The Ignoranceof Blood

19

Falcon's house, Calle Bailen, Seville – Monday, 18th September 2006, 22.05 hrs

It seemed later than it was. Flowers had only just left. Falcon sat in the patio, slumped in his chair, feet spread wide. He had been exhausted by the day and its lack of progress and, followed by the relentlessness of the CIA man's questions, he'd felt his lids growing heavier and his shoulder blades tightening. Now he felt as empty as that husk of a plant hiding in the corner of the patio but, with Dario in the centre of his consciousness, his mind was alive with the horror of the boy's situation and his helplessness beside it.

He began to wonder whether it was his particular fate to be haunted by abused, traumatized or persecuted children. Ever since he'd discovered how ruthlessly his father, Francisco Falcon, had exploited him as a small boy, he seemed to have become a magnet for these most vulnerable members of society. It did not escape him either, the appalling irony of his compulsion to discover what had happened to Raul Jimenez's missing son, Arturo. Then, having found that he'd been brought up in Morocco as Yacoub Diouri, to exploit him by making him an agent of Spanish intelligence, the CNI.

The patio was dark. He'd turned off the light. Wooden beams groaned somewhere far off in the large old house. He leaned forward, pinched the skin between his eyes, trying to tear out this ghastly nexus, but all that came to him were images in the chain of events of the last few years. An orphaned child being carried away by his aunt, two teenagers used as sex slaves buried in a shallow grave, four dead children covered by their pinafores after the 6th June bombing had destroyed their pre-school. He slapped his legs, stood up, cleared away the empty glasses and remains of crisps and olives, took them back to the kitchen. He hoped this mild activity would stop the fever in his brain. This is the blight of modern mankind, he thought, a world so full of accessible information, lives so crammed with work and relationships, people so constantly connectable that we've all developed what Alicia Aguado would probably call tachy-rumination. Nothing meditative about it, just a feverish mental grazing.

A bell rang, followed by three blunt thuds on the huge wooden door. Mark Flowers coming back with more questions. The afterthoughts. He made his way back through the house, under the gallery, around the patio. More thuds on the door, like a dull ache, followed by a sharper tapping. He slapped on the lights, opened the smaller door within the massive oak gates. Consuelo was standing there on one leg with her shoe in her hand.

'I couldn't seem to make any impression with my fist,' she said, slipping her shoe back on. 'You should get the bell fixed, or have a knocker fitted.'

'The bell works fine,' said Falcon, 'it just takes time to get from one end of the house to the other.'

'Are you going to invite me in?'

'Please,' he said.

They kissed formally on both cheeks, manoeuvred around each other awkwardly, and headed for the patio. She settled herself at the table. He offered her a drink. She'd take a small manzanilla sherry. He brought two and some olives. They sat in silence staring at the same point, exquisitely aware of each other's presence, but behaving as if there was some performance going on in which they could take no interest because of the vastness of what had come between them.

'I'm surprised to see you here after what happened the other night,' said Falcon.

'I didn't expect to have to come and see you,' she said.

'To have to come and see me?'

'We've been thrown together, Javier. It seems we cannot avoid each other,' she said. 'It's the only explanation I've got for what is happening. When we first met I was your suspect. Then I became your lover.'

'Then you left me,' he said.

'But I came back, Javier,' she said. 'Thanks to Alicia, I came back a different person.'

'And now?' said Falcon. 'Do we have Alicia to thank for you coming here this evening?'

'Not this time,' she said. 'I spoke to her. She listened. It's made me feel stronger.'

'And that didn't… No, I forgot, you had to come back,' said Falcon. 'I know why you're here, because I can't stop thinking about Dario myself, but who or what particularly has thrown us together this time?'

'This time, Javier, it's our enemies.'

They looked each other directly in the eye for the first time since she'd appeared at the door.

'Does that mean you've heard from the Russians?'

She nodded.

'But I told Inspector Jefe Tirado to call me if there were any developments,' said Falcon. 'He assured me nothing had happened. No phone calls…'

'I called them.'

