The Ignoranceof Blood jf-4

by Robert Wilson

  'Cortland Fallenbach knew about this,' said Falcon. 'I'm sure of it.'

  'He was only booked in when Charles Taggart's suite was cancelled,' said Ferrera. 'I don't think this evening was originally a part of his schedule.'

  'Valverde and Ramos have been the main contacts for the mayor and the town planning office for a long time, so Fallenbach probably sees the value in keeping them in place until the deal is signed,' said Falcon. 'Then they're out of their jobs.'

  Ten more minutes. They stared at the entrance to the presidential suite where they'd seen the two men disappear. Nothing.

  'Look at Belenki,' said Ramirez.

  The Russian was leaning slightly forward and staring into the night as if he was beginning to suspect they'd all somehow escaped over the perimeter fence. He turned and went into the car port. At that moment Alejandro Spinola came out of Ramos's suite at a sprint. He'd obviously been waiting for Belenki to disappear and, as Ramos's suite was the furthest bungalow from the main building, he had a good hundred metres to cover.

  'Spinola's realized or been told that Manzanares has rejected the deal and he doesn't want to get caught in the open,' said Falcon. 'He wants to be safe in a public space to give the Russians the bad news.'

  Belenki came out of the car port, crossed the path and headed across the grass to cut Spinola off.

  'Let's go,' said Ramirez.

  'Wait,' said Falcon. 'Let's see where they end up. No sense in running around the hotel when we can see it all here.'

  The cameras showed two men crossing the patio. Belenki had his arm around Spinola, hugging him tight. Spinola was terrified. They went into the toilets by the art gallery.

  'No cameras in the toilets,' said the head of security.

  'Cristina, go and stand outside Belenki's suite with your weapon,' said Falcon. 'I don't want him to have a chance of getting back in there. Ramirez and I will go to the toilets. Can you back us up?'

  The head of security nodded. They left the room. The shops and art gallery were empty apart from an assistant. Ramirez told her to go and wait in reception for a few minutes. They took out their weapons. Falcon eased open the door to the toilets. Ramirez closed it silently behind them. No sign of Belenki or Spinola. A harsh, guttural voice speaking good Spanish came from the last cubicle. It was the wide-doored disabled toilet.

  'I don't know how to impress upon you the importance of this, you little piece of shit,' said Belenki. 'Did you tell them that this is the deal, or there is no deal and they get this?'

  No answer, apart from a kind of grunting noise.

  They moved towards the cubicle. Falcon stood poised, gun at shoulder height in both hands. Ramirez readied himself.

  'What?' said Belenki.

  A spitting, gagging sound from Spinola.

  'What we're both going to do now is pay a visit to Alfredo Manzanares and explain to him the nature of our earlier agreement,' said Belenki.

  'Alfredo Manzanares is not the only problem,' said Spinola, gasping for air. 'Cortland Fallenbach, the owner of I4IT, is here. He's the one who has to be persuaded.'

  'Is he?' said Belenki. 'Do you think he could be persuaded like this?'

  More grunting, heavy nasal breathing.

  Falcon nodded. Ramirez took four steps and kicked the door with such a savage blow that it cracked back into the tiled wall with the sound of a rifle shot. Belenki, a hank of blond hair over his forehead, was in the middle of the floor, he had Spinola's tie wrapped around his fist and the man was dangling, his knees just brushing the tiles. Belenki's gun, a thick silencer attached, was forced hard into Spinola's mouth so that his Adam's apple jumped.

  Belenki dropped Spinola, who fell to his side, as if the noise he'd heard was the shot that had gone down his throat. Because his tie was still wrapped around Belenki's fist, his head hung about a half-metre from the floor.

  'Police! Drop the fucking gun,' said Ramirez, his weapon pointed at Belenki's chest.

  With intense, ice-blue eyes Belenki looked from Ramirez to Falcon, weighing up all the violent possibilities. He let Spinola's tie slip slowly from his grip as if preparing himself to move.

  'You want to lose an arm, Viktor?' asked Falcon.

  Silence and then the gun clattered to the floor. The room seemed to exhale.

