'I'm not sure how I can help. I'm neither a terrorist, nor a murderer, and I don't know anybody who is.'
'But you did know the suicide, Ricardo Gamero,' said Falcon. 'Where are you now?'
'I'm in the office. I'm just on my way out.'
'Name a place.'
Deep breath from Barreda. He knew he couldn't brush him off forever. He named a bar in Triana.
Falcon called Ramirez again.
'Have you got the printout of all calls made on Ricardo Gamero's mobiles?'
Ramirez crashed around the office for a minute and came back. Falcon gave him Barreda's number.
'Interesting,' said Ramirez. 'That was the last call he made on his personal mobile.'
'While I think about it,' said Falcon, 'we need the list of calls the Imam made on his mobile. Especially the one he made in front of Jose Duran on Sunday morning, because that is the electricians' mobile number.' The bar was half full of people. Everybody was looking at the television, ignoring their drinks. The news had just finished and now it was Lobo and Spinola. But Ramirez had been wrong, it wasn't a press conference; they were being interviewed. Falcon walked through the bar, looking for a lone young man. Nobody nodded to him. He sat down at a table for two.
The interviewer, a woman, was attacking Spinola. She could not believe that he hadn't known about the campaign of terror conducted by Calderon against his wife. The Magistrado Juez Decano de Sevilla, an old-school pachyderm with saurian eyes and an easy, but quite alarming, smile, was not uncomfortable with his moment in the hot seat.
Falcon tuned out of the pointless argument. Spinola was not going to be drawn. The female interviewer had lost herself in the emotional aspect of the case. She should have been hitting Spinola on Calderon's ability to perform and his integrity as a judge in the investigation. Instead she was looking for some riveting personal revelation and she had gone to precisely the wrong man for it.
A young guy in a suit caught Falcon's eye. They introduced themselves and sat down. Falcon ordered a couple of coffees and some water.
'You people are having a hard time,' said Barreda, tilting his head at the TV.
'We're used to it,' said Falcon.
'So how many times has it happened that a Juez de Instruccion has been found trying to dispose of his wife's dead body during a major international terrorism investigation?'
'About as many times as a valued member of an antiterrorist squad has committed suicide during a major international terrorism investigation,' said Falcon. 'How long have you known Ricardo Gamero?'
'A couple of years,' said Barreda, subdued by Falcon's swift response.
'Was he a friend?'
'Yes.'
'So you didn't just see him at Mass on Sundays?'
'We met occasionally during the week. We both like classical music. We used to go to concerts together. Informaticalidad had season tickets.'
'When did you last see him?'
'On Sunday.'
'I understand that Informaticalidad use San Marcos and other churches to recruit employees. Did anybody else from the company know Ricardo Gamero?'
'Of course. We'd go for coffee after Mass and I'd introduce him around. That's normal, isn't it? Just because he's a cop doesn't mean he can't talk to people.'
'So you knew he was in the antiterrorist squad of the CGI.'
Barreda stiffened slightly as he realized he'd been caught out.
'I've known him two years. It came out eventually.'
'Do you remember when?'
'After about six months. I was trying to recruit him to Informaticalidad, making him better and better offers, until finally he told me. He said it was like a vocation and he wasn't going to change his career.'
'A vocation?'
'That was the word he used,' said Barreda. 'He was very serious about his work.'
'And his religion,' said Falcon. 'Did he feel the two were bound up together?'
Barreda stared at Falcon, trying to see inside.
'You were a friend he met at church, after all,' said Falcon. 'I would have thought you were bound to talk about the Islamic threat. And then once it came out…the nature of his work, I mean. It would seem a natural progression to at least discuss the connection.'
Barreda sat back with an intake of breath and looked around the room, as if for inspiration.
'Did you ever meet Paco Molero?' asked Falcon.
Two blinks. He had.
