'Horizonte have specifically asked that six bottles of Cristal vintage champagne be made available after the dinner.'
'This isn't just another stepping stone in the negotiating process,' said Falcon. 'This is the big moment, and it's why the contents of Vasili Lukyanov's briefcase were so crucial.'
'But without the disks what can the Russians do?' asked Ramirez.
Falcon winced behind his sunglasses. Was he going to start lying to his right-hand man? This was what he told suspects: the first lie begets a hundred others and nothing sticks in your mind like the truth.
'The meeting I've just been to in Osuna was about the abduction of Dario,' he said. 'I don't think the Russians have him. I'm nearly certain that he's in Morocco.'
'CNI business?' said Ramirez. 'Inspector Jefe Tirado of the GRUME told me there's still been no contact from the abductors, and if the Russians were trying to influence the outcome of this meeting with the mayor tonight they'd need those disks, which are still in our safe.'
'Which could mean that at least one of the mafia groups has copies,' said Falcon. 'So we have to assume that is the case.'
He was appalled at the smoothness with which he'd plastered over that little crack.
'If the Russians are going to muscle in on this deal,' said Falcon, 'they're not going to do it in the business park on the Isla de la Cartuja with all its security. If it happens it'll be in the hotel.'
'Maybe we should get back-up,' said Ramirez. 'Fuck Comisario Elvira, we can't put our own people -'
'Back-up will involve Elvira, and we'll still be briefing him by the time the meeting takes place in a couple of hours' time,' said Falcon. 'And besides, the Russians aren't going to go in there guns blazing. This isn't gang warfare. They're going to put pressure on the Horizonte/I4IT consortium. These are civilized people who scare very easily. We also have to keep our strategy quiet, because if the Russians have informers in the Guardia Civil, I'm sure they have them in the Jefatura as well.'
'I was thinking more in terms of securing the hotel so that the mayor can have his meeting and sign the deal in peace,' said Ramirez. 'The mafia don't get a look in. None of our people have to take any risks.'
'Perfect, as long as the deal is totally legitimate,' said Falcon. 'Alejandro Spinola has created a question mark over that.'
'How do you think Comisarios Lobo and Elvira are going to take it when a corruption scandal of this magnitude hits the press?'
'Badly,' said Falcon. 'But the attraction of this scenario to me is that it's likely that the extortion will be done by senior mafia group members: Viktor Belenki and possibly even Leonid Revnik himself. For once we might actually catch some major players committing serious crimes, rather than picking them up for money-laundering or running illegal businesses,' said Falcon. 'And in the fallout, I think we're going to find answers to the Seville bombing, too.'
'Right. I forgot. It's all connected,' said Ramirez. 'Where are you now?'
'On the outskirts of Seville. I'm going into the Jefatura. Just keep me informed of any developments.'
He hung up, continued driving into the sun. Something about his conversation with Yacoub still bothered him, but there was too much going on for him to pick it out of his memory. And anyway, it was less to do with words and more to do with a feeling about Yacoub.
There was a lot of traffic on the ring road taking him from east to west Seville. He suddenly had to concentrate, and it was at this moment that 'the voice' chose to call.
'How are you getting on with our last two disks?'
'I'm just heading over to the Jefatura to see what progress the IT department are making on them. They might be available now.'
'We've been able to comply with all your requests,' said the voice.
'What? Round up all the perpetrators of the Seville bombing? Including Nikita Sokolov and his two friends?' said Falcon, incredulous. 'I find that hard to believe.'
'As we told you, Yuri Donstov's operation was in the process of being closed down.'
'And what's happened to Yuri Donstov himself?'
'He has disappeared.'
'Are you sure you don't mean terminated?' said Falcon. 'Remember, I had a very special insight into the workings of your organization.'
'Yuri Donstov saw the way things were going and decided that disappearing was more advisable than the alternative. Although the alternative is only a question of time.'
'We're going to have to interview all these people you've brought together for me.'
'Interview them? Why? They'll be arriving with signed confessions.'
