Robert Wilson - The Hidden Assassins

'He's going to be a natural at this business.'

'I'm not sure he'll take that as a compliment.'

'Because of your investigation this is time-critical, so we've arranged a private jet to take us down there. The flight to Casablanca will be less than an hour and a half as long as we get good air-traffic clearance. You've got diplomatic status so we'll get through any formalities quickly, and you'll be on the road to Rabat within two hours of take-off,' said Pablo. 'I presume you're meeting Yacoub in his home?'

'I'm a friend, not a business associate,' said Falcon. 'Although that might change after this meeting.'

'I'm sure Mark Flowers gave you some good tips.'

'How long have you known about Mark…and me?' asked Falcon, smiling.

'Since you first outwitted him back in July 2002 and he made you one of his sources,' said Pablo. 'We're not worried about Mark. He's a friend. After 9/11 the Americans said they were going to put someone in Andalucia and we asked for Mark. Juan has known him since they were in Tunis together, keeping an eye on Gaddafi. Did Mark give you any ideas on how to approach Yacoub Diouri?'

'I'm pretty sure he tried to recruit him and was rebuffed,' said Falcon. 'He said that Yacoub didn't like Americans.'

'That should make your task easier, if he's used to being approached.'

'I don't think Yacoub Diouri is someone you "approach". He's the sort of guy who would see you coming a long way off if you did. We'll just talk, as we always do, about everything. It will come out in the way it does. I'm not going to use any strategies on him. Like a lot of Arabs, he has a powerful belief in honour, which h e learnt from the man who became his father. He is someone to whom you show respect, and not just as a gesture,' said Falcon. 'Perhaps you should tell me the sort of thing you want him to do, how you want him to operate, what contacts you're expecting him to make. Are you hoping to get information about the MILA from him?'

'MILA? Has Mark been talking to you about the MILA?'

'You're all the same, you intelligence people,' said Falcon. 'You can't take a question, you have to answer it with another. Do you exchange any information?'

'The MILA has nothing to do with what we want from Yacoub.'

'The TVE news said they were responsible for the bomb,' said Falcon. 'A text was posted from Seville to the Madrid office of the ABC, about Andalucia being brought back into the Muslim fold.'

'The MILA are only interested in money,' said Pablo. 'They've dressed their intentions up in jihadist rhetoric, but the reason they want to liberate Ceuta and Melilla is that they want the enclaves for themselves.'

'Tell me what we're trying to achieve,' said Falcon.

'For the purposes of this mission, what is crucial is not who destroyed that apartment building in Seville and why, but rather what the explosion has revealed to us,' said Pablo. 'Forget the MILA, they're not important. This is not about your investigation into yesterday's bomb. This is not about the past, but the future.'

'OK. Tell me,' said Falcon, thinking that Flowers may have been right about the CNI planting the MILA story.

'Last year the British held their parliamentary elections. They didn't need the example of the Madrid bombings to know that these elections were going to be the target of a number of attempts by terrorists to change the way a population thinks.'

'And nothing happened,' said Falcon. 'Tony Blair, the "little Satan", got in with a reduced majority.'

'Exactly, and nobody knew that there were three separate cells with active plans, who were prevented from carrying out their attacks by MI5,' said Pablo. 'All those cells were sleepers, dormant until they received their instructions in January 2005. Every member of the cell was either a second-or third-generation immigrant, originally from Pakistan, Afghanistan or Morocco, but now British. They spoke perfect English with regional accents. They all had clean police records. They all had jobs and came from decent backgrounds. In other words, they were impossible to find in a country with millions of people of the same ethnicity. But they were found and their attacks were prevented because MI5 had a codebook to help them.

'When they were searching some suspects' properties after a series of arrests made in 2003 and early 2004 they came across identical editions of a text called the Book of Proof by a ninth-century Arab writer called al-Jahiz. Both editions had notes-all in English, because the accused didn't have a word of Arabic between them. Some of the notes in each copy were remarkably similar. MI5 photocopied the books, replaced the originals, released the accused and set their code-breakers to work.'

'And when did they share that information with the CNI?'

'October 2004.'

'So what happened with the London bombings of 7th and 21st July 2005?'

'The British think they stopped using the Book of Proof after the May 2005 elections.'

'And now you think you've discovered a new codebook,' said Falcon. 'What about the new copy of the Koran found on the front seat of the Peugeot Partner?'

'We think they were going to prepare another code-book to give to someone.'

'The Imam Abdelkrim Benaboura?'

'We haven't finished searching his apartment,' said Pablo, shrugging.

'That's taken some time.'

'The Imam lived in a two-bedroomed flat in El Cerezo and almost every room is full, floor to ceiling, of books.'

'I don't feel any closer to knowing why you want to recruit Yacoub Diouri.'

'The jihadis are in need of another big coup. Something on the scale of 9/11.'

'But not as "small scale" as a few hundred people killed on trains in Madrid and the underground in London,' said Falcon, not quite able to stomach this level of objectivity.

'I'm not diminishing those atrocities, I'm just saying that they were on a different scale. You'll learn about intelligence work as you do it, Javier; you're not in the trenches, seeing your friends getting killed. It has an effect on your vision,' said Pablo. 'Madrid was timetargeted, with a specific goal. It wasn't a big, bold statement. It was just saying: This is what we can do. There's no comparison to the operation that brought down the Twin Towers. No flight or hijack training. They just had to board trains and leave rucksacks. The most difficult aspect of the operation was to buy and deliver the explosives, and in that we now know they had considerable help from local petty criminals.'

'So what is the big coup?' asked Falcon, uneasy at this breezy talk of death and destruction. 'The World Cup in Germany?'

'No. For the same reason that the Olympics in Greece was untouched. It's just too difficult. The terrorists are competing with specialists who have been planning security at these events for years. Even the buildings are constructed with security in mind. The chances of discovery are increased enormously. Why waste resources?'

Silence, as the Mercedes tyres ripped over the tarmac towards the airport, which was smudged out by the early-morning haze.

'You don't know what it is, do you?' said Falcon. 'You just know it's coming, or maybe you "feel" it's coming.'

'We have no idea,' said Pablo, nodding. 'But we don't just "sense" their desperation, we know it, too. The design of the Twin Towers attack was to generate a fervour in Muslims all over the world, to get them to rise up against the decadent West, which they feel has humiliated them so much over the years, and to turn on their own dictatorial leaders and corrupt governments. It hasn't happened. The disgust level is rising in the Muslim world at what the fanatics are prepared to do-the kidnapping and beheading of people like the aid worker Margaret Hassan, the daily slaughter of Iraqis who just want to have a normal life-these things are not going down well. But the demographics of the Muslim world lean heavily on the side of youth, and a disenfranchised youth likes nothing better than a demonstration of rebel power. And that is what these radicals are in need of now: another symbol of their power, even if it's the last bang before they die out with a whimper.'