The Hidden Assassins

by Robert Wilson

  ‘Some people say it’s like riding a bicycle,’ said Flowers. ‘But there’s a big difference between an eighteen-year-old taking up cycling and a middle-aged man going back to it. I wish you’d change your whisky, Javier. This stuff is like drinking peat bog.’

  ‘Maybe you’d like some Coca Cola to go with it?’ said Falcón.

  Flowers chuckled.

  ‘Do your people know whether your Moroccan friend is “safe”?’ he asked.

  ‘Did I say that I was recruiting a friend, and that he was Moroccan?’ asked Falcón.

  Another chuckle from Flowers, followed by a big snort of whisky.

  ‘You didn’t say, but given our present circumstances it was a safe bet.’

  ‘They seem to have researched him pretty well,’ said Falcón, giving up quickly on the game.

  ‘That’s not how you find out if someone is “safe”,’ said Flowers. ‘Research is like trying to learn how to succeed in business by reading a self-help book.’

  ‘I know he’s safe.’

  ‘Well, you’re a homicide cop, so you should know when someone is lying to you,’ said Flowers. ‘What sort of conversations have you had about terrorism, Iraq, the Palestinian question, that have led you to believe that your friend is “safe”?’

  ‘None in which the outcome of the conversation has been crucial, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘I can find thousands of Muslims in the tea houses of North Africa who would condemn the actions of these extremist groups and their indiscriminate violence, but I would struggle to find one who would give me information that might lead to the capture and possible death of a jihadi,’ said Flowers. ‘It’s one of the strange contradictions of this kind of spying: it takes a profound moral certitude to behave immorally. So, how do you know he’s “safe”?’

  ‘I’m not sure what I can tell you that would help you believe, without sounding foolish,’ said Falcón.

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘We recognized something in each other from the first moment we met.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘We’ve had comparable experiences, which have given us a level of automatic understanding.’

  ‘Still not sure,’ said Flowers, closing an eye over his raised glass.

  ‘What happens when two people fall in love?’

  ‘Take it easy, Javier.’

  ‘How do two people sort out all that necessarily complicated communication that lets them know that they will be going to bed together that night?’

  ‘You know the problem with that? Lovers cheat on each other all the time.’

  ‘What you’re saying, Mark, is that we can never know, we can only be as certain as possible.’

  ‘The love analogy is right,’ said Flowers. ‘You’ve just got to be sure that he doesn’t love someone more than you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Who are we talking about, by the way?’

  ‘You took your time.’

  ‘Had I known you were going to be so coy, I’d have taken you out to dinner.’

  ‘This isn’t my business, it’s CNI business.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll be able to get out of Casablanca airport without my guys spotting you?’ asked Flowers.

  ‘I’m surprised you haven’t had me followed before.’

  Silence. Flowers smiled.

  ‘You knew all along,’ said Falcón, throwing up his hands. ‘Why do you play these games with me?’

  ‘To remind you that, in my world, you’re an amateur,’ said Flowers. ‘What are you hoping to get out of Yacoub Diouri?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not even sure whether I’m going to accept the task and, if I do, whether my superiors will allow me to do it.’

  ‘What about the investigation here?’

  ‘There’s a lot still to be done, but at least we know what went on inside and outside the mosque in the days leading up to the explosion.’

  ‘Was that why you wanted me to research I4IT?’

  ‘They’re in the background…quite a long way in the background,’ said Falcón, who filled him in on Horizonte and Informáticalidad.

  ‘I4IT are not, in fact, based in Indianapolis,’ said Flowers. ‘The company headquarters is in Columbus, Ohio, due to its proximity to Westerville, Ohio, which was where the US temperance movement started, and from where National Prohibition took off back in the 1920s.’

  ‘You’re making this sound significant.’

