The Ignoranceof Blood

18

Santa Maria La Blanca, Seville – Monday, 18th September 2006, 20.15 hrs

They were sitting outside in the square in front of the church of Santa Maria La Blanca, which had just turned golden in the late evening light. Jackets were on the back of their chairs, top buttons undone, ties loosened. Beers stood in frosted glasses in front of them and a girl offloaded plates of jamon, fried anchovies, patatas bravas in a piquant tomato sauce, and some bread and olives. The talk was of Nikita Sokolov, but it was vague, amused, slightly fatigued after a working weekend and a long Monday.

'OK, so let's think about this scientifically,' said Ramirez. 'How tall do you think Sokolov is?'

'He's small – one metre sixty-six,' said Cortes. 'The closer you are to the ground, the less distance you have to lift the weights. And he's probably at least ten kilos heavier than he was in his Olympic days. I'd say closer to ninety kilos. I think a.38 is the bare minimum you'd need to knock someone like that over.'

'How high is the table in El Pulmon's apartment, Emilio?'

'Seventy-five centimetres.'

'Add two for the gun, that's seventy-seven,' said Ramirez. 'Where would a bullet have hit a guy one metre sixty-six tall?'

'In the leg or hip, if you're normal,' said Falcon. 'But Carlos Puerta didn't describe Sokolov as limping when he got into his car after the shooting.'

'Puerta's not reliable.'

'He could have been hit on the hand or wrist,' said Falcon.

'But would a hand or wrist injury have knocked him over?' asked Cortes.

'He might have dropped to the floor as a reflex action to the shock of the noise,' said Falcon. 'It was hot, no air-con in the apartment; El Pulmon would have been in a shirt, nowhere to pack his gun, so he hid it under the magazine. All he wanted was a bang to distract everybody in the room and make his move. Sokolov hit the deck as an evasive action.'

'But he was hit,' said Ramirez. 'A wrist or a hand shot is a better explanation of the dripping blood. Bleeding from the leg would get soaked into the trousers, the drips wouldn't be so consistent in the room or going down the stairs.'

'All the drips were on the right-hand side of the stairs going down,' said Emilio.

'OK, right hand or wrist, maybe right leg or hip,' said Ramirez. 'The next question is: who is Nikita Sokolov working for?'

'If he's a friend of Vasili Lukyanov, and we think Lukyanov was defecting from Leonid Revnik to Yuri Donstov, then…' said Falcon.

'And we haven't seen Sokolov on the Costa del Sol for a while.'

'My intelligence source told me that Yuri Donstov had set up a heroin-smuggling route from Uzbekistan to Europe and chose Seville as his centre of operations,' said Falcon. 'El Pulmon was a heroin dealer. The Narcs say that the heroin coming into Las Tres Mil always used to be Italian product, then things started changing. It looks to me as if Nikita Sokolov was trying to create an exclusive market for Donstov's product in Las Tres Mil and, for one reason or another, El Pulmon was not in agreement.'

They worked on the tapas for a few minutes, drank beer. Ramirez ordered more.

'Do you think it was Revnik or Donstov who was involved in the 6th June bombing?' asked Cortes.

'CICO in Madrid think Yuri Donstov has been operating since September 2005, which is about nine months before the 6th June bombing,' said Falcon. 'I'm not sure that's long enough to develop a conspiracy of that complexity.'

'All they had to do was plant a small bomb,' said Perez.

'But a lot had to be put in place beforehand. Think about the political element: the Fuerza Andalucia party, the creation of their new leader,' said Falcon. 'I don't think a businessman like Lucrecio Arenas would have allowed anybody into the conspiracy who he hadn't been doing business with for quite some time. I always thought that he was dealing with people whose money he'd moved around the world while he was working at the Banco Omni, but maybe I'm wrong.'

'So you favour Leonid Revnik as the perpetrator?' asked Diaz. 'Except that he'd only been in place since his predecessor fled to Dubai in June 2005.'

'I suppose I do. There's no reason why Revnik and his predecessor shouldn't have been in contact with each other,' said Falcon. 'But having just learnt about Yuri Donstov, I'm beginning to think he might have found a role for himself in a new conspiracy that has its roots in the 6th June bombing. That was an attempt to gain political power in the whole of Andalucia. Now I think the sights have been lowered. Donstov seems to be shaping up to run a major criminal enterprise. The delivery of the disks by Vasili Lukyanov was a crucial element, not just in the enterprise, but in a more localized project. The disks are going to give him leverage, especially with I4IT and Horizonte, whose executives had been filmed in compromising situations.'

'What is this project?' asked Diaz.

'I don't know,' said Falcon. 'But I think this time it's not about political power but more about money.'

'We didn't talk about the money,' said Ramirez. 'I forgot to mention that this afternoon Prosegur took away the money found in the boot of Vasili Lukyanov's Range Rover. It's in the Banco de Bilbao now.'

