The Hidden Assassins

by Robert Wilson

  ‘Explosives, copies of the Koran and a green sash and black hood don’t sound confusing to me,’ said Ferrera.

  ‘Why two copies of the Koran? One brand-new cheap Spanish edition and the other heavily used and annotated, but exactly the same edition.’

  ‘The extra copy was a gift?’

  ‘Why leave it in full view on the front seat? This is Seville, people usually leave their cars completely empty,’ said Falcón. ‘We need more information on these books. I want you to find out where they were bought and if there was a credit card or cheque used.’

  He tore the page from his notebook with the ISBNs and bar codes, recopied them and gave Ferrera the torn page.

  ‘What are we trying to find out from the occupants of this apartment block?’

  ‘Keep it simple. Everybody’s in shock. If we can find witnesses we’ll bring them to this car park, ask whether they saw the Peugeot Partner arrive, if they saw anybody getting out of it, how many, what age and if they took anything out of the back.’

  At the police cordon Falcón called out the address of the apartment block. An old man in his seventies came forward and a woman in her forties with a bruised face and a plastered arm in a sling. Falcón took the old man, Ferrera the woman. As they passed the entrance to their block a bomb squad man and a fireman confirmed that the building was now clear. Falcón showed the old man the Peugeot Partner and took him back up to his thirdfloor apartment, where the living room and kitchen were covered in glass, all the blinds in shreds, the chairs fallen over, photographs on the floor and the soft furniture lacerated, with brown foam already protruding from the holes.

  The old man had been lying on his bed in the back of the apartment. His son and daughter-in-law had already left for work, with the kids, who were too old for the pre-school, so nobody had been hurt. He stood in the midst of his wrecked home with his left hand shaking and his old, rheumy eyes taking it all in.

  ‘So you’re here on your own all day,’ said Falcón.

  ‘My wife died last November,’ he said.

  ‘What do you do with yourself?’

  ‘I do what old guys do: read the paper, take a coffee, look at the kids playing in the pre-school. I wander about, talk to people and choose the best time to smoke the three cigarettes I allow myself every day.’

  Falcón went to the window and pulled the ruined blinds away.

  ‘Do you remember seeing that van?’

  ‘The world is full of small white vans these days,’ said the old man. ‘So I can’t be sure whether I saw the same van twice, or different vans in two separate instances. On the way to the pharmacy I saw the van for the first time, driving from left to right down Calle Los Romeros, with two people in the front. It pulled into the kerb by the mosque and that was it.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘About ten thirty yesterday morning.’

  ‘And the next time?’

  ‘About fifteen minutes later on the way back from the pharmacy I saw a white van pull into the parking area, but not in that spot. It was on the other side, facing away from us, and only one guy got out.’

  ‘Did you see him clearly?’

  ‘He was dark. I’d have said he was Moroccan. There are a lot of them around here. He had a round head, close-cropped hair, prominent ears.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘About thirty. He looked fit. He had a tight black T-shirt on and he was muscled. I think he was wearing jeans and trainers. He locked the car and went off through the trees to Calle Blanca Paloma.’

  ‘Did you see the van when it arrived in the position it is now?’

  ‘No. All I can tell you is that it was there by six thirty in the evening. My daughter-in-law parked next to it. I also remember that when I went for coffee after lunch the van had left its position on the other side. There aren’t so many cars during the day, except for the ones belonging to teachers lined up in front of the school, so I don’t know how, but I noticed it. Old guys notice different things to other people.’

  ‘And there were two men when it was going along Calle Los Romeros?’

  ‘That’s why I can’t be sure if it was the same van.’

  ‘On which side of the van did your daughter-in-law park her car?’

  ‘To the left as we’re looking at it,’ said the old man. ‘Her door was blown open by the wind and knocked into it.’

  ‘Did the van move again at all?’

  ‘No idea. Once people are around me I don’t notice a thing.’

