‘What the fuck?’
Less than a second later the image stabilised: an upside-down shot of the porch over the doorway.
‘You’ve crashed,’ Dídac said in a low, strained voice.
Daniel was silent, staring in confusion at his computer.
‘Someone closed the door!’ said Dídac.
Daniel turned and looked round. Dídac did not need to see: he could sense the policeman getting ever closer. There was no time to fix things: it was impossible. One drone was clearly the wrong way up, lying at the entrance to the basilica. There was nothing they could do.
Daniel let the tablet drop from his hands and it fell with a clatter on the ground. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. The number was there, already recorded.
Dídac turned his own drone away and flew it quick and high out of harm’s way. His fingers were so sweaty they almost slipped on the screen.
Daniel pressed the call button on his phone. There was a pause. Nothing happened.
Then the roar of the blast reached them, like a towering force of energy reaching up into the sky above the city.
FIFTY
THE JEFE DE operaciones had guessed what was happening: like Cámara he spotted those other, suspicious attachments to the undercarriage of the drones. But there was so little time to act. By some miracle, a door had been closed at the very instant that the machine tried to fly inside the building, and now it lay upside-down less than three metres from his feet, unable to fly any more.
But what he could now see very clearly taped to the drone confirmed his fears. Not least, the sight of the cheap mobile phone strapped to the side. It was going to go, and he had only seconds to do anything about it.
‘Get out!’ he screamed, waving his hand madly at the photographers and policemen waiting outside the door.
‘Get away!’
The crowd had already been silenced by the two shots fired by his marksmen trying to bring the drone down, but the vision of the GEI men was impaired by the coloured smoke, and neither bullet had found its target.
Now, for an eternal second, they all – the crowds, the journalists, the GEI agents and the ordinary policemen – watched as the jefe de operaciones screamed for everyone to take cover.
And at his side stood a small priest dressed in black robes, a look of confusion on his face as he took a step from inside, wondering what on earth was going on. He looked annoyed, almost, that this special mass ceremony was in danger of being upstaged by the events outside.
But it was the last expression anyone ever saw on his face. In the next instant Father Josep – and the jefe de operaciones – ceased to exist.
On the other side of the anteroom, still looking for the missing Carlos, Cámara was knocked sideways by the blast. A hail of glass was blown inwards from the door, showering over the congregation sitting nearby, and a noise so loud it felt as though it might cause his head to crumple boomed throughout the building like a screaming, horrified beast. The whole world shook; for a moment his feet were knocked off the floor and he had the sensation of flying. When he landed, shoulder first, rolling until he crashed into the seating area a few metres beyond, he felt nothing, as though everything were happening to someone else.
He blacked out, perhaps for no more than a second or two, but there was an acute change: the concussed silence in the immediate aftermath of the explosion gave way to wild, uncontrolled and vocal panic. Feet pounded past him and over him as the congregation found their legs and their will to survive and headed en masse for the exits on the south and east sides of the basilica, away from the smoking hole where the Door of the Passion had once stood.
Cámara curled into a tight ball for self-protection as scores of people crashed and tripped over him to make good their escape; beaten down by their urgent feet, he could not stand up.
But then, almost as quickly as they had rushed over his prostrate body, the kicking and jostling stopped. With a gulping, gasping breath, he came up like a drowning man, propping himself against the side of the nearest seat. Something was caught in his throat – an acid, burning smoke – and he coughed it out, leaning over on all fours, almost vomiting with the effort.
Inside the building, the sound of fleeing, panicking people filled the vast space around him. He glanced over: on the floor, a few metres away, was a crushed straw hat with bloodstains spattered on one side. And beyond, the crowds were funnelling through the two open doors trying to get out. But set against their high-pitched wail, he could hear two other sounds.
The first was that of groaning, wounded people. He pulled himself up on to his knees and looked across through the smoky air to where the blast had taken place: scattered bodies were lying over the floor, many of them calling out in dazed, intense pain. Scuttling around, trying to help them, to see which of them might be saved, were a handful of priests. Among them was Cardinal Forner himself, who had cast off his outer robes and was beginning to issue orders to his men, like a military commander.
The second noise inside the basilica made him shoot up to his feet. He could not see it – the air was still too thick with the aftermath of the explosion – but the sound was exactly the same: the same buzzing he had heard outside just before the blast.
Only now it was inside the building, and it was moving towards the centre.
‘Give me your tablet!’ Daniel screamed. ‘I need more time. Take him out!’
Daniel grabbed the computer and Dídac stared in shocked silence for a second before understanding. The policeman. His father was telling him to hold him back.
He had no weapon, not even anything he could throw or hit him with. And in the heightened, stunned chaos churning inside him, all he was capable of was charging at the man like an enraged bull.
He ducked his head low and sprinted as fast as he could. The last thing he saw before making impact was the policeman’s hand reaching down to his holster, but Dídac reached him just in time, the impact sending both of them to the floor.