'Well, Paco,' continued Falcon, 'said that Ricardo, by his own admission, had been a fanatic, that he'd only just managed to transform himself from being an extremist to being merely devout. And that he'd managed to achieve this through a fruitful relationship with a priest, who died recently of cancer. Where would you describe yourself as being on that integral scale between say, lapsed and fanatical?'
'I've always been very devout,' said Barreda. 'There's been a priest in every generation of my family.'
'Including your own?'
'Except mine.'
'Is that something you feel…disappointed by?'
'Yes, it is.'
'Was that one of the attractions of the culture at Informaticalidad?' said Falcon. 'It sounds a bit like a seminary, but with a capitalist aim.'
'They've always been very good to me there.'
'Do you think there's a danger that people with like minds and with the same intensity of faith might become, in the absence of a balancing outside influence, drawn towards an extreme position?'
'I've heard of that happening in cults,' said Barreda.
'How would you describe a cult?'
'An organization with a charismatic leader, that uses questionable psychological techniques to control its followers.'
Falcon left that hanging, sipped his coffee and took the top off his water. He glanced up at the television to see that Lobo and Spinola had now been replaced by Elvira and del Rey.
'The apartment which Informaticalidad bought on Calle Los Romeros near the mosque-did you ever go there?'
'Before it was bought they asked me to look at it to see if it was suitable.'
'Suitable for what?' asked Falcon. 'Diego Torres told me…'
'You're right. There wasn't much to look at. It was entirely suitable.'
'How upset were you by Ricardo's death?' asked Falcon. 'That's a terrible thing for a devout Catholic to do: to kill himself. No last rites. No final absolution. Do you know why people commit suicide?'
A frown had started up on Marco's forehead. A trembling frown. He was staring into his coffee, biting the inside of his cheek, trying to control emotion.
'Some people kill themselves because they feel responsible for a catastrophe. Other people suddenly lose the impetus for carrying on. We all have something that glues us into place-a lover, friends, family, work, home, but there are other extraordinary people who are glued into place by much bigger ideals. Ricardo was one of those people: a remarkable man with great religious faith and a vocation. Is that what he suddenly lost when that bomb exploded on 6th June?'
Barreda sipped his coffee, licked the bitter foam from his lips and replaced the cup with a rattle in its saucer.
'I was very upset by his death,' said Barreda, just to stop the barrage of words from Falcon. 'I have no idea why he committed suicide.'
'But you recognize what it means for a man of his faith to do that?'
Barreda nodded.
'You know who Ricardo's other great friend was?' asked Falcon. 'Miguel Botin. Did you know him?'
No reaction from Barreda. He knew him. Falcon piled on the pressure.
'Miguel was Ricardo's source in the mosque. A Spanish convert to Islam. They were very close. They had great respect for each other's faith. I have a feeling that it was as much Miguel Botin as Ricardo's old priest, that pulled him back from the brink of fanaticism to something more reasonable. What do you think?'
Barreda had his elbows up on the table, his fingertips pressed into his forehead and his thumbs pushing into his cheekbones, hard enough
for the skin to turn white.
Falcon had Barreda right there on the brink, but he couldn't get him to move that last centimetre. His mind seemed locked in a state of great uncertainty and doubt. Falcon still had his ace up his sleeve, but what about the drawing? If he showed it to him and the man was unrecognizable he would lose his present advantage, but if it was a close likeness it could blow the whole thing open. He decided to play the ace.
'The last time you saw Ricardo was on Sunday,' said Falcon. 'But it wasn't the last time you spoke to him, was it? Do you know who was the last person on earth that Ricardo spoke to before he hanged himself out of his bedroom window? The last number on the list of mobile calls he made?'
Silence, apart from the television burble at the far end of the cafe.
'What did he say to you, Marco?' asked Falcon. 'Were you able to give him absolution for his sins?'
The whole bar suddenly erupted. All the men were on their feet, hurling insults at the television. A couple of empty plastic bottles were thrown, which glanced off the TV, whose screen was full of del Rey's face.
'What did he say?' Falcon asked the man nearest to him, who was shouting: 'Cabron! Cabron!' in time with the rest of the men in the bar.
