The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

Chapter 22

Monday, 29th July 2002

Back at the Jefatura Ramírez sat smoking in the outer office. He said that Cristina Ferrera was on her way back with Salvador Ortega, who'd been found in a 'shooting gallery' in the Poligono San Pablo. He also informed him that Virgilio Guzmán, the crime editor for the Diario de Sevilla, was being patient in his office. This was unnerving because Virgilio Guzmán did not do stories any more.

Virgilio Guzmán was a few years younger than Falcón but his life and work had aged him considerably. Before coming down to Seville he had been in Bilbao and Madrid, covering ETA terrorist activity. His ambition and tenacity had cost him his marriage, the constant tension had left him with high blood pressure and heart arrhythmia and, he believed, not seeing his six-year-old son had given him colon cancer, from which he'd made a full recovery at the cost of a length of his guts. He'd had to leave the fear of his work to live in fear of his anatomy.

It had changed him. His wife had left him before the cancer diagnosis because he was too hard a man.

Now he had softened, not to mush just to flesh and blood but it had not dulled any of his journalistic sharpness. He had the vital journalist's tool: an infallible nose for when things were not right. And he knew that the first suicide by a senior officer in the Jefatura meant that something, somewhere, was rotten. He was polite. He asked if he could put the dictaphone on the desk between them. He clicked it on and sat back with his notebook.

Falcón did not say a word. He made an instant decision about Guzmán – this was a man he could trust and not just by reputation alone. He also thought, and he sniffed at his own naivety on this matter, that with only forty-eight hours left to make a case for Vega's murder, Guzmán, with his extensive experience, might be able to bring different information to the game which could develop into different leads and directions. All this might cost him something from the Montes inquiry, but then the exposure of corruption, and its cutting out, should be a good thing – shouldn't it?

'So, Inspector Jefe, I understand that you are conducting the investigation into the death of your colleague, Inspector Jefe Alberto Montes?'

Falcón said nothing for two long minutes during which Guzmán looked up, blinking like a subterranean animal.

'I'm sorry, Inspector Jefe,' he said, shrugging into the flak jacket of his journalistic hardness, 'but that's the easiest opening question I can think of.'

Falcón leaned over and turned off the dictaphone.

'You know with that machine on I can only tell you the facts of the case.'

'Well, that's a start,' said Guzmán, 'and then it will be up to me to extract the rest. That's how it goes where I come from.'

'You know the facts already,' said Falcón. 'They are the newsworthy event of a police officer's fall to his death. It's the why that contains the human story.'

'And what makes you think I'm looking for a human story and not, say, "a catalogue of corruption that reaches to the heart of regional government" story?'

'It's possible that you'll end up with that sort of story, but you have to start with the human story to get there. You have to understand the thoughts that led a respected officer, who'd never shown any suicidal tendency, to take such drastic action.'

'Do I?' said Guzmán. 'Normally we journalists, or rather journalists of my reputation, deal in facts. We report facts, we build on facts, we create a greater fact from the smaller facts we discover.'

'Then turn on your machine and I will give you the fully corroborated facts of the death of a fellow officer who was much admired by his squad and superiors.'

Guzmán laid down his notebook and pen on the desk and sat back assessing Falcón. He sensed that there were possibilities for him here if he could find the right words, and that the possibilities might not be only work related. He had arrived in Seville alone, admired and, he thought, respected by his fellow journalists, but alone. He could use a friend, and that was the possibility he saw on the other side of the desk.

'I've always worked alone,' he said, after a minute's thought. 'I've had to, because working with somebody and their unpredictability in threatening situations was too dangerous. I only ever wanted to be responsible for my own thoughts and actions and not the victim of others'. I've spent too long in the company of men of violence to be thoughtless.'

'In a human story such as this, there's always tragedy,' said Falcón. 'People feel hurt and betrayed, while others suffer loss and grief.'

'If you remember, Inspector Jefe, I worked on the story of the Guardia Civil death squads sent out by the government to remove ETA terrorist cells. I understand the tragedy of a betrayal of values on the large and the human scale. The repercussions were felt everywhere.'

