The Hidden Assassins jf-3

by Robert Wilson

  'I don't know what to say.'

  Falcon gave him a short life history of Tateb Hassani and asked him if that sounded like the profile of a dangerous Islamic radical.

  'Why did they pay Hassani to make up documents that would indicate a planned terrorist attack when, as has been made clear by the discovery of traces of hexogen in the Peugeot Partner, Islamic terrorists were positioning material to carry out a bombing campaign?' asked Alarcon. 'It doesn't make sense.'

  'The executive committee of Fuerza Andalucia did not know about the hexogen,' said Falcon, which opened up the story about the surveillance by Informaticalidad, the fake council inspectors, the electricians, and the planting of the secondary Goma 2 Eco device and the fireproof box.

  Alarcon was stunned. He knew all the directors of Informaticalidad, whom he described as 'part of the set-up'. Only then did he finally understand how he'd been used.

  'And I was positioned as the fresh face of Fuerza Andalucia, who, in the aftermath of the atrocity, would attract the anti-immigration vote, which would give us the necessary percentage to make ourselves the natural coalition partner of the Partido Popular for next year's parliamentary campaign,' said Alarcon.

  The revelations drained what little energy remained in Alarcon and he sat back with his arms limp at his sides and contemplated the catastrophe in which he'd been unwittingly involved.

  'I realize that this must be hard for you…' said Falcon.

  'There are enormous implications, of course,' said Alarcon, with an odd mixture of dismay and relief spreading across his features. 'But I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking that Fernando's madness has had the inadvertent side effect of allowing me to exonerate myself in front of the investigating Inspector Jefe.'

  'Our range of interrogation techniques no longer includes mock executions,' said Falcon. 'But it has saved me a lot of time.'

  'It wasn't what I had in mind for the extension of police powers in the handling of terrorists, either,' said Alarcon.

  'You might have to work a little harder than that to get my vote,' said Falcon. 'How would you describe your relationship to Lucrecio Arenas?'

  'I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that he's been like a father to me,' said Alarcon.

  'How long have you known him?'

  'Eleven years,' said Alarcon. 'In fact, I met him before that, when I was working for McKinsey's in South America, but we became close when I moved to Lehman Brothers and started working with Spanish industrialists and banks. Then he head-hunted me in 1997 and since then he's been a surrogate father…he's shaped my whole career. He's the one who has given me belief in myself. He's second in my life only to God.'

  It was the response Falcon had expected.

  'If you think he is involved in whatever this is, then think again. You don't know the man like I do,' said Alarcon. 'This is some local intrigue, cooked up by Zarrias and Rivero.'

  'Rivero is finished. He was finished before this happened. He was walking with the fly-buzz of scandal about him,' said Falcon. 'I know Angel Zarrias. He's not a leader. He makes people into leaders, but he doesn't make things happen himself. What can you tell me about Agustin Cardenas and Cesar Benito?'

  'I need another coffee,' said Alarcon.

  'Here's an interesting link for you to think about,' said Falcon. 'Informaticalidad to Horizonte, to Banco Omni, to…I4IT?'

  The coffee machine gurgled, trickled, hissed and steamed, while Alarcon hovered around it, blinking in this new point of view, matching it to his own bank of knowledge. Doubt threaded its way across his eyebrows. Falcon knew this wasn't going to be enough, but he didn't have anything more. If Rivero, Zarrias and Cardenas didn't break down then Alarcon might be his only door into the conspiracy, but it was going to be a heavy door to open. He didn't know enough about Lucrecio Arenas to induce a sense of outrage in Alarcon at the way in which he'd been shamelessly exploited by his so-called 'father'.

  'I know what you want from me,' said Alarcon, 'but I can't do it. I realize it's not fashionable to be loyal, especially in politics and business, but I can't help myself. Even suspecting these people would be like turning on my own family. I mean, they are my family. My father-in-law is one of these people…'

  'That was why you were chosen,' said Falcon. 'You are an extraordinary combination. I don't agree with your politics, but I can see that, for a start, you are very courageous and that your intentions towards Fernando were completely honourable. You're an intelligent and gifted man, but your vulnerability is in your professed loyalty. Powerful people like that in a person, because you have all the qualities that they don't, and you can be manipulated towards achieving their goals.'

