'If there's any doubt…' said Yacoub.
'There's no doubt,' said Falcon. 'You're the only person who understands what I've been through. I'm close to my brother and sister, but they still see me as the old Javier. They've never grasped the extent of the change, or perhaps they don't want to deal with it. You know me in a way that nobody else does, and I'm not going to give that up lightly.'
'Then why do you look so desolate?' said Yacoub.
'Because I think I might be destined for the ultimate loneliness of never being the most important person in anybody's life.'
Yacoub nodded. He had no intention of lying to him.
'But there are times,' he said, 'when only a friend will do.'
Falcon said nothing. Yacoub knew the questions he had to answer and he was either going to do it, or not. He sighed, as if this was going to be an enormous relief.
'I've been in a relationship with… well, let's leave it as "a member of the Saudi royal family" for the moment,' said Yacoub. 'We can call him Faisal without fear of identification.'
'How long have you known him?'
'We first met in 2002 at the house of a friend in Marbella,' said Yacoub. 'We became friends. He does a lot of business in London. Whenever I had meetings or attended fashion shows we would always see each other.'
'Let's be clear about it, Yacoub,' said Falcon. 'Is he your lover?'
'Yes,' he said. 'When it became clear that this was serious and Faisal, being an important member of the family, was suitably paranoid, he had me vetted and then trained, so that I could get to see him without bringing the world to his door. His security detail is British trained. They've also actively helped me in the last few months when, because of my successes, MI5 have been a little more assiduous in tailing me.'
'So what does he know about you?' asked Falcon. 'If his security detail is helping you lose MI5, he must realize that you're not "normal".'
'We share a lot of beliefs. We know the world is not black and white. We spend a lot of time talking about the grey. It was Faisal, for instance, who told me why the Americans invaded Iraq, as if it had become a matter of extreme urgency. Quite a few of those six thousand members of the royal family live in a state of total paranoia and terror. The least bit of trouble and they're on their private jets and out of there.'
'Taking the details of their Swiss bank accounts with them.'
'Quite,' said Yacoub. 'He despises them. He and I both have an interest in what is happening beneath the surface. You'd like him. We talk about you.'
'Does that mean he's comfortable with your "spying" activities for the CNI?'
'It's to his advantage and, as you know, he tells me things, too.'
'Where does he stand on the integral line between "friends of America" and "Wahabi fundamentalist"?'
'He's both and yet neither.'
'So he's an important member of the royal family, who is in the balance,' said Falcon. 'The ideal target for the GICM. Someone they would like to see converted to their cause.'
'Not quite,' said Yacoub. 'You're forgetting that the radicals in the GICM do see everything in black and white. They don't like grey areas. They can't stomach a man who holds conflicting opinions. However devout Faisal might be – and he is very devout, more devout than I'll ever be – he is still a very loyal family member. However powerful the arguments are that any radical could put to him, he would never betray his king.'
'How did the GICM find out about your relationship with Faisal, and do they know its full extent?'
'They do know its full extent and we are unsure how they got that information,' said Yacoub. 'I overlapped with another lover. Faisal often travels with a large entourage and other family members. There are indiscretions. There are servants. However hard you try, you can't hermetically seal yourself off from the world. And something like the homosexuality of an important family member has a way of getting out. Salacious gossip can find a crack in any wall.'
'And this was what the GICM told you when you came back from Paris in June?'
Yacoub had his feet up on the rim of the bidet. His elbows propped against his knees, his forehead in his hands. He nodded.
'And is this why the GICM have recruited Abdullah?' asked Falcon. 'The only tie more powerful than a lover is that between father and son. This is how they keep you "close". But what exactly do they want?'
'Faisal can never be entirely and securely converted to the cause,' said Yacoub. 'They want him dead.'
11
Nervion Plaza shopping centre, Seville – Saturday, 16th September 2006, 13.15 hrs
'I'm not going to talk to anybody except Javier,' said Consuelo, not loudly, but with such an edge to her voice that all the men stood back from her, as if she'd just unsheathed a sword.