Falcon blinked. She told him about the email and the call she'd made from the bottom of next-door's garden.

'And we have no record of this conversation,' said Falcon.

She handed him two sheets of A4 with the transcript of the dialogue as best she could remember it.

'I was not calm when I made that call,' she said. 'I realize now that I was stupid. I reacted in a state of excitement and panic, which was how they expected me to react.'

Falcon nodded, read the transcript several times.

'Talk to me, Javier,' she said, unable to bear the silence any longer. 'Tell me what you make of it. Ask me questions. Every detail, from the top.'

'When did this happen?' he asked.

'The email was timed two p.m., but I didn't see it until after four, then I had to charge the phone and open an account. I made the call at around five.'

'Five hours ago,' he said.

'I didn't want to call you. You can see how complicated it is,' she said. 'I only wanted to do this face to face. I've been waiting outside for the American to leave.'

'Tell me about the voice,' said Falcon. 'Was there only one voice?'

'The first voice was foreign. I don't know what Spanish sounds like spoken by a Russian, but I'm certain it was a foreigner. All he said was Diga and Momentito, but I could tell.'

'So the second voice was the one you had this conversation with, and he was Spanish.'

'Yes, definitely Spanish-speaking, but not from Spain. I'd say South American.'

'Or Cuban?' said Falcon. 'A lot of Cubans still speak Russian.'

'That must be it. I wasn't listening to the finer points of accent. I was concentrating on what he was saying and his tone. He was quite gentle with me. The second time he asked whether I knew why Dario had been kidnapped, he put it a different way.'

'He said: "Do you understand why your son has been taken from you?"' said Falcon.

'He said it like a doctor who wanted to explain the necessity of Dario's quarantine. As if he had a contagious disease and it was better for him. It made me very emotional.'

'The next bit about…'

'That's about you, isn't it?' she said. 'I was angry and, I can't deny it, Javier, I still am.'

'Just remember, Consuelo, that I am your friend,' said Falcon. 'Whatever this has done to us, I am still your friend. I want to get Dario back as much as you do. I did not kidnap him and it's not me threatening him with harm, and I will do everything I can to bring him back safely.'

'That's why I said, it's our enemies who've brought us together this time,' said Consuelo. 'I only understood that by working on the transcript.'

'They are trying to do something very tricky here. They want to remind you that I am responsible for all this – not them,' said Falcon. 'But they also need me to be your friend because they know that what you're asking of me is very difficult.'

'I realize that they want me to corrupt you,' said Consuelo. 'They believe that by holding my son they will have reduced me to their own moral level and that I will make you my friend, or even my lover, in order to corrupt you for my own purposes.'

'You don't need to talk me through this, Consuelo.'

'I do. I need you to understand that I know exactly what they're doing,' said Consuelo. 'They're making me a whore, in the hope that I will entice you to corrupt yourself, and I hate them for it. I could kill them for that, let alone taking Dario.'

And in that moment he fell for her all over again. If he'd thought that he loved her in the airport on Saturday he'd been mistaken, because what filled him now was an admiration so complete that he wanted to kiss those lips that had spoken such words.

He knew then that he would do anything for her.

'The one thing that is not established here, and given the stress of the call you were unlikely to think of it, is whether they have Dario or not,' said Falcon.

'You mean I didn't ask for some proof that he was alive?'

'Not exactly. I'm sure that Dario is being held by Russians; we're just not sure which group,' said Falcon.

He explained how Leonid Revnik had taken over the Russian mafia on the Costa del Sol after his predecessor had fled to Dubai and how Yuri Donstov had arrived in Seville. He also laid out his theory of Russian mafia involvement in the Seville bombing.

'But why would the Russians involve themselves in something like that?' asked Consuelo.

'Because they were invited to do so by the conspirators,' said Falcon. 'Lucrecio Arenas and Cesar Benito didn't know how to plant a bomb, they needed men of violence to do it for them. They had access to these people presumably because they were doing some money-laundering for them. The idea was that the Russians would be rewarded in the political fallout after the bombing. It didn't happen. And not only that, their whole criminal organization was put at risk. The Russians did the only thing possible and assassinated the Catholic conspiracy's ringleaders before they could implicate them.'

