The Ignoranceof Blood jf-4

by Robert Wilson

'Stand up,' said Falcon, handing the gun to Ferrera.

  He searched Flowers, found a disk.

  'Where did this come from?'

  'I found it on our Russian friend,' said Flowers.

  'You know what's on it?'

  'I think it contains the material we talked about the other night.'

  Falcon turned to the people behind him.

  'Mount a guard on Viktor Belenki. Look out for the weightlifter, Nikita Sokolov. Find Spinola. Cristina, get some handcuffs and come back here. I'll talk to the mayor when we're ready.'

  Everybody left. Falcon nudged the projection-room door to, moved in front of Flowers.

  'What time is it, Mark?'

  'You got me there, Javier.'

  'You don't wear the Patek Philippe when you're working?'

  'Breitling for ops,' said Flowers.

  'And that was how you got paid by Cortland Fallenbach?'

  'It was an opportunity,' said Flowers, shrugging. 'You know, we're public servants. We don't get paid very much and I have a number of ex-wives. I think I've spoken to you about them. American ex-wives are more demanding than European ones. And then there's the kids. That's a lot of outgoings. Why do you think I came out of retirement? You don't think I prefer fucking around with these shits to lying on a boat in the Florida Keys, do you, Javier?'

  'What about Mrs Zimbrick?'

  'I'm treating my girlfriend. There's no need to get ugly with her. She's a civilian. An English teacher.'

  'This is hardly what you'd call soldiering, is it, Mark?'

  'What can I say but, needs must, Javier?'

  'You're here at Cortland Fallenbach's invitation?'

  'I'm his security consultant. We got together after you asked me to research I4IT in June. I told him he was going to need help and he agreed.'

  'What happened tonight?'

  'He told me that under no circumstances was anybody to interrupt the showing of the I4IT/Horizonte presentation movie,' said Flowers. 'But he gave me no indication that it was going to come to this.'

  'You were armed.'

  'People calm down when you point a gun at them,' said Flowers. 'And if they've got one themselves, you're even.'

  'We're going to have to put you in the cells until we can speak to the American consul.'

  A knock on the door. Cristina came in, handcuffed Flowers to the projection equipment stand.

  'Time for an announcement,' said Falcon.

  'You must be a nice guy, Javier,' said Flowers. 'If it was me I'd play the DVD and listen to the bastards howl.'

  Time had flown by and the film at that moment ended. Falcon raised the lights and shut Flowers in the projection room. The double doors to the cinema opened and the group filed out, led by the mayor, who was talking to the banker, Alfredo Manzanares. Falcon showed him his police ID card, tried to usher him into the conference room where they were supposed to have had their drinks earlier. Valverde and Ramos intervened, blocked the doorway, started some vociferous protesting.

  'Open the projection-room door, Cristina,' said Falcon.

  The woman from Agesa screamed at the sight of the dead body. Cortland Fallenbach saw Mark Flowers, turned to stone.

  'I think you'll agree that this needs some explanation,' said Falcon. 'Close the door, Cristina. Take these people to the private room where they were supposed to be having dinner. Nobody is to leave that room under any circumstances. As you can see, there is a killer on the loose. Detective Ferrera is armed.'

  The sight of a dead body had subdued the group completely and they went into the private room like a flock of sheep into a slaughterhouse holding pen.

  Falcon took the mayor aside into the conference room and had just embarked on his devastating introduction to the evening's events when his mobile went off.

  'Belenki's been shot,' said Ramirez. 'Shot dead.'

  There was a hammering on the door. A security guard said he was needed up in the main office. Falcon took the mayor to join the others in the private room where Ferrera was standing guard.

  'Lock the door. Let nobody in or out,' he said, and left.

  In the security office the supervisor was tapping one of the screens showing the thick-set, stocky weightlifter, Nikita Sokolov, gun in hand, striding up to the main building.

  'He doesn't care now,' said the supervisor. 'He's not hiding from the cameras any more.'

  'He's heading towards the main building, so he's not bothered about getting away just yet,' said Falcon. 'He must have come back to meet up with his boss, Yuri Donstov. Keep the other guests in the restaurant, clear the reception area, turn the lights off inside, keep them on outside. Whatever happens, I do not want this man shot unless it's absolutely unavoidable. Where's Spinola?'

