The Hidden Assassins

by Robert Wilson

  Falcón came to on the ground. The duty judge had managed to catch him and break his fall. The paramedics from the ambulance were over him. He heard the duty judge above their heads.

  ‘He’s in shock. This is his ex-wife. He shouldn’t really be here.’

  The paramedics helped him up. The Médico Forense continued to murmur into his dictaphone. He checked the thermometer, made a calculation and muttered the time of death.

  Tears welled up as Falcón looked down once more on Inés’s inert body. This was a scene from her life that he’d never imagined—her death. Over the years he’d done a lot of thinking and talking about Inés. He’d relived their life together ten times over, until he’d nearly driven Alicia Aguado insane. He’d only been able to get rid of her permanent occupation of his mind by finally seeing her for what she was, and realizing how badly she’d behaved and treated him. But this was not how it should have ended. No amount of selfishness deserved this.

  The paramedics moved him away from the body and got him sitting on the low wall by the river, away from where the Médico Forense was working. Falcón breathed deeply. The duty judge came over.

  ‘You can’t handle this case,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll call Comisario Elvira,’ said Falcón, nodding. ‘He’ll appoint somebody from the outside. My entire squad is an interested party.’

  Elvira was speechless until he finally managed to come up with his condolences. The catastrophe was so much worse than he’d imagined and, as he spoke, first to Falcón and then the duty judge, the hideousness of the morning press conference began to spread like a malignancy through his innards.

  The duty judge finished the call and handed the mobile back to Falcón. They shook hands. Falcón took one last look at the body. Her face was perfect and undamaged. He shook his head in disbelief and had an image from years ago, when he’d come across Inés in the street. She’d been laughing; laughing so hard that she was doubled up with her hair flung forward, staggering backwards on her high heels.

  He turned away and left the scene. He walked past the patrol car where Calderón was being held. The door was open. The radio squawked. Calderón’s wrists were cuffed, his torn and bleeding hands lay in his lap. He stared straight ahead and his vision did not deviate even when Falcón leaned in.

  ‘Esteban,’ said Falcón.

  Calderón turned to him, and said the sentence that Falcón had heard more times from the mouths of murderers than any other.

  ‘I didn’t do it.’

  26

  Seville—Thursday, 8th June 2006, 08.04 hrs

  The classroom in the pre-school had been reglazed and new blinds put up. The air conditioners were already working full blast, which was the only way to keep the sulphurous stink of the corrupted bodies still in the destroyed apartment building at a bearable level. It was already past eight o’clock and still Comisario Elvira had not arrived. Everybody was tired, but there was a buzz of expectation in the room.

  ‘Something’s happened,’ said Ramírez, ‘and I’ve got the feeling it’s something big. What do you think, Javier?’

  Falcón couldn’t speak.

  ‘Where’s Juez Calderón?’ said Ramírez. ‘That’s what makes me think it’s big. He’s the man for the press conference.’

  Falcón nodded, appalled to silence by what he’d seen down by the river. The door opened and Elvira came in and made his way to the blackboard at the far end of the room, followed by three men. Already present at the meeting were Pablo and Gregorio from the CNI, Inspector Jefe Ramón Barros and one of his senior officers from the antiterrorist squad of the CGI, and Falcón and Ramírez from the homicide squad. Elvira turned. His face was grim.

  ‘There’s no easy way to put this,’ he said, ‘so I’m just going to give you the facts. At around six o’clock this morning Juez Esteban Calderón was placed under arrest on suspicion of murdering his wife. Two patrolmen found him earlier this morning, attempting to dispose of his wife’s body in the Guadalquivir. Given these circumstances, he will no longer be acting as the Juez de Instrucción in our investigation. It will also be impossible for our own homicide squad to conduct the murder enquiry, which will be carried out by these three officers from Madrid, led by Inspector Jefe Luis Zorrita. Thank you.’

  The three homicide officers from Madrid nodded and filed out of the room, stopping briefly to introduce themselves and shake hands with Falcón and Ramírez. The door closed. Elvira resumed the meeting. Ramírez stared at Falcón in a state of shock.