  Falcón took the daughter-in-law’s name and number and called her as he walked upstairs. He talked her through the conversation he’d just had with her father-in-law and asked her if she’d had a look at the van when her door had knocked into it.

  ‘I checked it, just to make sure I hadn’t dented it.’

  ‘Did you glance in the window?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Did you see anything on the front passenger seat?’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  ‘You didn’t see a book?’

  ‘Definitely not. It was just a dark seat.’

  Ferrera was coming out of the fourth-floor apartment as he hung up. They went downstairs in silence.

  ‘Was your witness injured in the blast?’ asked Falcón.

  ‘She says she fell down the stairs last night, but she’s got no bruises on her arms or legs, just the ones on her face,’ said Ferrera angrily. ‘And she was scared.’

  ‘Not of you.’

  ‘Yes, of me. Because I ask questions, and one question leads to another, and if any of it somehow gets back to her husband it’s another reason for him to beat her.’

  ‘You can only help the ones that want to be helped,’ said Falcón.

  ‘There seems to be more of it about these days,’ said Ferrera, exasperated. ‘Anyway, she did see the van arrive in its current position. There’s a woman on the same shift at the factory where she works, who lives in one of the blocks further down her street. They meet for a chat under the trees on Calle Blanca Paloma. They walked past the van at 6 p.m. just as it had arrived. Two guys got out. They were talking in Arabic. They didn’t take anything out of the back. They went up to Calle Los Romeros and turned right.’

  ‘Descriptions?’

  ‘Both late twenties. One with a shaved head, black T-shirt. The other with more of a square head, with black hair, cut short at the sides and combed back on top. She said he was very good looking, but had bad teeth. He wore a faded denim jacket, white T-shirt, and she remembers he had very flashy trainers.’

  ‘Did she see the van move again from that position?’

  ‘She keeps an eye on this car park, looking out for when her husband comes home. She said it hadn’t moved by the time he came in at 9.15 p.m.’

  The police were letting people through the cordon so that they could get back into their homes to start clearing up the damage. There was a large crowd gathered outside the chemist’s at the junction of Calle Blanca Paloma with Calle Los Romeros. They were angry with the police for not letting them back into any part of the block attached to the destroyed building, which was still too dangerous. Falcón tried talking to people in the crowd, but they couldn’t give a damn about Peugeot Partners.

  Pneumatic drills started up on the other side of the block. Falcón and Ferrera crossed Calle Los Romeros to another apartment building, whose glass was more or less intact. The apartments on the first two floors were still empty. On the third floor a child led Falcón into a living room, where a woman was sweeping up glass around a pile of cardboard boxes. She had moved in at the weekend but the removal company hadn’t been able to deliver until yesterday. He asked his question about the white van and the two guys.

  ‘Do you think I’d be sitting on the balcony watching the traffic with all this lot to unpack?’ she said. ‘I’ve had to give up two days’ work because these people can’t deliver on time.’

  ‘Do you know who was in here before you?’

  ‘It was empty,’ she said. �
��Nobody had been living here for three months. The letting agency on Avenida San Lazaro said we were the first to see it.’

  ‘Was there anything left here when you first arrived?’ asked Falcón, looking out of the living-room balcony on to Calle Los Romeros and the rubble of the destroyed building.

  ‘There was no furniture, if that’s what you mean,’ she said. ‘There was a sack of rubbish in the kitchen.’

  ‘What sort of rubbish?’

  ‘People have been killed. Children have been killed,’ she said, aghast, pulling her own child to her side. ‘And you’re asking me what sort of rubbish I found here when I moved in?’

  ‘Police work can seem like a mysterious business,’ said Falcón. ‘If you can remember noticing anything it might help.’

  ‘As it happens, I had to tie the bag up and throw it out, so I know that it was a pizza carton, a couple of beer cans, some cigarette butts, ash and empty packets and a newspaper, the ABC, I think. Anything else?’

  ‘That’s very good, because now we know that, although this place was empty for three months, somebody had been here, spending quite some time in this apartment, and that could be interesting for us.’

