Robert Wilson - The Hidden Assassins

Her heels clicked on the marble flags of the patio. He had wanted to get rid of her as soon as he'd seen her, but there was something about her pitiful frailness, her lack of Sevillana hauteur, that made it hard for him to brush her off into the night.

'How's things?' he said, trying to nod something more interesting into his head, which was almost completely taken up with the decision he had to make within the next eight hours. 'How's life with Esteban?'

'You see more of him than I do,' she said.

'We haven't worked together for a while and, you know, he's always been ambitious, so…'

'Yes, he's always been ambitious,' she said, 'to fuck every woman that passes under his nose.'

Falcon's glass of manzanilla stopped on its way to his mouth, before continuing. He took a good inch off the top.

'I wouldn't know,' he said, avoiding a conversational line that had been common knowledge in the police and judiciary for years.

'Don't be so fucking ridiculous, Javier,' she said. 'The whole of fucking Seville knows he's been dipping his cock in every pussy that comes his way.'

Silence. Falcon wondered if he'd ever heard Ines use this sort of language before. It was as if some fishwife inside her was kicking down the barriers.

'I came across one of his whores today in the Murillo Gardens,' she said. 'I recognized her from a shot he'd taken of her with his digital camera. And she was sitting in front of me on a park bench, smoking a cigar, as if she was still thinking about sucking his-'

'Come on, Ines,' said Falcon. 'I'm not the person you should be talking to about this.'

'Why not?' she said. 'You know me. We've been intimate. You know him. You know what he's…that he's a…that I…'

She broke down. Falcon took the glass out of her hand, found some tissues. She blew her nose and thumped the tabletop with her fist and tried to dig her heel into the floor of the patio, which made her wince. She took a walk around the fountain and felt a sudden stabbing pain in her side and had to hold on to herself.

'Are you all right, Ines?'

'Stop asking me that question,' she said. 'It's nothing, just some kidney-stone trouble. The doctor says I don't drink enough water.'

He fetched her a glass of water and thought about how he was going to manage this situation, with Mark Flowers due any minute. His brain stalled on the ludicrous fact that she had come to see him to talk about her husband's incorrigible womanizing. What did that mean?

'I wanted to talk to you,' she said, 'because I have no one else I can talk to. My friends aren't capable of this level of intimacy. I'm sure some of them have become his conquests. My suffering would just be gossip to them, nothing more. I know you went through a very bad time a few years ago and that has given you the capacity to understand what I'm going through now.'

'I'm not sure my experiences are comparable,' said Falcon, frowning at her self-absorbed talk, the situation expanding out of his control by the moment.

'I know that when we split up you were still in love with me,' she said. 'I felt very sorry for you.'

He knew she'd felt nothing of the sort. She'd projected all her guilt on to him and taunted him with that horrific mantra about his heartlessness: 'Tu no tienes corazon, Javier Falcon.'

'Are you thinking of leaving Esteban?' he asked, carefully, panicked by the notion that she might be thinking that he would have her back.

'No, no, no que no,' she said. 'It hasn't come to that. We're made for each other. We've been through so much. I'd never leave him. He needs me. It's just…'

It's just that there aren't enough cliches for the cheated wife to draw on, thought Falcon.

'It's just that…he needs help,' said Ines.

What was happening today? The CNI wanted him to persuade his new friend to become a spy. His ex-wife wanted him to encourage her husband, with whom he'd only ever had a professional relationship, to go and see a shrink.

'What do you think, Javier?'

'I think it's none of my business,' he said firmly.

'I still want to know what you think,' she said, her eyes huge in her head.

'You'll never persuade Esteban-or any man, for that matter-to go to a shrink or a marriage-guidance counsellor, unless he himself perceives that there is a problem,' said Falcon. 'And most men, in these situations, rarely see that the problem is theirs.'

'He's been whoring around in this marriage since…since before we got married,' she said. 'He must see that he needs to change.'

'The only thing that will change him is a major trauma in his life, which might make him reflect on his…insatiable needs,' said Falcon. 'Unfortunately, it might also mean that those close to him now will not remain so…'

'I stuck with him through his last crisis with the American bitch and I'll stick with him through this,' she said. 'I know he loves me.'

'That was my experience,' said Falcon, holding out his hands and realizing that he'd just told Ines why she wasn't a part of his life any more. 'My problem didn't happen to be womanizing, though.'

'No, it wasn't, was it? You were so cold, Javier,' she said.

That tone of false concern set his teeth on edge, but the doorbell rang, saving him from having to dig deeper into his reserves of patience. He walked her to the door.

'You're popular tonight,' said Ines.

'I don't know what people see in me,' said Falcon, braking hard on the irony.

'We don't see so much of each other these days,' she said, kissing him before he opened the door. 'I'm sorry…if we don't see each other again…'

'Again?' said Falcon, and the doorbell rang once more.

'I'm sorry,' she said. At 9.30 p.m. Calderon had arrived at Marisa's apartment. Twenty minutes later they lay naked and sexsmeared on the floor by the sofa. They were drinking Cuba Libres chock full of ice, and smoking their way through a packet of Marlboro Lights. She straddled him and brushed her hardened nipples against his lips, while lowering her pubis until it just tickled the tip of his exhausted penis. He filled his hands with her buttocks and bit her nipple a little too hard.

'Ai!' she yelped, pushing away from him. 'Haven't you eaten?'

'There hasn't been much time for eating,' he said.

'Why don't I make you some pasta?' she said, standing over him, still in her heels, legs astride, hands on hips, cigarette dangling from her plump lips.

I'm Helmut Newton, thought Calderon.

'Sounds good,' he said.

She put on a turquoise silk robe and went into the kitchen. Calderon sipped his drink, smoked, looked out into the dense, warm night, and thought: This is all right.

'Something strange happened to me today,' said Marisa, from the kitchen, knife working over some onion and garlic. 'I sold a couple of my pieces to one of my dealers. He pays cash and I like to treat myself to a nice cigar-a real one, made in Havana. I sit under the palm trees in the Murillo Gardens to smoke it, because it reminds me of home and it was really hot today, the first heat of the summer. And I'd just got myself into a really cool Cuban mood…'

Marisa could tell from the back of Calderon's head that he was barely listening to her.

'…when this woman sat down in front of me. A beautiful woman. Very slim, long dark hair, beautiful big eyes…Maybe a little too thin, now that I think about it. Her eyes were so big and she was staring at me in this very strange way.'

She had his attention now. His head was as still as rock.

'I like to smoke my cigars in peace. I don't like mad people looking at me. So I asked her what she was staring at. She told me she was looking at the whore with the cigar-la puta con el puro. Well, nobody calls me a whore, and nobody ruins a top-quality Havana cigar. So I gave her a piece of my mind-and you know what?'