The Hidden Assassins

10

Seville-Tuesday, 6th June 2006, 13.45 hrs

The meeting broke up with the news that another body had been found in the rubble. Calderon left immediately. The three CNI men spoke intently amongst themselves, while Falcon and Elvira discussed resources. Inspector Jefe Barros of the CGI stared into the floor, his jaw muscles working over some new humiliation. After ten minutes the CNI conferred with Elvira. Falcon and Barros were asked to leave the room. Barros paced the corridor, avoiding Falcon. Some moments later Elvira called Falcon back in and the CNI men moved towards the door, saying that they would conduct a detailed search of Imam Abdelkrim Benaboura's apartment.

'Is that information going to be shared?' asked Falcon.

'Of course,' said Juan, 'unless it compromises national security.'

'I'd like one of my officers to be present.'

'In the light of what's just been said, we have to do it now and you're all too busy.'

They left. Falcon turned to Elvira, hands open, questioning this state of affairs.

'They're determined not to make a mistake this time round,' said Elvira, 'and they want all the credit for it, too. Futures are at stake here.'

'And to what extent do you have control over what they do?'

'Those words "national security" are the problem,' said Elvira. 'For instance, they want to talk to you on a matter of "national security", which means I'm told nothing other than it has to be private and at length.'

'That's not going to be easy today.'

'They'll make time for you-at night, whenever.'

'And "national security" is the only clue they've given?'

'They're interested in your Moroccan connections,' said Elvira, 'and have asked to interview you.'

'Interview me?' said Falcon. 'That sounds like it's for a job and I've already got one of those with plenty of work in it.'

'Where are you going now?'

'I'm tempted to be present at the search of the Imam's apartment,' said Falcon. 'But I think I'm going to follow up the Informaticalidad lead. That's a very strange way to use an apartment for three months.'

'So you're keeping an open mind on this, unlike our CNI friends,' said Elvira, nodding at the door.

'I thought Juan was very eloquent on the subject.'

'That's how they want everybody else to think, so that they've got all their bases covered,' said Elvira, 'but there's no doubt in my mind that they believe they've hit on the beginning of a major Islamic terrorist campaign.'

'To bring Andalucia back into the Islamic fold?'

'Why else would they want to talk to you about your "Moroccan connections"?'

'We don't know what they know.'

'I know that they're seeking redress and greater glory,' said Elvira, 'and that worries me.'

'And what was going on with Inspector Jefe Barros?' asked Falcon. 'He was present but nothing more, as if he'd been told he was allowed to attend but not to say a word.'

'There's a problem, which they will explain to you directly. All I have been told by the head of the CGI in Madrid is that, for the moment, the Seville antiterrorism unit cannot contribute to this investigation.' Consuelo sat in her office in the restaurant in La Macarena. She had kicked off her shoes and was curled up foetally on her new expensive leather office chair, which rocked her gently backwards and forwards. She had a ball of tissue in her hands, which was crammed into her mouth. She bit against it when the physical pain became too much. Her throat tried to articulate the emotion, but it had no reference points. Her body felt like ruptured earth, spewing up sharp chunks of magma.

The television was on. She had not been able to bear the silence of the restaurant. The chefs weren't due to start preparing the lunch service until 11 a.m. She had tried to walk her extreme agitation out of herself, but her tour of the spotless kitchen, with its gleaming stainless steel surfaces, its knives and cleavers winking encouragement at her, had terrified rather than calmed. She'd walked the dining rooms and the patio, but none of the smells, the textures, not even the obsessive order of the table settings could fill this aching emptiness pressing against her ribs.

She had retreated to her office, locked herself in. The volume of the television was turned low so that she couldn't make out the words, but she took comfort from the human murmur. She looked out of the corner of her eye at the images of destruction playing on the screen. There was the sharp smell of vomit in the room as she'd just thrown up at the sight of the tiny bodies under their pinafores outside the pre-school. Tears tracked mascara down her cheeks. The mouth side of the ball of tissue was slimy with sharp saliva. Something had been levered open; the lid was no longer on whatever it was she had inside her, and she, who had always prided herself on her courage to face up to things, could not bear to take a look. She squeezed her eyes shut at a new rising of pain. The chair empathized with the shudder of her body. Her throat squealed as if there was something sharp lodged across it.