  ‘The corporation is owned and actively run by two born-again Christians, who discovered their faith through the excesses of their youth,’ said Flowers. ‘Cortland Fallenbach was a computer programmer who used to work for Microsoft until they “let him go” due to problems with alcohol and other substances. Morgan Havilland was a salesman for IBM, until his sex addiction got out of control and he had to be removed before the company ended up in court on the end of a sexual harassment suit.’

  ‘Did these guys meet in therapy?’

  ‘In Indianapolis,’ said Flowers. ‘And having both worked for the most powerful IT corporations in the world, they decided to set up a group to invest in hitech companies. Fallenbach was a software king and Havilland understood hardware. At first they just invested and took profit from their inside knowledge of the industry. Later they started buying companies outright, merging their strengths, and either selling them or setting them up in groups of their own. But there was, and is, one important stipulation if you want to be a part of I4IT…’

  ‘You have to believe in God?’ asked Falcón.

  ‘You have to believe in the right god,’ said Flowers. ‘You have to be a Christian. That doesn’t mean they don’t buy companies owned by Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists or Shintoists—if that’s what they’re called—it just means that they don’t become a part of I4IT. They either strip out what they want and, if they’re still valuable, they sell them on; if they’re not, they let them rot into the ground.’

  ‘Ruthless Christians,’ said Falcón.

  ‘Crusaders might be a good word,’ said Flowers. ‘Very successful crusaders. I4IT has world-wide assets in excess of $12 billion. They showed a profit in the first quarter of this year of $375 million.’

  ‘What about politics?’

  ‘Fallenbach and Havilland are members of the Christian Right and therefore deeply Republican. Their ethos, though, is based on religion. As long as you practise the same religion they believe you can understand each other. If one is a Muslim and the other a Christian there will always be fundamental differences which will prevent perfect communication. Atheists are off the page, which means communists are unacceptable. Agnostics can still be “saved”…’

  ‘Is this the level of discussion in board meetings before a take-over?’

  ‘Sure. They take company culture very seriously and religion is the foundation of that culture,’ said Flowers. ‘Where they can get away with it, they don’t employ women in the workplace, otherwise they keep to the bare legal minimum. They don’t employ homosexuals. God hates fags…remember, Javier?’

  ‘I don’t remember that line from the Bible.’

  ‘Their success and profitability is a manifestation of their righteousness.’

  ‘How active are they outside their own corporation?’

  ‘As far as we know, it’s limited to not doing business with people whose principles they don’t agree with. So they produce a lot of ultrasound equipment, for instance, and they won’t sell to clinics known to perform abortions,’ said Flowers. ‘As far as any active anti-religious movement goes, we haven’t heard of anything.’

  ‘Do you think Informáticalidad using this apartment for brainstorming sessions is weird?’

  ‘If you ask me what’s weird, it’s companies and governments spending billions of dollars and euros a year on management consultancies, who come in and give them the kind of common sense that my grandmother could have told them for free,’ said Flowers. ‘Informáticalidad sound like a company who haven’t bought into th
e bullshit industry and have come up with a cheaper, and probably more productive, solution which leaves them with an asset at the end of it all. If you can place any of those Informáticalidad brainstormers in the mosque, now that’s a different story…’

  ‘Not so far,’ said Falcón. ‘Another thing: have you got any information on an organization called VOMIT?’

  ‘VOMIT…yes, I’ve seen their website. We thought it stood for Victims of Muslim and Islamic Terror until one of our operators saw the Spanish. They can only be accused of not presenting the full picture, but that’s just a matter of imbalance. It’s not criminal. There’s no incitement to take revenge, no bomb-making advice, weapons training or active recruitment to “a cause”.’

  ‘If it’s just a few geeks with some phones and a computer, that’s one thing,’ said Falcón. ‘If it’s a multi-billion-dollar corporation with world-wide resources, wouldn’t that be different?’