  ‘We have decided to appoint a Juez de Instrucción from outside Seville,’ said Elvira, ‘and Juez Sergio del Rey is on his way down from Madrid now. On his arrival an announcement will be made to the press at a conference to be held in the Andalucian Parliament building and until that time I would ask you to keep this information to yourselves.

  ‘Following the suicide yesterday of Ricardo Gamero of the CGI, there have been some major developments and the CNI will now explain these to us.’

  Something had been sucked out of Elvira’s face overnight. The staggering import of his announcements had left him haggard. He sat back in the teacher’s chair, inanimate, with his chin resting on his fist, as if his head needed that sort of support to keep it in place. Pablo made his way to the front.

  ‘Just prior to the suicide of the CGI agent, Ricardo Gamero, we had received information from British intelligence that they had successfully identified the other two men photographed by Gamero’s source, Miguel Botín. These two men are of Afghan nationality, living in Rome. They were known to MI5 because they were arrested in London two weeks after the failed 21st July bombings and held for questioning under the Terrorism Act. They were released without being charged. The British were not able to establish what these men were doing in London at the time, other than that they were visiting family. The known addresses of these two men in Rome were raided by the Italian police last night and found to be empty. Their current whereabouts is unknown. What concerns us about these suspects is that they are believed to have connections to the high command of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and are believed by the British to have forged links with the GICM in Morocco. In the last year they are known to have visited the UK, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain and Morocco. All these countries are believed to have GICM sleeper cells. There is considerable intelligence work still to be done to ascertain Miguel Botín’s role, Imam Abdelkrim Benaboura’s relationship to these two men, and their involvement with what has happened here in Seville.

  ‘After Ricardo Gamero’s suicide we conducted a search of Miguel Botín’s apartment and discovered a heavily annotated copy of the Koran which matches the edition found in the Peugeot Partner driven by Hammad and Saoudi. Large chunks of the notes are exact transcripts and we believe that this is a codebook. It is now thought that as each sleeper cell is activated they are issued with a new codebook, which they use until their mission is complete.

  ‘The significance of finding this copy of the Koran in Miguel Botín’s apartment is that it could mean that Ricardo Gamero’s source was a double: working with the CGI and operating for a terrorist cell. This throws considerable confusion into the current investigation, because it would mean that the only intelligence Botín was communicating to Gamero was what his commanders wanted us to know. This would mean that Hammad and Saoudi, the two Afghans, and the Imam were all expendable.

  ‘There is one final confusing detail about Botín’s actions in this scenario. As you know, a great deal of manpower has been spent trying to find the fake council inspectors and the electricians. Inspector Jefe Falcón has found a witness who was in the mosque on the Sunday morning, after the fuse box blew on the Saturday night. This witness saw Botín give the electrician’s card to the Imam, and he watched as the Imam called the number and made the appointment. Inspector Jefe Barros has informed us that this was not something sanctioned by him or anyone in his department. The CGI was still waiting for authorization to bug the mosque.

  ‘We now have to examine
the possibility that the council inspectors and the electricians were members of, or in the pay of, a terrorist cell. It could be—and we might only have a chance of verifying this when the forensics have reached the mosque—that the council inspectors laid a device to blow the fuse box and that the electricians were brought in to set a bomb that would wipe out the Imam, Hammad and Saoudi, and Botín himself.’

  ‘There seems to be a break in the logic chain of that scenario,’ said Barros. ‘It might just be believable that Botín was the unwitting agent of their destruction, but I don’t see any terrorist commander allowing that quantity of hexogen, brought into this country at what one imagines was considerable risk and expense, to be destroyed.’

  ‘The electricians and council inspectors would constitute a type of terrorist cell we’ve never come across before, too,’ said Falcón. ‘The witness said they were a Spaniard and two Eastern Europeans.’

  ‘And how does Ricardo Gamero’s suicide fit into this scenario?’ asked Barros.