It was a success; his one idea had worked. But for all the surge in his blood, he was no fighter. The policeman was down, but not out, and now he employed his superior strength and fighting prowess on the young lad who had suddenly and for no apparent reason rushed headlong at him.
Dídac felt the wind kicked out of him as the policeman pushed a fist deep into his abdomen, then a choking sensation as hands gripped around his still bruised throat. With a jerk, his entire body was flung to the side and his head smashed into the tarmac.
For another couple of seconds the hands continued to press and push him, before they began to relax. By the time they had stopped wrestling him and had pulled away from his body, he could barely understand the images now burning into his eyes from where he lay. Warm liquid begin to flow from a cut above his eye and cloud his vision. The last thing he saw was the figure of the policeman standing up and walking away from him, gun in hand, towards Daniel.
The second drone still had a little smoke left in its canisters, streaming yellow and red to mingle with the colourless cloud hanging in the air of the basilica. And as a result, Cámara knew exactly where it was.
The machine came to land in front of the altar, its propellers still whirring.
The first had exploded outside, in the open air. From where he stood he had little idea of the damage it had caused. People were dead – that much was clear. But the Sagrada Familia itself was still standing. For some reason that first drone had not made it inside. But this one had. And an explosion inside the building would do immeasurably more harm, almost certainly kill anyone still left inside, and perhaps – depending on how much explosive was strapped to the thing – even bring the basilica itself down.
It had to be stopped; it had to be disarmed.
And the only person who had seen it, who knew where it was and what it was about to do, was him.
His feet took him towards the central aisle. There, he turned left and paced steadily, calmly and inexorably towards the drone. T
he screaming and the groaning fell away, unheard as he focused everything of himself on this – this one task.
His last task.
Death did not figure: it was all his thought, embracing it like a droplet of water falling into a vast, forgiving ocean.
And he entered a world beyond choice, beyond ‘either’ and ‘or’. There was no question of whether he would get there in time, nor if it would explode before. There was only the bomb, his being, and his non-being, three parts of a whole – a picture that had neither beginning nor end, but simply was and existed of itself.
‘You’ve arrived.’
He heard the voice as clearly as though it had been spoken inside his own body. Hilario, speaking to him, not from outside, not Hilario as he had known him – distinct, separate, another being. But Hilario who was also he himself, with no line between them, no division. Only harmony. Only unity. Not two, but one.
And finally, he understood. No ‘or’; only ‘and’.
He could see.
Until that moment, he had been living in a world of partition, a world of illusion; now he experienced a world of reality, of no separation, where all things were one – even opposites, or supposed opposites. The shock of the blast, the need of the moment, the nearness of death had brought him awareness. Except that death was always close – only a heartbeat away. He merely drowned out the truth – like everyone else – with so much noise. And now there was silence. There was only this, what he had to do now – only clear vision, like a searing light streaming into his mind.
Terreros was conducting everything, but from afar, hidden somewhere. What was happening around him was being carried out by an agent, a secret member of his private network. Someone who had been living a double life, a man with a dual heart. Except that only one side of him had been visible.
Until now. Everything had changed. Everything was manifest, from the snapping of Fermín’s neck, to Segarra’s silence, Terreros’s escape, the flight to Barcelona and the bruising around Dídac’s throat.
The drone sat motionless at Cámara’s feet, and he knelt down next to it, as though in prayer.
For a split second Daniel stared down at the dead policeman, blood streaming from the back of his head where the bullet had smashed out of his skull. He pushed the pistol into the back of his trousers and reached for his phone.
There was the number, clearly marked.
He whispered under his breath, ‘En el nombre del Padre …’
And pressed the button.
Silence. A pause. And he waited.
But there was no roar.
Cámara kicked the detonator across the floor and watched it clatter before wedging at the foot of the altar. There was a smothered pop as it exploded harmlessly.
Then he lifted the drone and carried it away. A window nearby shone bright yellow and red, the sun streaming in through the stained glass.
He lifted the machine high above his head and threw it with all his strength.
The glass shattered, shards of coloured light flying in all directions.
And from outside he heard the drone crash into the empty street on the other side.
Disabled and disarmed.
FIFTY-ONE
DÍDAC WAS WOKEN by the sound of a screaming engine and the harsh squeal of tyres spinning on the road quickly followed by a loud and sustained honking of a car horn.
The small pool of blood made his head almost stick to the ground and he felt dizzy and nauseous. He hauled himself up on to his elbows just in time to see the tail of Daniel’s black pickup speeding away from the car park and cutting into the traffic, shooting across the line of vehicles and disappearing from view.
He froze for a second as he tried to understand what was happening, where he was, the events of the past few seconds. Daniel would come back for him, he was sure. Or perhaps expected him to meet him somewhere else close by so that they could make good their escape together.
The drones, the bomb, the policeman, the attack – and now this. Everything flooded simultaneously into his brain. He pulled himself up fully, crouching on his heels, and turned to look back at the spot from where they had launched their flying machines.
