'And what script is that?' asked Elvira, who was desperate for one.
'I don't know,' said Falcon. 'But it's something that explains what happened in that mosque on Tuesday. If we had the manpower, I'd have the whole of Informaticalidad down at the Jefatura and interview them until they broke down.'
'So what did Marco Barreda say were Gamero's last words?' asked Elvira.
'That Gamero was in love with him,' said Falcon. 'He'd been reluctant to say anything because he was embarrassed about it. I thought it was significant that he'd been to the toilet. I'm sure he called someone and was given advice about what to say. He was at cracking point and then suddenly he seemed to be back on the rails.'
'So what have we got on Informaticalidad?'
'Nothing, apart from the fact that the apartment was bought with black money.'
'And what do you think this apartment was used for?'
'Surveillance of the mosque.'
'With what purpose?'
'With the purpose of attacking it, or enabling others to attack it.'
'For any particular reason?'
'Other than that they are an organization recruited from the Catholic Church and therefore representative of the religious Right and opposed to the influence of Islam in Spain, I'm not entirely sure. There might be a political or financial angle that I don't, as yet, know about.'
'You haven't got enough,' said Elvira. 'You've interviewed all the sales reps and you've tried to capitalize on Marco Barreda's vulnerability without success. All you have is an unsubstantiated theory to go on. How could you apply any more pressure? If you brought them down here, they'd come with lawyers attached. Then there'd be the media to contend with. You're going to need something much more solid than your instinct to break open Informaticalidad.'
'I'm also concerned that that was all they did,' said Falcon, nodding. 'Provide surveillance information and nothing more. In which case we could interview them for days and get no further than that. I need another link. I want the old guy seen talking to Gamero in the museum.'
'Did you show the drawing to Marco Barreda?' asked del Rey.
'No. I was concerned that it might not be a close enough likeness and I wanted to apply pressure to his vulnerable point, which was Ricardo Gamero.'
'What's your next move?'
'I'm going to take a look at all the board directors of Informaticalidad and the other companies in their group, including the holding company, Horizonte, and see if I can find a likeness to the sketch,' said Falcon. 'What are the CNI and CGI doing?'
'They're concerned with the future now,' said Elvira. 'Juan has gone back to Madrid. The others are using the names from this investigation to try to get leads to other cells or networks.'
'So we're on our own with this investigation here?'
'They'll only come back to us if we find, from the DNA sampling, that the Imam, or Hammad and Saoudi, weren't in the mosque at the time of the explosion,' said Elvira. 'As far as they're concerned, there's nothing more for them to extract from this situation and they're more worried about future attacks.' Back in his office, Falcon ran an internet search for Informaticalidad and Horizonte and extracted photographs of the directors of all the individual companies, their groups and the holding company. As he scrolled through the search engine's results for Horizonte he came across a web page dedicated to the celebration of their fortieth anniversary in 2001. As he'd hoped, the page showed a banquet with more than twenty-five shots of the great and the good at their tables.
The memory is a strange organ. It seems to be random and yet it can be jogged into patterns by other senses. Falcon knew if he hadn't just seen him on television he would never have picked him out from all the other faces at the Horizonte candlelit, floral dinner. He stopped, scrolled back. It was unmistakably Jesus Alarcon, with his beautiful wife sitting three places to his right. He looked at the caption, which said nothing, other than this was a table belonging to Horizonte's bankers-Banco Omni. Well, that figured. Alarcon had been a banker in Madrid before he came to Seville. He printed out the page with all its photographs and left the Jefatura, Serrano having given him the name of the security guard at the Archaeological Museum.
The security guard was called to the ticket desk and Falcon showed him the photographs, which he flipped through quickly, shaking his head. He ran his finger over the fortieth anniversary banquet shots. Nothing jumped out at him.
It was too hot even for a quick snack under the purple flowers of the jacarandas in the park, and Falcon drove back into town with too much on his mind. Pablo from the CNI called and they agreed to meet in a bar on Calle Leon XII near the destroyed apartment building.
