The Hidden Assassins

‘That’s why I can’t be sure if it was the same van.’

‘On which side of the van did your daughter-in-law park her car?’

‘To the left as we’re looking at it,’ said the old man. ‘Her door was blown open by the wind and knocked into it.’

‘Did the van move again at all?’

‘No idea. Once people are around me I don’t notice a thing.’

Falcón took the daughter-in-law’s name and number and called her as he walked upstairs. He talked her through the conversation he’d just had with her father-in-law and asked her if she’d had a look at the van when her door had knocked into it.

‘I checked it, just to make sure I hadn’t dented it.’

‘Did you glance in the window?’

‘Probably.’

‘Did you see anything on the front passenger seat?’

‘No, nothing.’

‘You didn’t see a book?’

‘Definitely not. It was just a dark seat.’

Ferrera was coming out of the fourth-floor apartment as he hung up. They went downstairs in silence.

‘Was your witness injured in the blast?’ asked Falcón.

‘She says she fell down the stairs last night, but she’s got no bruises on her arms or legs, just the ones on her face,’ said Ferrera angrily. ‘And she was scared.’

‘Not of you.’

‘Yes, of me. Because I ask questions, and one question leads to another, and if any of it somehow gets back to her husband it’s another reason for him to beat her.’

‘You can only help the ones that want to be helped,’ said Falcón.

‘There seems to be more of it about these days,’ said Ferrera, exasperated. ‘Anyway, she did see the van arrive in its current position. There’s a woman on the same shift at the factory where she works, who lives in one of the blocks further down her street. They meet for a chat under the trees on Calle Blanca Paloma. They walked past the van at 6 p.m. just as it had arrived. Two guys got out. They were talking in Arabic. They didn’t take anything out of the back. They went up to Calle Los Romeros and turned right.’

‘Descriptions?’

‘Both late twenties. One with a shaved head, black T-shirt. The other with more of a square head, with black hair, cut short at the sides and combed back on top. She said he was very good looking, but had bad teeth. He wore a faded denim jacket, white T-shirt, and she remembers he had very flashy trainers.’

‘Did she see the van move again from that position?’

‘She keeps an eye on this car park, looking out for when her husband comes home. She said it hadn’t moved by the time he came in at 9.15 p.m.’

The police were letting people through the cordon so that they could get back into their homes to start clearing up the damage. There was a large crowd gathered outside the chemist’s at the junction of Calle Blanca Paloma with Calle Los Romeros. They were angry with the police for not letting them back into any part of the block attached to the destroyed building, which was still too dangerous. Falcón tried talking to people in the crowd, but they couldn’t give a damn about Peugeot Partners.

Pneumatic drills started up on the other side of the block. Falcón and Ferrera crossed Calle Los Romeros to another apartment building, whose glass was more or less intact. The apartments on the first two floors were still empty. On the third floor a child led Falcón into a living room, where a woman was sweeping up glass around a pile of cardboard boxes. She had moved in at the weekend but the removal company hadn’t been able to deliver until yesterday. He asked his question about the white van and the two guys.

‘Do you think I’d be sitting on the balcony watching the traffic with all this lot to unpack?’ she said. ‘I’ve had to give up two days’ work because these people can’t deliver on time.’

‘Do you know who was in here before you?’

‘It was empty,’ she said. ‘Nobody had been living here for three months. The letting agency on Avenida San Lazaro said we were the first to see it.’

‘Was there anything left here when you first arrived?’ asked Falcón, looking out of the living-room balcony on to Calle Los Romeros and the rubble of the destroyed building.

‘There was no furniture, if that’s what you mean,’ she said. ‘There was a sack of rubbish in the kitchen.’

‘What sort of rubbish?’

‘People have been killed. Children have been killed,’ she said, aghast, pulling her own child to her side. ‘And you’re asking me what sort of rubbish I found here when I moved in?’

‘Police work can seem like a mysterious business,’ said Falcón. ‘If you can remember noticing anything it might help.’

‘As it happens, I had to tie the bag up and throw it out, so I know that it was a pizza carton, a couple of beer cans, some cigarette butts, ash and empty packets and a newspaper, the ABC, I think. Anything else?’