The destroyed apartment block flickered on the screen in the corner of her eye. She couldn't bear to switch off the TV and live with the only other occupant of the silence, even though the building's collapse was an appalling replication of her own mental state. Only a few hours ago she had been more or less whole. She had always imagined the gap between sanity and madness as a yawning chasm, but now found it was like a border in the desert: you didn't know whether you'd crossed it or not.

The TV pictures changed from the piles of rubble to a body bag being lifted into a cradle stretcher, to the wounded, staggering down pavements, to the jagged edges of shattered windows, to the trees stripped of all their leaves, to cars upside down in gardens, to a road sign speared into the earth. These TV news editors must be professionals in horror, every image was like a slap to the face, knocking a complacent public into the new reality.

Then calm returned. A presenter stood in front of the church of San Hermenegildo. He had a friendly face. Consuelo turned up the sound in the hope of good news. The camera zoomed in on the plaque and dropped back down to the presenter, who was now walking and giving a brief history of the church. The camera remained tight on the presenter's face. There was an inexplicable tension in the scene. Something was coming. The suspense transfixed Consuelo. The presenter's voice told them that this was the site of an old mosque and the camera cut to the apex of a classic Arabic arch. Its focus pulled wide to reveal the new horror. Written in red over the doors were the words: AHORA ES NUESTRA. Now it is ours.

The screen filled again with another montage of horror. Women screaming for no apparent reason. Blood on the pavements, in the gutter, thickening the dust. A body, with the terrible sag of lifelessness, being lifted out of the ruins.

She couldn't bear the sight of any more. These cameramen must be robots to handle this horror. She turned the TV off and sat in the silence of the office.

The images had jolted her. The lid seemed to have slipped back over the darkness welling inside her chest. Her hands trembled, but she no longer needed to bite on the ball of tissue. The shame of her first consultation with Alicia Aguado came back to her. Consuelo pressed her hands to her cheekbones as she remembered her words: 'blind bitch'. How could she have said such a thing? She picked up the phone.

Alicia Aguado was relieved to hear Consuelo's voice. Her concern raised emotion in Consuelo's throat. Nobody ever cared about her. She stumbled through an apology.

'I've been called worse than that,' said Aguado. 'Given that we're the most inventive insulters in the world, you can imagine the special reserves that are drawn on when it comes to psychologists.'

'It was unforgivable.'

'All will be forgiven as long as you come and see me again, Sra Jimenez.'

'Call me Consuelo. After what we've been through, all formality is out of the window,' she said. 'When can you see me?'

'I'd like to see you tonight, but it won't be possible before 9 p.m.'

'Tonight?'

'I'm very concerned about you. I wouldn't normally ask, but…'

'But what?'

'I think you've reached a very dangerous point.'

'Dangerous? Dangerous to whom?'

'You have to promise me something, Consuelo,' said Aguado. 'You have to come directly here to me after work, and when our consultation is over you must go straight home and have somebody-a relative or a friend-to be there with you.'

Silence from Consuelo.

'I could ask my sister, I suppose,' she said.

'It's very important,' said Aguado. 'I think you've realized the extreme vulnerability of your state, so I would recommend that you confine yourself to home, work and my consulting room.'

'Can you just explain that to me?'

'Not now over the phone, face to face this evening,' she said. 'Remember, come straight to me. You must resist all temptations to any diversion, however strong the urge.' Manuela Falcon sat in Angel's big comfortable chair in front of the television. She was now incapable of movement, with not even the strength to reach for the remote and shut down the screen, which was transferring the horror images directly to her mind. The police were evacuating El Corte Ingles in the Plaza del Duque after four reports of suspicious packages on different floors of the department store. Two sniffer dogs and their handlers arrived to patrol the building. The image cut to a deserted crossroads in the heart of the city, with shoes scattered over the cobbles and people running towards the Plaza Nueva. Manuela felt pale, with just the minimum quantity of blood circulating around her head and face to maintain basic oxygenation and brain function. Her extremities were freezing, despite the open door to the terrace and the temperature outside steadily rising.

