'Everybody. My people. Your people. The world,' he said, and, as an afterthought, 'Maybe myself, too.'
He poured the tea, stood up, paced around the room to bring his nerves back under control.
'So, nobody knows about this meeting,' said Falcon, encouraging Yacoub to open up.
'This is just you and me,' said Yacoub. 'The only man I can trust. The only one I can talk to. The only one I can rely on not to use what has happened against me.'
'You're nervous. I can see that.'
'Nervous,' he said, nodding. 'That's why I like you, Javier. You keep me calm. I'm not just nervous. I'm paranoid. I'm totally fucking paranoid.'
These last words were accompanied by a ferocious sideways slash of the air in front of him. Falcon tried to remember whether he'd ever heard Yacoub swear.
Yacoub then launched himself into a long rant about the lengths to which he'd had to go in order to arrive unseen in this apartment.
'You were careful, weren't you, Javier?' he said at the end of it all.
Falcon reciprocated with his own procedure, which seemed to have a mildly calming influence on Yacoub, who listened and gnawed at a hangnail. Then he lit another cigarette, sipped his tea, which was too hot, sat down on the sofa, and stood up again.
'The last time you got like this was after those four days in Paris,' said Falcon. 'But you were OK. You were taken back into the fold.'
'My cover's not blown,' said Yacoub, quickly. 'No, there's no problem with that. It's just that they've found the perfect way to keep me… close.'
'Keep you close?' said Falcon. 'You mean in the sense of not straying? Does that mean they suspect you?'
'Suspect is too strong a word,' said Yacoub, tucking his hand under his armpit and chopping the air with his cigarette. 'They like me. They need me. But they are naturally unsure of me. It's the part of my brain that isn't Moroccan that makes them nervous.'
'We're Andalucians, Yacoub, same people, same Berber genetic marker,' said Falcon.
'The problem for them is that they can't rely on me to think in a certain way. I'm not consistently Moroccan,' said Yacoub. 'And that makes them uneasy.'
Falcon waited. If he'd been with another European he'd have asked the question: 'Is this something to do with you being gay?' But he had the same problem that the radical Islamist group, the GICM, had with Yacoub, but the other way round; Falcon couldn't rely on him to think like a European. His mentality for argument was more Moroccan. Direct questioning didn't work.
'Before Friday noon prayers last week, Abdullah, my son, came to see me,' said Yacoub. 'I was alone in my study. He closed the door and came to the edge of my desk. He said: "I am going to tell you something that will make you very happy and very proud." I was confused. The boy is only eighteen. I didn't remember any talk of a girl and, anyway, this would not be the way for that sort of thing to happen. I stood up as if I was about to hear important news. He came over to my side of the desk and told me that he had become a mujahideen and embraced me as a fellow warrior.'
'The GICM have recruited him?' said Falcon, cannoning out of his armchair.
Yacoub nodded, drew on the cigarette, took the smoke deep into his lungs and then held open his arms in a gesture of total helplessness.
'Directly after the Friday noon prayers, he left to continue his training.'
'Continue?'
'Exactly that,' said Yacoub. 'The boy's been lying to me. He's taken four weekends away in the last two months. I thought he was going to see his friends in Casablanca, but he's been out in the country on military-training exercises.'
'How was he recruited?'
Yacoub shrugged, shook his head. Falcon doubted that he was going to hear the precise truth.
'He's been working with me at the factory, just temporarily before he goes to university at the end of the month. We go to a mosque in Sale. There are… elements there. I thought he was steering clear of them… clearly, he wasn't.'
'Have you spoken to anyone about this?'
'You are the first outsider.'
'What about in the GICM?'
'The military commander is not there at the moment. Even when he is, he's not easy to get to see. I've only conveyed my gratitude via an intermediary.'
'Your gratitude?'
'What was I supposed to do? I should be happy and proud,' he said, and sank back down on to the sofa, buried his face in his hands and sobbed twice.
'And you assume that this has been done to keep you "close", to control you, to make them feel less uneasy about you.'