‘That’s very good, because now we know that, although this place was empty for three months, somebody had been here, spending quite some time in this apartment, and that could be interesting for us.’

He crossed the landing to the apartment opposite. A woman in her sixties lived there.

‘Your new neighbour has just told me that her apartment had been empty for the last three months,’ he said.

‘Not quite empty,’ she said. ‘When the previous family moved out, about four months ago, some very smart businessmen came round, on maybe three or four occasions. Then, about three months ago, a small van turned up and unloaded a bed, two chairs and a table. Nothing else. After that, young men would turn up in pairs, and spend three or four hours at a time during the day, doing God knows what. They never spent the night there, but from dawn until dusk there was always someone in that apartment.’

‘Did the same guys come back again, or were they different every time?’

‘I think there might have been as many as twenty.’

‘Did they bring anything with them?’

‘Briefcases, newspapers, groceries.’

‘Did you ever talk to them?’

‘Of course. I asked them what they were doing and they just said that they were having meetings,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t that worried. They didn’t look like druggies. They didn’t play loud music or have parties; in fact, quite the opposite.’

‘Did their routine change over the months?’

‘Nobody came during Semana Santa and the Feria.’

‘Did you ever see inside the apartment when they were there?’

‘In the beginning I offered them something to eat, but they always very politely refused. They never let me inside.’

‘And they never let on about what these meetings were about?’

‘They were such straight, conservative young men, I thought they might be a religious group.’

‘What happened when they left?’

‘One day a van arrived and took away the furniture and that was it.’

‘When was that?’

‘Last Friday…the second of June.’

Falcón called Ferrera and told her to keep at it while he went to talk to the letting agency down the street on Avenida de San Lazaro.

The woman in the letting agency had been responsible for selling the property three months ago and renting it out at the end of last week. It had not been bought by a private buyer but a computer company called Informáticalidad. All her dealings were through the Financial Director, Pedro Plata.

Falcón took down the address. Ramírez called him as he was walking back up Calle Los Romeros towards the bombed building.

‘Comisario Elvira has just told me that the Madrid police have picked up Mohammed Soumaya at his shop. He lent the van to his nephew. He was surprised to hear that it was in Seville. His nephew had told him he was just going to use it for some local deliveries,’ said Ramírez. ‘They’re following up on the nephew now. His name is Trabelsi Amar.’

‘Are they sending us shots of him?’

‘We’ve asked for them,’ said Ramírez. ‘By the way, they’ve just installed an Arabic speaker in the Jefatura, after receiving more than a dozen calls from our friends across the water. They all say the same thing and the translation is: “We will not rest until Andalucía is back in the bosom of Islam.”’

‘Have you ever heard of a company called Informáticalidad?’ asked Falcón.

‘Never,’ said Ramírez, totally uninterested. ‘There’s one last bit of news for you. They’ve identified the explosive found in the back of the Peugeot Partner. It’s called cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Otherwise known as RDX. Research and Development Explosive,’ said Ramírez, in a wobbly English accent. ‘Its other names are cyclonite and hexogen. It’s top-quality military explosive—the sort of thing you’d find in artillery shells.’

9

Seville—Tuesday, 6th June 2006, 12.45 hrs

Ferrera had found one occupant who’d given her a sighting of the Peugeot Partner late yesterday afternoon, Monday 5th June. The van had stopped on Calle Los Romeros, opposite the mosque, and two men had unloaded four cardboard boxes and some blue plastic carrier bags. The only description of the men was that they were young and well built and were wearing T-shirts and jeans. The boxes were heavy enough that they could only be carried one at a time. Everything was taken into the mosque. Both men came out and drove away in the van. Falcón told her to keep looking for witnesses and if necessary to go down to the hospital.

Back in the car park the Mayor and the deputies from the Andalucían Parliament had gone and Comisario Elvira and Juez Calderón were coming to the end of an impromptu press conference. Another body had been found on the seventh floor. The rescue workers had not made contact with anybody alive in the rubble. Pneumatic drills were being used to expose the steel netting in the reinforced concrete floors and oxyacetylene torches and motorized cutters were breaking up the floors into slabs. These slabs were being lifted away by the crane and put into tippers. With each piece of information given, more questions came at them. Elvira was visibly irritated by it all, but Calderón was playing at the top of his game and the journalists loved him. They were more than happy to concentrate on the good-looking, charismatic Calderón when finally Elvira took his leave and headed into the pre-school, where they’d set up a temporary headquarters in the undamaged classrooms at the back.