The telephone had rung once since Angel had left for the ABC offices where he hoped to put his finger to the thready pulse of a convulsing city. She'd had the strength then to answer it. Her lawyer had asked whether she'd seen the television and then told her that the Sevillana buyer had pulled out with an excuse about her 'black' money not being ready and that she would have to postpone the signing of the deed.

'That's not going to stop her from losing her deposit,' said Manuela, still able to raise some aggression.

'Have you been listening to what Canal Sur have been reporting?' said the lawyer. 'They've found a van with traces of a military explosive in the back. The editor of the ABC in Madrid was sent a letter from al-Qaeda saying that they would not rest until Andalucia was back in the Islamic fold. There's some security expert saying that this is the start of a major terrorist campaign and there'll be more attacks in the coming days.'

'Fucking hell,' said Manuela, jamming a cigarette into her mouth, lighting it.

'So that 20,000 deposit your buyer might lose is looking like a cheap way out for her.'

'What about the German's lawyer, has he called yet?'

'Not yet, but he's going to.'

Manuela had clicked off the phone and let it fall in her lap. She smoked on automatic with great fervour, and the nicotine surge enabled her to call Angel, whose mobile was off. They couldn't find him in the ABC offices, which sounded like the trading floor in the first minutes of a black day for the markets. Her lawyer called again.

'The German has pulled out. I've called the notary's office and all deed signings have been cancelled for the day. There's been an announcement on the TV and radio, the Jefe Superior de la Policia and the chief of the emergency services have told us to only use mobile phones if absolutely necessary.' The workshop was in a courtyard up an old alleyway with massive grey cobbles, off Calle Bustos Tavera. Marisa Moreno had rented it purely because of this alleyway. On bright sunny days, such as this one, the light in the courtyard was so intense that nothing could be discerned from within the darkness of the twenty-five-metre alleyway. The cobbles were like pewter ingots and drew her on. Her attraction to this alleyway was that it coincided with her vision of death. Its arched interior was not pretty, with crappy walls, a collection of fuse boxes and electric cables running over crumbling whitewashed plaster. But that was the point. It was a transference from this messy, material world to the cleansing white light beyond. There was, however, disappointment in the courtyard, to find that paradise was a broken-down collection of shabby workshops and storage houses, with peeling paint, wrought-iron grilles and rusted axles.

It was only a five-minute walk from her apartment on Calle Hiniesta to her workshop, which was another reason she'd rented somewhere too big for her needs. She occupied the first floor, accessed via an iron staircase to the side. It had a huge window overlooking the courtyard, which gave light and great heat in the summer. Marisa liked to sweat; that was the Cuban in her. She often worked in bikini briefs and liked the way the wood chips from her carving stuck to her skin.

That morning she'd left her apartment and taken a coffee in one of the bars on Calle Vergara. The bar was unusually packed, with all heads turned to the television. She ordered her cafe con leche, drank it and left, refusing all attempts by the locals to involve her in any debate. She had no interest in politics, she didn't believe in the Catholic Church or any other organized religion, and, as far as she was concerned, terrorism only mattered if you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In the studio she worked on staining two carvings and polishing another two, ready for delivery. By midday she had them rolled in bubblewrap and was down in the courtyard waiting for a taxi.

A young Mexican dealer, who had a gallery in the centre on Calle Zaragoza, had bought the two pieces. He was part Aztec, and Marisa had had an affair with him a few months before she'd met Esteban Calderon. He still bought every carving she made and paid cash on delivery every time. To see them greet each other you might have thought they were still seeing each other, but it was more of a blood understanding, his Aztec and her African.

Esteban Calderon knew nothing of this. He'd never seen her workshop. She didn't have any of her work in her apartment. He knew she carved wood, but she made it sound as if it was in the past. That was the way she wanted it. She hated listening to Westerners talking about art. They didn't seem to grasp that appreciation was the other way around: let the piece talk to you.