They were in the office of the director of the Nervion Plaza shopping centre, which looked out through thin slatted blinds on to the broad avenue of Calle Luis de Morales. It was cold in the room. The sun was blinding and fierce outside. White bars of intense light, spectrum edged, laddered the far wall, on which hung a copy of a Joan Miro painting. Consuelo knew that this painting was called Dog Barking at the Moon and, indeed, it consisted of a small, colourful dog, a scimitar of white moon and an unforgiving black background, broken only by what looked like a railway track going to oblivion. It turned her stomach to look at Miro's intention; to show tiny forms in vast empty spaces. Where was Dario now? Normally he was a large presence in a small space, but now she could only think of his defenceless tininess in the larger outside world.
The thought of him came in waves; one moment she was tough and assertive, commanding respect from all the men in the room, and the next she had her face in her trembling hands, hiding that vulnerability, pressing the tears back into her eyes.
'This is not Javier's kind of work,' said Ramirez, the only one who knew her well enough to raise any sort of objection.
'I know it's not, Jose Luis,' said Consuelo, looking up from the sofa. 'Thank God for that. But I can't… I don't want to talk to anyone else. He knows me. He can get everything he needs out of me. We don't have to start from scratch.'
'You should talk to the officers from the Crimes Against Children squad,' said Ramirez. 'The GRUME have enormous experience with missing children. And it's important that we establish the possibilities and probabilities of what may have happened here immediately. Is this a case of a child having wandered off or has he been abducted and, if so, what could be the motives of…?'
'Abducted?' said Consuelo, her neck lengthening by ten centimetres.
'Don't alarm yourself, Consuelo,' said Ramirez.
'I'm not alarming myself, Jose Luis. You're alarming me.'
'This is what the GRUME do. They look at the background. They judge probabilities. Have you made enemies in business?'
'Who hasn't?'
'Have you noticed anyone hanging around your home?'
She didn't answer. That made her think. What about that guy last June? The gypsy-looking guy who'd muttered obscenities at her in the street, then she'd seen him again in the Plaza del Pumarejo, not far from her restaurant. She'd thought he was going to rape her down a back street. He'd known her name. He'd known all sorts of things. That her husband was dead. And, yes, her sister, later, had referred to him as the 'new pool guy' when she'd been looking after the kids and had seen him hanging around the house.
'You're thinking, Consuelo.'
'I am.'
'Will you talk to the GRUME officers now?'
'All right, I'll talk to them. But as soon as Javier is available…'
'We're trying to get a message to him now,' said Ramirez, patting her on the shoulder with one of his huge, steadying mahogany hands. He felt for her. He had his own kids. The abyss had opened up in him before now and changed him. They were angry with Falcon. Douglas Hamilton, who was on the brink of losing his usual calm, was jabbing him with irony. Rodney had already called him a cunt. Falcon knew from his English lessons that this was the worst thing you could say to som
eone in England, but to him, a Spaniard, the world's greatest insulters, it was water off a duck's back.
They were mildly irritated by the fact that the listening device they'd planted on him hadn't worked, but what was really incensing them was that Falcon wouldn't tell them anything juicy from his meeting with Yacoub.
'You can't tell us where he's been on the five occasions he's lost us. You can't tell us who trained him. You can't tell us why his son is with him in London…'
'That I don't know,' said Falcon, cutting in on the litany. 'He wouldn't tell me that.'
'Maybe we should just shoot the fucker anyway,' said Rodney.
'Who?' said Falcon.
Rodney shrugged as if it didn't matter.
'It won't come to that,' said Hamilton smoothly.
'He's in a very difficult position,' said Falcon.
'Oh, fuck right off,' said Rodney.
'Aren't we all?' said Hamilton. 'You're talking to people with two thousand suspected terrorists under constant watch. Can't you at least throw us a bone, Javier?'
'I can tell you about the Turkish businessman from Denizli.'
'Fuck that,' said Rodney.
'We're listening,' said Hamilton.