The journalists recognized Falcón and came after him, preventing him from following Elvira. Microphones butted his face. Cameras were thrust between heads. What’s the name of the explosive again? Where did it come from? Are the terrorists still alive? Is there a cell still operating in Seville? What have you got to say about the evacuations in the city centre? Has there been another bomb? Has anybody claimed responsibility for the attack? Falcón had to force his way out of the scrum and it took three policemen to push the journalists back from the pre-school entrance. Falcón was straightening himself up in the corridor when Calderón burst through the roaring crowd at the gates.

‘Joder,’ he said, remaking his tie, ‘they’re like a pack of jackals.’

‘Ramírez just told me about the explosive.’

‘They keep asking me about that. I haven’t heard anything.’

‘The common name is RDX or hexogen.’

‘Hexogen?’ said Calderón. ‘Wasn’t that what the Chechen rebels used to blow up those apartment blocks in Moscow back in 1999?’

‘The military use it in artillery shells.’

‘I remember there was some scandal about the Chechens using recycled explosives from a government scientific research institute, which had been bought by the mafia, who then sold it to the rebels. Russian military ordnance being used to blow up their own people.’

‘Sounds like a typical Russian scenario.’

‘It’s not going to be easy for you,’ said Calderón. ‘Hexogen can come from anywhere—Russia, a Muslim Chechen terrorist group, an arms dump in Iraq, any Third World country where there’s been a conflict, where ordnance has been left behind. It might even be American, this stuff.’

Falcón’s mobile vibrated. It was Elvira, calling them into a meeting with the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia and the antiterrorist squad of the Comisaría General de Información.

There were three men from the CNI. The boss was a man in his sixties, with white hair and dark eyebrows and a handsome, ex-athlete’s face. He introduced himself only as Juan. His two juniors, Pablo and Gregorio, were younger men, who had the bland appearance of middle managers. In their dark suits they were barely distinguishable, although Pablo had a scar running from his hairline to his left eyebrow. Falcón was uncomfortably aware that Pablo had not taken his eyes off him since he’d walked into the room. He began to wonder whether they’d met before.

There was only one representative from the antiterrorism unit of the CGI. His name was Inspector Jefe Ramón Barros, a short, powerfully built man, with close-cropped grey hair and perfect teeth, which added a sinister element to his brutal and furious demeanour.

Comisario Elvira asked Falcón to give a résumé of his findings so far. He started with the immediate aftermath of the bomb and moved on quickly to the discovery of the Peugeot Partner, its contents, and the times it was seen by witnesses in the car park.

‘We’ve since discovered that the fine white powder taken from the rear of the van is a military explosive known as hexogen, which my colleague, Juez Calderón, has told me was the same type of explosive used by Chechen rebels to blow up two apartment blocks in Moscow in 1999.’

‘You can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers,’ said Juan. ‘There’s considerable doubt now that it was the Chechen rebels. We’re not great believers in conspiracy theories in our own back yard, but when it comes to Russia it seems that anything is possible. There is a natural inclination, after such a catastrophic attack as this, to make comparisons to other terrorist attacks, to look for patterns. What we’ve learnt from the mistakes we made after March 11th is that there are no patterns. It’s the government’s business to quell panic by offering some kind of order to a terrified public. It’s our job to treat every situation as unique. Carry on, Inspector Jefe.’

None of the Sevillanos liked this patronizing little speech and they looked at the CNI man in his expensive loafers, lightweight suit and stiff, heavy, silvery tie and decided that the only thing he’d said that didn’t mark him out as a typical visiting Madrileño was his admission of a mistake.

‘If it wasn’t Chechen rebels, who was it?’ asked Calderón.

‘Not relevant, Juez Calderón,’ said Juan. ‘Proceed, Inspector Jefe.’

