Robert Wilson - The Hidden Assassins

'He was a convert,' said Falcon. 'He took his religion very seriously. It's difficult to know what sort of impression a charismatic radical preacher could make on someone like that. We have the example of Mohammed Sidique Khan, one of the London bombers, who was transformed from a special needs teacher into a radical militant.'

'We don't know what the relationship between Miguel Botin and his injured brother was like, either,' said Ramirez.

'I'm also uncomfortable about the electricians and the fake council inspectors. I don't buy the CNI line that they were a terrorist cell. The CNI seem to me to be trying to cram square information into a round hole.'

There was a knock at the door. A policeman put his head round.

'The forensics have been working their way through the rubble above the storeroom in the mosque,' he said. 'They've found a fireproof, shock-proof metal box. It's been taken to the forensic tent and they thought you might like to be there when they open it.'

Seville-Thursday, 8th June 2006, 12.18 hrs

Outside the pre-school everybody was wearing masks against the stench and Falcon, Ramirez and del Rey walked with their hands clasped over their mouths and noses. There was an anteroom to the main body of the forensics' tent, where they all dressed in white hooded boiler suits and put on masks. The interior of the tent was air conditioned down to 22°C. Five forensic teams were currently working at the site. All of them had stopped for the opening of the box. Something within the human psyche making it impossible, even for forensics, to resist the mystery of a closed, secure container.

A dictaphone was tested and set in the middle of the table. The leader of the forensic team nodded to the judge and detectives as they gathered around. His hands, in latex gloves, were spread on either side of a red metal box. Next to him was a shallow cardboard evidence box, dated and with the address of the Imam's apartment on the lid. Inside were three small plastic bags containing keys. A white-suited figure nudged into Falcon. It was Gregorio.

'This could be interesting if those keys open that box,' he said. 'Two sets came from the desk and one from the kitchen of the Imam's apartment.'

'Are we ready?' asked the forensics team leader. 'Here we are on Thursday, 8th June 2006 at 12.24 hours. We have a sealed metal box, which has sustained some blast damage to the lid, although the lock still appears to be sound. We are going to attempt to open this box, using keys taken from the Imam's apartment during a search of those premises on Wednesday, 7th June 2006.'

He rejected the first sachet of keys but selected the next one and poured the two keys into his hand. He fitted one of the identical keys into the lock, turned it, and the lid sprang open.

'The box has been successfully opened by a key found in the kitchen drawer of the Imam's apartment.'

He opened the lid and lifted out three coloured plastic folders, thick with folded paper. This emptied the box, which was removed to another table. He opened up the first green folder.

'Here we have one sheet of writing in Arabic script, which has been paper-clipped to what appears to be a set of architect's drawings.'

He opened out the drawings, which proved to be a detailed plan of a secondary school in San Bernardo. The other two folders followed the same pattern. The second set of drawings featured the plan of a primary school in Triana, and the third, the biology faculty on Avenida de la Reina Mercedes.

Silence, while the men and women of the forensic teams contemplated their find. Falcon could feel the minds in the room working their way towards more and more uneasy conclusions. Each Islamic terrorist atrocity had released new viral strains of horror into the body of the West. No sooner had the West become reconciled to men as bombs, than they had to accept women as bombs, and even children as bombs. It seemed sickeningly obvious now that car bombs would transmute to boats as bombs, and then planes as bombs. Finally the atrocities would no longer remain at a distance in the Middle East, Far East or America, but come to Madrid and London. Then there was the unimaginable. The stuff that would make a horror novelist tremble at night: executions beamed around the world of men and women being beheaded with kitchen knives. And finally Beslan: children held hostage, given no food or water, explosives hung over their heads. How is an ordinary mind supposed to work under these conditions of easy contagion?

'Were they going to blow these places up?' asked a voice.

'Take hostages,' said a woman. 'Look, they're after kids from five years old up to twenty-five years old.'

'Bastards.'

'Is there nothing these people won't do? Are there no fucking boundaries?'

'I think,' said Juez del Rey, quick to put a lid on the mounting hysteria, 'that we should wait until we have translations of the Arabic script in our hands before we jump to conclusions.'

It was not the voice of reason that people wanted to hear. Not just yet, anyway. They'd been waiting a long time to get their hands on solid evidence and now they'd found something spectacular they wanted to vent some of their anger. Del Rey sensed this. He moved things along once more.

'As a precaution, these three buildings should be searched. If there was a plan to seize them it's possible that weaponry has been stored there.'

Everybody nodded, glad to see that even the man from Madrid suffered the same paranoia, the same corrupted brain circuit as themselves.

'Let's get these drawings and the Arabic texts through the forensic process as soon as possible. We need those translations fast,' he said.

'There's something else,' said the forensics team leader. 'The bomb disposal people have come across something interesting on the explosives front.'

An army officer in white overalls with a green armband pushed his way through to the table.

'So far we've only had full access to the area above the storeroom, because there's no evidence of bodies or human tissue. We still believe that the main destructive explosion was caused by a large quantity of hexogen being detonated, but we have also found trace evidence of Goma 2 Eco, which is the mining explosive that was used in the Madrid bombings.'

'Did one set off the other?'

'It's certainly possible, but we have no way of proving it.'

'Is there any reason why two types of explosive would be used?'

'Goma 2 Eco is industrial quality, whereas hexogen is military. If you have a large quantity of hexogen, which has greater brisance than Goma 2 Eco, I don't see why you'd use a lower grade explosive, unless your intention was to cause other distracting explosions, or to hold people in a state of fear.'

'You estimated the hexogen stored in the building to be in the region of 100 kilos,' said del Rey.

'Conservative estimate.'

'What sort of damage would 100 kilos do to these schools and the university faculty on these drawings?'

'A real expert, who understood the architecture of the buildings, could probably raze them to the ground,' said the army officer. 'But it would be a demolition job. They would have to drill into the reinforced skeleton of the building and wire the charges together for a simultaneous explosion.'

'And what about people?'

'If everyone was herded into one or two rooms of each building, with 30 kilos of hexogen there would be no, or only very few, survivors.'

'Is it possible for you to tell how much Goma 2 Eco exploded in the storeroom of the mosque?'

'Personally, I would say 25 kilos or less, but I wouldn't be able to stand up in court and say that, because the hexogen trace is too dominant.'

'Is hexogen manufactured in Spain?'

'No. The UK, Italy, Germany, USA and Russia,' he said. 'They probably make it in China, too, but they're not telling us if they are.'