Robert Wilson - The Hidden Assassins

The apartment stank of vomit and diarrhoea. He'd been up most of the night and was still weak. The daughter turned off the television and forced her father to wear his hearing aid. She told Falcon that her father's Spanish was poor and Falcon said that they could conduct the interview in Arabic. She explained this to her father, who looked confused and irritable, with too much happening around him. Once his daughter had checked that the hearing aid was functioning properly and had left the room, Majid Merizak sharpened up.

'You speak Arabic?' he asked.

'I'm still learning. Part of my family is Moroccan.'

He nodded and drank tea through Falcon's introduction and visibly relaxed on hearing Falcon's rough Arabic. It had been the right thing to do. Merizak was far less wary than Harrouch had been.

Falcon warmed him up with questions about when he attended the mosque-which was every morning, without fail, and he stayed there until the early afternoon. Then he asked about strangers.

'Last week?' asked Merizak, and Falcon nodded. 'Two young men came in on Tuesday morning, close to midday, and two older men came in on Friday morning at ten o'clock. That's all.'

'And you'd never seen them before?'

'No, but I did see them again yesterday.'

'Who?'

'The two young men who'd come in last Tuesday.'

Merizak's description fitted that of Hammad and Saoudi.

'And what did they do last Tuesday?'

'They went into the Imam's room and talked with him until about one thirty.'

'And what about yesterday morning?'

'They brought in two heavy sacks. It took two of them to carry one sack.'

'What time was this?'

'About ten thirty. The same time that the electricians arrived,' said Merizak. 'Yes, of course, there were the electricians, as well. I'd never seen them before, either.'

'Where did the two young men put these sacks?'

'In the storeroom next to the Imam's office.'

'Do you know what was in the sacks?'

'Couscous. That's what it said on the side.'

'Has anyone made a delivery like that before?'

'Not in those quantities. People have brought in bags of food to give to the Imam…you know, it's part of our duty to give to those less fortunate than ourselves.'

'When did they leave?'

'They stayed about an hour.'

'What about the men who came in on Friday?'

'They were inspectors from the council. They went all over the mosque. They discussed things with the Imam and then they left.'

'What about the power cut?'

'That was on Saturday night. I wasn't there. The Imam was on his own. He said that there was a big bang and the lights went out. That's what he told us the following morning, when we had to pray in the dark.'

'And the electricians came in on Monday to fix it?'

'A man came on his own at eight thirty. Then three other men came two hours later to do the work.'

'Were they Spanish?'

'They were speaking Spanish.'

'What did they do?'

'The fuse box was burned out, so they put in a new one. Then they put in a power socket in the storeroom.'

'What sort of work was that?'

'They cut a channel in the brickwork from a socket in the Imam's office, through the wall and into the storeroom. They put in some grey flexible tubing, fed in the wire and then cemented it all up.'

Merizak had seen the blue transit van, which he described as battered, but he hadn't seen any markings or the registration number.

'How did the Imam pay for the work?'

'Cash.'

'Do you know where he got the phone number of this company?'

'No.'

'Would you recognize the electricians, council inspectors and two young men if you saw them again?'

'Yes, but I can't describe them to you very well.'

'You've been listening to the news?'

'They don't know what they're talking about,' said Merizak. 'It makes me very angry. A bomb explodes and it is automatically Islamic militants.'

'Have you ever heard of Los Martires Islamicos para la Liberacion de Andalucia?'

'The first time was on the news today. It's an invention of the media to discredit Islam.'

'Have you ever heard of the Imam preaching militant ideology in the mosque?'

'Quite the opposite.'

'I'm told that the Imam was a very capable linguist.'

'He learnt Spanish very quickly. They said his apartment was full of French and English books. He spoke German, too. He spoke on the telephone using languages I'd never heard before. He told me that one of them was Turkish. Some people came here in February and stayed with him for a week and that was another strange language. Somebody said it was Pashto, and that the men were from Afghanistan.'

Seville-Tuesday, 6th June 2006, 18.30 hrs

The offices of the ABC newspaper, a glass cylinder on the Isla de la Cartuja, had been as close to bedlam as a hysterical business like journalism could get. Angel Zarrias watched from the edge of the newsroom as journalists roared down telephones, bawled at assistants and harangued each other.

Through the flickering computer screens, the phone lines stretched to snapping point and the triangles formed by hands slapped to foreheads, Angel was watching the open door of the editor's office. He was biding his time. This was the newshounds' moment. It was their job to find the stories, which the editor would knit together to construct the right image and tone, for the new history of a city in crisis.

On the way from Manuela's apartment to the ABC offices he'd asked the taxi to drop him off in a street near the Maestranza bullring where his friend Eduardo Rivero lived and which also housed the headquarters of his political party: Fuerza Andalucia. He'd been dining with Eduardo Rivero and the new sponsors of Fuerza Andalucia last night. A momentous decision had been made, which he hadn't been able to share with Manuela until it became official today. He had also not been able to tell her that he was now going to be working more for Fuerza Andalucia than the ABC. He had a lot more important things on his mind than grumbling about same-sex marriages in his daily political column.

Rivero's impressive house bore all the hallmarks of his traditional upbringing and thinking. Its facade was painted to a deep terracotta finish, the window surrounds were picked out in ochre and all caged in magnificent wrought-iron grilles. The main door was three metres high, built out of oak, varnished to the colour of chestnuts and studded with brass medallions. It opened on to a huge marble-flagged patio, in which Rivero had departed briefly from tradition by planting two squares of box hedge. In the centre of each was a statue; to the left was Apollo and to the right Dionysus, and in between was the massive bowl of a white marble fountain, whose restrained trickles of water held the house, despite these pagan idols, in a state of religious obeisance.

The front of the house was the party headquarters, with the administration below and the policy-making and political discussions going on above. Angel took the stairs just inside the main door, which led up to Rivero's office. They were waiting for him; Rivero and his second-in-command, the much younger Jesus Alarcon.

Unusually, he and Rivero were sitting together in the middle of the room, with the boss's wood and leather armchair empty behind his colossal English oak desk. They all shook hands. Rivero, the same age as Angel, seemed remarkably relaxed. He wasn't even wearing a tie, his jacket was hanging off the back of his chair. He was smiling beneath an ebullient white moustache. He did not look as if scandal had come anywhere near him.

'Like any good journalist, Angel, you've arrived at the crucial moment,' said Rivero. 'A decision has been made.'

'I don't believe it,' said Angel.

'Well, you'll have to believe it, because it's true,' said Rivero. 'I'd like you to meet the new leader of Fuerza Andalucia, Jesus Alarcon. Effective as from five minutes ago.'