yes, but I can’t describe them to you very well.’

  ‘You’ve been listening to the news?’

  ‘They don’t know what they’re talking about,’ said Merizak. ‘It makes me very angry. A bomb explodes and it is automatically Islamic militants.’

  ‘Have you ever heard of Los Mártires Islámicos para la Liberación de Andalucía?’

  ‘The first time was on the news today. It’s an invention of the media to discredit Islam.’

  ‘Have you ever heard of the Imam preaching militant ideology in the mosque?’

  ‘Quite the opposite.’

  ‘I’m told that the Imam was a very capable linguist.’

  ‘He learnt Spanish very quickly. They said his apartment was full of French and English books. He spoke German, too. He spoke on the telephone using languages I’d never heard before. He told me that one of them was Turkish. Some people came here in February and stayed with him for a week and that was another strange language. Somebody said it was Pashto, and that the men were from Afghanistan.’

  14

  Seville—Tuesday, 6th June 2006, 18.30 hrs

  The offices of the ABC newspaper, a glass cylinder on the Isla de la Cartuja, had been as close to bedlam as a hysterical business like journalism could get. Angel Zarrías watched from the edge of the newsroom as journalists roared down telephones, bawled at assistants and harangued each other.

  Through the flickering computer screens, the phone lines stretched to snapping point and the triangles formed by hands slapped to foreheads, Angel was watching the open door of the editor’s office. He was biding his time. This was the newshounds’ moment. It was their job to find the stories, which the editor would knit together to construct the right image and tone, for the new history of a city in crisis.

  On the way from Manuela’s apartment to the ABC offices he’d asked the taxi to drop him off in a street near the Maestranza bullring where his friend Eduardo Rivero lived and which also housed the headquarters of his political party: Fuerza Andalucía. He’d been dining with Eduardo Rivero and the new sponsors of Fuerza Andalucía last night. A momentous decision had been made, which he hadn’t been able to share with Manuela until it became official today. He had also not been able to tell her that he was now going to be working more for Fuerza Andalucía than the ABC. He had a lot more important things on his mind than grumbling about same-sex marriages in his daily political column.

  Rivero’s impressive house bore all the hallmarks of his traditional upbringing and thinking. Its façade was painted to a deep terracotta finish, the window surrounds were picked out in ochre and all caged in magnificent wrought-iron grilles. The main door was three metres high, built out of oak, varnished to the colour of chestnuts and studded with brass medallions. It opened on to a huge marble-flagged patio, in which Rivero had departed briefly from tradition by planting two squares of box hedge. In the centre of each was a statue; to the left was Apollo and to the right Dionysus, and in between was the massive bowl of a white marble fountain, whose restrained trickles of water held the house, despite these pagan idols, in a state of religious obeisance.

  The front of the house was the party headquarters, with the administration below and the policy-making and political discussions going on above. Angel took the stairs just inside the main door, which led up to Rivero’s office. They were waiting for him; Rivero and his second-in-command, the much younger Jesús Alarcón.

  Unusually, he and Rivero were sitting together in the middle of the room, with the boss’s wood and leather armchair empty behind his colossal English oak desk. They all shook hands. Rivero, the same age as Angel, seemed remarkably relaxed. He wasn’t even wearing a tie, his jacket was hanging off the back of his chair. He was smiling beneath an ebullient white moustache. He did not look as if scandal had come anywhere near him.

  ‘Like any good journalist, Angel, you’ve arrived at the crucial moment,’ said Rivero. ‘A decision has been made.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Angel.

  ‘Well, you’ll have to believe it, because it’s true,’ said Rivero. ‘I’d like you to meet the new leader of Fuerza Andalucía, Jesús Alarcón. Effective as from five minutes ago.’

  ‘I think that’s a bold and brilliant decision,’ said Angel, shaking them both by the hand and embracing them. ‘And one you’ve been keeping very quiet.’

  ‘The committee voted on it last night before we met for dinner,’ said Rivero. ‘I didn’t want to break the news until I had asked Jesús and he’d accepted. Something was going to have to happen before the 2007 campaign and, with this morning’s explosion, that campaign will be starting today—and what better way to kick it off than with a new leader?’

  Alarcón’s expression was a mask of seriousness that bore all the weight and lines of the gravity that the situation demanded, but it could not hide what came shining out from within. His grey suit, dark tie and white shirt could not contain his sense of achievement. He was the schoolboy at the prize-giving, who’d already been told that he had won the top award.