'Conjecture is something that police officers have to indulge in to find a direction for their investigation, but it is not something that's allowable in court,' said Falcón.

'I told you about my belief in facts,' said Guzmán, 'but you didn't seem to like it so much then.'

'Information is a two-way street,' said Falcón, smiling for the first time.

'Agreed.'

'If you discover something inflammatory you will always tell me before it appears in your newspaper.'

'I'll tell you, but I won't change it.'

'The facts: I didn't know Montes until I went to see him last week. I was and still am investigating the death of Rafael Vega.'

'The suspicious suicide out at Santa Clara,' said Guzmán, picking up his notebook and pointing the pen at Falcón. 'Pablo Ortega's neighbour. Crisis in the Garden City – that's not a headline, by the way.'

'I came across a couple of names in an address book, one of whom was Eduardo Carvajal,' said Falcón.

'The paedophile ring leader who died in a car crash,' said Guzmán. 'I always remember things that stink. Is your inquiry going to crack open that cesspit as well?'

Falcón held up a hand, already nervous that he'd made some pact with the devil.

'I knew the name from a previous investigation so I went to see Montes and asked him about Carvajal. He was the investigating officer on the Carvajal paedophile ring.'

'Right. I get it. Very interesting,' said Guzmán, terrifying Falcón with the rapacity of his brain.

Falcón tried to slow his own brain down as he detailed his conversation with Montes about Carvajal procuring from the Russian mafia, the people-trafficking business and its influence on the sex industry. He told him about the two projects owned by Ivanov and Zelenov and managed by Vega Construcciones, and how he'd twice spoken to Montes about the Russians, once when Montes had been very drunk, to see if the names meant anything to him.

'I was due to talk to him this morning,' said Falcón, 'but I didn't make it in time.'

'Do you think he'd been corrupted?' asked Guzmán.

'I have no evidence for it, apart from his sense of timing and his suicide note, which, in my opinion, has some ugly subtext,' said Falcón, handing him the letter. 'For your eyes only.'

Guzmán read the letter, tilting his head from side to' side as if his factual brain wasn't inclined to agree with Falcón's more creative interpretation. He gave it back.

'What was the other name in Vega's address book that caught your attention?' asked Guzmán.

'The late Ramon Salgado,' said Falcón. 'It could be completely innocent because Salgado had supplied a painting for Vega's office building. But after Salgado's murder last year we found some very distressing child pornography on his computer.'

'There are some big gaps to fill here,' said Guzmán. 'What are your theories?'

Falcón stayed him with his hand again. There were complications, he said, and gave him the secret life of Rafael Vega.

'We're hoping that he has a record with the FBI and that they might be able to help us identify him,' said Falcón.

'So you think he might have had a past that's caught up with him?' said Guzmán. 'Which would be a separate theory to some kind of link to the Carvajal paedophile ring?'

'The situation has been complicated with each new development in Vega's secret life,' said Falcón. 'My original theory came when those names jumped out at me from his address book. After I'd talked to Montes the first time, and then found a connection between Vega and the Russians, I began to think that Vega had possibly replaced Carvajal as the procurer for the paedophile rings. But the major problem with that theory is that I have no proof of Vega's interest in paedophilia, only his connection to people who were, and the extremely advantageous nature of the deals he was giving the Russians.'

'What made the Vega suicide look suspicious to you?' asked Guzmán.

'The method, the cleanliness of the crime scene and, although there was a note, it was not what I would call a suicide note. First of all, it was in English. Secondly, it was only a partial sentence. And later we found that he had traced over the indentations of his own handwriting, as if he was trying to find out what he himself had written.'

'What were the words?'

"'… in the thin air you breathe from 9/11 until

'9/11?' said Guzmán.

'We're assuming that he'd taken up the American way of writing the date.'

'When you were talking me through his secret life you mentioned the American connection, which made you think that he was probably of Central or South American origin. Well, you know, most people forget this since the events of last year in New York, but there were two 9/11s. Where do you think I come from, Inspector Jefe?'

'You've got a Madrid accent.'

'I've lived in Madrid nearly all my life,' he said, 'so most people forget that I'm actually Chilean. The first 9/11, the one that nobody now will ever remember, was 11th September 1973. That was the day that they bombed the Moneda Palace, killed Salvador Allende and General Augusto Pinochet took power.'