Falcon was there first. It was a downtrodden place. The staff hadn't bothered to clear away the ankle-deep fag butts, sugar sachets and paper napkins after the coffee-break rush. He ordered a gazpacho, which was a little fizzy, and a piece of tuna, which had less flavour than the plate it was served on, and the chips were soggy with oil. Things were going well. Pablo arrived and ordered a coffee.
'First thing,' he said, sitting down. 'Yacoub has made contact and we've given him his instructions on your behalf. He knows what to do now.'
'And what is that?'
'Yacoub belongs to two mosques. The first is in Rabat: the Grand Mosque Ahl-Fes, which is attended by the powerful and wealthy. It's not known for any radical Islamic stance. But he also belongs to a mosque in Sale, near his work, which is a different kind of place altogether, and Yacoub knows it. All he has to do is step over to the other side and start getting involved. He knows the people…'
'How does he know the people?'
'Javier,' said Pablo, with an admonishing look, 'don't ask. You don't have to know.'
'How dangerous is this going to be for him?' asked Falcon. 'I mean, radical Islam isn't known for its forgiving nature, and I imagine they're especially unforgiving when it comes to betrayal.'
'As long as he maintains his role there's no danger. He communicates with us at a distance. There's no face to face, which is where things normally come unstuck. If he needs to see anybody then he can organize a business trip to Madrid.'
'What happens if they take him over and start feeding us emails of disinformation?'
'There's a phrase he has to use in his correspondence with us. If that phrase isn't employed then we know it isn't him writing and we react accordingly.'
'How quickly will they come to trust him?' said Falcon. 'You've always been of the opinion that this bomb was a mistake, or a diversion. Maybe you're expecting an information return too quickly if you think that he can help you with attacks which have already been planned.'
'They'll recognize his value immediately…'
'Has he been approached by the GICM before?' asked Falcon, these things only just occurring to him.
'He's in a unique position because of his business,' said Pablo, pointedly ignoring Falcon's question. 'He can travel freely and is widely known, respected and trusted by his business partners. He will arouse no suspicion from the Moroccan authorities looking for radicals, or European authorities looking for terrorists or their planners. He's the perfect person for a terrorist organization to make use of.'
'But they'll test him first, surely?' said Falcon. 'I don't know how it works, but they might give him some valuable information and see what he does with it. See, for instance, if it appears elsewhere. Just like the CNI did with the CGI here in Seville, come to think of it.'
'That's our job, Javier. We know what we can use from him and what we can't. If we have information that could only possibly have come from him, then we know to be careful,' said Pablo. 'If he tells us that there's a GICM cell operating from an address in Barcelona, we don't just storm the building.'
'What's the other thing?'
'We want you to communicate with Yacoub tonight. There's nothing to be said, but we want him to know you're here and in touch with him.'
'Is that it?'
'Not quite. The CIA have come back to
us with the identity of your mystery man with no hands or face.'
'That was quick.'
'They've developed quite a system over there for tracing people of Arabic origin, even when they've become American citizens,' said Pablo. 'Your model man did a good job with the face, and his identity was corroborated by the hernia op, tattoos and dental X-rays.'
'What were the tattoos?'
'On the webbing between thumb and forefinger he had four dots configured in a square on his right hand, and five dots on his left hand.'
'Any reason?'
'It helped him count,' said Pablo.
'Up to nine?'
'Apparently women never failed to comment on them.'
'That is on his file?' said Falcon, amazed.
'You'll see why when I tell you he was a professor in Arabic Studies at Columbia University until March last year, when he was fired after being found in bed with one of his students,' said Pablo. 'And you know how they found out? He was shopped by one of his other students who he was bedding at the same time.