'How much?' asked Diaz.

'Seven million, seven hundred and forty-eight thousand two hundred euros,' said Ramirez. 'I was there when Elvira signed it off.'

'You know, Javier, if you're looking to nail the Russians for the June 6th bombing I doubt you're going to be able to do it through Nikita Sokolov,' said Cortes. 'I don't think he's the sort of guy who's going to talk. You might be able to stick him with the murders in Las Tres Mil, but that's not going to help you. He's a vor-v-zakone, and their code, like the Sicilian mafia's omerta, is silence.'

'And the big names we're talking about, they're invisible men,' said Diaz. 'We only got a photograph of Revnik's predecessor at the beginning of 2005. We have no shot of Leonid Revnik and only the old gulag shot of Yuri Donstov. All these guys could walk past us in the street and we wouldn't know.'

'And not one of the current charges against Revnik's predecessor is murder,' said Cortes. 'He was arrested for money-laundering, falsifying documents, fraudulent bankruptcies and being a member of a criminal organization. No drugs. No people-trafficking. No extortion. No murder.'

A mobile vibrated. Perez took the call.

'Do you have anybody on the inside of Revnik's gang?' said Falcon, looking at Cortes and Diaz.

'We have informers,' said Diaz.

'How high up the ladder?' said Falcon. 'All these gangster-owned businesses must be run by local people.'

'But none of them get anywhere near Revnik,' said Cortes.

Diaz exchanged a look with Cortes, whose shake of the head was barely perceptible in the dying light in the square.

'That was Traffic,' said Perez. 'They've found El Pulmon's car in Calle Hernan Ruiz. There's a bloodstained T-shirt on the back seat. I'd better get down there.'

'Take Felipe from Forensics with you,' said Ramirez, sighing. 'I'll come too; it's on my way.'

Falcon paid the bill, exchanged phone numbers with Cortes and Diaz, who were still finishing their beers. He headed back to the Palacio de Justicia to pick up his car.

They caught up with him in the Murillo Gardens.

'Sorry about that, Javier,' said Cortes. 'We just had to get clearance before we talked to you about our informers and we didn't want to do it in company.'

'We have just developed an informer close to Leonid Revnik,' said Diaz. 'She's a twenty-five-year-old woman from Malaga…'

'Who is completely fucking gorgeous,' said Cortes. 'She could be having the time of her life with any footballer or film star you'd care to name, but she, the poor stupid bitch, has chosen a gangster by the name of Viktor Belenki.'

'I've heard that name before,' said Falcon, remembering Pablo from the CNI mentioning him. 'He's Revnik's right-hand man and runs all his construction companies in the Costa del Sol. So, why does the girl inform on him?'

'We're still right at the beginning of developing her,' said Cortes. 'Last month we found her brother on a yacht with some of his stupid friends and seven hundred kilos of hashish, and he's not the sort of kid who'd last very long in a high-security prison.'

'Does she have a name?'

'At the moment we're calling her Carmen,' said Diaz. The light was out over the doorway to Falcon's house on Calle Bailen. He reversed up and left the car on the cobbles between the orange trees. As he went up to the door he stumbled and a streak of fear flashed through his guts as someone came from the shadows and caught him by the arm.

'Steady on, Javier,' said Mark Flowers. 'Been drinking?'

'I've had a couple of beers, but not nearly enough,' said Falcon. 'I was wondering when you'd come…'

'Crawling out of the woodwork?'

'To see me.'

'Well, here I am,' said Flowers. 'Shall we go in?'

Falcon never knew where he stood with Mark Flowers, but then, that was the way Flowers liked it. He wanted to be unreadable. What was the point of being a Communications Officer in the American Consulate in Seville if the whole world could tell that you were really a CIA operative reporting to Madrid?

Flowers was a handsome fifty-four-year-old, much married and divorced. His hair had thinned dramatically over the last couple of years so that he'd had to resort to the comb-over. The hair should have been grey, too, but he dyed it. And Falcon suspected that, during a long vacation in the United States, Flowers had resorted to some plastic surgery around his eyes and neck.

'Are you in mourning, Mark?' asked Falcon, now realizing the reason why he hadn't been able to see Flowers outside was that he was dressed completely in black.

'It makes me look slim,' said Flowers, shaking the loose short-sleeved shirt out over his thickened stomach. 'You get to my age and weight and you need all the help you can get.'

They came into the patio of the house, the bronze boy was running across the fountain, the water was as flat as a mirror.

'Shall we sit out?' said Falcon. 'You'll want a whisky. I suppose you've already eaten.'

'You know me, Javier. I'm all done by six thirty.'

'Glenlivet?'

'That's a nice change from the usual peat bog you serve.'

'As you know, I went to London,' said Falcon. 'And I'm always thinking of you.'