  'He got out over the main gates,' said the supervisor. 'He's on the run and we don't have the manpower to go after him.'

  Falcon called Detective Serrano, who was still waiting with Baena in the car in the petrol station nearby. He told him to find Spinola, who would be out on the main road somewhere.

  'Be careful with him. He's in a state. You have to make sure he survives. No accidents.'

  By the time Falcon got to the reception area the lights were out in the patio. The shops and art gallery were in darkness. Between him and the main door were two thick marble supporting pillars. Beyond the pillars were four panels of plate glass, two of which were double doors. The mayor's delegation Mercedes was parked outside. No driver. Falcon hid behind one of the pillars. He didn't have to wait long.

  Nikita Sokolov came out of the night, his colossal quadriceps straining against the material of his trousers, biceps with a thick cord of vein bursting out of his polo shirt, which flapped at his waist. He had a thick, white bandage around his right forearm where El Pulmon's bullet had grazed him. The gun, silencer attached, was in that hand. He tried the door to the Mercedes. Locked. He looked through the driver's window, swapped his weapon to his left hand and dealt the glass a savage blow with the butt of his gun. It bounced off. Now that his work was done, Revnik and Belenki shot dead, his mission completed, he was thinking about escape. He checked the unlit main building. Didn't like it. He jogged off to his left. Disappeared back into the darkness.

  Falcon told the head of security to stay in the reception area while he sprinted across the patio, down a corridor to the kitchens, which were totally silent on the outside and a cacophony of brutal swearing, hollered orders, clattering pans and sizzling fat on the inside. He ran down the corridors of stainless-steel work surfaces. Diminutive sous chefs with large knives, flaming pans, blow torches and cleavers, glanced over their shoulders as he tore past them. He asked after the mayor's driver, nobody answered. He found a plongeur, asked if there was a staff dining room. The man walked him past boiling cauldrons and flat metal griddles crackling and spitting with hot oil. He pointed him to a door with a porthole window at the end of a short corridor, said there was an outside entrance as well.

  'What's out there?'

  'The bins.'

  Falcon looked through the porthole. The mayor's driver was sitting at the table in the empty room, eating. There was a window, barred on the outside, and a door, both to the driver's right. Falcon knelt down, crawled into the room. The driver's food stopped on its way to his mouth.

  'Police,' said Falcon. 'Carry on eating. Don't look at me.'

  He crawled under the window, was just about to get to his feet when the door out to the bins burst open and Sokolov came in. Blue polo shirt, hairy arm outstretched, white bandage, gun, safety off, finger on the trigger.

  'Keys!' he roared.

  He'd seen the driver on his own, eating. Wasn't prepared for Falcon coming up on his right side, who chopped down with his revolver on Sokolov's bandaged arm. A shot, a dull thud and a crack as the bullet went through the wooden table, before the silenced gun dropped from Sokolov's deadened hand. Falcon lost grip of his own weapon, which scuttled off into the corner. The Russian turned and crouched and Falcon found himself precisely where
he didn't want to be: facing off against the former Olympic weightlifter.

  Sokolov charged him, caught Falcon in the midriff with his shoulder, wrapped a steel-reinforced arm around his back and lifted him up as if he was nothing more than a cardboard cut-out.

  'Hit him over the head, hard,' Falcon yelled at the driver.

  Sokolov hefted him to shoulder height and slammed him down on the wooden table.

  The mayor's driver jettisoned himself out of his seat, reached behind him, picked up the metal chair and brought it down so that the edge of the seat made horrific contact with the back of Sokolov's head. The noise it made was violently musical, a pianist's mad discord. Sokolov turned and the driver thought for a moment that he'd made a terrible mistake, but the light went out of the Russian's eyes and he crumpled to the tiled floor. Falcon, too, was on the floor, staring bug-eyed at the unconscious Russian, trying to remember how to breathe.

  The porthole door opened and the plongeur charged in with a shining stainless-steel cleaver in one hand and a rolling pin in the other.

