Robert Wilson: The Ignoranceof Blood

'I do need your help now,' said Falcon. 'Has your mother ever been to the Diouri house in Fes?'

'Of course. She goes there every month. She saw that as one of her duties as my father's wife,' said Abdullah. 'She mustn't know what you are going to do, though. She is very fond of Mustafa. As my father said, Mustafa was like a brother to him, and that was how she treated him.'

'And he was an uncle to you,' said Falcon.

'But an impostor,' said Abdullah, looking Falcon in the eye. 'What my father didn't tell you in the letter is that Mustafa is very charismatic. Apart from anything else, he sells a lot of carpets. The tourists love him even as he despises them. My advice to you is not to engage.'

'I need Yousra to get me into the Diouri house afterwards.'

'That is perfectly possible. It will be quite natural for her, under these circumstances, to go to Fes and mourn with the other women there. They will expect it of her,' said Abdullah. 'The woman with you, Consuelo, is this boy her son?'

Falcon nodded, stunned by the transformation of Abdullah from the slack-limbed teenager he'd known on the family holiday a month ago, to this focused young man he'd become in the last half-hour.

'It's better that neither my mother nor Leila are told about the boy. These women in the Diouri house know each other very well and my mother is not an actress,' said Abdullah. 'She will have an audience with Mustafa's mother as soon as she arrives, and that woman is frightening. She might be mad, but she doesn't miss anything.'

'All right, so how will I get into the house?'

'I will be accompanying her, but I will not be party to their conversation. I will stay downstairs and let you in.'

'Do you know the house?'

'I know everything about that house. When Leila and I were children we were left to play – and you know what children are like. We discovered everything. All the secret passages and back staircases. Don't worry, Javier. Everything will be fine. I think it's best we go our separate ways now. We will arrive in Fes as the grieving family,' said Abdullah, writing down his mobile number. 'Call me when you are ready and I'll make sure everything goes smoothly in the house in Fes.'

They embraced again. Abdullah went to the door, fitted his feet into his barbouches. Falcon could see his mind still working.

'Nothing will change my mind, Javier,' he said.

'But remember, Abdullah: your father sacrificed his life so that you would not suffer what he went through,' said Falcon. 'You've just read his letter. He did not want to be a spy, and he did not want that life for you either.' As they set off for Fes the clouds in the western sky were aflame, with the reddening sun already low on the horizon. Falcon drove in silence.

'I can nearly hear what's going on in your head, but not quite,' said Consuelo, after half an hour.

'The usual problem,' said Falcon. 'Trust. I don't know whether I've just made a big mistake in assuming that Abdullah is as his father believed.'

'A "friend"?'

Falcon nodded, turned on the headlights as the sun disappeared behind them. The light in the car was strange, with the flamingo sky behind, dark night ahead, and the dashboard glowing in his face.

'I just witnessed an extraordinary transformation from a boy into a man in the space of fifteen minutes,' said Falcon. 'This is what intelligence work does to you. You question everybody's loyalty. Abdullah's response to that letter, it just…'

'Didn't quite ring true?'

'It did and it didn't,' said Falcon. 'That's what you could hear going on in my head. For us to gain access to the Diouri house in Fes I must rely on him. I had to tell him everything. I've made myself vulnerable to him.'

'Was there an alternative?'

'Originally I was going to ask Yousra to let me in. Abdullah advised against it for perfectly plausible reasons. But when things matter so much, there's always a question.'

'You're not giving me the full story, Javier. I can tell.'

He should have known.

'In order to make Dario safe, I have to kill a man first. Abdullah's uncle.'

She looked at him, his profile, the jawline, the cheekbone, the ear, the eye. What had she done to this man?

'No, Javier. You can't do that. I can't let you do that.'

'It has to be done.'

'Have you ever killed a man before?'

'Twice.'

'But you've never assassinated someone,' she said, 'in cold blood.'

'There's no other way, Consuelo. I'm doing it for Yacoub as much as anyone else. It will happen,' said Falcon firmly.

'Abdullah knows this,' said Consuelo. 'And if he's not a friend, when you go to kill this man you might be walking to your death.'

'We need an alternative plan in case I've been wrong about Abdullah.' The Hotel du Commerce was on the Place des Alaouites. They parked nearby and went up to their room. It wasn't a class of hotel that Consuelo was used to staying in, but it was right in front of the golden doors of the royal palace.

They had a shower, changed clothes. Neither of them was hungry. They lay on the bed, Consuelo with her head on his chest. Falcon stared at the ceiling. There was a knock at the door.

One of Pablo's agents identified himself, looked nervously at Consuelo.

'It's all right,' said Falcon, introducing her. 'She had to know.'

The agent took out a light brown burnous from the small cabin bag he was carrying.

'Put this on,' he said. 'It has a hood to cover your face.'

Falcon wrestled into the long, ankle-length cloak, put the hood over his head, checked himself in the mirror. The pockets of the burnous went straight through to his trousers. The agent screwed a silencer on to a nine-millimetre Glock handgun, gave it to Falcon. He showed him that it was fully loaded, with one in the chamber, and where the safety catch was. Falcon put it in the waistband of his trousers. The agent laid out a large-scale map of the medina of Fes El Bali on the bed. Showed him the gate where he would come in, where the shop was and the best route from the shop to the Diouri house. He gave him a recent photo of Barakat, let him look at it for a minute, took it back.

'You will go into Mustafa Barakat's shop at eight thirty,' said the agent. 'There will be one other person in the shop, a Spanish tourist. As you enter, another agent will man the door from the outside. He will be Moroccan. You will shoot Mustafa Barakat, hand the gun to the Spanish tourist and leave the premises. Do not look back. The Moroccan will close the shop behind you.'

'I'll need a gun for when I go into the Diouri house,' said Falcon.

'We will make sure you have one,' said the agent. 'It's just a precaution that after the killing you walk away from the shop unarmed.'

'I want you to show Consuelo where the Diouri house is,' said Falcon. 'She's never been to Fes before and the medina can be confusing. I want her to see it for real and memorize a route. If anything happens to me and I do not show at the gates of the house, you must knock at the door and ask for Yousra.'

'And what will Consuelo do?' asked the agent.

'You will give her the weapon intended for me. She will ask Yousra to take her to Barakat's mother.'

'What do you think might happen to you?' asked the agent.

'I have had to inform Abdullah Diouri of this plan.'

'That was not what we were told,' said the agent.

'It was unavoidable.'

The agent looked at his watch.

'I have to take up my position now,' he said. 'I will talk to Pablo. If we are to abort the mission, you will get a one-word text on your mobile telling you just that.'

Consuelo and the agent left.

Falcon looked at his watch, still some time to go. He remembered the DNA swabs, put a couple in his pocket. He took the gun out, put it on the bed, paced the room. He lay down with the gun on his chest, had to get up again. Too hot, stripped off the burnous. Time got stuck, wouldn't move on.