'Ice, no water,' said Flowers.

Falcon went to the kitchen, came back with the drinks. A cold beer for himself. Some olives. A bowl of crisps.

'I've had some long days recently,' said Falcon, handing him the tumbler of whisky. 'Lost track of where I am. What time is it?'

Flowers was just about to look at his watch. Remembered.

'You're not going to catch me out that easily, Javier.'

It was their little joke since Falcon had noticed Flowers looking ostentatiously at his watch one day – a Patek Philippe. At the time it had meant nothing to Falcon, until he saw in an in-flight magazine that it retailed for €19,500. He'd brought this up with Flowers, who'd said: 'You never actually own a Patek Philippe, Javier. You merely look after it for the next generation.' Later Falcon had found out that Flowers had quoted him the strap line from the Patek Philippe advertisement, and he'd started teasing him. One of the reasons Falcon did this was to feel more relaxed in the company of a man he did not entirely trust.

'Long days,' said Flowers, setting his tumbler down on the table, 'in London.'

'And here.'

'What's happening here?'

'Consuelo's youngest child was kidnapped on Saturday while I was in London.'

Flowers nodded. He knew that. Which meant that he'd spoken to the CNI.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'That's a big pressure. What the fuck is that all about, Javier?'

Falcon recited the litany about Marisa Moreno and the threatening phone calls from the Russians. Flowers wanted to know how the Russians got into the mix and Falcon began at the beginning with Lukyanov's car accident, the money, the disks and Ferrera making the link to Marisa's sister, Margarita.

'That is some heavy police work, Javier.'

'I've got a very good squad. They're all prepared to do that little bit extra, and that's where you get your breaks,' said Falcon. 'You might be interested in the identity of one of the guys we saw on the disks.'

'Don't tell me it was somebody in the American Consulate – I have to look them in the eye every day.'

'A guy called Juan Valverde.'

Flowers didn't react.

'Should I have heard of him?' asked Flowers. 'If he's a soccer player, I'm lost, Javier.'

'You remember that company I asked you to investigate for me back in June?'

'I4IT, owned by Cortland Fallenbach and Morgan Havilland.'

'Juan Valverde is their Chief Executive Officer in Europe,' said Falcon. 'Do you know if they have any investment plans for Seville, or in southern Spain?'

'I just got the information you asked for back in June,' said Flowers. 'I'm not following their stock, Javier.'

'There's another guy on those disks you will have heard of.'

'Try me.'

'Charles Taggart.'

'The fallen preacher?'

'He's a consultant for I4IT.'

'On what?' asked Flowers brutally.

'Religious matters?' said Falcon, and they both laughed. 'I thought you were supposed to be a reformed sinner to be a part of I4IT.'

'Once a sinner, always a sinner,' said Flowers. 'I don't believe in this redemption shit: confess your sins, clean your slate, get out there and commit some more. Just keeps the Church in work.'

'What do you do with your sins, Mark?'

'Keep them to myself,' said Flowers. 'If I confessed them all, I'd age a priest, and myself, by a hundred years.'

'What was your line, Mark?' said Falcon. 'It takes a profound moral certitude to behave immorally.'

'In the spy game, Javier,' said Flowers.

They drank. Flowers breathed in the heavy night air and crunched ice with his teeth.

'London,' said Flowers. 'You know how it happened? I got a call from my station head in Madrid telling me that you're running a rogue agent and the Brits are… what was that expression they use? Hopping mad. I like that. I said: "How can he be running a rogue agent? If an agent's gone rogue, nobody's running him." So what the fuck are you doing, Javier?'

'I have an agent…'

'Let's call him Yacoub, so we don't get confused,' said Flowers. 'He is your only agent.'

'Yacoub is under extraordinary pressure.'

'What did he expect, going into this business?' said Flowers. 'Pressure's what we've lived on since the beginning of time, since we've felt the need for our genes to survive, since the first cavewoman saw her man asleep on the floor and thought he should be out hunting. Pressure is a constant. It's like gravity, without it we'd drift aimlessly.'

'I know what pressure is, Mark,' said Falcon. 'If your station head is talking to the British then you'll know that the GICM have recruited Yacoub's son, Abdullah, as a mujahideen.'

'That's almost standard procedure for an agent like Yacoub,' said Flowers. 'A group like that won't expose themselves to an outsider with questionable friends and lifestyle without getting some insurance.'

'I didn't see it.'

'That's because you're an amateur,' said Flowers. 'A raw recruit, who was doing the recruiting. The senior CNI guy, Juan, he would have seen it even if Pablo didn't. They just wouldn't have told you about it. Didn't want to confuse your mind.'

'You mean they didn't want me to fail in my recruiting mission.'

Flowers shrugged, throwing up his hands, as if it was all so obvious it wasn't worth talking about.