Marisa dropped off her two finished pieces and took her money. She went to a tobacconist and bought herself a Cuban cigar-a Churchill from the Romeo y Julieta brand. She walked past the Archivo de las Indias and the Alcazar. The tourists were not quite as numerous as usual, but still there, and seemingly oblivious to the bomb which had gone off on the other side of the city, proving her point that terrorism only mattered if it directly affected you.

She walked through the Barrio Santa Cruz and into the Murillo Gardens to indulge in her after-sales ritual. She sat on a park bench, unscrewed the aluminium cap of the cylinder and let the cigar fall into her palm. She smoked it under the palm trees, imagining herself back in Havana. Ines had pulled herself together after fifteen minutes weeping. Her stomach couldn't take it any more. The tensing of her abdominals was agony. She had crawled to the shower, pulled off her nightdress and slumped in the tray, keeping her burning scalp out from under the fine needles of water.

After another quarter of an hour she had been able to stand, although not straight because of the pain in her side. She dressed in a dark suit with a high-collared cream blouse and put on heavy make-up. There was no bruising to disguise but she needed a full mask to get through the morning. She found some aspirin, which took the edge off the pain so that she could walk without being creased over to one side. Normally she would walk to work, but that was out of the question this morning and she took a taxi. That was the first she knew of the bomb. The radio was full of it. The driver talked non-stop. She sat in the back, silent behind her dark glasses until the driver, unnerved by her lack of response, asked if she was ill. She told him she had a lot on her mind. That was enough. At least he knew she was hearing him. He went into a long soliloquy about terrorism, how the only cure for this disease was to get rid of the lot of them.

'Who?' asked Ines.

'Muslims, Africans, Arabs…the whole lot. Get shot of them all. Spain should be for the Spanish,' he said. 'What we need now are the old Catholic kings. They understood the need to be pure. They knew what they had to do…'

'So you're including the Jews in this mass exile?' she asked.

'No, no, no que no, the Jews are all right. It's these Moroccans, Algerians and Tunisians. They're all fanatics. They can't control their religious fervour. What are they doing, blowing up an apartment block? What does that prove?'

'It proves how powerful indiscriminate terror can be,' she said, feeling her whole chest about to burst open. 'We're no longer safe in our own homes.'

The Palacio de Justicia was frantic as usual. She slowly went up to her office on the second floor, which she shared with two other fiscales, state prosecutors. She was determined not to show the pain each step unleashed in her side. Having wanted to wear the badge of his violence, she now wanted to disguise her agony.

The mask of her make-up got her through the first excited minutes with her colleagues, who were full of the latest rumour and theory, with hardly a fact between them. Nobody associated Ines with emotional wreckage so they glided over the surface and went back to their work unaware of her state.

There were cases to prepare and meetings to be attended and Ines got through it all until the early afternoon when she found herself with a spare halfhour. She decided to go for a walk in the Murillo Gardens, which were just across the avenue. The gardens would calm her down and she wouldn't have to listen to any more conjecture about the bomb. She had the little grenade attack in her relationship to consider. She knew a breather in the park wasn't going to help her sort it out, but at least she might be able to find something around which to start rebuilding her collapsed marriage.

Over the last four years when things had been going wrong for Ines in her marriage she played herself a film loop. It was the edited version of her life with Esteban. It never started with their meeting each other and the subsequent affair, because that would mean the film started with her infidelity, and she did not see herself as somebody who broke her marriage vows. In her movie she was unblemished. She had rewritten her private history and cut out all images that did not meet with her approval. This was not a conscious act. There was no facing up to unfortunate episodes or personal embarrassments, they were simply forgotten.

This movie would have been immensely dull to anyone who was not Ines. It was propaganda. No better than a dictator's glorious biopic. Ines was the courageous fiancee who had picked up her husband-to-be after the nasty little incident that they never talked about, given him the care and attention he needed to get his career back on track…and so it went on. And it worked. For her. After each of his discovered infidelities she'd played the movie and it had given her strength; or rather it had given her something to record over Esteban's previous aberration, so that she only suffered from one of his infidelities at a time, and not the whole history.