'He's trying to tell us that it might not have been Islamic terrorists after all,' said the man, his tremendous belly quivering with rage. 'He's trying to tell us that it could have been our own people who've done this. Our own people, who want to blow up an apartment block and schools, and kill innocent men, women and children? Go back to Madrid, you fucking wanker.'
Falcon turned back to Marco Barreda, who looked stunned by the reaction around him.
'Fuck off back to Madrid, cabron'!
The bar owner stepped in and changed the channel before someone put a glass bottle through the screen. The men settled back into their chairs. The fat guy nudged Falcon.
'The other judge, he beat his wife, but at least he knew what he was talking about.'
The television showed another current affairs programme. The interviewer introduced her two guests. The first was Fernando Alanis, whose introduction was lost in applause from the bar. They knew him. He was the one who'd lost his wife and son, and whose daughter had miraculously survived and was now fighting for her life in hospital. Falcon realized that this was the man they were all going to believe. It didn't matter what he said, his tragedy had conferred on him a legitimacy that Juez del Rey's vast experience and command of the facts totally lacked. In the other chair was Jesus Alarcon, the new leader of Fuerza Andalucia. The bar was silent, listening intently. These were the people who were going to tell them the truth.
Barreda excused himself to go to the toilet. Falcon sat back from the table in a state of shock. He'd lost all the leverage he'd just created. Why hadn't Elvira given del Rey the message that he shouldn't mention the other angle of the investigation? Now that the mistake had been made, it was clear that, even as an enquiry, let alone a possible truth, it was totally unacceptable to the local populace.
The topic of the TV discussion was immigration. The interviewer's first question was irrelevant, as Fernando had come to the cameras well primed. There wasn't a sound in the bar as he started to talk.
'I'm not a politician. I'm sorry to say this in front of Sr Alarcon, who is a man I've grown to respect over the days since the explosion, but I don't like politicians and I don't believe a word they say, and I know I'm not alone. I am here today to tell you how it is. I'm not an opinion-maker. I am a labourer who works on a building site, and I used to have a family,' said Fernando, who had to stop momentarily as his Adam's apple jumped in his throat. 'I lived in the apartment block in El Cerezo which was blown up on Tuesday. I know from the media people I've met over the last few days that they would like to believe, and they would like the world to believe, that we live in a harmonious and tolerant modern society here in Spain. In talking to these people I realized why this is the case. They are all intelligent people, far more intelligent than a mere labourer, but the truth of the matter is that they do not live the life that I do. They are well off, they live in nice houses, in good areas, they take regular holidays, their children go to good schools. And it is from this point of view that they look at their country. They want it to continue in the way that it appears to them.
'I live…I mean, I lived in a horrible apartment in a nasty block, surrounded by lots of other ugly blocks. Not many of us have cars. Not many of us take holidays. Not many of us have enough money to last the month. And we are the people living with the Moroccans and the other North Africans. I am a tolerant person. I have to be. I work on building sites where there is a lot of cheap immigrant labour. I have a respect for people's rights to believe in whichever god they want to, and to attend whichever church or mosque they want to. But since 11th March 2004 I have become suspicious. Since that day, when 191 people died in those trains, I have wondered where the next attack is coming from. I am not a racist and I know that the terrorists are very few out of a large population, but the problem is that…I don't know who they are. They live with me, they live in my society, they enjoy its prosperity, until one day they decided to put a bomb under my apartment block and kill my wife and son. And there are many of us who have lived in suspicion and fear since 11th March until last Tuesday, 6th June. And now it is we who are angry.'
Barreda came back from the toilet. He had to go. Falcon followed him out into the heat and fierce light of the street. All his advantage and initiative had gone. They stood under the awning of the bar and shook hands. Barreda was back to normal. He'd recomposed himself in the toilet and perhaps been strengthened by listening to Fernando Alanis's speech on his way back.
'You didn't tell me what Ricardo said to you in that final phone call,' said Falcon.
