Robert Wilson - The Hidden Assassins

'Has he identified the people he lent the van to?' asked Ramirez.

'Yes. He's very scared,' said Gregorio. 'The CGI's antiterrorist squad in Madrid say he hasn't been behaving like a terrorist at all. He's been happy to tell them the whole story.'

'Let's start with the names,' said Ramirez.

'The shaven-headed guy is Djamel Hammad, thirtyone years old, born in Tlemcen in Algeria. His friend is Smail Saoudi, thirty years old, born Tiaret in Algeria. Both were resident in Morocco and still should be.'

'What sort of records have they got?'

'Those are their original names. They've operated under a lot of pseudonyms. They were medium-to high-risk terror suspects, by which I mean they were not likely to actually carry out attacks, but they have been suspected of document forgery, recce and logistical work. They both have relatives who have been active in the GIA-the Armed Islamic Group.'

'And how did Trabelsi Amar get to know them?'

'They're all illegal immigrants. They came across the straits together, on the same shipment. Hammad and Saoudi made him their friend. They got him to Madrid and helped him with his documents. Then they called in the favour.'

'Didn't he find their slickness…suspicious?' asked Calderon.

'It was convenient for him not to,' said Gregorio. 'Trabelsi Amar is not very bright.'

'What's the story with the van?' asked Ramirez.

'Amar has been working for his uncle making deliveries. He also did a few things on the side, to make himself some extra cash. He ran errands, some of them were for Hammad and Saoudi. Then they asked to borrow the van; the first time for an afternoon, the second time for a whole day. It all happened gradually, so that when they asked to borrow the van to go to Seville for three days and said they'd give him €250, Trabelsi Amar just saw the money.'

'How did he explain that to his Uncle Mohammed?' asked Ramirez.

'He rented the van from him for € 30 a day,' said Gregorio. 'He might not be bright, but he could still work out that he didn't have to do anything and he'd be €160 up on the deal.'

'So presumably he knows where Hammad and Saoudi live.'

'They're searching the apartment as we speak.'

'When exactly did Amar go into hiding?' asked Ramirez. 'When he heard about the bomb, or once it was reported that the Peugeot Partner had been found?'

'As soon as he heard about the bomb,' said Gregorio.

'So he'd probably worked out already that his new friends weren't just ordinary guys.'

'What about their relationship with the Imam Abdelkrim Benaboura,' asked Falcon, 'apart from the fact that they were all Algerians?'

'The only connection we can see at the moment was that Benaboura was born in Tlemcen, which doesn't mean much.'

'We've found out more about the Imam from a member of the mosque than we have from the CNI and the CGI put together,' said Falcon.

'We still don't have the authority to access any more information,' said Gregorio. 'And that includes Juan, who, as you've probably gathered, is a very senior officer.'

'The Imam is a player of some sort,' said Ramirez. 'I'm sure of it.'

'What about this group, the MILA, who, according to the television news, have claimed responsibility for the blast?' asked Falcon.

'It's not a group we've ever heard of having an active terrorist dimension,' said Gregorio. 'We've heard about their intention to "liberate" Andalucia, but we've never taken it seriously. With the current military set-up in this country it's just not possible for anyone but a major power to secure a region of Spain for themselves. The Basques haven't achieved it and they don't even have to invade.'

'And what did the CGI in Madrid know about Hammad and Saoudi being in Spain?' asked Calderon.

'They didn't,' said Gregorio. 'It's not as easy as it sounds to trace unknown radicals in a huge, constantly changing immigrant population, some of whom are legal and others who've been smuggled across the straits. We know, for instance, that some of these people come over, perform two or three tasks in this country and then move on, to be replaced by others from France, Germany or the Netherlands. Quite often they have no idea of the purpose of what they're doing. They deliver a package, drive a person somewhere, raise some money from stolen bank cards, travel on a train at certain times to report on passenger numbers and time spent at how many stations, or they're asked to look at a building and report on its security situation. Even if we catch them and extract their task from them, which is not easy, all we end up with is a little strip of footage that could be one of a hundred operations that might make up a major attack, or might just be something that ends up on the cutting-room floor.'

'Does anyone have any opinion about what Hammad and Saoudi might have been doing?' asked Falcon.

'We don't know enough. We hope to know more after we've searched their apartment,' said Gregorio.

'What about the hood and the Islamic sash?' said Ramirez. 'Isn't that what operatives wear when they videotape themselves before a suicide mission?'

'No comment from the CGI on that,' said Gregorio. 'Based on the interview with Trabelsi Amar, they think the guys were logistical and nothing more.'

Ramirez gave a report on the deliveries to the mosque, the council visit last week, the power cut on Saturday night and the electricians' repair work performed on Monday morning. Falcon held back on disclosing his findings from the interview with Diego Torres of Informaticalidad until they had more information from interviews with the sales reps.

'Do we know anything more about the explosive used?' asked Calderon.

'The bomb squad have given me this report,' said Elvira. 'Based on their preliminary investigation of the site, the distance from the epicentre to the furthest flung pieces of debris, and the extent of the destruction of the first three floors of the building, their conservative estimate is that three times the quantity of hexogen was exploded than was necessary, if the intention was to destroy the apartment block.'

'Do they deduce anything from that?' asked Calderon. 'Or is that left up to our, inexpert, assuming?'

'That's what they're prepared to put in writing at the moment,' said Elvira. 'Verbally, they tell me that to destroy a building of this size, with demolition knowledge easily found on the internet, they would need as little as twenty kilos of hexogen. They say that hexogen is commonly used in demolition work, but primarily to shear through solid steel girders. Twenty kilos expertly positioned in an ordinary reinforced concrete building would wreck the whole block, not just the section that was actually destroyed. They deduce from this that the explosive was located in one place in the basement of the building, more towards the back than the front, hence the damage done to the pre-school. They thought that it could have been as much as one hundred kilos of hexogen that exploded.'

'Well, that sounds like enough to start a serious bombing campaign in Seville,' said Calderon. 'And if this is a group with plans to liberate the whole of Andalucia…'

'You probably haven't seen the latest news,' said Elvira, 'but we're on red alert all over the region. They've evacuated the cathedral in Cordoba, and the Alhambra and Generalife in Granada. There are now special patrols going through the tourist resorts on the Costa del Sol, and there are more than twenty roadblocks along the N340. The Navy are off the coast and there are Air Force fighters on all major airstrips. More than forty helicopters are running up and down the main arterial routes through Andalucia. Zapatero is taking this threat very seriously indeed.'

'Well, he has the demise of his predecessor's political ambitions as an example,' said Calderon. 'And nobody wants to be the Prime Minister who lost Andalucia to the Muslims after more than five hundred years of Spanish rule.'