  Angel Zarrías had known Jesús Alarcón since the year 2000, when he’d been introduced to him by his old friend, Lucrecio Arenas the Chief Executive Officer of the Banco Omni in Madrid. In the last six years Angel had drawn Jesús into Eduardo Rivero’s orbit and gradually eased him into positions of greater importance within the party. Angel had never had any doubt about Alarcón’s brains, his political commitment or astuteness, but, as an old PR man, he had been worried by his lack of charisma. But the final wresting of the leadership from Rivero’s trembling clutches had wrought an extraordinary change in the younger man. Physically he was the same, but his confidence had become dazzlingly palpable. Angel couldn’t help himself. He embraced Jesús once again as the new leader of Fuerza Andalucía.

  ‘As you know,’ said Rivero, ‘in the last three elections there has been steady growth in our share of the vote, but it has only grown to a maximum of 4.2 per cent and that is not enough for us to be the chosen partner of the Partido Popular. We need a new kind of energy at the top.’

  ‘I have the business experience,’ said Alarcón, breaking in with his new-found confidence, ‘to raise our funding to unprecedented levels, but this is of limited significance in a torpid political atmosphere. What this morning’s event has given us is a unique opportunity to focus voters’ minds on the real and perceivable threat of radical Islam. It gives our immigration policy new bite where before, even after 11th March, it was dismissed as extreme and out of step with the ways in which contemporary societies were developing. If we spend the next eight months getting that message across to the population of Andalucía then we stand a chance of a substantial increase in our share of the vote, come 2007. So we have the right ideology for the time, and I can raise the money to make it heard across the region.’

  ‘We don’t think that it’s a coincidence that the first call after the explosion in El Cerezo this morning should be from you, Angel,’ said Rivero. ‘You, more than anybody else, know what would make an enormous impression on the population of Andalucía tomorrow morning.’

  Angel sat back in his chair, ran his fingers through his hair and hissed air out from between his clenched teeth. He knew what Rivero wanted and it was a tall order under the circumstances.

  ‘Just think of the impact it would have,’ said Rivero, nodding at Jesús, ‘his face, his profile and his ideas in the pages of ABC Sevilla on the day after such a catastrophe as this. We would tread Izquierda Unida into the dust and make the Partido Andalucista writhe in their beds at night.’

  ‘Are you ready for what I can do for you?’ asked Angel.

  ‘I’m more prepared for it than at any time in my life,’ said Alarcón, and handed him his CV.

  Angel had sat in the back of the cab on the way to the ABC offices, leafing through Alarcón’s CV. Jesús Alarcón was born in Cordoba in 1965. He’d been accepted at Madrid University at the age of seventeen to study philosophy, political history and e
conomics. As a staunch Catholic he despised the atheistic creed of communism and believed that the best way to break one’s enemy was to know them. He went to Berlin University to study Russian and Russian political history. He was there—and a photograph existed to support this—when the Wall came down in 1989. It wasn’t supposed to have happened like that and the crucial event had left him bereft of a cause. At the same time his father’s business collapsed and he died soon after. His mother followed her husband into the grave six months later and Jesús applied to INSEAD in Paris to do an MBA. By Christmas 1991 he was working for McKinsey’s in Boston, and in the following four years became one of their analysts and consultants in Central and South America. In 1995 he moved to Lehman Brothers, to join their mergers and acquisitions team. There he changed his sphere of operations to the European Union and built up a powerful list of investors looking to buy into the booming Spanish economy. In 1997 his life changed again when he met a beautiful Sevillana called Mónica Abellón, whose father had been one of Jesús’s leading clients. Mónica’s father effected an introduction to Lucrecio Arenas, who headhunted him for the secretive Banco Omni and he moved to Madrid, where Mónica was working as a model.

  It was in the year 2000 that Angel, totally fed up with the Partido Popular, had taken on some PR work for Banco Omni clients. Lucrecio Arenas, convinced that he’d discovered a future leader of Spain in Jesús Alarcón, was eager for his new find to cut his teeth in regional politics, and had enlisted Angel’s help. As soon as Angel introduced Alarcón to Eduardo Rivero and the other Fuerza Andalucía committee members, they welcomed him into the fold, recognizing one of their own. Jesús Alarcón was a traditionalist, a practising Catholic, a man who loathed communism and socialism, a believer in the power of business to do good in society and also a lover of the bulls. He was twenty years younger than any of them. He was good looking, if a little on the dull side, but he made up for it by having the beautiful Mónica Abellón as his wife, and two gorgeous children.