  'It's a marvellous world in which loyalty is perceived as a vulnerability,' said Alarcon. 'You must be a man made cynical by your work, Inspector Jefe.'

  'I'm not cynical, Sr Alarcon, I've just come to realize that it's the nature of virtue to be predictable,' he said. 'It's always evil that leaves one gasping at its bold and inconceivable virtuosity.'

  'I'll remember that.'

  'Don't make me any more coffee,' said Falcon. 'I have to sleep. Perhaps we should talk again when you've had time to think about what I've told you and I've started working on Rivero, Zarrias and Cardenas.' Alarcon walked him to the front door.

  'As far as I am concerned, I have no wish to see Fernando punished for what he did to me,' he said. 'My sense of loyalty also enables me to understand the profound effects of disloyalty and betrayal. You might have charges you wish to press against him, but I don't.'

  'If this gets out to the press I'll have no option but to prosecute him,' said Falcon. 'He stole a police firearm and there's a good case for attempted murder.'

  'I won't talk to the press. You have my word on it.'

  'You've just saved the career of one of my best junior officers,' said Falcon, stepping off the porch.

  He walked to the gate and turned back to Alarcon.

  'I presume, after last night's meeting, that Lucrecio Arenas and Cesar Benito are still in Seville,' he said. 'I would suggest a face-to-face meeting with one, or both, of them while the information I've just given you is still out of the public domain.'

  'Cesar won't be there. He'll be at the Holiday Inn in Madrid for a conference,' said Alarcon. 'Is seventytwo hours from inception to demise of a political future some kind of Spanish record?'

  'The advantage you have at the moment is that you, personally, are clean. If you can retain that, you will always have a future. It's only once you join hands with corruption that you're finished,' said Falcon. 'Your old friend Eduardo Rivero could tell you that from the bottom of the well of his experience.' Cristina Ferrera and Fernando were sitting in the back of Falcon's car. She'd cuffed his hands behind his back and he leaned forward with his head resting against the back of the front seat. Falcon thought that they'd been talking but were now exhausted. He turned to face them from the driver's seat.

  'Sr Alarcon is not going to press charges and he won't talk to the newspapers about this incident,' he said. 'If I were to prosecute you I would lose one of my best officers, your daughter would lose her father and only parent and would have to be taken into care, or go to live with her grandparents. You would go to jail for at least ten years and Lourdes would never know you. Do you think that's a satisfactory outcome for a burst of uncontrollable rage, Fernando?'

  Cristina Ferrera looked out of the window blinking with relief. Fernando raised his head from the back of the passenger seat.

  'And had your rage got the better of you, had your hatred been so dire that no reason could have appealed to it, and you'd actually killed Jesus Alarcon, then all the above would still be true, although your prison sentence would be longer, and you'd have had the death of an innocent man on your conscience,' said Falcon. 'How does that feel, in the dawn light of a new day?'

  Fernando looked straight ahead, through the windscreen, down the street growing lighter by the moment.

  He said nothing. There was nothin
g to say.

  38

  Seville-Friday, 9th June 2006, 08.17 hrs

  'You didn't make it to our appointment last night,' said Alicia Aguado.

  'I was in no condition,' said Consuelo. 'I left you, went to the pharmacy with the prescription you'd given me, bought the drugs and didn't take them. I went back to my sister's house. I spent most of the day in her spare room. Some of the time I was crying so hard I couldn't breathe.'

  'When was the last time you cried?'

  'I don't think I ever have…not properly. Not with grief,' said Consuelo. 'I don't even remember crying as a child, apart from when I hurt myself. My mother said I was a silent baby. I don't think I was the crying type.'

  'And how do you feel now?'

