The Hidden Assassins jf-3

by Robert Wilson

  Falcon became quite concerned that the rage unleashed by his revelation of Manuela's comparative peevishness might result in a fatal embolism or lethal infarction. Angel's forty-five years of political frustration had finally erupted, producing spluttering admissions which indicated, beyond any doubt, his and Fuerza Andalucia's involvement in the conspiracy, but did nothing to help the investigation cross the divide into unknown areas.

  By prior arrangement, Falcon was not going to be interviewing anybody between 10.30 and midday. He was going to attend the funeral of Ines Conde de Tejada. He drove out to the San Fernando cemetery on the northern outskirts of the city. As he drew near he counted three television vans and seven camera crews.

  Everybody from the Edificio de los Juzgados and the Palacio de Justicia was in attendance at the cemetery. Close to two hundred people were milling around the gates, most of them smoking. Falcon knew them all and it took him some time to work his way through the crowd to reach Ines's parents.

  Neither of her parents was tall, but the death of their daughter had diminished them. They were dwarfed by its enormity and overwhelmed by the numbers of people around them. Falcon paid his respects and Ines's mother kissed him and held on to him so tightly it was as if he was her lifesaver in this sea of humanity. Her husband's handshake had nothing in it. His face was slack, his eyes rheumy. He'd aged ten years overnight. He spoke as if he didn't recognize Falcon. As he was about to leave, Ines's mother grabbed his arm and in a hoarse whisper said: 'She should have stayed with you, Javier', to which there was no answer.

  Falcon joined the crowd walking up the tree-lined path to the family mausoleum. The camera crews were there, but they kept their distance. As the coffin was taken up the steps there was a great wailing from some of the women in the crowd. These occasions, especially with untimely deaths, were so emotionally lacerating that many of the men had their handkerchiefs out. When one elderly woman cried out, 'Ines, Ines,' as the coffin disappeared into the dark, the crowd seemed to convulse with grief.

  The crowd dispersed after the short ceremony. Falcon walked back to his car, head bowed and throat so constricted he couldn't respond to the few people who tried to stop him. Driving back alone was a relief, a great unknotting of strangled emotion. He arrived at the Jefatura and wept for a minute, with his forehead on the steering wheel, before pulling himself together for the next round of interviews. By lunchtime they'd all discovered their fundamental problem. Not even Rivero, who was the weakest of the three, would give the interrogators the necessary link between Fuerza Andalucia and the bomb makers. Not one of them would even yield up the link to Informaticalidad, never mind to Lucrecio Arenas and Cesar Benito.

  In a conference between Elvira, del Rey and Falcon, in which they were trying to work out the most serious possible charges with which they could hold the three suspects, Elvira put forward the possibility that the link wasn't forthcoming because it didn't exist.

  'They had to give Hassani's work to someone,' said del Rey.

  'And I think we all believe now that the reason Ricardo Gamero killed himself was that the electrician's card, which would end up in the Imam's hands, via Botin, made him feel responsible,' said Falcon. 'Mark Flowers told me that the Imam was expecting more intrusive surveillance. In fact, he wanted the microphone planted in his office so that the CGI antiterrorist squad would find out about Hammad and Saoudi's plan. Obviously, none of them knew a bomb was going to be planted with that microphone. The point is that Gamero went back to the person who had given him the card, looking for an explanation. Who gave that card to Zarrias?'

  'It's possible that Zarrias didn't know about the bomb either,' said Elvira. 'Perhaps he just thought this was an escalation of the surveillance carried out by Informaticalidad.'

  'The person I would really like to see down here is Lucrecio Arenas,' said Falcon. 'He positioned his protege, Jesus Alarcon, to take over the leadership from Rivero. He is a long-standing friend of Angel Zarrias and he has been involved with the Horizonte group, with whom Benito and Cardenas are associated and who ultimately own Informaticalidad.'

  'But unless these guys give him up, all you can do is talk to him,' said del Rey. 'You have no leverage. The only reason we've got this far is a lucky sighting of Tateb Hassani late on the Saturday night in Rivero's house, and Rivero's subsequent confusion and loss of nerve when you and Inspector Ramirez first spoke to him.' Falcon was in the observation room for the next interviews, which started at four o'clock. At about five Gregorio appeared at his shoulder.