  He crossed the landing to the apartment opposite. A woman in her sixties lived there.

  ‘Your new neighbour has just told me that her apartment had been empty for the last three months,’ he said.

  ‘Not quite empty,’ she said. ‘When the previous family moved out, about four months ago, some very smart businessmen came round, on maybe three or four occasions. Then, about three months ago, a small van turned up and unloaded a bed, two chairs and a table. Nothing else. After that, young men would turn up in pairs, and spend three or four hours at a time during the day, doing God knows what. They never spent the night there, but from dawn until dusk there was always someone in that apartment.’

  ‘Did the same guys come back again, or were they different every time?’

  ‘I think there might have been as many as twenty.’

  ‘Did they bring anything with them?’

  ‘Briefcases, newspapers, groceries.’

  ‘Did you ever talk to them?’

  ‘Of course. I asked them what they were doing and they just said that they were having meetings,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t that worried. They didn’t look like druggies. They didn’t play loud music or have parties; in fact, quite the opposite.’

  ‘Did their routine change over the months?’

  ‘Nobody came during Semana Santa and the Feria.’

  ‘Did you ever see inside the apartment when they were there?’

  ‘In the beginning I offered them something to eat, but they always very politely refused. They never let me inside.’

  ‘And they never let on about what these meetings were about?’

  ‘They were such straight, conservative young men, I thought they might be a religious group.’

  ‘What happened when they left?’

  ‘One day a van arrived and took away the furniture and that was it.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Last Friday…the second of June.’

  Falcón called Ferrera and told her to keep at it while he went to talk to the letting agency down the street on Avenida de San Lazaro.

  The woman in the letting agency had been responsible for selling the property three months ago and renting it out at the end of last week. It had not been bought by a private buyer but a computer company called Informáticalidad. All her dealings were through the Financial Director, Pedro Plata.

  Falcón took down the address. Ramírez called him as he was walking back up Calle Los Romeros towards the bombed building.

  ‘Comisario Elvira has just told me that the Madrid police have picked up Mohammed Soumaya at his shop. He lent the van to his nephew. He was surprised to hear that it was in Seville. His nephew had told him he was just going to use it for some local deliveries,’ said Ramírez. ‘They’re following up on the nephew now. His name is Trabelsi Amar.’

  ‘Are they sending us shots of him?’

  ‘We’ve asked for them,’ said Ramírez. ‘By the way, they’ve just installed an Arabic speaker in the Jefatura, after receiving more than a dozen calls from our friends across the water. They all say the same thing and the translation is: “We will not rest until Andalucía is back in the bosom of Islam.”’

  ‘Have you ever heard of a company called Informáticalidad?’ asked Falcón.

  ‘Never,’ said Ramírez, totally uninterested. ‘There’s one last bit of news for you. They’ve identified the explosive found in the back of the Peugeot Partner. It’s called cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Otherwise known as RDX. Research and Development Explosive,’ said Ramírez, in a wobbly English accent. ‘Its other names are cyclonite and hexogen. It’s top-quality military explosive—the sort of thing you’d find in artillery shells.’

  9

  Seville—Tuesday, 6th June 2006, 12.45 hrs

  Ferrera had found one occupant who’d given her a sighting of the Peugeot Partner late yesterday afternoon, Monday 5th June. The van had stopped on Calle Los Romeros, opposite the mosque, and two men had unloaded four cardboard boxes and some blue plastic carrier bags. The only description of the men was that they were young and well built and were wearing T-shirts and jeans. The boxes were heavy enough that they could only be carried one at a time. Everything was taken into the mosque. Both men came out and drove away in the van. Falcón told her to keep looking for witnesses and if necessary to go down to the hospital.

