Robert Wilson - The Hidden Assassins

'Well, Angel, now you've told me my job,' said the editor, 'you can get on with telling me what you're proposing.'

'A vision of hope,' he said, handing over the page he'd just created. 'In this time of crisis there's a young, energetic, capable man in the wings, who could make Andalucia a safe and prosperous place to live.'

The editor scanned the page, took it all in, nodded and grunted.

'So the rumours about Eduardo Rivero are true.'

'I'm not sure what you're referring to.'

'Come off it, Angel,' said the editor, flinging out a dismissive fist. 'He was caught with his pants down.'

'I don't think there's any truth in that.'

'With an under-age girl. There was talk of a DVD.'

'Nobody's seen it.'

'The rumblings have been very loud, and now this-' said the editor, waving the page in the air. 'If it wasn't for the bomb, I'd have someone digging in the dirt after your old friend.'

'Look, this has been in the pipeline for a long time,' said Angel. 'With this bomb going off he just feels that it's time to stand down and let somebody younger take the party to the next stage. He's going to be seventy at the end of this year.'

'So we have the first political casualty of the bomb.'

'That's not how we should be thinking about it,' said Angel. 'It's precipitated change and it's saying that change is what we have to do if we want to survive this challenge to our liberty.'

'You're serious, Angel. What's happened to the great deflator? The man with the sharpened nib who pops those hot-air egos?'

'Perhaps my cynicism is another casualty of the bomb.'

'Well, you're always complaining that nothing happens,' said the editor, 'and now…you believe in this guy and yet you've barely written a word about him before.'

'As you've just pointed out, my column was primarily for puncturing egos,' said Angel. 'Jesus Alarcon hasn't had time to develop an ego that needs to be punctured. He's quietly taken Fuerza Andalucia from being an organization with a small debt to one with regular contributions from members and businesses. He's done amazing, if uncharismatic, work.'

'So what makes you think he's got the personality for it?'

'I saw him this morning,' said Angel. 'He's learnt a lot…'

'But can you learn charisma?'

'Charisma is just an intense form of self-belief,' said Angel. 'Jesus Alarcon has always been confident. He's ambitious. He's dealt with serious personal setbacks, which, to me, are a far more powerful measure of the man than his ability to broker international finance deals. He has the inner steel and common sense that our last prime minister had. You know politics. It's like boxing. It's all very well to have the fast hands and fancy footwork, but even the greatest fighters get hit very hard and if you can't absorb punishment you're finished. Jesus Alarcon has all those qualities and, after the conferring of the leadership, I can now see emerging that indefinable quality that will make people want to follow him.'

'All right,' said the editor, thinking positively about it. 'A new face for a new era. Write me a profile. And, by the way, I agree with you about charisma, it is an intense form of self-belief. But there's something both blinding and blind about it, too. Its closest friend can quite quickly become corruption-the belief that you can do anything with impunity. I hope Jesus Alarcon does not have the makings of a tragic figure.'

'He's not a hollow man,' said Angel. 'He's suffered and come through it.'

'Get him to remember that suffering,' said the editor. 'Every politician should have the words of the president of the Terrorists' Victims' Association, Pilar Manjon, ringing in their ears: "They only think of themselves."' The Madrid police and forensics had been working hard in the apartment used by Djamel Hammad and Smail Saoudi. Taped to the underside of a gas bottle they'd found a selection of stolen and forged IDs and passports, with pictures of the two men whose descriptions fitted those given by Trabelsi Amar and the Seville homicide squad. They'd also discovered € 5,875 in small-denomination notes in three separate packages hidden around the apartment. DNA was currently being generated from hairs, bristles and pubic hairs found in the bathroom. An empty pad on the kitchen table had revealed indentations, which proved to be complicated directions to a property southwest of Madrid, not far from a village called Valmojado. The isolated house near the Rio Guadarrama was found to be empty, with no evidence of recent habitation. The police concluded that it was a staging post-a place to pick up and leave material-and nothing more. The property had been rented in the name of a Spaniard, whose ID was false. The owners had been paid six months in advance, which had made them reluctant to ask too many questions. The forensics were still conducting their search of the premises, but so far not a trace of explosive had been found. The Guardia Civil had questioned a number of locals, including shepherds, and reckoned that in the four months it had been rented it had been visited by a white van five times. Three of those visits corresponded roughly to the times Trabelsi Amar had lent the Peugeot Partner to Hammad and Saoudi.

There was a complication with this scenario, which was that the directions to the isolated house found in the Madrid apartment were freshly written in Hammad's handwriting, which would imply that their visit on Sunday at around midday was their first. This in turn implied that the other two times they'd borrowed Trabelsi Amar's van they'd lent it to others who had gone to the farmhouse. A clearer indication that the isolated farmhouse was being visited by people other than Hammad and Saoudi came from eyewitness reports that as many as six different people, including one woman, had been seen going there. This information had an adrenalizing effect on the CGI in Madrid, who concluded that Hammad and Saoudi were acting within a much larger network than at first thought. They contacted all the major intelligence agencies but none of them had picked up any 'chatter' about a planned attack in Spain. The fear now was that Hammad and Saoudi's logistical work was part of a wider effort.

The CGI, with the help of the Guardia Civil, were now trying to find Hammad and Saoudi's route from Madrid to the isolated house near Valmojado and then down to Seville. They wanted to know if they had made any other stopovers-anonymous-looking meetings in roadside bars, other visits to isolated houses or, worse, other deliveries to, for instance, a location in another major Andalucian city.

That was the primary content of a seven-page report, drafted by several senior officers of the counterterrorism unit and sent by the Madrid CGI to Comisario Elvira in the damaged pre-school in Seville. There was a conclusion attached, which had been written by the Director of the CNI and had also reached the hands of Prime Minister Zapatero: On the basis of our own findings and the reports received so far from the offices of the CGI and, taken in conjunction with the preliminary reports from the bomb squad and the police on the ground at the site of the disaster, we can only conclude, at this point, that we have come across an Islamic terrorist network who were planning an attack, or, more likely, a series of attacks, with the intention of destabilizing the political and social fabric of the region of Andalucia. Whilst the investigating bodies have so far uncovered some anomalies to the usual modus operandi of radical Islamic groups, they have not brought to our attention any suspicious activity, or even stated intention, of any other group that might want to inflict damage on the Muslim population of Andalucia. We therefore recommend that the government take the necessary steps to protect all major cities in the region.

The noise of demolition work reasserted itself in the room after Comisario Elvira finished the reading of the report. Inspector Jefe Falcon and Juez Calderon were sitting on small children's desks, arms folded, ankles crossed and staring into the ground, which had now been swept clear of glass. Plastic sheeting, which had been stretched across the empty window frames, revealed an indistinct outside world that ballooned and lurched with the hot breeze, blowing from the south.