  'Can't you tell?' said Consuelo, twitching her wrist under Aguado's fingers.

  'Tell me.'

  'It's not an easy state to describe,' said Consuelo. 'I don't want to sound like some mushy fool.'

  'Mushy fool is a good start.'

  'I feel better now than I have done for a long time,' said Consuelo. 'I can't say that I feel good, but that terrifying sense of impending hideousness has gone. And the strange sexual urges have gone.'

  'So, you don't think you're going mad any more?' said Aguado.

  'I'm not sure about that,' said Consuelo. 'I've lost all sense of equilibrium. I can't seem to have just one feeling, I'm both extremes at once. I feel empty and full, courageous and afraid, angry and placid, happy and yet grief-stricken. I can't find any middle ground.'

  'You can't expect your mind to recover in twentyfour hours of crying,' said Aguado. 'Do you think you could describe what happened yesterday morning? You came to some sort of realization which completely felled you. I'd like you to talk about that.'

  'I'm not sure I can remember how it came about,' said Consuelo. 'It's like the bomb going off in Seville. So much has happened that it already feels like ten years ago.'

  'I'll tell you how it came about afterwards,' said Aguado. 'Concentrate on what happened. Describe it as best you can.'

  'It started off like a pressure, as if there was a membrane stretched across my mind, like an opaque latex sheet, against which someone, or something, was pressing. It's happened to me before. It makes me feel queasy, as if I'm at that crossover point between being merry and drunk. When it's happened in the past I'd make it go away by doing something like rummaging in my handbag. The physical action would help to reassert reality, but I'd be left with the sensation of the imminence of something that had not come to pass. The interesting thing was that I stopped getting these moments a few years ago.'

  'Were they replaced by something else?'

  'I didn't think so at the time. I was just glad to be rid of the sensation. But now I'm thinking that it was then that the sexual urges started,' said Consuelo. 'In the same way that the pressure started during a lull of brain activity, so the urges would come, sometimes in a meeting, or playing with the kids, or trying on a pair of shoes. It was disturbing to have no control over when they appeared, because they would be accompanied by graphic images which left me feeling disgusted with myself.'

  'So what happened yesterday?' asked Aguado.

  'The membrane came back,' said Consuelo, palms suddenly moist on the arms of the chair. 'There was the pressure, but it was much greater and it seemed to be expanding at an incredible rate, so that I thought my head would burst. In fact, there was a sensation of bursting, or rather splitting, which was accompanied by that feeling you get in dreams of endlessly falling. I thought this is it. I'm finished. The monster's come up from the deep and I'm going to go mad.'

  'But that didn't happen, did it?'

  'No. There was no monster.'

  'Was there anything?'

  'There was just me. A lonely young woman in a rain-filled street, full of grief, guilt and despair. I didn't know what to do with myself.'

  'When this happened, we were talking about someone you knew,' said Aguado. 'The Madrid art dealer.'

  'Ah, yes, him. Did I tell you that he'd killed a man?'

  'Yes, but you told me about it in a certain way.'

  'I remember now,' said Consuelo. 'I told you about it as if his crime was greater than my own.'

  'What does that mean?'

  'That I believed that I had committed a crime?' said Consuelo, questioning. 'Except that I knew what I'd done. I had always faced up to the fact that I'd had the abortions, even the appalling way I'd raised the money for the first one.'

  'Which had resulted in some confusion in your mind,' said Aguado. 'The graphic sexual images?'

  'I don't understand.'

  'This pain you mentioned when you watched your children sleeping, especially the youngest child-what do you think that was?'

  Consuelo gulped, as the saliva thickened in her mouth and tears flooded her eyes and rolled down her face.

  'You told me before that it was the love that was hurting,' said Aguado. 'Do you still think it was love?'

  'No,' said Consuelo, after some long minutes. 'It was guilt at what I had done, and grief at what could have been.'

  'Go back to that time when you were standing in the rain-filled street. I think you told me earlier that you were looking at some smart people coming out of an art gallery. Do you remember what you were thinking, before you decided that you wanted to be like them, that you wanted to "reinvent" yourself?'