  'Come here,' said Falcon, beckoning to Belenki. 'Face down on the floor, hands behind your head.'

  Belenki got down. Ramirez frisked him thoroughly, found a small firearm in an ankle holster.

  'Hands behind your back,' said Ramirez, and handcuffed him, hauled him to his feet.

  They called in the head of security. Falcon checked Belenki's pockets for disks. Nothing.

  'Who's with you, Viktor, apart from Isabel?' asked Falcon.

  No answer.

  'You didn't come alone, did you?'

  No answer.

  'Is Leonid Revnik with you?'

  No answer, but a slight widening of the eyes.

  'Take him down to the lock-up,' said Falcon. 'Start questioning him, Jose Luis. See if you can get anywhere. I'll look after this one.'

  27

  Hotel La Berenjena – Tuesday, 19th September 2006, 22.05 hrs

  Alejandro Spinola was still lying on his side in the disabled toilet, shaking, the image of the accomplished networker from the mayor's office gone for good. His mouth was connected to the tiled floor by strings of bloody saliva. He was dry-retching and crying. Falcon knelt beside him, patted him on the shoulder.

  'All right, Alejandro?' asked Falcon. 'Glad to see me this time?'

  A nod, his fists jammed between his thighs, like a little boy who'd taken his first bullying on the playground.

  'Good,' said Falcon. 'Let's get you cleaned up.'

  Spinola stood at the sink, looked at himself in the mirror. His lips were cut up and swollen, and he'd lost one of his front teeth, an incisor. He buried his face in his arms and sobbed.

  'Wash your face, Alejandro. Pull yourself together. We have to talk before this little event gets under way.'

  Falcon helped Spinola out of his jacket. The shirt underneath was so drenched in sweat that the cotton was transparent. While he washed his face, Falcon asked the receptionist to bring a white shirt. Spinola lifted the tie over his head and unpicked the dense knot. He straightened the material with trembling fingers. A girl arrived with a shirt. He put it on, reconstructed the tie around his neck, combed his hair back into place and, staring into the mirror, touched his tender lips with the tips of his fingers.

  'I'm finished,' he said, and his stomach started juddering with emotion.

  'You're alive and Viktor Belenki is out of the game,' said Falcon, patting him on the shoulder. 'When did he first talk to you about his plans for Russian involvement in the Isla de la Cartuja construction projects?'

  'In August,' said Spinola, thighs shivering uncontrollably. 'We met in Marbella.'

  'What did he tell you?'

  'That he had Valverde, Ramos and the American, Taggart, on film fucking whores and taking drugs,' said Spinola. 'All I had to do was line up the I4IT/Horizonte consortium to make sure it tendered the best possible bid, and he would sort out the rest.'

  'Which meant that you leaked information about the other bids to whom?'

  'Antonio Ramos, Horizonte's head of construction. He was the guy who was putting the building project together.'

  'Couldn't they have sorted all this out before today?'

  'Alfredo Manzanares has only been in charge of the bank for a fortnight. The whole financing of the Horizonte deal was being discussed with other parties from Dubai. Then the big boss in the US, Cortland Fallenbach, stepped in and said he wasn't going to have a project of this magnitude being financed, well, he said by the Middle East, but we all know he meant Muslims. You know how they feel about non-Christian religions in I4IT. He told Antonio Ramos that he was going to have to use the Banco Omni.'

  'When was this?'

  'The beginning of this month.'

  'Were the Russians i
nvolved in the financing from Dubai?'

  'I think they must have been, but I don't know,' said Spinola. 'They were furious when it was taken away from Dubai.'

  'So the Russians lost their way into the building project through the financing, laundering their money in the process, and had to try a different tactic.'

  'Alfredo Manzanares, as the financier, wanted all contractors on the job to have pristine track records. He's hardline Opus Dei and after the Seville bombing, with all its associations with Lucrecio Arenas and the Catholic Kings shit, he wasn't going to allow anything that had the faintest stink about it. So telling him he had to use Viktor Belenki's construction companies was never going to work. I don't know how Valverde and Ramos put it to him, but that, in effect, is what they would have been asking him to accept this evening.'