'You don't do that sort of thing at an American university and get caught. The police were brought in. The girls' parents threatened to sue the university and then him personally. It was the end of his career-and it cost him, too. He managed to settle out of court on advice from his lawyers, who knew he would lose and that they wouldn't get paid. He had to sell his midtown apartment, which had been left to him by his parents. The only job he could get after the case blew over was teaching maths privately in Columbus, Ohio. He lasted three months of a Mid West winter and then flew to Madrid in April last year.
'After that, our information gets a little sparse. We've a record of him taking a trip to Morocco for three weeks at the end of April. He took the ferry from Algeciras to Tangier on 24th April and he came back on 12th May. That's it.'
'Does he have a name?'
'His real name is Tateb Hassani,' said Pablo. 'When he became an American citizen in 1984-which was also the year both his parents died, one in a car crash and the other of cancer-he changed his name to Jack Hansen. It's not so unusual for immigrants to anglicize their names. He was born in Fes in 1961 and his parents left Morocco in 1972. His father was a businessman who went back and forth frequently. Tateb only went back to Morocco twice in thirty years. He didn't like it. His parents forced him to maintain an Arabic education and his mother spoke to him only in French. He wrote and spoke Arabic fluently. He graduated in mathematics, but couldn't get a place as a post-graduate, so he switched to Arabic Studies and wrote a thesis on Arab mathematicians. He came out of Princeton with a doctorate in 1986. He spent time in the universities of Madison, Minnesota and San Francisco before ending up in New York. He had a good life: a university salary, with the rent from his parents' apartment coming in. Then, when he landed the professorship at Columbia, he took over the apartment and had the perfect existence, until he started sleeping with his students.'
'What about his religion?'
'He's down as a Muslim, but, as you might have gathered from his history, he'd let that lapse.'
'Was he known for any opinions about radical Islam?'
'You can read the file sent over by the CIA,' said Pablo, taking it out of his briefcase, laying it on the table. It looked to be about ten pages long.
'Are there any samples of his handwriting in here?' asked Falcon.
'Not that I've seen.'
'Can the CIA send some across to us?' asked Falcon, flicking through the pages. 'In both Arabic script and English.'
'I'll get them on to it.'
'Any other languages, apart from French, English and Arabic?'
'He spoke and wrote Spanish, too,' said Pablo. 'He used to give a maths course every summer over here at Granada University.'
'Comisario Elvira told me that you're not much interested in our investigation any more and that Juan has gone back to Madrid,' said Falcon. 'Does that mean you've cracked the code in the annotated versions of the Koran?'
'Juan's been called back to Madrid because there have been reports of other cells, not connected with Hammad and Saoudi, which are now on the move,' said Pablo. 'We're still interested in your investigation, but not in the way you are. And, no, we haven't cracked the code.'
'How's the diversion theory going?'
'Madrid have hit dead ends with the Hammad and Saoudi connections,' said Pablo. 'Arrests have been made, but it's the usual thing. They only knew what they were doing. They received encrypted emails and did what they were told to do. So far we've only picked up a few "associates" of Hammad and Saoudi, which hardly constitutes unravelling the whole network-if there was one to unravel. We're hoping Yacoub can help us there.'
'What about the MILA?'
'A story invented by the media based on some truth-that this group does, in fact, exist-but they weren't involved in any way,' said Pablo. 'It was a neat follow-on from the Abdullah Azzam text sent to the ABC. Something to capture the public's imagination, but, in the end, bogus. If you ask me, it's irresponsible journalism.'
'And VOMIT?' asked Falcon. 'Did you break them down, too?'
'That's not a priority for us,' said Pablo, riding over Falcon's irony. 'We're more concerned about future attacks on European countries which emanate from Spain rather than an enumeration of the past.'
'So nothing has changed?' said Falcon. 'You still believe that Miguel Botin was a double, and he was instructed to give the electrician's card to the Imam by someone in his radical Islamic network?'
'I know you don't have any faith in it,' said Pablo, 'but we have more information than you do.'
'And you're not going to give it to me?'