  ‘First of all, I don’t see that connection. Second, there’d have to be more of a perceived threat to get us to do any digging on VOMIT,’ said Flowers. ‘And anyway, Javier, why are you sniffing around the wacky fringes of this attack instead of getting stuck into the guts of it? I mean, VOMIT, I4IT…’

  ‘The guts of the problem are under a few thousand tons of rubble at the moment,’ said Falcón. ‘Informáticalidad was an unignorable part of the scenario outside the mosque. VOMIT were introduced into the frame by the CNI. We have some suspicious occurrences in the mosque, which have not been adequately explained.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Falcón told him about the council inspectors, the blown fuse box and the electricians.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Flowers.

  ‘No, you don’t, because I haven’t decided on a scenario yet myself. I’m keeping an open mind,’ said Falcón. ‘We know that two terror suspects—Djamel Hammad and Smail Saoudi—made deliveries to the mosque, which could be innocent or could have been bomb-making material. A deposit of hexogen—or cyclonite, as you call it—was found in the back of their van…’

  ‘Fucking hell, Javier,’ said Flowers, sitting up. ‘And you don’t call that damning evidence?’

  ‘It looks bad,’ said Falcón, ‘but we’re not talking about looks here. We’ve got to get beyond appearances.’

  ‘Is there any more of this whisky? I’m getting the taste for this liquid-charcoal stuff.’

  ‘Falcón topped him up and gave himself another jolt of manzanilla. He sat back, feeling as he always did in his conversations with Flowers—stupid and flayed.

  ‘You know, Mark, you still haven’t told me anything I couldn’t have found out for myself inside half an hour on the internet, whereas I’ve told you…everything. I know you like to keep your account with me in the black, but I’d appreciate some real help,’ said Falcón. ‘Why don’t you tell me something about the MILA, or Imam Abdelkrim Benaboura?’

  ‘There’s a good reason why you don’t get as much information from me as I do from you,’ said Flowers, who let those names flash past him without a flicker. ‘I’m running a station that covers southern Spain and its relations with Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. I have no idea what is going on in Madrid, northern Spain or southern France. I only see a small corner of the whole picture. London, Paris, Rome and Berlin make their contributions, but I don’t see any of it. Like you, I’m just a contributor.’

  ‘You’re making yourself sound very passive.’

  ‘I’m getting information from all sorts of different sources, but I have to be very careful how I use it,’ said Flowers. ‘Spying is a game, but I never forget that it’s being played with real people, who can get killed. So you only get information that doesn’t endanger you or any of my other sources. If I’m in any doubt, you won’t be given it. Be glad that I’m not a risk-taking station head.’

  ‘Thanks for that, Mark. Now why don’t you tell me about Los Mártires Islámicos para la Liberación de Andalucía?’

  ‘I first heard about them at the end of last year as El Movimiento rather than Los Mártires. My source in Algiers told me that they were a disaffected faction of the Algerian GIA, the Armed Islamic Group, who had crossed the border into Morocco and teamed up with a local group, whose goal at the time was the liberation of the Spanish enclaves in Morocco: Ceuta and Melilla. The Algerians brought with them a network, with operatives already installed in Madrid, Granada, Málaga and Valencia.’

  ‘But not Seville?’

  ‘I’m coming to that,’ said Flowers. ‘My source told me that what the Moroccans could supply was finance. They were cash rich from their connections in the hashish trade in the Rif mountains. What they didn’t have was a network and a strategy. Both Ceuta and Melilla are small enclaves, well protected and well supplied by the Spanish mainland. The Algerians saw the money and told them to think big. Liberate Andalucía, cut off the Spanish supply line to Ceuta and Melilla, and this Western corner of the Islamic kingdom is whole once again.’

  ‘You’d need an army and a navy to take Andalucía.’

  ‘And there’s the British in Gibraltar, who might have an opinion on the matter, too,’ said Flowers. ‘But that is not the point. The liberation of Andalucía is an inspiring ideal that fills the hearts of Islamic fanatics with a warm Allah-infused glow. It is the dream that will draw followers to the cause. My source also read the Algerians’ intentions wrong. They didn’t want access to the hashish trade because of finance, they wanted to tap into their smuggling routes to get people and material across to Spain.’