  There was a long silence. Aguado didn't move. She stared straight ahead with her unseeing eyes and felt the pulse beneath her fingers, like string untangling itself.

  'Regret,' said Consuelo. 'I wished I hadn't done it, and when I saw those people coming out into the street I thought that they were not the sort of people to get themselves into this state. It was then that I decided I wanted to leave this pathetic, lonely, pitiful person on this wet street and go and be someone else.'

  'So, although you've always "faced up" to what you'd done, there was also something missing. What was that?'

  'The person who'd done it,' said Consuelo. 'Me.' The search warrants for Eduardo Rivero's house, the premises of Fuerza Andalucia, Angel Zarrias's apartment and Agustin Cardenas's residence were issued at 7.30 a.m. By 8.15 the forensics had moved in, the computer hard disks had been copied and evidence was being gathered and gradually shipped back to the Jefatura. Comisario Elvira, all six members of the homicide squad and three members of the CGI antiterrorism squad convened for a strategy meeting in the Jefatura at 8.45. The idea was that the nine-man interrogation team would interview the three suspects, with a few breaks, for a total of thirteen and a half hours. To prevent the suspects developing relationships or getting used to a certain style, every member of the team would interview each suspect for an hour and a half. While the first three interviewers worked the next wave would watch, and the third wave would rest or discuss developments. Lunch would be taken at 3 p.m. and there would be another tactical discussion. The next session would run from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. and, if none of the suspects had cracked, there would be a break for dinner and a final ninety-minute session at midnight.

  The point of the interviews was not to persuade the suspects to admit to the killing of Tateb Hassani, but to force them to reveal who had put Fuerza Andalucia in touch with him, why he was being employed, where the documents he'd prepared had been delivered, and who else had been at the dinner at which Tateb Hassani had been poisoned.

  Exhaustion was the communal state. The meeting broke up with sighs, hands run through hair, jackets removed and shirt sleeves rolled up. It was agreed that Falcon would take Angel Zarrias first, Ramirez would handle Eduardo Rivero, and Barros would start on Agustin Cardenas. Once they were told that the suspects were in the interview rooms they went downstairs.

  Ferrera was due to follow Falcon interviewing Angel Zarrias. They stood in front of the glass viewing panel, looking at him. He was sitting at the table, wearing a long-sleeved white shirt, hands clasped, eyes fixed on the door. He seemed calm. Falcon began to feel too tired for this confrontat
ion.

  'You're going to find out that Angel Zarrias is a very charming man,' said Falcon. 'He especially likes women. I don't know him very well because he's the sort of man who keeps you at a distance with his charm. But there has to be a real person underneath that. There has to be the fanatic that wanted to make this conspiracy work. That's the man we want to get to, and once we've got to him we want to keep him there, exposed, for as long as possible.'

  'And how are you going to do that?' said Ferrera. 'He's practically your brother-in-law.'

  'I've learnt a few things from Jose Luis,' said Falcon, nodding at Rivero's interview room, which Ramirez had just entered.

  'Then I'll keep an eye on both of you,' said Ferrera.

  Angel Zarrias's eyes flicked up as Falcon opened the door to the interview room. He smiled and stood up.

  'I'm glad it's you, Javier,' he said. 'I'm so glad it's you. Have you spoken to Manuela?'

  'I spoke to Manuela,' said Falcon, who sat down without turning on any of the recording equipment or following any of the normal introductory procedure. 'She's very angry.'

  'Well, people react in different ways to having their partners arrested in the middle of the night on suspicion of murder,' said Zarrias. 'I can imagine some people might get angry. I don't know how I'd feel myself.'

  'She wasn't angry about your arrest,' said Falcon.

  'She was pretty fierce with your officers,' said Angel.

  'It was after I'd spoken to her that she became…incandescent with rage,' said Falcon. 'I think that would be a fair description.'

  'When did you speak to her?' he asked, unnerved, puzzled.