'We have to establish that you're sending us the right people,' said Falcon. 'Their confessions have to satisfy a court of law.'
'You're not just being demanding now, Inspector Jefe,' said the voice. 'You're being impossible.'
'The Jefatura's IT department have been hard at work, deciphering those disks. They've brought in some mathematics professors and Interpol, and it won't be long before they'll be approaching the intelligence community…' Back at the Jefatura he went straight to the IT room. The two disks were still in use. So far they'd made no significant progress. They'd contacted the CNI, who were sending someone down to take a look. He went upstairs to his office, sat at his desk. The wall chart – my God, he was looking forward to tearing that down. It depressed him. That's what Alicia Aguado had said in his later sessions with her: contemplation of the past induces depression, but who are you without a past? Falcon had always thought that, if you had a past full of joy you wouldn't mind contemplating it. Aguado countered: If you only had joy to contemplate you'd learn nothing, until you reached the point where you questioned your relative happiness. He'd thrown up his hands. 'The unexamined life is not worth living,' she quoted.
'Is this the philosophical Inspector Jefe?' said Pablo, leaning against the door jamb of his office.
'I was wondering what had happened to you,' said Falcon.
'I've been spending too much time on the AVE. I came down from Madrid with our software-encryption specialist,' said Pablo. 'You don't call us any more, Javier, so I have to seek you out and force you into face-to-face meetings.'
'I'm not avoiding you,' said Falcon. 'I'm just busy.'
'Not helped by having to drive out to Osuna this afternoon.'
'Are you following him or me?'
'Him, of course,' said Pablo. 'You don't represent a threat.'
'Nor does Yacoub,' said Falcon, who briefed Pablo on his 'rogue' agent's mental state and his resignation to a future of long-term dissimulation.
'Agents like Yacoub have to go through this phase,' said Pablo. 'We're trained for it in the service and plenty of people fall at that fence. This isn't a game that you pack up and put away. It's not suspended reality, like a good novel or a great film. It's a whole life to lead in a certain way and very few people are suited to it. And even those who are suited to it necessarily go through this… well, it's almost a grieving process, I suppose. Saying farewell to the simple life involves anger, despair, sorrow, anxiety, depression… all those emotions that we associate with the loss of something or someone important to us. And the only way out of it is to replace it with something that gives us purpose.'
'And what happens to people like Yacoub when this purpose he's so carefully cultivated disappears?'
'Do you mean… been accomplished?'
'That's the easier question to answer,' said Falcon. 'What I mean is that now he is setting out with this new resolve, but he is just one man, surrounded by numerous enemies. He will be constantly tested. He's already resigned himself to the loss of his family. Now all he has is his purpose, which, given the need for constant pretence and lying, must inevitably get whittled away.'
'Inevitably?'
'Because we're not talking about a job, Pablo. This isn't professionalism, acumen, or managerial skill. This is about who you are.'
'Soul, you mean?' said Pablo, smiling.
'Yes, that probably is what I mean… if I could be certain
what "soul" was. But whatever it is, it needs nourishment, and that normally comes from the people around you, who you love, and who love you. That's finished for Yacoub. So it's a question of how long his "soul" can last on a nourishment of, say, revenge.'
'A long time.'
'Until you go mad,' said Falcon, falling back in his chair, suddenly tired of all this dialogue. Where did it get him? Words and language had such constraints, as their use of the word 'soul' had just demonstrated.
'Do you know where his son is?' asked Falcon.
'He's still in London.'
'What's he doing there?'
'What you'd expect any kid of his age to be doing,' said Pablo. 'Eating out. Bars. Night clubs. MI5 even sent some of their girls to talk to him. They danced all night, had a great time.'
'Not exactly Islamic behaviour from Abdullah.'
'He has his cover,' said Pablo. 'Even the 9/11 terrorists went to bars, drank beers and talked to girls.'
'Is that all he's doing? No other… activity?'
'Six months is the minimum we'd expect for an agent of his age to become active,' said Pablo. 'It would make MI5's job a lot easier if they knew Abdullah's proposed target.'