  'Yacoub needs to talk,' he said.

  'I thought we weren't due to "chat" until tonight.'

  'In an emergency we've given Yacoub the possibility of making contact,' said Gregorio. 'It's to do with the initiation rite.'

  'I haven't got the Javier Marias book with me.'

  Gregorio produced a spare copy from his briefcase. They went up to Falcon's office and Gregorio prepared the computer.

  'You might find there's more of a delay between each line of "chat" this time,' said Gregorio. 'We're using different encryption software and it's a bit slower.'

  Gregorio gave up Falcon's seat and went over to the window. Falcon sat in front of the computer and exchanged introductions with Yacoub, who opened by saying he didn't have much time and gave a brief account of what had happened that morning. He wrote about the execution he'd witnessed, but wrote nothing of his own mock execution. Falcon reeled from the computer screen.

  'This is out of control,' he said, and Gregorio read Yacoub's words over Falcon's shoulder.

  'Steady him. Keep him calm,' said Gregorio. 'They're just warning him.'

  Falcon started to type just as another paragraph came through from Yacoub.

  'Important things in no particular order. 1) I was taken from the house in the medina at about 6.45 a.m. The journey was about three and a half hours long and then there was about forty minutes before I met the two men, who called themselves Mohamed and Abu. They told me they were following the Seville bombing very closely. 2) They said that the explosion had caused "great disruption to one of their plans which had demanded a lot of reorganization". 3) I was left in a room with books on one wall. The titles were all about architecture or engineering. There were also a number of manufacturer's car manuals for four-wheel-drive vehicles. 4) They knew about the arrest of three men from a political party called Fuerza Andalucia, who were suspected of murdering "an apostate and traitor" called Tateb Hassani. They also knew that this was in some way connected to the Seville bombing, but said that these men were "unimportant". 5) The information they want from you, Javier, is as follows: the identities of the men who were responsible for the planning of the bombing of the mosque in Seville. They know about the three arrests, and they believe that although you know who the real perpetrators are, they are too powerful for you to touch them.

  'I don't expect you to reply immediately. I know you will have to talk to your people first. I need your answer as soon as possible. If I can give them this information I believe it will increase my standing with the council immeasurably.'

  'That last bit I don't even have to think about,' said Falcon. 'I can't do it.'

  'Just wait, Javier,' said Gregorio, but Falcon was already typing out his reply:

  'Yacoub, it's completely impossible for me to give you that information. We have our suspicions, but absolutely no proof. I assume the leaders of this council are looking for revenge for the bombing of the mosque and that is not something I am prepared to have on my conscience.'

  Falcon had to hold Gregorio back as he hit the send button. After about fifteen seconds the screen wavered and the CNI secure website disappeared to be replaced by the msn home page. Gregorio played about on the keyboard and tried to get back into the website, but there was no access. He made a call standing at the window.

  'We've lost the connection,' he said.

  After several minutes of listening and nodding he closed down the mobile.

  'Trouble with the encryptio
n software. They had to terminate the transmission as a precaution.'

  'Did my last paragraph go through?'

  'They said it did.'

  'All the way through to Yacoub?'

  'That I don't know yet,' said Gregorio. 'We'll reconvene at your house at 11 p.m. I'll have had a chance to discuss the meat of what Yacoub was saying and its implications with Juan and Pablo by then.'

  40

  Seville-Friday, 9th June 2006, 17.45 hrs

  On the way back down to the interview rooms Falcon ran into Elvira and del Rey in the corridor. They'd been looking for him. The forensics computer specialists had hacked into the Fuerza Andalucia hard disks. From the articles and photographs found on one of the computers they could tell that the user was compiling the raw material to be transformed into the web pages that would appear on the VOMIT website. From other material on the same hard disk, the user was evidently Angel Zarrias. Elvira seemed annoyed that this news didn't impress Falcon, whose mind was still reeling from the exchange with Yacoub.