'This is the problem I've got with Yacoub,' said Falcon. 'He doesn't trust anybody any more. He describes himself as being in the goldfish bowl, with all these agencies and his enemies looking on.'

'Maybe more like a murky aquarium,' said Flowers. 'I hear he's good at keeping himself out of sight when he wants to.'

'Wouldn't you?'

'I've got nothing to hide.'

'You still hide it.'

'Look, Javier, Yacoub is a valuable asset. He's the perfect agent, who has got to the heart of the enemy. We all have a vested interest in keeping him and his son alive and happy. We want the sort of intelligence he can give us,' said Flowers. 'We, more than anybody else, understand what he's going through. There's no reason for him – or you – to stop talking to us. It's the only way we can help.'

'When I was about to recruit Yacoub, you told me that he didn't like Americans. That's why he wouldn't work for you.'

'And what's so different about you and the CNI?'

'He won't talk to the CNI, he'll only talk to me, because he trusts me.'

'Does he?' said Flowers, fixing him with a look across the table. 'Why didn't he tell you that he'd already been trained?'

'Probably the same reason that Juan and Pablo didn't warn me about the sort of tricks the GICM would play on Yacoub. Not distrust, just omission,' said Falcon. 'And, anyway, this previous training was limited to making sure he wasn't being followed and losing a tail if he was. Not full spy craft.'

'How would you describe Yacoub's state of mind since you met him in Madrid?'

'The fact that you know we met in Madrid supports the goldfish-bowl theory,' said Falcon. 'You're all looking at him and you don't trust what you see.'

'This is the War on Terror, Javier. It's called pooling resources.'

'He was distraught in Madrid. Nervous. Desperate. Evasive. He alarmed me. He'd thought he'd "lost" his son and it had made him, in my estimation, unreliable.'

'So how did he get to be so much more persuasive in London?'

'He'd come to terms with his situation. It had made him calmer.'

'He lied to you in Madrid.'

'Not so much lying as the paranoia giving him the inclination to mislead.'

'What happened to you between Madrid and London?' said Flowers, keeping the questions coming thick and fast. 'One moment you're nervous enough to seek advice from Pablo, the next you're so relaxed you're going it alone and giving Yacoub a free rein.'

'But I had told Pablo.'

'A limited amount.'

'Only what I knew, but I had told him,' said Falcon. 'That was already a betrayal of Yacoub's trust but, given his volatile state and my inexperience, I felt it was a necessary step.'

'So telling Pablo gave you some comfort. I can understand that,' said Flowers. 'But why wouldn't you let the Brits listen in on your conversation with Yacoub in Brown's Hotel?'

'I wanted to re-establish trust. I couldn't do that with MI5 listening in.'

'And how did Yacoub persuade you that he was still trustworthy?'

'Instinct.'

'You know, there are a lot of people out there who can make you believe that they love you,' said Flowers. 'Especially when it's so important to them that they believe it themselves.'

'What can you do about it?'

'Let other people take a look,' said Flowers. 'People who are capable of total objectivity.'

'But not people who are paid and sworn in by a government which has interests.'

'So Yacoub is protecting his son,' said Flowers, changing tack, 'and how many others?'

'Just one other person.'

'Is that person a lover?'

'You're not going to wring it out of me, Mark,' said Falcon. 'I know you're clever. Yacoub does, too. You've carefully reminded me that Yacoub has lied to me, that I've already betrayed him because I needed the support of the CNI. So what's one more little betrayal? And the answer is: possible death. Yacoub will lose control, because all the intelligence agencies will set about protecting their interests and that will create more unknowns. A decision could easily be taken that, despite Yacoub's intelligence coups, he is expendable.'

'You're making this sound very serious,' said Flowers, 'as if there could be grave geopolitical consequences. You're making it sound like something we really have to know.'

'But not yet.'

'We talked about pressure earlier,' said Flowers. 'The one thing I can tell you, Javier, is that I know about pressure. I am an expert in pressure… exerting it, I mean.'

'The thing about pressure, Mark, is that it's always exerted in order to cause pain. The GICM keep Yacoub under control by embracing his son. The Russians want to stop me from investigating their role in the 6th June Seville bombing, so they kidnap Consuelo's youngest child. Even we do it in the police force. We encourage a woman to inform on her criminal lover by threatening her brother with a heavy jail term.'

'That's right, Javier. We're all in the same business. The good guys and the bad guys. So what's your point?'

'Try offering solutions instead of threats,' said Falcon.

'What could I do for you that would make you feel sufficiently indebted to me that you would tell me what Yacoub is up to?'

'If you could get Consuelo's son back for me,' said Falcon. 'That would engender an enormous sense of gratitude in me.'

Flowers nodded, the light in the patio meant that only half his face was visible, the other half was completely opaque. The one seemed to inform the other, thought Falcon. Threats were always a lot easier to pull off than solutions.