Robert Wilson - The Hidden Assassins

Calderon took a viciously long drag of his cigarette.

'You know what she said to me?'

'What?' said Calderon, as if a long way off.

'She said: "You're the whore who's fucking my husband." She asked me how much you were paying me and said that it didn't look as if it was more than € 15 a night and that you'd probably thrown in the copper wig and the cigar to keep me happy. Can you tell me how the fuck Ines knows who I am?'

Calderon stood up. He was so angry he couldn't speak. His lips were pale and his genitals were shrivelled back into their pubic nest as if his rage had taken all available blood to keep it stoked. He was clenching and unclenching his fist and staring off into the night, with bone-snapping violence ricocheting around his head. Marisa had seen this trait in physically unimpressive men before. The big, muscly guys had nothing to prove, whereas the fat, the puny and the stupid had big lessons to hand out.

When she heard the shower running, Marisa stopped preparing the food. Calderon dressed in ominous silence. She asked him what he was doing, why he was leaving. He whipped his tie up into a tight choleric knot.

'Nobody talks to you like that,' he said, and left. Ines stopped to look in a hand-painted tile shop on Calle Bailen. She felt better after seeing Javier. She'd persuaded herself, in the short walk after their brief encounter, that Javier still cared for her. How sweet of him to ask her if she was thinking of leaving Esteban. He still lived in hope after all these years. It was sad to have to disappoint him.

The darkness under the huge trees of the Plaza del Museo held the murmur of more young people, the chinking of beer bottles and the reek of marijuana. She walked through them feeling more cheerful. The light was on in the apartment, which elated her. Esteban was home. He had come back to her. They were going to repair the damage. She was sure, after what had happened this morning, that he would see reason and she could persuade him to make an appointment with a psychologist.

The stairs no longer inspired dread and although the pain in her side meant that she didn't exactly sprint up them, she reached the door with a lightness of heart. Her hair swung on her shoulders as she closed the door. She instantly felt his looming presence. A smile was already spreading on her face when he sheafed her hair and turned it once around his wrist. She toppled backwards, falling to her knees, and he brought her face up close to the pallor of the pure hatred in his own.

Seville-Tuesday, 6th June 2006, 22.05 hrs

Mark Flowers had already eaten. His American digestive system had never got used to the Spanish custom of not even thinking about dinner until 9.30 p.m. He turned down Falcon's offers of beer and manzanilla and opted for a single malt whisky. Falcon wolfed down a quickly made sandwich in the kitchen and stuck with the manzanilla. It was still very warm and they sat out under the open sky of the patio.

'So what did "your own" people want to talk to you about?' asked Flowers, always a man to get his questions in first.

'They're trying to persuade me to go into the recruitment business for them.'

'And will you do it?'

'I've got until 6 a.m. to decide.'

'Well, it was nice of them to wait until you had nothing on your plate,' said Flowers, who was always determined to show him that not all Americans had undergone an irony bypass. 'I don't know who they want you to recruit, but if he's a friend he might not stay a friend. That's the way these things work, in my experience.'

'Why's that?'

'People react strangely to being asked to become a spy. It calls into question your prior relationship: Did he become my friend just to recruit me? It also implies moral duplicity. You, as the recruiter, have a singular purpose, which requires asking someone to lie and deceive on your behalf. It's an odd relationship.'

'Got any advice?'

'It's like going out on a date. It's all in the timing. You move in too early and the girl will accuse you of being too fresh. You come on too late and you might have bored her, shown her your uncertainty. It's a delicate process and, like dating, you only get better at it by doing it…a lot.'

'You've just filled me with confidence, Mark. I haven't been out on a date for more than a year.'

'Some people say it's like riding a bicycle,' said Flowers. 'But there's a big difference between an eighteen-year-old taking up cycling and a middle-aged man going back to it. I wish you'd change your whisky, Javier. This stuff is like drinking peat bog.'

'Maybe you'd like some Coca Cola to go with it?' said Falcon.

Flowers chuckled.

'Do your people know whether your Moroccan friend is "safe"?' he asked.

'Did I say that I was recruiting a friend, and that he was Moroccan?' asked Falcon.

Another chuckle from Flowers, followed by a big snort of whisky.

'You didn't say, but given our present circumstances it was a safe bet.'

'They seem to have researched him pretty well,' said Falcon, giving up quickly on the game.

'That's not how you find out if someone is "safe",' said Flowers. 'Research is like trying to learn how to succeed in business by reading a self-help book.'

'I know he's safe.'

'Well, you're a homicide cop, so you should know when someone is lying to you,' said Flowers. 'What sort of conversations have you had about terrorism, Iraq, the Palestinian question, that have led you to believe that your friend is "safe"?'

'None in which the outcome of the conversation has been crucial, if that's what you mean.'

'I can find thousands of Muslims in the tea houses of North Africa who would condemn the actions of these extremist groups and their indiscriminate violence, but I would struggle to find one who would give me information that might lead to the capture and possible death of a jihadi,' said Flowers. 'It's one of the strange contradictions of this kind of spying: it takes a profound moral certitude to behave immorally. So, how do you know he's "safe"?'

'I'm not sure what I can tell you that would help you believe, without sounding foolish,' said Falcon.

'Try me.'

'We recognized something in each other from the first moment we met.'

'What does that mean?'

'We've had comparable experiences, which have given us a level of automatic understanding.'

'Still not sure,' said Flowers, closing an eye over his raised glass.

'What happens when two people fall in love?'

'Take it easy, Javier.'

'How do two people sort out all that necessarily complicated communication that lets them know that they will be going to bed together that night?'

'You know the problem with that? Lovers cheat on each other all the time.'

'What you're saying, Mark, is that we can never know, we can only be as certain as possible.'

'The love analogy is right,' said Flowers. 'You've just got to be sure that he doesn't love someone more than you.'

'Thanks.'

'Who are we talking about, by the way?'

'You took your time.'

'Had I known you were going to be so coy, I'd have taken you out to dinner.'

'This isn't my business, it's CNI business.'

'Do you think you'll be able to get out of Casablanca airport without my guys spotting you?' asked Flowers.

'I'm surprised you haven't had me followed before.'

Silence. Flowers smiled.

'You knew all along,' said Falcon, throwing up his hands. 'Why do you play these games with me?'

'To remind you that, in my world, you're an amateur,' said Flowers. 'What are you hoping to get out of Yacoub Diouri?'

'I don't know. I'm not even sure whether I'm going to accept the task and, if I do, whether my superiors will allow me to do it.'

'What about the investigation here?'

'There's a lot still to be done, but at least we know what went on inside and outside the mosque in the days leading up to the explosion.'