'And this huge amount of money and the disks?'

'They represent a complication. They came into our hands because of a defection from Revnik to Donstov by a gangster called Vasili Lukyanov,' said Falcon. 'It means that men in both groups were possibly responsible for the Seville bomb and also that both groups will want to get their hands on those disks, because they will give them the leverage they need.'

'What exactly is on those disks?'

'They show powerful people having sex with prostitutes. The most important people on those disks, as far as my investigation is concerned, are the ones who are representatives of the two companies who I think originally initiated the Seville bombing: an American corporation, called I4IT, who own a Spanish holding company in Barcelona, called Horizonte.'

'And those companies are now excluding the Russians because they no longer need, or want, their brand of violence.'

'I have no proof of any of this,' said Falcon. 'All I know is that the original idea behind the Seville bomb was to take political control of the Andalucian state parliament and I can only assume that there would ultimately be economic rewards for those involved. What's happening now is smaller scale. It's just business. I'm not sure what the business is, but it's probably something to do with construction in or around Seville. I think the Russians got their foot in the door with Lucrecio Arenas and Cesar Benito, and they still want their reward for the dirty work they've done.'

'So whichever mafia group holds the disks can exert pressure on I4IT and Horizonte.'

'My guess is that Dario is being held by Yuri Donstov, who was expecting delivery of the disks from Vasili Lukyanov when the car accident put his whole strategy in jeopardy.'

'Does Leonid Revnik know that Lukyanov has disappeared with the disks?'

'We assume so, because Lukyanov's best friend was found shot dead in the woods behind Estepona.'

'So it could just as easily be Revnik holding Dario, trying to get back in the game?'

'If Lukyanov had the foresight to ensure that he had the originals and there were no copies, then yes,' said Falcon.

'If I was him, I'd have made sure of that,' said Consuelo. 'That money and the disks were probably in the same safe and he stole both.'

'Lukyanov ran puti clubs. He controlled the girls. So he was probably responsible for the secret filming of what they did with these men,' said Falcon, tapping the transcript.

'And the money?'

'I'm thinking about that,' said Falcon. 'They're asking for the return of €8.2 million, but Ramirez told me there was only €7.75 million accounted for.'

'Light-fingered Guardia Civil on the motorway?' said Consuelo.

'Or the Russians are lying.'

'Or they don't know. They're guessing.'

Falcon paced slowly around the patio.

'You're very calm,' he said, suddenly. 'I don't know how…'

'Because in making me their agent they've given me power,' said Consuelo. 'I know nothing will happen to Dario while I can still do things for them.'

'A further complication,' said Falcon, ideas occurring to him all the time. 'The reason we need proof that whoever we're talking to is holding Dario, is that they could both say that they're holding him.'

'So far I've only been contacted by one group,' said Consuelo. 'And they used an email address that is strictly for friends and family.'

'You think only Dario could have given them that address?' asked Falcon. 'Do you have any protection on that computer? It's a family PC. You probably don't even need a password to use it. Anybody could have found that out.'

'All right,' said Consuelo, thinking desperately. 'There's been no media coverage yet, so only the group that's performed the abduction will know about it.'

'That's in the perfect world,' said Falcon, 'but these mafia groups have connections everywhere. The corruption is deep. They've penetrated the Guardia Civil and it wouldn't surprise me if they had someone in the Jefatura.'

'So they would know if you called on other resources, too,' said Consuelo, alarmed.

Falcon nodded, feeling the box they were in getting tighter and darker.

'What… what about their demands?' said Consuelo, the earlier calm beginning to dissipate now that she could sense their isolation.

'The first obstacle is the money,' said Falcon. 'We can't get our hands on the cash. It's already in the Banco de Bilbao and I have no authority over it. That lies with Comisario Elvira, and we don't want him involved in any of this.'

'The Russians probably know that, or have guessed it,' said Consuelo hopefully. 'They probably felt they had to ask for the money, especially that amount of money, or they'd have made the disks look too important. They'll be understanding about the money.'