'Nobody but the maddest radical would want their son to become a mujahideen… potentially a suicide bomber. All this talk you hear on TV in France or England about honour and paradise and seventy-two virgins, it's just… it's just bullshit. You might find that sort of thinking in Gaza, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, but you won't find it in Rabat – not in my circle.'
'Let's think this through,' said Falcon. 'What are they trying to achieve through this manoeuvre? If it's to keep you close, then…'
'They want to infiltrate my household,' said Yacoub. And then, touching his temple: 'They want to infiltrate my mind.'
'They're not convinced that they can control you, so they set about controlling all those around you?'
'Their whole reason for being interested in me is that they know that I can live "convincingly" in both worlds: Islamic and secular, East and West. It doesn't mean they like it. They didn't like the fact that my sixteen-year-old daughter, Leila, was wearing a swimsuit on the beach.'
'They were watching you on the beach?'
'When we were on holiday in Essaouira, they were watching us, Javier,' said Yacoub. 'Abdullah has stopped playing his music, which I thought a blessing at first, but now I'm desperate for him to be normal. And, can you believe this, he reads the Qur'an. He doesn't play computer games any more. I had a look at the history on his browser… it's all Islamic websites, Palestinian politics – Hamas versus Fatah, the Muslim Brotherhood…'
'Where is this influence coming from?'
Another shrug.
Does he know? Why isn't he telling me? thought Falcon. Is it someone close to him? Someone in his extended family? When Yacoub had been recruited, he'd said he'd never give up a family member.
'They find their way in,' said Yacoub. 'And you know, until Abdullah came to me with his news last Friday, I didn't think these developments were such a bad thing. It's good for teenagers to have something serious in their lives, something other than violent video games and hip-hop… but mujahideen?'
'I know it's difficult for you to be calm about this,' said Falcon. 'But there's no immediate danger if, as you say, they're trying to keep you close. We have time.'
'They've taken my boy away from me,' said Yacoub, who shaded his eyes and sobbed again, before coming back at Falcon, angry. 'He's in one of their camps. That's 24/7. When they're not running over hills and assault courses, they're doing weapons training and bomb-making. And when that's all over, they're plugged into radical Islam. I have no idea what is going to come back to me, but I'm sure it won't be the Abdullah I knew. It will be their Abdullah. And then how will I live? Looking over my shoulder at my own son?'
The enormity of Yacoub's predicament hit Falcon hard. Three months ago he'd asked Yacoub to make what should have been a personal step towards embracing radical Islam. He had been stunned at the rapidity with which Yacoub had been taken deep inside the GICM organization. It could only mean that he had something that they wanted. And now the GICM were protecting themselves and it meant enclosing not just Yacoub but his whole family as well. And, worse still, there was no way out. Radical Islam was not something you changed your mind about. Once admitted to the close fraternity and their secrets there was no walking away. They wouldn't let you. It wasn't so different – and Falcon couldn't believe he was thinking this – to being part of a mafia family.
'You don't have to say anything, Javier. There's nothing to say,' said Yacoub. 'I just needed to tell someone and
you're the only person I've got.'
'You don't want me to talk to Pablo at the CNI about this?'
'Pablo? What happened to Juan?' said Yacoub. 'Juan was the old, experienced guy.'
'Juan was given early retirement last week,' said Falcon. 'He'd blown it over Madrid and their assessment of his work in the Seville bombing wasn't so good either. Pablo's good. Forty-two years old. Very experienced in North Africa. Totally committed.'
'No, Javier, you must not tell anyone,' said Yacoub, the flat of his hand taking on the threat of a chopping blade. 'If you do they will only use it. That is how these intelligence people think: He's vulnerable, let's use it. You won't use it. I know that. And that's why you always have to be there between me and them. You are, and will be, the only one who truly understands my situation.'
Something like a cramp started up in Falcon's guts. This was different to the dead weight of his responsibility in this matter. That was just a few more rocks in the already unwieldy rucksack. This was the knot of fear making itself felt. Now he was being forced into the unique position of having to decide whether Yacoub was reliable or not. Given the choice between his son, Abdullah, and the anonymous face of the Spanish intelligence agency, there would be no doubt who Yacoub would choose. He'd said it from the very beginning and the CNI had accepted those terms.