  'All right, that gives us some vital background detail on tonight's event,' said Falcon. 'Now, I just want to clarify why you introduced Marisa Moreno to your cousin, Esteban Calderon, last year.'

  'I was told to,' said Spinola. 'I didn't understand what it was all about at the time. I couldn't have known the implications.'

  'Except that you knew you'd been asked by members of a criminal organization to introduce a woman to the leading instructing judge in Seville,' said Falcon. 'You might not have known about the intended bombing or Ines's murder, but you knew you were giving gangsters access to a very important person in the justice system. Why did you do it? Did they have you on film with your pants down? A single guy? No, I don't think so.'

  He shook his head, sniffed. Falcon rummaged through Spinola's jacket, rammed his hands into his trouser pockets. Spinola put up no resistance. Found it. A sachet of white powder.

  'Coke?'

  Spinola nodded.

  'Is that it?' said Falcon. 'You did all this for some coke?'

  Spinola stared into the sink, choked up again. He blurted out a few more sobs as the sudden vision of his collapsed career and spoiled life came to him again.

  'I don't get paid very much,' he said. 'What little I make, I gamble. You know what gambling is like, Inspector Jefe.'

  'Anything else?' asked Falcon, sensing there was more. 'How do you feel about your cousin? The brilliant lawyer.'

  Spinola doubled over as if in agony, rested his head on the edge of the sink.

  'I've lived in that fucker's shadow all my life,' he said. 'Do you have any idea what it's like to have your father holding up this guy all the time as someone to aspire to, when you know that he's been a first-class bastard all his life?'

  'OK,' said Falcon, calming him down. 'Let's think about tonight. You've done something illegal: leaking information on the construction tenders to the I4IT/Horizonte consortium is a criminal offence, and you're going to have to explain that to the mayor – unless he was in on this?'

  'No, no, no, que no,' said Spinola emphatically. 'He knows nothing, nor do Agesa or the town planning office.'

  'Right,' said Falcon. 'I'm going to take you to the security office, where you'll wait for a guard to take you to the mayor as soon as he arrives. Tonight's event cannot continue under these circumstances, and you've got to do the right thing.'

  They looked at each other via the mirror. Spinola nodded. They went back to the office together. Falcon asked the screen supervisor if the mayor's delegation had arrived. No sign. Running late. Falcon needed to get into the Sanchez/Belenki suite and the head of security might be required for that. He got the screen supervisor to call him up and get another guard to take care of Spinola.

  'Anybody else arrived yet?'

  'Senor and Senora Cano.'

  'Regular types?'

  'A Spanish couple in their sixties.'

  The head of security came back, they went to the Sanchez/Belenki suite, picked up Ferrera standing guard outside on the way. Falcon pressed the buzzer. No answer. Pressed it again. Nothing. The head of security opened the door.

  As soon as the air in the room touched Falcon's face he knew they were in trouble. Blood does something to an atmosphere: electrifies it, so that other humans know to tread with care.

  The living room was unlit and empty. The terrace doors were open. The night had moved in, moths fluttered and batted against the bedroom door, which showed a crack of low light. The television was on in the next room. Falcon drew his gun, took four paces across the floor, nudged the door open with his foot. A reading lamp was casting light on to Isabel Sanchez's body from the chest down. She was wearing bra and panties only. Perfect figure. Legs so long and slim they reminded him of a foal's. Her head was in darkness. He stepped fully into the room. She didn't move. He turned on the light. That was what was wrong. The vision of beauty they'd seen on the CCTV screens had gone. A hideous black hole where her nose and mouth should have been.

  The light was on in the bathroom, too. The sound of the shower. Falcon stepped to his left, leaned in. There was a hole in the glass panel of the shower cabinet, which had several long hairline cracks in it. Beyond was a man slumped against the marble-tiled wall, blood still oozing from a hole in the back of his grey head. The water from the shower cleaned and re-cleaned the constant rivulets of blood that ran down his back.

  'Who the fuck is that?' asked the head of security, on his shoulder.

  'This is probably Leonid Revnik,' said Falcon.

  'He must have been hidden in the back seat, or the boot, when they came in,' said the head of security.