‘It might be interesting from the point of view of sources for the hexogen,’ said Calderón, who was not a man to be brushed off easily. ‘We’ve found a van with traces of explosive and Islamic paraphernalia. The Chechens are known to have access to Russian military ordnance and have the sympathy of the Muslim world. In most people’s minds those rebels were responsible for the destruction of the Moscow apartment blocks. If any of these connections have been proven invalid by the intelligence community, then perhaps the Inspector Jefe should know about them now. The source of the explosives will be an important area of his investigation.’

‘His investigation?’ said Juan. ‘Our investigation. This is going to be a concerted effort. The Grupo de Homicidios is not going to crack this case on its own. This hexogen will have been imported. The CNI has the international connections to find out where it came from.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Calderón, embarking on some of his own pomposity, ‘this is where the investigation begins, and if the Inspector Jefe is about to pursue an avenue of enquiry with incorrect or misleading information, then perhaps he should be told.’

Calderón was aware that this was irrelevant in terms of information for the purposes of the investigation, but he also knew that a demonstration of power was required to put Juan in his place. Calderón was the leading Juez de Instrucción and he was not going to have his authority undermined by an outsider, especially a Madrileño.

‘We cannot be certain,’ said Juan, exasperated by the posturing, ‘but a theory is being given credibility that the Russian Security Service, the FSB, were themselves responsible for the outrage, and that they successfully managed to frame the Chechens. Just prior to the explosion Putin had become director of the FSB. The country was in turmoil and there was the perfect opportunity for a power play. The FSB provoked a war in Chechnya and Dagestan. The prime minister lost his job and Putin took over at the beginning of 1999. The Moscow apartment explosions gave him the opportunity to start a patriotic campaign. He was the fearless leader who would stand up to the rebels. By the beginning of 2000, Putin was acting president of Russia. The hexogen used by the FSB was supposed to have come from a scientific research institute in Lubyanka where the FSB has its headquarters. As you can see, Juez Calderón, my explanation does not help us very much here, but it does illustrate how very quickly the world can become a dangerous and confusing place.’

Silence, while the Sevillanos considered the reverberations of the explosion in their own city to places like Chechnya and Moscow. Falcón continued his briefing about the Peugeot Partner, the two men seen unloading goods for the mosque, the men believed to have been in the mosque at the time of the explosion, and the latest revelations about the owner of the vehicle and his nephew, Trabelsi Amar, who had borrowed it.

‘Anything else?’ asked Juan, while Elvira’s assistant entered the name of Trabelsi Amar into the terrorist suspects database.

‘Just one thing to clear up before I continue with the investigation,’ said Falcón. ‘Did the CNI or the CGI have the mosque under surveillance?’

‘What makes you think that we might have done?’ asked Juan.

Falcón briefed them on the mysterious, well-dressed young men from Informáticalidad, who had frequented the nearby apartment over the past three months.

‘That is not the way we would run a surveillance operation and I’ve never heard of Informáticalidad.’

‘What about the antiterrorism unit, Inspector Jefe Barros?’ asked Elvira.

‘We did not have the mosque under active surveillance,’ said Barros, who seemed to be restraining great anger under preternatural calm. ‘I’ve heard of Informáticalidad. They’re the biggest suppliers of computer software and consumables in Seville. They even supply us.’

‘One final question about the Imam,’ said Falcón. ‘We’re told he arrived here from Tunis in September 2004 and that he is in the lowest risk category for terrorist suspects, but his history required a higher authority for clearance.’

‘His file is incomplete,’ said Juan.

‘What does that mean?’

‘As far as we know, he’s clean,’ said Juan. ‘He has been heard to speak out against the cold-blooded, indiscriminate nature of the Madrid bombings. We understand from his visa application that part of the reason he came to Seville was to attempt a healing of the wounds between the Catholic and Muslim communities. He saw that as his duty. We were only concerned about gaps in his history that we could not fill. These gaps occurred in the 1980s, when a lot of Muslims went to Afghanistan to fight with the mujahedeen against the Russians. Some returned radicalized to their homes in the 1990s and others later became the Taliban. The Imam would have been in his thirties at the time and therefore a prime candidate. In the end, the Americans vouched for him and we allowed him a visa.’