'There is no target any more,' said Falcon. 'This was all a test of Yacoub's loyalty to the cause.'
'Once a target, always a target,' said Pablo. 'If Yacoub and his target are out of danger, you shouldn't mind telling us.'
'We didn't discuss that.'
'What did you discuss?'
'He said he was going to help me find Consuelo's son.'
'How can he help you with that?'
'Because I think the GICM have got him,' said Falcon, and regretted saying it instantly.
'They would only kidnap Dario to put pressure on you,' said Pablo, coming fully into the office for the first time, his curiosity piqued. 'Why would they want to do that?'
'The kidnapper said I would "recognize" it,' said Falcon. 'In other words, I would see the similarity between Dario, a son of Raul Jimenez, being abducted, and Arturo, another son – now known as Yacoub – also having been kidnapped thirty years ago when he was a similar age. The caller said we would never hear from them again, which was something that happened in the original Arturo case, too.'
'That's in your personal context,' said Pablo. 'I'm interested in what it means in our context.'
'That's the point, though: it's meant to be personal.'
'But why? I don't understand why, even on a personal level,' said Pablo. 'What is the point? You're not even sure yourself, are you? I mean, I can see the similarities between Arturo/Yacoub and Dario, in that they share the same father, but I don't see the motive.'
'Apart from putting pressure on my relationship with Yacoub?' said Falcon.
'That hasn't worked. You seemed to be closer than ever in Osuna, according to our surveillance.'
'What about: he's punishing Yacoub by recruiting his son, and he's punishing me by taking Dario, the closest I've ever come to having a son?'
'"He"? Who is "he"?'
'I mean the GICM.'
'Do you know "him"?' asked Pablo, suddenly suspicious. 'The person who is doing this?'
'No. How could I?'
'He knows you,' said Pablo. 'But the fact is, you are not concentrating on Yacoub. Your attention has been diverted. Am I right? I think I am.'
Since London, last Saturday, the only time he'd thought about Yacoub was as he drove Consuelo back to her house early this afternoon, when it finally occurred to him what the phrase 'you will recognize it' might mean. In the landscape of his mind over the last seventy-two hours the foreground had changed but the background had been constant. Whenever the foreground lapsed, Dario sprang immediately to mind.
'You're right,' said Falcon. 'And now it's changed. The pressure is off Yacoub.'
'Is it?' said Pablo, to himself again. 'Has it changed?'
'Abdullah is in London having a great time. Yacoub is at a fashion show in Marbella.'
'He was calm, you said.'
'Completely.'
'Why do people who've been very anxious suddenly become calm?'
'Because what was making Yacoub anxious is no longer imminent,' said Falcon.
'But it also happens to people when they've been decisive,' said Pablo. 'When they've finally made up their mind.'
Falcon's mobile vibrated on the desktop, creeping towards him with each ring tone. He took the call.
'There were only two men on the private jet which just landed,' said Ramirez. 'Our old friends from the disks: Juan Valverde and Antonio Ramos. But no sign of the American consultant, Charles Taggart. We're following their Mercedes back into town now.'
'Any movement on Alejandro Spinola?'
'He's already arrived at the town planning office,' said Ramirez. 'And I presume that's where we're heading.'
'I'll be there in ten minutes,' said Falcon, and hung up.
Pablo had lapsed into silence and was hunched over, thinking with a frightening intensity.
'I've got to go, Pablo,' said Falcon, 'but I need some help from you.'
'What help?'
'I might want to send some shots through of people we need to identify.'
Pablo scribbled an email address on a scrap of paper.
'I'll call them, make sure it's OK.'
'Thanks, I'll see you later,' said Falcon.
'It's not finished, Javier. I know it's not finished. You have to tell me.'
Falcon came right up to the brink and got into a struggle with his old self: the conservative, duty-bound, by-the-book Inspector Jefe. All he had to do was say the word 'Saudi' and it would all be over. He knew who would win. There had never been any doubt in his mind. It was just a small test he'd set himself.