Which was when he saw the body. The policeman was on his back, his cap lying a couple of metres beyond. His legs were folded beneath him, one tucked under the other, in what looked like an uncomfortable position. But the policeman was not feeling anything. From the lake of blood oozing from the back of his skull, it was clear that the policeman was very dead.
Dídac reeled to the side, holding himself up with one hand as he tried not to give in to the dizziness now threatening to overpower him.
And for a second he glanced from the body to the exit of the car park and back again, a sense of paralysis beginning to grow.
But the sound of stomping feet coming from the far side shook him into wakefulness, a sharp stab of cold fear reviving his senses.
Daniel had run. Daniel had taken the car and sped away. Daniel – for whatever reason – had abandoned him. But there was no way he was going to sit there and get caught. It was time for him to run as well.
And without thinking or looking, he sprinted to the edge of the car park before they saw him, held his hand out to grip the side wall, and vaulted over.
He was alone, and free.
The sirens grew louder and louder until they reached the outside of the basilica, their voices like a thousand harpies screaming panic, blood, death.
The first paramedics were already arriving, streaming in through the doors where only moments ago the congregation had been fighting to get out. Cámara saw the cardinal with them, telling them what had happened and the situation of the dead and wounded. And in less than a minute the inside of the building began to transform from the shocked, wrecked hull in the aftermath of a bomb attack into a makeshift medical centre, as a swarm of healers set about their tasks.
One body was attracting more attention than most. On the floor, not far from the altar, lay a middle-aged man with closely cropped white hair. Thick dark blood was oozing out of what looked like a head wound. Alfonso Segarra appeared close to death.
There was no sign of the jefe de operaciones, and the only policemen visible were prostrate, unable to do anything. Cámara walked to the back of the altar and the chapel where the GEI had set up their temporary headquarters. The place was deserted, much of the equipment scattered over the floor where it had been shaken from the table with the blast. But the police radio was still there and blaring away as the police forces in the rest of the city began to respond to the events at the Sagrada Familia.
There were a thousand anxious, professional voices, all speaking at once. Calls for backup, progress reports, the current location of units, clarifications and emergency response teams. Back at the GEI centre they were desperately trying to find out what had happened to their men at the basilica. The only agents responding were the snipers on the roofs in the surrounding area.
Cámara was about to pick up the radio and report on the absence of the jefe de operaciones when a new voice came over – one he recognised. It was Sotsinspector Ripoll from the police station on the Carrer de la Marina.
‘Agent down, agent down,’ he said. ‘Repeat, agent down. Car park on Carrer de Taxdirt behind the comissaria. We have a sighting of a black pickup truck, last seen heading west. Agent is dead. Confirmed. Agent is dead. Advise pursuit. Call for use of helicopter for tracking.’
From the GEI centre the response was immediate.
‘Related?’
‘Believe related, affirmative,’ said Ripoll. ‘Sighting of drones from this area. Flew in from north west. Suspect seen escaping in black pickup, repeat, black pickup.’
There was a second’s pause before the GEI centre responded.
‘Helicopter on its way. Centre to helicopter – report immediately any sighting.’
Cámara was already heading out of the chapel. He ran across the nave, skipping over broken chairs and pushing past priest
s and doctors, before leaving through the Door of the Nativity. The air was fresh and clean after the smoke and dirt inside, and he halted, leaning on a column of the porch to take a couple of breaths before carrying on.
Policemen on the other side of the road were doing their best to press people back, pushing them as far away from the basilica as possible. Some were leaving of their own volition in a frightened rush. Others were pushing in the opposite direction, trying to get closer to the drama unfolding at the heart of the city.
Cámara spotted one policeman breaking away from the others to talk into the radio fitted to his motorbike. In an instant Cámara skipped down the steps and out on to the empty street, his police badge already gripped tightly between his fingers.
‘Can you pick up the GEI traffic on that?’ he asked breathlessly.
The policeman nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘And the helicopter? Can you hear what they’re reporting?’
The policeman turned a switch on the receiver and the pilot’s voice came over.
‘… currently heading north-west, possible sighting ahead.’
Cámara looked up, trying to spot the helicopter, but it was out of sight.
‘We need to follow it, exactly where it’s going,’ Cámara said, climbing on to the pillion seat of the motorbike. The policeman hesitated.
‘What’s your name?’ Cámara asked.
‘Bartomeu, sir.’
‘Listen, Bartomeu,’ said Cámara. ‘You can either ride this with me, or I’ll ride it myself. But one way or another I’m going after the man who set off that bomb. Understood?’
Bartomeu was already pulling his helmet on.
‘Yes, sir,’ he said, climbing on to the bike and firing it into life.
‘Just follow the directions from the air,’ said Cámara as they sped off.
‘Wherever he is, he won’t get far,’ said Bartomeu. ‘The traffic’s gridlocked across the city. The only way to get around is on one of these.’
A Body in Barcelona: Max Cámara 5 Page 26