  ‘Has that been happening?’

  ‘Nobody’s been caught,’ said Flowers. ‘Smuggling routes generally exist because they’re allowed to. There’s a constant stream of hashish from Morocco and cocaine from South America coming into the long, unpatrollable Iberian coastline, and there’s plenty of money to keep the authorities happy and quiet.’

  This talk made Falcón’s sweat run cold. The money, organization and corruption were all in place to make a devastating campaign on Andalucía seem likely rather than crazy.

  ‘What about Seville and the MILA?’ asked Falcón.

  ‘Some Afghans arrived in Morocco in January.’

  ‘Where in Morocco? How do your sources get such information? Why aren’t we getting it?’

  ‘There’s no base. There’s no town hall with posters outside advertising “MILA Meeting Tonight”. I have one source, at the wrong level, who is able to give me bits and pieces. You don’t just walk into these groups off the street. You have to be vouched for. It’s all to do with family and tribal ties. I believe my source’s information, but I’m wary of sharing it because he’s peripheral to the group’s leading council.’

  ‘Which means it could be invention?’

  ‘You see, Javier, being given information doesn’t necessarily make the picture any clearer.’

  ‘Tell me about the Afghan connection.’

  ‘Some Afghans arrived, offering the group a Seville connection. They said he was capable of giving recce and logistical support, but did not have the capacity to carry out an attack.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘He couldn’t give me one.’

  ‘One of the worshippers in the mosque here told me that there had been a visit from a group of Afghans and that the Imam had spoken to them in Pashto.’

  ‘I’d be careful about putting those two pieces of information together without more corroboration,’ said Flowers.

  ‘What’s the news on Abdelkrim Benaboura?’ asked Falcón. ‘He doesn’t seem to be high risk and yet there’s a clearance problem with his history. What does that mean?’

  ‘That they don’t know who he is from a certain date, which is normally around the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002 when the US went into Afghanistan and the Taliban regime broke up and dispersed. You have to remember, until 9/11 the US and European intelligence network in the Islamic world was negligible. We sorted out who was who on our own turf in the years that followed, but there were, and st
ill are, very large gaps—as you’d expect from an introverted religion that stretches from Indonesia to Morocco and Northern Europe to South Africa. Factor in the difficulties of identification, given the clothes these people wear, the headgear and facial hair, and histories are not so easily matched to people.’

  ‘You still haven’t told me anything about Abdelkrim Benaboura.’

  ‘Why do the CNI think it’s so important for you to recruit Yacoub now, right at the moment when you’re supposed to be heading the biggest murder enquiry of your career?’

  ‘The CNI think they might have discovered something even bigger.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘They weren’t prepared to say.’

  ‘What have they got that’s made them think that?’

  ‘You don’t miss much, Mark, do you?’ said Falcón, but Flowers didn’t answer. He was deep in distracted thought until he looked at his watch, knocked back his whisky and said he had to go. Falcón walked him to the door.

  ‘Have you tried to recruit Yacoub Diouri yourself?’ asked Falcón.

  ‘Something worth remembering,’ said Flowers, ‘he doesn’t like Americans. Now, who was that beautiful woman who left just as I arrived?’

  ‘My ex-wife.’

  ‘I’ve got two ex-wives,’ said Flowers. ‘It’s funny how ex-wives are always more beautiful than wives. Think about that, Javier.’

  ‘That’s all you do, Mark, leave me with more to think about than when you arrived.’

  ‘I’ll give you something else to roll around your brain,’ said Flowers. ‘The CNI planted the story about the MILA in the press. How about that?’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘Welcome to my wonderful world, Javier,’ said Flowers, walking off into the night.

  He stopped at the end of the short avenue of orange trees and turned back to Javier, who was silhouetted in the doorway.

  ‘One last piece of advice,’ said Flowers. ‘Don’t try to understand the whole picture…there’s nobody in the world who does.’

  19

  Seville—Wednesday, 7th June 2006, 04.05 hrs