  'Damn!' he said, as if he'd just missed out on the ultimate culinary experience. Alejandro Spinola was out on the Huelva road, running towards Seville, the velvet night air on his sweaty skin, the smell of hot, dry grasses in his nostrils. Occasionally he looked behind him, but each time he found he was only running away from the dark. He wasn't moving very quickly because he was in no condition to. His head was full of the junk of his life, the wreckage of tonight's events.

  He couldn't have faced the mayor. He couldn't have faced approaching the mayor and the people from Agesa and the town planning office with his bruised lips and missing tooth, saying that he had to speak privately to the boss. He couldn't bear even the thought of the mayor's disappointment in him. Then there was his father. He'd have to face him, too. The whole messy business was going to come out, right down to what he'd done to his cousin, Esteban Calderon. It was going to be intolerable and he wasn't going to face it. He was going to run. He was going to run and run and not stop until…

  Headlights came up slowly behind him, stopped. He looked back, couldn't see anything behind the blinding lights until a man stepped out from behind them, running after him. Who the fuck? He tried a sprint, but he had nothing in the tank, and slowed to a lolloping jog. The car started up again, pulled alongside him, the window down.

  'Alejandro, we're the police,' said the driver. 'Come on now. Just stop and get in the car. No sense in this.'

  He could hear the other man's footsteps behind him, it gave him a surge of panic. He saw headlights coming the other way. Something shrill and exciting rose in his throat. He thumped his foot down, stopped, turned back, ducked under the arms of the policeman following him, shoved past him, slipped round the back of the car and stood up straight between the oncoming headlights. The truck's horn blew the night open for three seconds, a white light covered Spinola from head to toe, and the black grille with thirty-five tons behind it gathered him in with a sickening crunch.

  28

  Hotel Vista del Mar, Marbella – Wednesday, 20th September 2006, 01.00 hrs

  Lying on his back on the firm, expensive bed, pillow supporting his neck, phone to his ear, Yacoub Diouri was talking to his sixteen-year-old daughter Leila. They had always got on so well. She loved him in the uncomplicated way that a daughter loves her protective father. Leila and her mother was a different story, that was to do with her age, but she'd always been able to make her father happy. And Yacoub was laughing, but tears were also leaking out of the corners of his eyes, trickling down the sides of his face and coiling around the curlicued passages of his ears.

  He'd already spoken to Abdullah in London, who'd been annoyed because he'd never been so popular with the girls before and he'd had to stand outside a club in the dark and cold, listening to his father prattling on about matters that could easily wait for when they were back in Rabat, but he indulged him. Yacoub was sorry for this, not because he would have liked a better conversation, but because he knew that Abdullah would always remember his irritation and exasperation as the prevailing sentiment of this particular conversation with his father.

  Leila said good night, passed the phone to her mother.

  'What's going on?' asked Yousra. 'It's not like you to be calling home while you're away, and you'll be back here on Thursday.'

  'I know. It's just that I missed you all. You know what it's like. Business. Madrid one day, London the next, Marbella the day after. The endless talk. I just wanted to hear your voices. Talk about nothing. How's it been without me?'

  'Quiet. Mustafa left last night. He's gone back to Fes. He managed to get his consignment of carpets out of customs in Casablanca and he's got to go to Germany at the weekend. So it's just been Leila and me.'

  They talked about nothing and everything. He could hear her moving around in her private living room, which she'd decorated in her own taste, where she received her woman friends.

  'What's it like outside?' he asked.

  'It's dark, Yacoub. It's eleven o'clock.'

  'But what's it like? Is it warm?'

  'It can't be much different to Marbella.'

  'Just go outside and tell me what it's like.'

  'You're in a funny mood tonight,' she said, stepping out of the french windows on to the terrace. 'It's warm, maybe twenty-six degrees.'

  'What does it smell of?'

  'The boys have been doing the watering so it smells of earth and the lavender you planted last year is very strong,' she said. 'Yacoub?'

  'Yes?'

  'Are you sure you're all right?'

  'I'm fine now,' he said. 'I really am. It's been wonderful to talk to you. I'd better go to sleep now. Long day tomorrow. A very long day tomorrow. I mean today. We're two hours ahead here, of course, so it's today already. Goodbye, Yousra. Give a kiss to Leila from me… and take care of yourself.'