Falcón held on to the arms of his chair, looked into Guzmán's eyes and knew, as his organs seemed to realign out of their planetary chaos, that he was right.

'I was fifteen years old,' said Guzmán, whose face for a moment looked like that of a drowning man with his life flashing before him. 'It was also the last day that I saw my parents. I heard later that they were last seen in the football stadium, if you know what that means.'

Falcón nodded. He'd read about the horrors of the Santiago football stadium.

'A week later I'd been taken out of Santiago and was living in Madrid with my aunt. I only found out later what happened in the football stadium,' he said. 'So people say 9/11 to me and I never think of the twin towers and New York City, I think of the day a bunch of US-sponsored, CIA-backed terrorists murdered democracy in my own country.'

'Wait one moment,' said Falcón.

He went next door. Ramírez was hunched over the keyboard.

'Has Elvira come back with the FBI contact?'

'I'm just pasting Vega's photograph into the e-mail,' said Ramírez.

'You can now add that we believe him to have been a Chilean national.'

Falcón went back into his office and apologized to Guzmán, who was standing at the window, hands behind his back.

'I'm getting old, Inspector Jefe,' he said. 'Since I arrived in Seville my brain seems to have changed. I can't seem to remember anything of my day to day life. I see movies which I can't tell you anything about. I read books by writers I can't recall. And yet those days in Santiago before I left are pin-sharp in my mind. And they come at me like a film in the dark. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I'm at the end of my career and all that stuff. You know, it was the whole reason I became the kind of journalist I was.'

'And you still are,' said Falcón. 'Although I was surprised to see you here. I didn't think you did stories any more. I thought you were the editor.'

'When the news came through about Montes I could have sent anybody down here,' said Guzmán, 'but then

I heard that you were going to run the inquiry and for no good reason I decided it was time to meet Javier Falcón.'

'Well, you've given me a break, so I'm glad.'

'It's a strange line that – in Vega's note. It seems almost poetic. There's emotion in there. It's like a spirit threatening,' said Guzmán. 'Why do you think I'm so right about it?'

'Apart from the South American connection,' said Falcón, 'we've also heard about discussions Vega had with his American neighbour, Marty Krugman, and a few things he'd mentioned to Pablo Ortega. Between them they built a picture of a man with very right-wing views, anti-communist, pro-capitalism and largely pro- American in terms of the spirit of enterprise. But he also held some negative views about the way in which US governments interfered with other countries, how they were your friends until you were no longer useful to them… that kind of thing. I also found files in his study on international courts of justice and the work of Baltasar Garzón. Look at all that in the context of his secretive nature, the fact that he seems to have been a trained, connected Hispanic with a knowledge of American society, and this guy begins to look like a politically motivated, disappointed man who died with what he considered to be an important date in his hand.'

'And why do you think he did that?'

'Personally, I think it was because he was being murdered, that he wanted to make sure that his death was investigated as murder and that whatever secrets he held would be discovered and told to the world.'

'So now where is your theory about Carvajal, the Russians and Montes?'

'What do you mean?'

'You seem to think that Montes was responding to pressure that you were unconsciously applying. The mention of Carvajal and the Russians – Ivanov and Zelenov. Would that have been enough to push him over the edge? Or was he looking at those names in the context of the Vega investigation, and it was that which made him certain that you were on to something?'

'Let's wait until we get a response from the FBI. If he did have a criminal record, that might be indicative of something that's relevant here.'

'If he's Chilean he sounds like a disaffected pro- Pinochet man to me,' said Guzmán. 'And there were plenty of them about in the ranks of Patria y Libertad – the extreme right-wing organization who were bent on destabilizing Allende from the moment he won the election. A lot of their members did some very nasty things before, during and after the coup – the kidnappings and assassinations abroad within Operation Condor, the killings and torture at home, the Washington car bomb – and they thought they deserved better. They'd stopped the rampage of communism up to America's back door and they felt they should be properly rewarded for it. But you said he was keeping these files on the justice systems and Garzón. That sounds as if he was heading for the confessional.'