‘So this bomb has killed a potential sympathizer, five men over the age of sixty-five, a man under thirty-five who was in a wheelchair, two Spanish converts and two men in their forties collecting disability benefits, which leaves only two under the age of thirty-five, able-bodied and of North African origin,’ said Elvira. ‘Can the CNI offer a theory as to why this strangely mixed group of people who, we have just been told, were not under active surveillance, should be storing high-quality military explosive and why it should have been detonated?’

Silence. The grinding gears of the machinery outside reached them. The thunder of rubble dropping into empty tippers, the hiss and scream of hydraulics, the low roar of the crane’s unwinding cable, all punctuated by the pneumatic drills’ staccato stabbing, reminded these men of the purpose of their meeting and the disaster that had befallen this city.

‘Trabelsi Amar is not on any terrorist suspect database and he’s an illegal alien,’ said Elvira’s assistant, breaking the silence.

‘Do you believe that explosives could have been stored in the mosque without the knowledge of the Imam?’ asked Calderón.

‘There’s an outside chance that he didn’t recognize what it was,’ said Juan. ‘As you know, hexogen looks like sugar. The trace left on the floor indicates that the packaging wasn’t exactly hermetically sealed. It’s possible that the explosive was in those cardboard boxes, which the Inspector Jefe has told us were seen being unloaded yesterday.’

‘But for the hexogen to actually explode would require a detonator,’ said Falcón. ‘From the way in which they were moving it around it must be a stable product.’

‘It is,’ said Juan.

‘Then that means they must have been working on making bombs and accidentally detonated it,’ said Falcón. ‘I doubt they could be doing that in secret in a mosque of that size, with thirteen other people in it. I haven’t seen the plans, but it can’t be more than ten by twenty metres.’

‘So the Imam is complicit in that scenario,’ said Juan. ‘We’ll have to talk to the Americans about Abdelkrim Benaboura and we’ll find a photo ID and a history for Trabelsi Amar.’

‘If Soumaya is identifying Amar as his nephew, then that doesn’t sound to me like deep terrorist cover. He’s probably got photographs,’ said Falcón. ‘We have to consider the possibility that this van was not being driven by him. It could have been stolen or, for whatever reason, given to another party to transport goods to Seville. Trabelsi Amar’s function could have been simply to provide a van, which would not be reported stolen.’

‘We’ll make sure the CGI in Canillas communicate with the local police in Madrid, who are interviewing Mohammed Soumaya,’ said Juan, which sounded like he was undermining Inspector Jefe Barros, who was still boiling in silence. ‘It’s one of the complications of these terrorist operations that the people we know about are active only in so far as they use up our time and resources. As was the case with March 11th, where none of the operatives were known terrorists or had any links to known radical Islamic organizations. They came out of nowhere to perform their tasks.’

‘But you’re in a better position now than you were then,’ said Elvira.

‘Since 9/11 and the evidence of connections made by Islamic terrorist cell members in Spain…’

‘You mean al-Qaeda members?’ said Elvira.

‘We don’t like to use the name al-Qaeda because it implies an organization with a hierarchy along Western lines. This is not the case,’ said Juan. ‘It’s useful for the media to have this name to hang on Islamic terrorism, but we don’t use it in the service. We have to remind ourselves not to be complacent. As I was saying: since 9/11 and the evidence of connections made by Islamic terrorist cell members in Spain with the perpetrators of the Twin Towers and Washington DC attacks, there has been considerable stepping up of activities.’

‘But, as you say, there seems to be an unending stream of young operatives who you don’t know about and who can be organized at a distance to perform terrorist acts,’ said Calderón. ‘That, surely, is the problem?’

‘As you’ve seen from the investigations into the London bombings, there is extraordinary co-operation between all the secret services,’ said Juan. ‘Our proximity to North Africa makes us vulnerable but gives us opportunities as well. In the two years since the Madrid train bombings we have achieved considerable penetration into Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. We hope to improve our ability to pick up sleeping cells by intercepting the signals that might eventually activate them. We are not perfect, but neither are they. You don’t hear about our successes, and it’s too early to say whether we are dealing here with one of our failures.’