'They've signed a contract for the supply of denim to his factory in Sale,' said Falcon. 'The first shipment was received…'
'Bugger off,' said Rodney. 'You know what he's doing and you're not fucking telling us. We don't give a shit about the Turkish tosser.'
'Maybe you knew that Yacoub and the Turk had a genuine business relationship,' said Falcon, 'and you were just using their mildly suspicious backgrounds to make them appear more threatening.'
'We know about the Turk,' said Hamilton, holding up a calming hand. 'What else can you tell us?'
'Yacoub knows of no active GICM cell currently operating in the UK,' said Falcon. 'This doesn't mean there isn't one, it just means he has never been asked to make contact with it, and he's never heard any reference to one in any of his discussions with the military wing of the GICM.'
'Brilliant,' said Rodney.
'Let's at least get something straight,' said Hamilton. 'Do you know what he's been up to when he's lost the MI5 tails?'
'Not exactly. All I do know is that it's a private matter…'
'Which requires top-level spy craft?'
'In order to stay private… yes,' said Falcon.
'All right,' said Hamilton. 'The person or group that he's met on these occasions, you're saying they're not an active GICM cell.'
'I can confirm that,' said Falcon. 'I can also confirm that they are in no way your enemies.'
'Then why the fuck can't you tell us who they are?' said Rodney, in a crescendo.
'Because you'll start to make assumptions,' said Falcon. 'I'll tell you one thing and you'll put it together with other, perhaps unrelated, bits of information about Yacoub. You'll build a picture. The wrong one. Then you'll act in your own interests and not those of my agent, and that will more than likely put Yacoub and his son in serious danger.'
'What's Yacoub's interest?' asked Hamilton.
'That everybody close to him gets out alive… and he doesn't necessarily include himself in that number.'
'Fuck me, now he's giving you the sacrificial lamb shit,' said Rodney.
'Why does he think that we wouldn't help him?' asked Hamilton.
'Yacoub turned down approaches from both MI6 and the CIA,' said Falcon, 'because he had very good reasons for thinking that they would quite quickly find him expendable.'
'Let's just take him out,' said Rodney, bored by it all. 'Then we won't have to worry about him any more.'
Falcon had been waiting for this moment. He needed to create a little scene and Rodney had just given him the opportunity. He took three steps across the room, lifted Rodney out of his chair and slammed him up against the door.
'You're talking about my friend,' said Falcon, through gritted teeth. 'My friend who has given vital information at considerable risk to himself, which prevented an attack on a landmark building in the heart of the City of London containing thousands of people. If you want to put yourself in the way of more information like that, then you'll have to be patient with him. Yacoub, unlike you, is not in the business of endangering people's lives.'
'All right,' said Hamilton, grabbing Falcon's tensed bicep. 'Let's calm things down.'
'Then get this trigger-happy imbecile out of my sight,' said Falcon.
Rodney grinned and Falcon realized that the man had been playing a part all along, getting under his skin, trying to lever him open.
Falcon, still simmering, allowed himself to be guided back to his chair.
'Just give us something to go on, Javier,' said Hamilton, 'that's all we ask.'
'All right,' said Falcon, who'd been prepared by Yacoub for this free gift. 'A number of agencies, including the CNI, have been concerned by the appearance of a stranger in Yacoub's household.'
'In Rabat?'
'That's where he lives, Rodney.'
'What the fuck's that to us?'
'Then that probably concludes our business,' said Falcon coldly, preparing to leave.
'Take no notice of him,' said Hamilton. 'Tell us about the stranger.'
'He's a family friend. His name is Mustafa Barakat. He runs a number of tourist shops in Fes, which was where he was born in 1959 and has lived his entire life.'
'What's he doing in Yacoub's house?'
'He's a guest. It's not the first time, although it is probably the first time since foreign and Moroccan agencies have taken an interest in Yacoub's life.'
'We'll check him out,' said Rodney, as if that was a threat. 'She'll talk to you now,' said Ramirez, addressing the two officers from the Crimes Against Children squad, GRUME, who were standing in the corridor outside the director's office.
'What's her problem?' asked the younger one.