This time, as she sat on the park bench playing her film, something went wrong. She couldn't hold the images. It was as if the film was jumping out of the sprockets and letting an alien image flood into her private theatre: someone with long coppery hair, dark skin and splayed legs. This visual interference was shorting out her internal comfort loop. Ines gathered the amnesiac forces of her considerable mind by pressing her hands to the sides of her head and blinkering her eyes. It was then that she realized that it was something on the outside, forcing its way in. Reality was intruding. The copper-haired, dark-skinned whore she'd seen only this morning, naked, on her husband's digital camera was sitting opposite her, smoking a cigar without a care in the world. Marisa didn't like the way the woman sitting on the bench on the other side of the shaded pathway was looking at her. She had the intensity of a lunatic about her; not the raving-in-the-asylum type but a more dangerous version: too thin, too chic, too shallow. She'd come across them at the Mexican dealer's gallery openings, all on the verge of a nervous breakdown. They filled the air with high-pitched chatter to keep the real world from bursting through the levee, as if, by chanting their consumer mantras, the great nothing that was going on in their lives would be kept at bay. In the gallery she tolerated their presence as they might buy her work, but out in the open she was not going to have one of these cabras ricas ruining her expensive cigar.

'What you looking at?' said Marisa. 'You're ruining my cigar, you know that?'

It took a moment for Ines, fluttering her eyelids in astonishment, to realize that this was directed at her. Then the adrenaline kicked into her prosecutorial system. Here was a confrontation. She was good at those.

'I'm looking at you. La puta con el puro,' said Ines. The whore with the cigar.

Marisa uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, with her elbows on her knees, to get a good look at her heavily made-up adversary. She didn't stop to think too long.

'Hey, look, you bony-assed bitch, I'm sorry if I'm on your patch, but I'm not working, I'm just enjoying a cigar.'

The insult slashed across Ines's face leaving it red with outrage. The blood dimmed Ines's vision at the edges and played havoc with her oral-cerebral linkage.

'I'm a fucking lawyer!' she roared, and the people in the park stopped to look.

'Lawyers are the biggest whores of them all,' said Marisa. 'Is that why you paint your face like that? To hide the pox?'

Ines leapt to her feet, forgetting her injuries. Even in her fury she felt that twinge in her side, the bumping of her bruised organs, and it was that which stopped her from a full physical onslaught. That, and the force field of Marisa's languid muscularity, and impassive vocal brutality.

'You are the whore,' she said, pointing a spindly white finger at Marisa's lustrous, mulatto sheen. 'You're the one fucking my husband.'

The shock that registered in Marisa's face encouraged Ines, who had misread it as consternation.

'How much is he paying you?' asked Ines. 'It doesn't look as if it's much more than 15 Euros a night, and that's a disgrace. That's not even minimum wage. Or does he throw in the copper wig and buy you a fat cigar to keep you happy when he's not there?'

Marisa instantly recovered from the revelation that this was the pale, pathetic, stringy little wife that Esteban couldn't bear to go back to. She'd also seen that wince of pain as Ines had got to her feet and guessed at the hurt being disguised by the clownish panstick. She'd seen beaten women in the poverty of Havana and she could spot vulnerability at a hundred metres, and she had the ruthlessness to open it up and reveal it to its owner and the rest of the world.

'Just remember, Ines,' she said, 'that when he's beating you, it's because he's been fucking me so beautifully, all night, that he can't bear the sight of your disappointed little face in the morning.'

The sound of her name coming out of the mulatto's mouth made Ines catch her breath with a loud cluck. Thereafter the words sliced through her with the ferocity of blasted glass. The arrogance of her own anger disappeared. She felt the shame of being stripped naked in public with all eyes on her.

Marisa saw the fight go out of her and watched the sag in Ines's shoulders with some satisfaction. She felt no pity; she'd suffered much worse when she'd lived in America. In fact the thin white hand with which Ines now held her side, no longer able to disguise the pain, only made Marisa think of other possibilities. Fate had brought them together and now it was up to one to shape the destiny of the other.