The Hidden Assassins jf-3

by Robert Wilson

  She had his attention now. His head was as still as rock.

  'I like to smoke my cigars in peace. I don't like mad people looking at me. So I asked her what she was staring at. She told me she was looking at the whore with the cigar-la puta con el puro. Well, nobody calls me a whore, and nobody ruins a top-quality Havana cigar. So I gave her a piece of my mind-and you know what?'

  Calderon took a viciously long drag of his cigarette.

  'You know what she said to me?'

  'What?' said Calderon, as if a long way off.

  'She said: "You're the whore who's fucking my husband." She asked me how much you were paying me and said that it didn't look as if it was more than € 15 a night and that you'd probably thrown in the copper wig and the cigar to keep me happy. Can you tell me how the fuck Ines knows who I am?'

  Calderon stood up. He was so angry he couldn't speak. His lips were pale and his genitals were shrivelled back into their pubic nest as if his rage had taken all available blood to keep it stoked. He was clenching and unclenching his fist and staring off into the night, with bone-snapping violence ricocheting around his head. Marisa had seen this trait in physically unimpressive men before. The big, muscly guys had nothing to prove, whereas the fat, the puny and the stupid had big lessons to hand out.

  When she heard the shower running, Marisa stopped preparing the food. Calderon dressed in ominous silence. She asked him what he was doing, why he was leaving. He whipped his tie up into a tight choleric knot.

  'Nobody talks to you like that,' he said, and left. Ines stopped to look in a hand-painted tile shop on Calle Bailen. She felt better after seeing Javier. She'd persuaded herself, in the short walk after their brief encounter, that Javier still cared for her. How sweet of him to ask her if she was thinking of leaving Esteban. He still lived in hope after all these years. It was sad to have to disappoint him.

  The darkness under the huge trees of the Plaza del Museo held the murmur of more young people, the chinking of beer bottles and the reek of marijuana. She walked through them feeling more cheerful. The light was on in the apartment, which elated her. Esteban was home. He had come back to her. They were going to repair the damage. She was sure, after what had happened this morning, that he would see reason and she could persuade him to make an appointment with a psychologist.

  The stairs no longer inspired dread and although the pain in her side meant that she didn't exactly sprint up them, she reached the door with a lightness of heart. Her hair swung on her shoulders as she closed the door. She instantly felt his looming presence. A smile was already spreading on her face when he sheafed her hair and turned it once around his wrist. She toppled backwards, falling to her knees, and he brought her face up close to the pallor of the pure hatred in his own.

  18

  Seville-Tuesday, 6th June 2006, 22.05 hrs

  Mark Flowers had already eaten. His American digestive system had never got used to the Spanish custom of not even thinking about dinner until 9.30 p.m. He turned down Falcon's offers of beer and manzanilla and opted for a single malt whisky. Falcon wolfed down a quickly made sandwich in the kitchen and stuck with the manzanilla. It was still very warm and they sat out under the open sky of the patio.

  'So what did "your own" people want to talk to you about?' asked Flowers, always a man to get his questions in first.

  'They're trying to persuade me to go into the recruitment business for them.'

  'And will you do it?'

  'I've got until 6 a.m. to decide.'

  'Well, it was nice of them to wait until you had nothing on your plate,' said Flowers, who was always determined to show him that not all Americans had undergone an irony bypass. 'I don't know who they want you to recruit, but if he's a friend he might not stay a friend. That's the way these things work, in my experience.'

  'Why's that?'

  'People react strangely to being asked to become a spy. It calls into question your prior relationship: Did he become my friend just to recruit me? It also implies moral duplicity. You, as the recruiter, have a singular purpose, which requires asking someone to lie and deceive on your behalf. It's an odd relationship.'

  'Got any advice?'

  'It's like going out on a date. It's all in the timing. You move in too early and the girl will accuse you of being too fresh. You come on too late and you might have bored her, shown her your uncertainty. It's a delicate process and, like dating, you only get better at it by doing it…a lot.'

  'You've just filled me with confidence, Mark. I haven't been out on a date for more than a year.'

  '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 Falcon.

  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 Falcon.

  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 Falcon, 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 Falcon.

  '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 Falcon, 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 Falcon, who filled him in on Horizonte and Informaticalidad.

  '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 Falcon.

  '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 Falcon.

  '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 Informaticalidad 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. 'Informaticalidad sound like a company who haven't bought into the 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 Informaticalidad brainstormers in the mosque, now that's a different story…'

  'Not so far,' said Falcon. '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 Falcon. '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 Falcon. 'Informaticalidad 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?'

  Falcon 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 Falcon. '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 Falcon, '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.'

  'Falcon 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 Falcon. '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 Martires Islamicos para la Liberacion de Andalucia?'

  'I first
heard about them at the end of last year as El Movimiento rather than Los Martires. 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, Malaga 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 Andalucia, 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 Andalucia.'

  '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 Andalucia 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 Falcon's sweat run cold. The money, organization and corruption were all in place to make a devastating campaign on Andalucia seem likely rather than crazy.

  'What about Seville and the MILA?' asked Falcon.