  ‘A profound sense of failure at his inability to prevent this atrocity,’ said Pablo. ‘We understand that he took his work very seriously.’

  Silence, while everybody wrestled with the CNI’s possible scenario. Falcón snapped out of his shocked state and burned with his theory that too much weight was being attached to the copy of the Koran as a codebook. But it was impossible to understand how two identical copies could have ended up in the Peugeot Partner and Botín’s apartment.

  ‘Why do you think this cell self-destructed?’ asked Barros.

  ‘We can only think that it was a spectacular diversionary tactic, to occupy our domestic investigating teams and all European intelligence services while they plan and carry out an attack elsewhere,’ said Pablo. ‘If Botín was a double agent, his terrorist masters would have known that the mosque was under suspicion. They fed that suspicion further by bringing in the hexogen and Hammad and Saoudi, two known logistics men. They then blew it up. They don’t mind. They’re all going to paradise, whether as successful bombers or magnificent decoys.’

  ‘What about the Afghans?’ asked Barros. ‘They’ve been identified, but not exactly sacrificed.’

  ‘Perhaps Botín intended the shot of the two Afghans to be interpreted by us as an indication of an attack planned for Italy. Botín supplied those photographs when he was a trusted CGI source.’

  ‘So, another diversionary tactic?’

  ‘The Italians, Danish and Belgians are all on red alert, as they were after the London bombings.’

  ‘So this letter sent to the ABC with the Abdullah Azzam text and all the media references to MILA—was that all part of this grand diversion?’ asked Barros, nearly enjoying himself at being able to finally needle the CNI, who had so humiliated him and his department.

  ‘What we’re working on now is the real target,’ said Pablo. ‘The Abdullah Azzam text and the idea of MILA are powerful tools of terror. They inspire fear in a population. We see this as part of the escalation of this particular brand of terrorism. We are fighting the equivalent of a mutating virus. No sooner do we find one cure than it adapts to it with renewed lethal strength. There is no model. Only after we have sustained attacks do we become aware of a modus operandi. The intelligence gathered from the hundreds of people interviewed after the Madrid and London bombings is no help to us now. We are not talking about an integrated organization with a defined structure, but more of a satellite organization with a fluid structure and total flexibility.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re not reading too much into the diversionary tactic?’ said Elvira. ‘After the Madrid bombings—’

  ‘We’re pretty sure that ETA provided the diversion which led to the devastating success of the Madrid bombings. We don’t think it was a coincidence that, 120 kilometres southeast of Madrid, the Guardia Civil stopped a van driven by two ETA incompetents, and loaded with 536 kilos of titadine for delivery to Madrid; and on the same day, 500 kilometres away in Avilés, three Moroccan terrorists were taking delivery of the 100 kilos of Goma 2 Eco used on the Madrid trains,’ said Pablo. ‘British security forces and intelligence were focused on an attack on the G8 Summit in Edinburgh when suicide bombers blew themselves up on the London Underground.’

  ‘All right, so there is a history of diversion,’ said Elvira.

  ‘And a diversion that is prepared to sacrifice 536 kilos of titadine,’ said Pablo, looking pointedly at Barros.

  ‘The reality,’ said Elvira, ‘is that we have no idea who we are dealing with most of the time. We call them al-Qaeda because it helps us to sleep at night, but we seem to have come up against a very pure form of terrorism whose “goal” is to attack our way of life and “decadent values” at whatever cost. There even seems to be competition between these disparate groups to think up and carry out the most devastating attack possible.’

  ‘This is what we’re concerned about here,’ said Pablo, enthused by Elvira seeing his point of view. ‘Are we experiencing a series of diversionary jabs prior to the main attack—something on the scale of the World Trade Center in New York?’

  ‘What we need to know,’ said Ramírez, tiring of all the conjecture, ‘is where our investigation here, in Seville, should be heading.’