'Ask your old friend, Mark Flowers,' said Pablo. 'I've got to go now.'
'You know, it was a set of keys from the Imam's kitchen drawer that opened the fireproof box recovered from the storeroom of the mosque,' said Falcon. 'Gregorio was with me when they opened it and he was very interested by that, although, as usual, he didn't say why the CNI was so fascinated.'
'This is just the way we have to be, Javier,' said Pablo. 'It's nothing personal, it's just the nature of our work and the work of others in our business.'
'Make sure you call me when the handwriting comes through from the CIA,' said Falcon.
'What do you want us to do with it?'
'You've got a handwriting expert back in Madrid, haven't you?'
'Sure.'
Falcon bowed his head and started flicking through Tateb Hassani's file. He knew it was childish, but he wanted to show that two could play at the withholding information game.
'Gregorio and I will come by your house tonight.'
He nodded, waited for Pablo to leave. He closed the file, sat back and let his mind wander. The television was on and the four o'clock news showed the evacuations of the schools and the biology faculty while the bomb squad went in with their dogs. Gradually, a palimpsest of the Arabic script found with the architect's drawings appeared over the action images with a voice-over of their translations. Cut to a journalist outside the school, trying to make something out of the fact that nothing, as yet, had been found on the premises.
The chair recently vacated by Pablo slid into Falcon's vision. He went back to the photographs of Horizonte's fortieth anniversary and the shot of Banco Omni's table. That's what he'd noticed: an empty chair next to Jesus Alarcon's wife, Monica. A closer look showed that the chair had just been vacated by a man in a dark suit who was walking away. Against the dark background, only a cuff of shirt, a hand and his collar with some grey hair above it was visible.
The pre-school was empty, apart from a policewoman at the door and another on the computer in one of the classrooms. The stink from the bombsite did not make it a popular location to hang out. Falcon logged on to the internet and entered: Horizonte: fortieth anniversary. He clicked on the first article, which was from the business pages of the ABC. The byline jumped out at him because it was A. Zarrias. He read through the article just looking for a mention of Banco Omni.
It was there, but no names. The photograph was of the Horizonte board at the dinner. He went for another article, which had been published in a business magazine. Again the byline was for A. Zarrias. Falcon clicked on five other articles, of which three had been placed by Angel. He must have been doing the PR for Horizonte's fortieth anniversary. Interesting. He entered Banco Omni and Horizonte into the search engine.
There were thousands of hits. He scrolled down through the pages of hits until he got to articles written in 2001. He clicked on the articles, not reading them but checking who placed them. Angel Zarrias had written 80 per cent of them. So, when Angel had quit politics he'd gone into journalism, but he'd also picked up a lucrative sideline in PR with Banco Omni, who presumably put him in touch with Horizonte. He entered 'Banco Omni board of directors' into the search engine. He went back through the years, pulling up articles on to the screen. There were names, but never any photographs. In fact, the only photograph he could find of any employees of Banco Omni was from the table shot taken at Horizonte's fortieth anniversary banquet.
31
Seville-Thursday, 8th June 2006, 17.30 hrs
'It's taken me hours to get to speak to this person,' said Ferrera, 'but I think it's been worth it. I've got a…reliable witness to the dumping of the body which was later found on the rubbish dump outside Seville.'
'We now have a name for that body. He's called Tateb Hassani,' said Falcon. 'You didn't sound very sure of that word "reliable".'
'He drinks, which is never a good thing for a court to hear, and I'm not sure we could ever get him to court anyway.'
'Tell me what the guy saw and we'll worry about his credentials if it gets us anywhere.'
'He lives in an apartment at the end of a cul-de-sac just off Calle Boteros. His daughter owns the third and fourth floors of this building. She lives on the third and her father lives above. Both apartments have the perfect view of those bins on the corner of Calle Boteros.'
'I'm sure that's why the daughter bought them,' said Falcon. 'And what's this guy doing awake at three in the morning, looking out of his window?'
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