  'It's more leverage,' said Elvira. 'It places Zarrias and Fuerza Andalucia closer to the heart of the conspiracy.'

  Falcon had no ready opinion about that.

  'I'm not sure that it does,' said del Rey. 'It could be construed as a separate entity. Zarrias can defend it as a personal campaign. All he's done is use a Fuerza Andalucia computer to draft the articles, which he's downloaded on to a CD and given to some geek, to anonymously slap them up on the VOMIT website. I can't see the leverage we can extract from that.'

  Falcon looked from one man to the other, still with no comment. Elvira took a call on his mobile. Falcon started to move away.

  'That was Comisario Lobo,' said Elvira. 'The media pressure is at breaking point.'

  'What has the media been told so far about these men being held?' asked Falcon, coming back down the corridor to Elvira.

  'Suspicion of murder and conspiring to murder,' said Elvira.

  'Has Tateb Hassani been named?'

  'Not yet. Naming him would involve revealing too much about the nature of our enquiry at the moment,' said Elvira. 'We're still sensitive to the expectations of the people.'

  'I'd better get back to work. I'm due to start on Eduardo Rivero in a few minutes,' said Falcon, looking at his watch. 'Tell me, have the forensics found any blood traces in the Fuerza Andalucia offices, yet? Especially in the bathroom?'

  'I haven't heard anything on that,' said Elvira, moving off with del Rey. All the interrogators were in the corridor outside the interview rooms. A paramedic in fluorescent green was talking to Ramirez, who caught sight of Falcon over his shoulder.

  'Rivero's collapsed,' he said. 'He started gasping for air, getting disorientated, and then fell off his chair.'

  Rivero was lying on the floor between two paramedics who were giving him oxygen.

  'What's the problem?' asked Falcon.

  'Heart arrhythmia and high blood pressure,' said the paramedic. 'We're going to take him to hospital, keep him under observation. His heart rate is up around 160 and completely irregular. If we don't bring it down there's a danger that the blood will pool and clot in the heart, and if a clot gets loose he might have a stroke.'

  'Shit,' said Ramirez from the corridor. 'God knows how this is going to play out in the media. They'll tell the world we're running Abu Ghraib down here.'

  All the interrogators thought that Rivero, of all the suspects, had been the least attached to the central conspiracy. He had only been important as the leader of the party and, given that the intention was to wrest that from him in order to install Jesus Alarcon, it would stand to reason that he would be kept the least informed. His collapse had occurred under persistent questioning from Inspector Jefe Ramon Barros about the real reason for his relinquishing of the leadership. The pressure of sticking to his story about old age, while the truth worked away at the flaws in his mind, had proved too much.

  Just after 7 p.m. Marco Barreda, the Informaticalidad sales manager, was brought in. He'd been met at the airport having flown in from Barcelona. His mobile phone records were accessed but none of the numbers called corresponded to any of those owned by Angel Zarrias. Falcon made sure that Zarrias knew about Barreda's appearance in the Jefatura. Zarrias was unperturbed. Barreda was questioned for an hour and a half about his relationship with Ricardo Gamero. He didn't deviate from his original story. They released him at 8.30 p.m. and went back to Zarrias and lied to him about Barreda, saying he'd admitted that Gamero had said nothing about being in love with him and wasn't even a homosexual. Zarrias didn't buy any of it.

  By 9 p.m. Falcon couldn't take any more. He went outside to breathe some fresh air, but found it hot and suffocating after the chill of the Jefatura. He drank a coffee in the cafe across the street. His mind was confused with too much going on between Yacoub and the interrogation of the three suspects. He drank some water to wash out the bitterness of the coffee, and Zorrita's words from last night came back to him.

  In the Jefatura he went down to the cells where he asked the officer on duty if he could speak to Esteban Calderon, who was in the last cell, lying on his back, staring at the back of his hands held above him. The guard locked Falcon in. He took a stool and leaned back against the wall. Calderon sat up on his bunk.

  'I didn't think you were going to come,' he said.

  'I didn't think there was much point in coming,' said Falcon. 'I can't help you or discuss your case with you. I'm here out of curiosity only.'

  'I've been thinking about denial,' said Calderon.