'What can I do to make your situation any easier?' asked Falcon.
'You're a good friend, Javier. The only true friend I've got,' said Yacoub. 'You will be the one to help me with the plan to save my son.'
'I doubt he could walk away from being a mujahideen very easily, especially after he's been to one of their camps.'
'I think the only way would be for him to be arrested on his way to a mission,' said Yacoub.
'Those would be extraordinary circumstances,' said Falcon. 'For the GICM to let you know what was being planned… unless you were directly involved.'
'There you have it, Javier,' said Yacoub. 'It would also depend very much on whether my survival is considered critical.'
Falcon and Yacoub looked at each other for some time, smoke steadily rising from Yacoub's fingers and dissipating over his shaven head.
'What?' asked Yacoub.
'I can't believe you said those words.'
'We were naive, Javier. We have absurdly idealistic minds. It was no accident that you were chosen to recruit me. All these agencies have people specifically employed to size you up, to perceive whether you have the necessary strengths and weaknesses for the work required of you. And I'm not talking about whether you're a good manager of people or handle stress well, but whether, under the right circumstances, you could torture a man to get the necessary information or…'
'Or be ingenuous enough to be completely malleable, or perhaps, utterly predictable?' said Falcon.
'The CNI saw in you a need. They knew your history. They knew that you no longer viewed the world in the blinkered way that most people see it, that you demanded a different perspective. They fed it to you. You fed it to me. We didn't know the sort of people we were dealing with. Possibly we imagined that they might be like ourselves, and we could enter their world beneath the surface of everyday life and change things. And what happens? We meet completely ruthless minds who beat us into corners and force us to behave – or else.'
Falcon looked around the darkened room. Their situation – meeting in an anonymous Madrid apartment to discuss unseen dramatic developments – was so far removed from real life that he was suddenly desperate for the surface; but like the diver surrounded by sharks, who still needed to decompress, he had to hold the line, not panic.
'You envisage a situation where you will give us information about an imminent attack, which will enable us to intercept Abdullah's group and arrest him, but…'
'It will irrevocably undermine my position in the GICM and I will be immediately executed.'
'No,' said Falcon.
'Yes,' said Yacoub. 'It's the only way.'
'But you realize all that will happen is that Abdullah will end up in jail, where he will gravitate to the radical elements which exist in Spanish prisons, and he will come out even more zealous than he went in. Having done his time he will be welcomed back into the group, and all you will have achieved is your own death,' said Falcon. 'You have to let me draw on some experience in this matter. Pablo and others in the CNI must have come across this type of situation before. They will have ideas on how to handle it.'
'You're my friend,' said Yacoub. 'I'm in this because of you. By that I mean I wanted to do this and you were the only one I could trust. I don't want you to start talking to others. As soon as you do that, I lose control and they start to run the situation; and believe me, they will look after their own interests, not mine. Before you know it, we'll be in a hall of mirrors, not knowing which way to turn. And this is my son, Javier. I can't allow him to be sucked in, manipulated, turned into a piece of the game, a fanatic's mass murderer, who will imagine in his adolescent mind that in killing and maiming…'
'Yacoub, you're letting this get out of control in your mind.'
'This is my Moroccan side,' he said, leaping to his feet and pacing around the room, scratching at childhood scars on his head which had been laid bare by the severity of his haircut. 'I get very emotional. I can't seem to calm myself down, or rather, I can calm down. I do calm down. And you know how I do it?'
Falcon waited for him to come back into his line of sight, but Yacoub leaned over the back of the armchair, his face so close the tobacco breath was sharp in Falcon's nostrils. 'I imagine Abdullah safe… away from all this… this madness. I imagine myself under a funeral shroud and able to see the sun coming through the cotton, the breeze playing over the material, and I am at peace for the first time in my life.'