'There's nothing to tell,' he said, and left the office.
26
Seville airport – Tuesday, 19th September 2006, 19.15 hrs
The large black Mercedes containing the men identified by Ramirez as Juan Valverde, boss of I4IT Europe, and Antonio Ramos, the Chief Engineer of Horizonte, drove directly from the airport to the Isla de la Cartuja. Lying across the river from the old city, this was where the Expo '92 had taken place. It had now been transformed into an area of prime commercial real estate. The car waited at the heliport, where it was joined by another Mercedes. The two drivers got out, smoked and chatted. Four minutes later a helicopter's faint rhythmical beating could be heard coming from the south. The clatter of blades grew louder and the drivers turned their faces as the helicopter swept in, dipped momentarily and, amid a violent thrashing and rucking up of dust, settled its runners delicately on the painted yellow H.
As the blades came to rest, an employee from the heliport trotted up and opened the door to the helicopter. Two men got out: one was a corporate Spaniard in a light grey suit, white shirt, blue tie; the other clearly American in jeans, a blue button-down shirt with a light sports jacket folded over his arm. In the thirty-metre walk to the cars, Ramirez got four good close-ups of both men with his digital camera.
The two men got out of the Mercedes, shook hands with the new arrivals, who had an air of seniority about them. They accompanied them to the second Mercedes. The heliport employee handed over a couple of suit carriers and two small cabin cases to the driver, who had the door to the car already open. The two men got in. Juan Valverde and Antonio Ramos returned to their Mercedes. The drivers got behind their steering wheels. The cars took off.
While Ramirez drove, Ferrera sat in the back and downloaded the images from the camera on to her laptop. The men's faces meant nothing to her. When they came into the wi-fi area near the town-planning management offices she sent the shots and her mobile number to the email address that Falcon had phoned through some minutes ago. Ramirez pulled up outside the town planning office on Avenida Carlos III, just next to the heliport, picked up Falcon, who got into the passenger seat. Ferrera handed him the laptop with an image of the two men. He shook his head.
They looked out at the two Me
rcedes. Nobody moved until the double doors of the town planning office opened and Alejandro Spinola led three people out. The first was the mayor, who was followed by a man and a woman.
'She's the head of Agesa, the company responsible for the Isla de la Cartuja,' said Ferrera. 'He's the head of town planning.'
Everybody got out of their cars. There were warm, insincere greetings all round. The unknown American smiled with perfect teeth and treasured any hand offered to him in both of his. He didn't seem to have any trouble speaking Spanish. After a few minutes they dispersed to their cars and the mayor's Mercedes joined the convoy which headed down Calle Francisco de Montesinos.
The cars pulled up at the Spanish Discoveries Pavilion from the Expo '92 site. The group gathered in front of the building, walked around it, and then down to the river, going as far as the Puente de la Cartuja. The cars met them again outside the Monasterio de Santa Maria de las Cuevas, picked them all up and drove into the secure, fenced-off area of the business park. They arrived at a vacant lot in a prime location. Again the group gathered and walked around.
'What do you think they're doing?' asked Ferrera. 'There's nothing to see. It's like some Papal delegation come to bless the site.'
'More like corporate jackals come to spray their territory,' said Ramirez.
'I've read something about the pavilion, that they want to convert it into a museum and build apartments down by the river,' said Falcon. 'And my sister, who knows everything there is to know about property in Seville, told me that the site we're looking at now is the prime piece of real estate on the Isla de la Cartuja and is reserved for a bank to build a twenty-storey office building on it.'
The cars left the secure business park and crossed the Camino de los Descubrimientos and pulled up next to the Pavilion of the Future. The delegation got out and walked the full length of the pavilion, heading away from the Isla Magica amusement park towards the Auditorium. On the way back they cut through into some parkland on the other side. At this point there was much arm-spreading and genuine excitement at the prospect of superb views of the river.
'This is where they're going to make a lot of money,' said Ramirez.
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