'I'm embarrassed to have to talk about it after…what we've said about him.'
'Embarrassed?'
'I didn't realize how he felt about me,' said Barreda. 'But then…I'm not gay.'
30
Seville-Thursday, 8th June 2006, 14.05 hrs
'So why weren't all these other lines of enquiry written up in a report?' asked Comisario Elvira, looking from del Rey back to Falcon.
'As you know, I've been helping the CNI with one of their missions,' said Falcon. 'I've had to maintain the enquiry into this murder which happened prior to the bombing, and I've since acquired a suicide to investigate. However, all these enquiries, I believe, are linked and should be moved forward together. At no point have I deviated from my initial intention, which was to find out what happened in the destroyed building. You have to agree that there has been a breakdown of logic in the scenario, and it's my job to create different lines of enquiry to find the necessary logic to resolve it. I didn't hear what happened on television, but it has now been explained to me that it was the interviewer who interrupted Juez del Rey and said: "So you believe it was one of our own people that committed this atrocity?" It was that question which caused this public relations problem.'
'Problem? Public relations catastrophe,' said Elvira. 'Another one, on top of this morning's debacle.'
'Did you talk to Angel Zarrias of the ABC?' asked Falcon.
'We're a bit shy of the media right now,' said Elvira. 'Comisario Lobo and I are having a strategy meeting after this to see how we can repair the damage.'
'Juez del Rey has done a great job bringing himself up to speed on a very complicated and sensitive investigation,' said Falcon. 'We can't allow the thrust of our enquiry to be dictated by the media, who have seen an opportunity to manipulate a nervous population by playing games with us on television.'
'What we're playing with here is the truth,' said Elvira. 'The presentable truth and the acceptable truth. And it's all a question-'
'What about the actual truth?' said Falcon.
'And it's all a question,' said Elvira, nodding at his little slip, 'of timing. Which truth is released when.'
'Have the translations of the Arabic script attached to the drawings been
completed?' asked Falcon.
'So you didn't see the news before we went on,' said Elvira. 'And nor did we, which was why the wretched interviewer seized on what Juez del Rey was saying. Only afterwards did we find out that the evacuations of the two schools and biology faculty had been filmed, and a translation of one of the Arabic texts was aired with it.
'Each text gave full instructions on how to close off each building, where to hold the hostages and where to place the explosives in order to ensure maximum loss of life, should special forces storm the building,' said del Rey. 'There was a final instruction in each text, which was that one hostage-starting with the youngest child in the case of the schools-was to be released every hour and, as they made their way to freedom, they were to be shot, in full view of the media. This process was to continue until the Spanish government recognized Andalucia as an Islamic state under Sharia law.'
'Well, that explains why there was nearly a riot in the bar I was in,' said Falcon. 'How did the media get hold of the text?'
'It was delivered by motorbike to Canal Sur's reception in a brown padded envelope, addressed to the producer of current affairs,' said del Rey.
'An enquiry is underway,' said Elvira. 'What were you doing in this bar?'
'I was interviewing the last man to speak to Ricardo Gamero before he killed himself,' said Falcon. 'He's a sales manager at Informaticalidad.'
'This isn't the old guy who was seen talking to Gamero in the Archaeological Museum?' said del Rey.
'No. This was the last call Gamero made on his personal mobile,' said Falcon. 'I presume that all members of the CGI's antiterrorist squad would be vetted, Comisario, including their sexuality?'
'Of course,' said Elvira. 'Anybody with access to classified information is vetted to make sure they're not vulnerable.'
'So it would be known if Gamero was homosexual?'
'Absolutely…unless he was, you know, not practising…so to speak.'
'The guy I was talking to, Marco Barreda, was at cracking point when the bar went crazy. He knows something. I think he feels that whatever it is that he or they have got involved in, it has spiralled out of control. He's sick about Gamero's death, for a start. That was not part of the script.'
The Hidden Assassins jf-3 Page 34