  Falcon nodded.

  'I know you've come across a lot of it in your work.'

  'There's no greater guilt than that of a murderer,' said Falcon, 'and denial is the human mind's greatest defence.'

  'Talk me through the process?' said Calderon. 'The theory's always different to the reality.'

  'Only in the aftermath of a serious crime, such as murder, does the motive for taking such disastrous measures suddenly seem ridiculously disproportionate,' said Falcon. 'So, to kill someone for, say, the paltry reason of jealousy seems like madness, an affront to the intellect. The easiest and quickest way to deal with the aberration is to deny it ever happened. Once that denial is in place, it doesn't take long for the mind to create its own version of events which the brain comes to believe with absolute certainty.'

  'I'm trying to be as careful as I can,' said Calderon.

  'Sometimes care is not enough to defeat a deepseated desire,' said Falcon.

  'That scares me, Javier,' said Calderon. 'I don't understand how the brain can be at the mercy of the mind. I don't understand how information, facts, things we've seen and heard can be so easily transformed, reordered and manipulated…by what? What is it? What is the mind?'

  'Maybe it's not such a good idea to lie in a prison cell, torturing yourself with unanswerable questions,' said Falcon.

  'There's nothing else to do,' said Calderon. 'I can't stop my brain from working. It asks me these questions.'

  'Wish fulfilment is a powerful human need, on both a personal and a collective level.'

  'I know, which is why I'm being so careful in examining myself,' said Calderon. 'I've started at the beginning and I've been admitting some difficult things.'

  'I'm neither your confessor, nor your psychologist, Esteban.'

  'But, apart from Ines, you are the person I have most wronged in my life.'

  'You haven't wronged me, Esteban, and if you have I don't need to know.'

  'But I need you to know.'

  'I can't absolve you,' said Falcon. 'I'm not qualified for that.'

  'I just need you to know the care with which I am conducting my self-examination.'

  Falcon had to admit to himself that he was interested. He leaned back against the wall and shrugged. Calderon took some moments to prepare his words.

  'I seduced Ines,' he said. 'I set out to seduce her, not because of her beauty, her intelligence or because of the woman she was. I set out to seduce her because of her
relationship with you.'

  'Me?'

  'Not because of who you were, the son of the famous Francisco Falcon, which was what had made you interesting to Ines. It was more to do with…I don't know how to put this: your difference. You were not well liked in those days. Most people thought you cold and unapproachable, and therefore arrogant and patronizing. I saw something I didn't understand. So, the first way, the most natural way for me to understand you was to seduce your wife. What did this beautiful, muchadmired woman see in you, that I didn't have myself? That's why I seduced her. And the irony of it was, she gave me no insight at all. But before I knew it, it was no longer just an affair as I'd intended; we became an open secret. She was always way ahead of me in public relations. She could manipulate people and situations with consummate ease. So, we became the golden couple and you were the cuckold, who people enjoyed laughing about behind your back. And I admit it now, Javier, just so that you know what I'm like: I enjoyed that situation because, although I didn't understand you, which made me feel weak, I had inadvertently got one up on you, and that made me feel strong.'

  'Are you sure you want to tell me this?' said Falcon.

  'The next item isn't so personal to you,' said Calderon, batting him down with his hands, as if Falcon was thinking of leaving. 'It's important that you know me for the…I was going to say "man" but I'm not sure that's appropriate now. Remember Maddy Krugman?'

  'I didn't like her,' said Falcon. 'I thought she was sinister.'

  'She's probably the most beautiful woman I never went to bed with.'

  'You didn't sleep with her?'

  'She wasn't interested in me,' said Calderon. 'Beauty-I mean, great beauty-for a woman is both her good fortune and her greatest curse. Everybody is attracted to them. It's difficult for normal people to understand that pressure. Everybody wants to please a beautiful woman. They spark something in everybody, not just men; and because the pressure is so constant, they have no idea who has good intentions, who they should choose. Of course, they recognize the poor, slack-jawed fools who drool on to their lapels, but then there are the others, the hundreds and thousands with money, charm, brilliance and charisma. Maddy liked you because you brushed aside her beauty…'