'They'll have to be,' said Falcon. 'It's not a possibility.'

'If the Russians have their people in the Jefatura, why don't they just lift the disks themselves?'

'No, that's true, we're not exactly a high-security institution,' said Falcon, 'the disks are in a safe in the evidence room, which during office hours is heavily used and manned, especially as the money was kept there until it was moved this afternoon. Only two people have the key and the combination of that safe: Elvira and myself.'

'And there are only the originals in existence?'

'No, there are copies of parts of the disks on the Homicide squad's computer and to access it you'd need not only the passwords to the system, but also the encryption software to unscramble the shots.'

They fell silent again. Falcon focused on the problem. If, as Consuelo's business brain had intuited, I4IT/Horizonte were excluding the Russians from whatever this new deal was, then it could be crucial for the Russians to know that Juan Valverde, Antonio Ramos and Charles Taggart were going to be in Seville tomorrow evening and night.

'You've gone quiet on me again, Javier.'

Falcon reached for his mobile, called Ramirez.

'How did you know that the money from the Lukyanov accident had left the Jefatura?' he asked him.

'Because you'd signed the money into the Jefatura it was technically Homicide squad evidence, so I had to accompany Comisario Elvira to the evidence room and sign it over to him, so that he could sign it over to Prosegur for delivery to the bank,' said Ramirez.

'Was the money in the safe?'

'As much as they could fit in,' said Ramirez. 'There was still one block in the Prosegur box.'

'Did you see inside the safe when Elvira opened it?'

'Sure. We took the money out together.'

'What was left in there?'

'The disks from the car accident.'

'Did you see the safe locked afterwards?'

'Elvira locked it.'

'No other copies of those disks were made?'

'The guy from the Jefatura's IT department came to our office. He took one, sometimes two, images from each piece of footage, which best showed the faces of the participants, and that's all we have on the Homicide computer.'

'What about the images you sent to me which I emailed to the CNI?'

'They were cropped faces only. No visible fucking. If somebody could access your computer, those shots wouldn't be much use to them,' said Ramirez. 'What's bothering you?'

'Just making sure,' said Falcon. 'How did you and Perez get on with El Pulmon's car?'

'His bloody fingerprints were all over it and there was a bloody T-shirt on the back seat. All blood samples in the car correspond to the Cuban, Miguel Estevez,' said Ramirez. 'That was as far as we got on site. The vehicle's been taken down to the Jefatura so that the forensics can go over it tomorrow.'

Consuelo's mobile, the one she'd used to call the Russians, rang. Falcon glanced at her. She looked at the screen.

'The restaurant,' she said, and took the call.

'Did anybody see El Pulmon leaving the vehicle?' asked Falcon.

'Not leaving the vehicle, but we've found an old guy who saw a man stripped to the waist, with a red stain over his chest and a dark stain on the front of his trousers, running down Calle Heroes de Toledo towards the centre of town.'

'Work on it, Jose Luis,' said Falcon. 'We need El Pulmon.'

'I've got Serrano and Baena on it. They were getting nowhere with the Narcs. I think this is a better bet. They'll be at it tomorrow morning, first thing.'

Falcon hung up. Consuelo finished her call.

'That's not the mobile that Inspector Jefe Tirado is supposed to be recording?'

'It's the one I used to call the Russians.'

'Was that them?'

'I gave the number to my restaurant manager before I came out.'

'Haven't you got your regular mobile with you?'

'The Russians aren't going to call me on that one. I left it at home.'

'Who knows you're here?'

'Nobody.'

'What about the people in your house?'

'They think I'm in bed,' said Consuelo. 'I went into my neighbour's garden, out through the front and took a cab here.'

'You don't trust the good guys any more?'

'I can't,' she said, looking desperate.

'All right,' said Falcon, holding his hands up to keep her calm. 'What did your restaurant manager want?'

'Somebody came in off the street a few minutes ago, gave one of the waiters an envelope and said he was to make sure that it was given to me tonight.'