'I think he was looking for something a bit bigger than the confessional,' said Falcón. 'More like the witness stand in a major court. Something seems to have happened to him at the end of last year. Something personal, which might have changed him. He was suffering from anxiety attacks…'

'Well, maybe that clouded his judgement. People who were involved always think they're more important than they actually were,' said Guzmán. 'Colonel Manuel Contreras, the ex-chief of DINA – the secret police – is now in jail, beautifully betrayed by Pinochet, and what's happened? Documents were released by the Clinton administration in 1999, and what's happened? More material was released by the CIA themselves in 2000, and what's happened? Have we had any justice? Have the perpetrators been punished? No. Nothing has happened. It's the way of the world.'

'But what could have happened? Who's left? Who's accountable?'

'There are some CIA men who should still be sweating in the dark and there's my old friend, the Prince of Darkness – Dr K himself. He was Nixon's National Security Adviser and Secretary of State over that whole period. Nothing happened in Chile without him knowing about it. If anybody should be held to account, he should.'

'Well, if you could finger him, you'd go down in history,' said Falcón. 'And if Vega was about to do that there must be plenty of people who'd want to kill him?'

'In my experience, if the CIA had decided he was dangerous for their public relations profile, they'd want to make it look like suicide – and then make a complete mess of it,' said Guzmán. 'These American neighbours of his, what's their background?'

'He's an architect working for Vega, she's a photographer. It was her photographs of him that gave us an insight into his personal crisis. That's her speciality.'

'Well, that's pretty good cover if you wanted information on somebody,' said Guzmán.

They've both got totally genuine backgrounds,' said Falcón. They were even suspects in a murder inquiry into the death of the woman's lover back in the USA. No charges were brought.'

They don't smell so sweet, even if they are real enough,' said Guzmán. 'But then that's the nature of perfect cover, I suppose. We all have something ugly hidden away.'

Falcón got to his feet and started pacing the room. The complications were building by the hour and he had no time, never any time.

'If this is some sort of intelligence operation,' he said, 'and the Krugmans have been pressurized into service, then there must be collusion between the CIA and the FBI. And we're now asking the FBI for information on Rafael Vega.'

'For a start, you can't do anything else,' said Guzmán. 'And anyway, these are not perfect organizations. I imagine very few people will know about this. They've got their hands full with the War on Terror. This is a side game, a small issue. Possibly private.'

Falcón went to the phone and started dialling.

'I'm going to talk to Marty Krugman again,' he said. 'I'll come at him from a different angle.'

'But you don't know anything yet.'

'I realize that, but I have no time. I have to start now.'

Falcón was saved by the fact that Krugman was not in his office or at home and his mobile was turned off. He slammed the phone down.

'Krugman has a weakness,' said Falcón. 'His wife is a beautiful woman who is much younger than him.'

'And he's a jealous man?'

'It's his weak point,' said Falcón, 'a way to lever him open.'

'All this will go up in smoke if you don't get a positive ID from the FBI,' said Guzmán. 'So don't do anything until then. In the meantime, if you think it will help, I'll put that line he was holding in his hand out into the Chilean expatriate communities here and in England, see what they make of it. And if you do get a positive ID and he was Chilean and military, or DINA, I am in contact with people who could help build a profile.

'I'll also write an article about Montes and the first suicide of a senior officer at the Jefatura. It will be a kind of obituary with the big moments of his career, including the Carvajal scandal, pointed up. I'll emphasize your in-depth investigation into Montes's career.'

'And what will we get out of that?'

'You'll see. It'll smoke people out. There'll be plenty of anxiety around, especially from the ones who turned a blind eye to Carvajal's "accident",' said Guzmán. 'It'll be interesting to see the pressure that comes down on you from upstairs. If Comisario Lobo doesn't call you into his office first thing in the morning after the Diario de Sevilla has hit the streets, I'll buy you lunch.'

'Only the facts,' said Falcón, a wave of anxiety ripping through him.

'That's the beauty of it. Everything I'll write about Montes will already be in the public domain. There won't be any need for conjecture. It's just the way in which I put it all together that will frighten people to death.'