'She's been investigated by the police before,' said Ramirez. 'That's how we know her. We suspected her – or rather, I suspected her – of murdering her husband, Raul Jimenez.'
'And Falcon didn't?' asked Inspector Jefe Tirado, the older GRUME officer. 'Is that why she'll only talk to him?'
'They're close,' said Ramirez, and cut off that line of questioning with his hand.
'She didn't kill her husband, did she?' asked the younger officer, nervously.
'Just stick to the fucking point,' said Ramirez, ignoring him. 'Stay focused on her missing son, don't try to broaden things out too quickly. Concentrate on the immediate facts and then work back… slowly.'
'But that's not how we work,' said the young officer.
'I know. That's why I'm telling you,' said Ramirez. 'If you start rooting around in her private life, her business associates, her family album before you've gained her complete trust, then she'll clam up until Falcon gets here.'
'And when is that going to be?'
'I don't know. Maybe ten or eleven o'clock this evening.'
'I hear she lost sight of the boy when he went into the Sevilla Futbol Club shop,' said Tirado. 'You know they don't have CCTV out there. It's going to be hard going for us to establish whether he wandered off or was abducted. You got any feeling for what might have happened, Jose Luis?'
'I doubt the kid wandered off,' said Ramirez. 'You're going to find out that she's a complicated woman.'
'I don't even understand them when they're simple,' said the young officer, looking down the corridor.
Ramirez made a short mental appeal to the Holy Virgin.
'Stick to the facts. Broaden out slowly,' he repeated the mantra. 'We may have to wait for Falcon, anyway.'
'What does that mean?'
'It means Falcon's stirring a lot of pots at the same time and a fair few of them have shit at the bottom.'
They opened the door. Consuelo's voice barged out into the corridor.
'What do you mean, they don't have CCTV?' she asked. 'Why don't you have CCTV? In England I've heard they have CCTV everywhere… even on roundab
outs in the middle of nowhere.'
'This isn't England,' said the director, feeling sorry for her but having to tamp down his irritation, too, as he was having to repeat himself again and again because not much was sticking in her mind.
'But there must be something.'
'Good afternoon, Senora Jimenez, my name is Inspector Jefe Tirado,' said the senior GRUME officer, as he entered the room. 'We are from the Crimes Against Children squad. There is, of course, plenty we can do. We're going to check all the footage of every camera in the Nervion Plaza, and that includes the internal shops' CCTV. As you know, there are cameras in the central area, too, and it's possible that we will get sufficient angle on some of them to include the Sevilla FC stadium and shop. There are already officers conducting interviews with people in and around the shop and stadium. I expect that we will find out very quickly what has happened to your son, Dario.'
Consuelo stood up and shook the man's hand. At 18.00 Falcon was on his way back to Heathrow. Douglas Hamilton had told him he'd make sure they held the flight, but Falcon wasn't sure the man liked him enough to actually do it. Despite the aggression from the two men, Falcon was relaxed. Yacoub had told him the truth. They were back on track and he didn't mind doing some blocking for him. There were still moments of panic when he thought about the ruthlessness of the GICM, but he calmed himself with the thought of Faisal's Saudi security detail.
He turned his mobile on without thinking. It exploded with messages and missed calls. He went into the inbox. Twelve messages from Consuelo. He leaned back in his seat. The Jaguar coasted along the raised section of the Great West Road, past empty high-rise office space. He allowed some exhaustion to creep into his neck and back as he savoured the weight of the unread messages. He smiled to himself, thinking: Javier Falcon, the romantic. He'd never have believed it. He shrugged and opened the first message.
'Dario missing. Help.'
He clicked through all twelve messages hoping that this was just the first panicked text and that by number twelve he'd get 'Dario found. See you tonight.' Instead he pieced together the chain of events and the last message read: 'WHERE ARE YOU? I NEED YOU HERE.' It was timed 17.08. His insides felt hideously cold, as ugly thoughts stirred at the back of his mind. Ramirez was still in the corridor outside the director's office waiting for news when he took Falcon's call. He gave him the update, told him that Consuelo was with the GRUME officers.
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