'Try an alternative vision, Yacoub. Don't be so fatalistic. Imagine yourself at home with Abdullah, his wife and your grandchildren on your lap. Try achieving that instead of your death and his incarceration.'
'I would, if it wasn't such an absurd dream, an impossible ideal, Javier,' said Yacoub. 'The boy is already a part of their organization. He has no thoughts for girls, wives, children. Normal life has become a miserable existence to him. He despises his carefree childhood. He mourns the lost hours spent on his Gameboy. His whole adolescence is a tragedy of unconsciousness to him now. There's no question of bringing him back. The irony of it all is that, in joining himself to this new world, he has, to me, become a lost soul. He wanders a world of death, destruction and martyrdom. While my stomach heaves at the thought of a market in Baghdad with two hundred dead women and children, the whole area a blackened, smoking charnel house, Abdullah smiles beatifically at the imagined grace of the martyr who has committed this godless atrocity.'
'So you've seen him again since he went to this training camp a week ago?' asked Falcon, confused at how Yacoub could have known all this.
'The purpose of admitting me to the GICM in the first place was primarily to make one of their international attacks possible,' said Yacoub inconsequentially, buying himself some time. 'This means, as you know, I have unprecedented access to the military wing of the GICM. As soon as Abdullah told me his news, it was arranged for me to be shown his training camp. I spent some time there. We had a couple of evenings together in which I was able to see the profound change wrought in his young mind.'
'But you didn't manage to see the commander of the military wing?'
'No, as I told you, he wasn't there,' said Yacoub, turning his back on Falcon to stare at the drawn curtains. 'I had to convey my gratitude for this honour through one of his officers.'
Was that how it happened? thought Falcon as he joined Yacoub by the window. They embraced and he caught sight of his own confused face over Yacoub's shoulder in the only mirror in the room.
'My friend,' said Yacoub, his hot breath on Falcon's neck. 'You know me so well.'
Do I? thought Falcon. Do I?
7
AVE from Madrid to Seville – Friday, 15th Se
ptember 2006, 22.00 hrs
If on the train journey from Seville to Madrid he'd been slightly feverish with paranoia, then the ride back saw a serious multiplication of the uncertainty parasites in his bloodstream. The darkness rushing past outside meant that all he could see was his disconcerted visage reflected back to him and, with the movement of the train, it seemed to tremble like his vacillating mind.
Not only had Yacoub forbidden him to talk to any of the intelligence officers from the CNI, but he had also already set in motion a plan for extracting Abdullah from the ranks of the GICM. Yacoub had begged the senior officers in the military wing to ask their commander to send his son on a mission as soon as possible, with the condition that he be responsible for its planning, logistics and execution.
'Why did you do that?' asked Falcon. 'The one thing we need in this situation is time.'
'More important than time, at this stage,' Yacoub said, 'is to show them how honoured I am that my son has been chosen. Delay would have meant that suspicion would have come down heavily on me and I would have been excluded from my son's future. This was the only way for me to keep my foot in the door.'
The high command were thinking about it. Yacoub had told Falcon that the following morning he would be flying back to Rabat, where he expected to be told of their decision. None of this was exactly calming, but it wasn't the cause of Falcon's paranoia. That had started with those cramps of fear in his gut. He'd tried to ignore them, like the man with acute appendicitis who'd convinced himself it was just wind, but they'd made him very apprehensive. One moment he was sitting in front of a man who'd become his closest friend, with whom he shared a level of intimacy he'd only ever experienced with the man he'd believed to be his father – Francisco Falcon. And the next there was a person he no longer completely trusted. Doubt had been interposed. That last embrace in front of the closed curtains had been an attempt to reinforce the relationship, but it was as if some impenetrable barrier, like a Kevlar skin, had come between them.
Perhaps that had been the fatal flaw; the only other time he'd experienced this level of intimacy, it had been based on lies and fraudulence: his father had tricked the five-year-old Javier into becoming the agent of his own mother's death. But how could it have been so quick with Yacoub? Suspicion had ripped through him. But why? He replayed the meeting in minute detail, almost frame by frame, to extract every nuance.
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