  ‘There is no Juez de Instrucción until Sergio del Rey arrives from Madrid,’ said Elvira. ‘The Madrid CGI have been pulling in all contacts of Hammad and Saoudi for interviews, but so far they appear to have been operating alone. The Guardia Civil have successfully plotted the route taken by the Peugeot Partner from Madrid to the safe house near Valmojado, where it is believed they were keeping the hexogen. They are having difficulties plotting the route taken by the vehicle from Valmojado down to Seville. There are concerns that it diverted on its route.’

  ‘Where was the last sighting of the Peugeot Partner?’ asked Falcón.

  ‘Heading south on the NIV/E5. It stopped at a service station near Valdepeñas. The concern is that ninety kilometres later the road forks. The NIV continues to Cordoba and Seville, while the N323/E902 goes to Jaen and Granada. They are looking at both routes, but it’s not easy to track a particular white van amongst the thousands on the roads. Their only chance is if the vehicle stopped and the two men got out so that someone could identify them, as happened at the service station near Valdepeñas.’

  ‘Which means there’s a distinct possibility that there’s more hexogen elsewhere,’ said Pablo. ‘Our job at the moment is to find out what connections Botín made, and we’ll be speaking to his partner, Esperanza, this morning.’

  ‘That’s great,’ said Ramírez. ‘But what are we supposed to do? Keep searching for the non-existent electricians and council inspectors? We’re looking like incompetents at the moment. Juez Calderón was doing a good job of protecting us from too much media attention. Now he’s in a police cell. A CGI antiterrorist agent has committed suicide and his source could be a double agent. We’re at crisis point here. Our squad can’t just carry on as we were.’

  ‘Until we receive forensic information from inside the mosque, there’s not a lot else we can do,’ said Falcón. ‘We can go back to the congregation of the mosque and interview them about Miguel Botín, see what that throws up. But I believe we should keep hammering away at the electricians and council inspectors—who do exist. They have been seen. And if I understand the CNI correctly, the council inspectors created a pretext so that the electricians could plant a bomb. They are the perpetrators of this atrocity. We have to find them and the people who sent them. That, as the Grupo de Homicidios, is our goal.’

  ‘But possibly one that you can only achieve through quality intelligence,’ said Elvira. ‘Are they part of an Islamic terrorist cell or not? Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the history of Miguel Botín, who gave their card to the Imam.’

  ‘And what about the Imam?’ said Ramírez, not wanting to be thwarted. ‘Where is he in all this? Has the CNI search of his apartment been completed? Can we have their findings? Has access to his history finally been grant
ed to someone who’s allowed to tell us?’

  ‘We can’t access it because we do not hold it,’ said Pablo.

  ‘Who does hold it?’

  ‘The Americans.’

  ‘Did you find a heavily annotated copy of that edition of the Koran in the Imam’s apartment?’ asked Falcón.

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you don’t think he was in the loop?’ said Ramírez.

  ‘We don’t know enough to be able to answer that question.’

  The meeting broke up soon after that exchange. The CNI and CGI men left the pre-school together. Elvira asked Falcón to attend the press conference in the Andalucian Parliament building when the new judge arrived, to show a united front. Ramírez was waiting outside the classroom.

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Javier,’ he said, holding him by the shoulder and shaking his hand. ‘I know you and Inés had grown apart, but…it’s a terrible thing. I hope you didn’t go to the crime scene.’

  ‘I did,’ said Falcón. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking. They told me over the phone that he’d been identified as Juez Calderón and that he’d been trying to dispose of a body. I don’t know why…I just didn’t think it would be Inés.’

  ‘Did he do it?’

  ‘I went to talk to him in the patrol car. All he said was: “I didn’t do it.”’

  Ramírez shook his head. Denial was a very common psychological state for husbands when they murdered their wives.

  ‘There’s going to be a feeding frenzy,’ said Ramírez. ‘A lot of people have been waiting for this moment.’

  ‘You know, José Luis, the worst thing…’ said Falcón, struggling, ‘was that she was very badly bruised over her torso, down her left side…and it was old bruising.’

  ‘He’d been beating her?’