Robert Wilson - The Hidden Assassins

'Witnesses plural, you said.'

'There's an old Moroccan guy, but he didn't even spot that the two labourers weren't Spanish.'

'Maybe we should send an artist along to see Jose Duran while he looks at the licensed explosive handlers,' said Ramirez. 'I'll get on to it.'

Falcon gave him his mobile to extract Duran's number. Ramirez left the room.

'I'm concerned that the CNI are either not seeing things straight, or they're not telling us everything we should know,' said del Rey. 'I don't know why they haven't let you into the Imam's apartment yet.'

'They're not concerned about what happened here any more,' said Falcon. 'This explosion was either a mistake or a decoy, and either way there's no point in expending energy to find out very little when there's possibly another, more devastating attack being planned elsewhere.'

'But you don't agree with the CNI's point of view?'

'I think there are two forces at play here,' said Falcon. 'One force is an Islamic terrorist group, who appeared to be planning an attack using hexogen, brought here in the Peugeot Partner and stored in the mosque…'

'An attack on those schools and the biology faculty?'

'Let's see what forensic information we get, if any, from the drawings and the texts,' said Falcon. 'And also the content of the translations.'

'And the other force?'

'I don't know.'

'But how does this force manifest itself?'

'By a breakdown of logic in the scenario,' said Falcon. 'We can't fit the council inspectors and the electricians into our scenario, nor can we explain the Goma 2 Eco.'

'But who do you think this force is?'

'What are these Islamic terrorist groups fighting for, or who do you think they're fighting against?' asked Falcon.

'It's difficult to say. There doesn't seem to be any coherent agenda or strategy. They just seem to be meting out a series of punishments. London and Madrid were supposedly because of Iraq. Nairobi, the USS Cole and the Twin Towers because they believe that America is an evil empire. Bali because of Australian action in East Timor against the Islamic nation of Indonesia. Casablanca was supposedly against Spanish and Jewish targets. Karachi…I don't know; it was the Sheraton, wasn't it?'

'And that's our problem here,' said Falcon. 'We have no idea who their enemy is. Perhaps this other force is just a group of people who've had enough and decided they don't want to be passively terrorized any more. They want to fight back. They want to preserve their way of life-whether it's considered decadent or not. They could be the people behind the VOMIT website. They could be an unknown local Andalucian group who've heard about the MILA and perceived it as a threat to them and their families. Maybe it's a religious group who want to maintain the sanctity of the Catholic faith in Spain and drive Islam back into North Africa. Or perhaps we are even more decadent than we know and this is pure power play. Somebody has seen the political or economic potential in terrifying the population. When those planes hit the Twin Towers everything changed. People see things differently now-both good and bad people. Once a new chapter in the human history of horror has been opened, all sorts of people start applying their creative powers to the writing of its next paragraphs.'

Seville-Thursday, 8th June 2006, 13.10 hrs

'Did you manage to talk to your ex-mentor, Marco Barreda, at Informaticalidad?' asked Falcon.

'I did better than that,' said David Curado. 'I went to see him.'

'How did that go?'

'Well, I called him and started to tell him what you and I talked about, and he stopped me, said it was a pity we hadn't seen each other since I'd left the company and why didn't we meet for a beer and a tapa?'

'Has that happened before?'

'No way, we've only ever talked on the phone,' said Curado. 'I was surprised; you're not even supposed to talk to ex-employees, let alone meet them for a beer.'

'Was it just the two of you?'

'Yes, and it was odd,' said Curado. 'He'd been all enthusiastic on the phone, but when we met it was almost as if he'd changed his mind about the whole thing. He seemed distracted, but I could tell it was an act.'

'How?'

'I told him about our conversation and he barely took any notice,' said Curado. 'But then I asked the question about Ricardo Gamero and he was stunned. I asked him who this Ricardo Gamero was, and he said he was a member of his church who'd committed suicide that afternoon. As you know, I used to go to San Marcos myself and I'd never come across Ricardo Gamero, so I asked him if he'd killed himself because the cops were after him and Marco said that the guy was a cop.'

'How do you think he'd taken the news of Ricardo Gamero's suicide?'

'He was sick about it, I could tell. Very upset, he was.'

'Were they friends?'

'I assume so, but he didn't say.'

Falcon knew he had to speak to Marco Barreda directly. Curado gave him his number. They hung up. Falcon sat back in his car, tapping the steering wheel with his mobile. Had Gamero's suicide made Marco Barreda vulnerable? And if that was a weakness and Falcon could get some leverage, would it reveal enough, would it, in fact, reveal anything?

He had no idea what he was getting into. He had spoken to Juez del Rey about these two forces-Islamic terrorism and another, as yet unknown-both of whom had demonstrated a ruthlessness in their operations, but he knew nothing about their structures, nor their aims, other than a preparedness to kill. Had the one movement learnt from the other: declare no coherent agenda, operate a loose command structure, create selfcontained, unconnected cells who, having been remotely activated, carry out their destructive mission?

Talking this through to himself produced a moment of clarity. That was one cultural difference between Islam and the West: whenever an Islamic attack occurred, the West always looked for the 'mastermind'. There had to be an evil genius at the core, because that was the order that the Western mind demanded: a hierarchy, a plan with an achievable goal. What was the chain?

He worked back from the electrician who'd planted the bomb. He'd been brought in by a call from the Imam, who in turn had been given the electrician's card by Miguel Botin. The card was the connection between the mission and the hierarchy who'd ordered it. Neither the electricians, nor the council inspectors for that matter, had been in the building at the time of the explosion, and both sets of people were as much a part of the plan as the card. This would not be how an Islamic terrorist cell would operate. That would mean, logically, that the only other person who could have activated Miguel Botin was Ricardo Gamero. Why had Gamero committed suicide? Because, in activating Miguel Botin with the electrician's card, Gamero did not realize that he was making him the agent of destruction of the building and all the people inside.

That would be reason enough to take your own life.

On the day of the bombing, the CGI antiterrorist squad couldn't move because of the possibility of a mole in their ranks. Only on day two could Ricardo Gamero have got out and demanded to see someone senior-the older man in the Archaeological Museum-from whom he demanded an explanation. That explanation had not been good enough to prevent his suicide. Falcon called Ramirez.

'Has that police artist come up with a sketch of the man Gamero met in the museum yet?'

'We've just scanned it and sent it to the CNI and CGI.'

'Send a copy to the computer in the pre-school,' said Falcon.

'The witness Jose Duran is due here any moment. We'll show him the shots of the licensed explosive handlers, but I'm not holding out much hope,' said Ramirez. 'The bomb could have been made up by somebody else and left in the mosque, or he could have been an assistant to an explosives expert and learnt everything necessary.'