  Back in the car park the Mayor and the deputies from the Andalucían Parliament had gone and Comisario Elvira and Juez Calderón were coming to the end of an impromptu press conference. Another body had been found on the seventh floor. The rescue workers had not made contact with anybody alive in the rubble. Pneumatic drills were being used to expose the steel netting in the reinforced concrete floors and oxyacetylene torches and motorized cutters were breaking up the floors into slabs. These slabs were being lifted away by the crane and put into tippers. With each piece of information given, more questions came at them. Elvira was visibly irritated by it all, but Calderón was playing at the top of his game and the journalists loved him. They were more than happy to concentrate on the good-looking, charismatic Calderón when finally Elvira took his leave and headed into the pre-school, where they’d set up a temporary headquarters in the undamaged classrooms at the back.

  The journalists recognized Falcón and came after him, preventing him from following Elvira. Microphones butted his face. Cameras were thrust between heads. What’s the name of the explosive again? Where did it come from? Are the terrorists still alive? Is there a cell still operating in Seville? What have you got to say about the evacuations in the city centre? Has there been another bomb? Has anybody claimed responsibility for the attack? Falcón had to force his way out of the scrum and it took three policemen to push the journalists back from the pre-school entrance. Falcón was straightening himself up in the corridor when Calderón burst through the roaring crowd at the gates.

  ‘Joder,’ he said, remaking his tie, ‘they’re like a pack of jackals.’

  ‘Ramírez just told me about the explosive.’

  ‘They keep asking me about that. I haven’t heard anything.’

  ‘The common name is RDX or hexogen.’

  ‘Hexogen?’ said Calderón. ‘Wasn’t that what the Chechen rebels used to blow up those apartment blocks in Moscow back in 1999?’

  ‘The military use it in artillery shells.’

  ‘I remember there was some scandal about the Chechens using recycled explosives from a government scientific research institute, which had been bought by the mafia, who then sold it to the rebels. Russian military ordnance being used to blow up their own people.’

  ‘Sounds like a typical Russian scenario.’

  ‘It’s not going to be easy for you,’ said Calderón. ‘Hexogen can come from anywh
ere—Russia, a Muslim Chechen terrorist group, an arms dump in Iraq, any Third World country where there’s been a conflict, where ordnance has been left behind. It might even be American, this stuff.’

  Falcón’s mobile vibrated. It was Elvira, calling them into a meeting with the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia and the antiterrorist squad of the Comisaría General de Información.

  There were three men from the CNI. The boss was a man in his sixties, with white hair and dark eyebrows and a handsome, ex-athlete’s face. He introduced himself only as Juan. His two juniors, Pablo and Gregorio, were younger men, who had the bland appearance of middle managers. In their dark suits they were barely distinguishable, although Pablo had a scar running from his hairline to his left eyebrow. Falcón was uncomfortably aware that Pablo had not taken his eyes off him since he’d walked into the room. He began to wonder whether they’d met before.

  There was only one representative from the antiterrorism unit of the CGI. His name was Inspector Jefe Ramón Barros, a short, powerfully built man, with close-cropped grey hair and perfect teeth, which added a sinister element to his brutal and furious demeanour.

  Comisario Elvira asked Falcón to give a résumé of his findings so far. He started with the immediate aftermath of the bomb and moved on quickly to the discovery of the Peugeot Partner, its contents, and the times it was seen by witnesses in the car park.

  ‘We’ve since discovered that the fine white powder taken from the rear of the van is a military explosive known as hexogen, which my colleague, Juez Calderón, has told me was the same type of explosive used by Chechen rebels to blow up two apartment blocks in Moscow in 1999.’

  ‘You can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers,’ said Juan. ‘There’s considerable doubt now that it was the Chechen rebels. We’re not great believers in conspiracy theories in our own back yard, but when it comes to Russia it seems that anything is possible. There is a natural inclination, after such a catastrophic attack as this, to make comparisons to other terrorist attacks, to look for patterns. What we’ve learnt from the mistakes we made after March 11th is that there are no patterns. It’s the government’s business to quell panic by offering some kind of order to a terrified public. It’s our job to treat every situation as unique. Carry on, Inspector Jefe.’