  'You'll be all right in the morning,' she said, but she was talking to no one. He'd gone. She went back inside and, before she closed the doors, took one last breath of the lavender-infused night air. Yacoub swivelled his legs off the bed, sat on the edge and buried his face in his hands. The tears ran down his palms. He wiped them on his bare legs. He breathed deeply, got his head back together. He put on a pair of black stretch-cotton jeans, a black long-sleeved T-shirt, black socks and a pair of black trainers. He wrapped a black sweater around his shoulders.

  He lit a cigarette, looked at his watch: 01.12. He turned his bedside light off, let his eyes get used to the dark. He rested the cigarette on the ashtray, went to the window, slipped out on to the balcony and looked down into the street. The car, which had been there for days, was still there, the driver still awake. He shrugged, went back in. He checked his pockets. Nothing but the photograph. From the side pocket of his suitcase he removed a single ring with four keys. He looked around him, knowing there was nothing else he needed now. Took one last drag of the cigarette, stubbed it out and left the room. He had a powerful sense of relief as he closed the door.

  The corridor was empty. He took the stairs down to the ground floor, came out into the hotel and immediately went through the door marked 'Staff Only'. It was quiet. He walked past the laundry and down a small flight of stairs to the kitchens. Voices. They were wrapping up the dinner service. He waited, gauging the different sounds, then stepped into the corridor, ducked underneath the portholes of the double doors and went out into the night and the stink of the rubbish bins. He climbed up the metal bin closest to the wall and checked over the top.

  A complication had arisen here. On his return from his meeting with Falcon in Osuna, he'd been told that the CNI had put a car in the street at the back of the hotel as well as the front. The car was there now and almost directly opposite the rear exit of the hotel. He was going to have to drop over the wall into the street at the side of the hotel, and this involved a leap of some two and a half metres.

  He made the jump, hit the wall messily, smacked his chin, but clung on to the top of it
with his arms and shoulders cracking under the strain. He swung his leg up, lay flat on the top, gasped, looked down. Empty. As he lowered himself the strength drained from his arms and he dropped heavily into the narrow alleyway, went over on his ankle and limped to the corner. He checked out the car: only a driver with his head resting against the window. No movement. Yacoub looked left and right. Nobody around. He ducked and ran along the line of cars, found a gap, squeezed into it, held on to his ankle and waited. Blood trickled down his chin. A car turned into the street, headlights swept the tarmac. As it passed, he crossed the street running low and went straight up the narrow alley opposite. He hopped to the next street.

  The Vespa and the helmet were locked to a lamp post. He used one of the four keys to unlock the heavy padlock and unthreaded the chain from the wheel and helmet. He used the second key to start the Vespa. He wiped out the helmet with his hand, put it on. It was sticky with the hair gel of the kid who'd left it there.

  There was little traffic in the town. He set out west, heading for a small bay along the coast, which was protected from the sea and had shallow waters. On the other side of Estepona he turned towards the sea. He hid the Vespa and helmet by the side of the road and limped two hundred metres down to the water's edge where the boat was waiting for him. The only light came from the tower blocks of tourism set back from the road above.

  Nobody could accuse the GICM high command of having no sense of humour. The power boat they'd bought for this mission was called the 35 Executioner. It was dark blue, ten metres long and had twin Mercury 425-horsepower engines, capable of speeds in excess of 130 kilometres per hour. It looked sleek, almost flashy, as it rocked gently against the small wooden jetty where it was moored.

  He unclipped the awning over the rear of the boat and dropped himself into the cockpit. He inserted the third and fourth keys in the ignition panel on the right-hand side of the dashboard, but did not turn them on. He threw the sweater off his shoulders into the passenger seat. He opened the hatch, leading to the cabin, which had been stripped out and a false wall installed. Yacoub felt his way around to the side, peeled back the edge of the carpet. He ran his fingers over the wood until he felt the metal ring inset and lifted out a thirty-centimetre square of wood. He found the pen torch first, turned it on, put it in his mouth. Blood on his hands from his chin. He lifted out a compass and a mobile phone, which he turned on, and a pair of binoculars. All that was left was a switch mechanism from which two copper cables emerged. He could now see the five jerry cans of fuel strapped to the bulkhead, two five-litre flagons of water and a tupperware box of food.