  'Cristina, ask one of the security guards to take you down to the lock-up and get Viktor Belenki to confirm who this is in his suite. Be careful. Have your weapon at the ready. There's a killer out there and, given the way he's shot Isabel Sanchez, I think it's Nikita Sokolov Bring Ramirez back with you. Meet in the security office.'

  The head of security sent out an alert to all guards in the grounds. Falcon gave him a one-line description of Nikita Sokolov. Using some toilet paper, he turned off the shower over Revnik's inert body.

  'He came in from the back terrace,' said the head of security, 'but can't have triggered the light sensor.'

  Back in the security office they went straight into the screen room. The screens on the right were all dark. The supervisor had seen nothing.

  'If you hug tight to the side of the building it's possible you wouldn't trigger the light sensor,' he said.

  'Run the footage on suite number six,' said the head of security.

  The supervisor took it back ten minutes. The outside light hadn't come on. They looked closely and could see only a vague dark movement, nothing more.

  'Has the mayor's delegation arrived?' asked Falcon.

  'Yes, they went straight into the cinema,' said the guard.

  'What do you mean? Spinola was supposed to talk to the mayor as soon as he arrived,' said Falcon. 'And what's happened to the guard looking after him?'

  'I don't know. I've been watching the screens,' said the supervisor. 'I can't…'

  The head of security held up his hand, radioed the guard, asked the question, listened.

  'He never showed up. He thought responding to my alert about the weightlifter was more important, and he's out in the grounds looking for him.'

  'Find Spinola, you must have him on those screens somewhere. I can't believe you didn't see him leave this office,' said Falcon. 'Why didn't the mayor have drinks and canapes before the viewing?'

  'They were running late,' said the supervisor. 'There's a dinner afterwards. All I know is that they were met in the reception area by the guests from the Horizonte/I4IT consortium and they went straight into the cinema.'

  Ramirez and Ferrera came in panting and sweating.

  'Belenki's confirmed it's Leonid Revnik,' said Ramirez.

  'Is Belenki secure?' asked Falcon.

  'I've handcuffed him to the bed, and the door to the staff quarters is locked. There's not much else I could do,' said Ramirez.

  'We're going to the cinema now,' said Falcon. 'Tell us when you find Spinola.'

  The cinema doors were shut. The faint sound of t
he film presentation came through the wooden soundproofed doors. The head of security tapped Falcon on the shoulder, pointed at the projection room. The lock had been shot out. They all took out their guns. Ramirez shoved against the door. It wouldn't open. There was something jammed up against it on the other side. Between them they forced it open. Apart from a dead body on the floor there was another man, sitting quite calmly with his legs crossed, by the projection equipment.

  'Mark,' said Falcon, nodding.

  Flowers said nothing, looked tired, bags heavy under his eyes. The dead man had fallen on his side, face turned to the corner of the room.

  'Who's this?' asked Falcon.

  'I don't know,' said Flowers, sighing, as if this killing had taken something out of him. Falcon knelt over the dead man, who had taken a bullet to the temple. Falcon fingered his hair, felt it was false. He eased up the hair piece, saw that the man had a head shaved down to the skin.

  'What happened here, Mark?'

  'The projectionist set the film running and I told her to get out. I locked the door after her. A couple of minutes later someone tried the door. There's no peep-hole, so I couldn't check who it was. I stood behind the door. He shot out the lock. The first thing that came in the room was a gun. I recognized it as a nine-millimetre Makarov. Given that sequence of events, I didn't bother to ask questions. As soon as his head appeared I shot him.'

  Falcon pulled up the man's jacket, yanked his shirt out of his trousers and revealed his naked back, which was covered in tattoos: some Russian lettering, a crucifix and angel wings.

  'This must be Yuri Donstov, also known as the Monk, judging by these tattoos,' said Falcon, checking the man's pockets, which were empty, not even a set of keys.

  'I assumed from his weapon that he was Russian,' said Flowers, his exhaustion making him preternaturally calm. 'Those tattoos must make him mafia.'

  'You're going to have to give me your gun, Mark,' said Falcon.

  Flowers reached across to a low shelf under the projection equipment and handed over his silenced gun.