The Hidden Assassins

‘You said that “in this scenario the Imam is complicit”,’ said Falcón. ‘Does this mean you are looking at other scenarios?’

‘All we can do is prepare ourselves for eventualities,’ said Juan. ‘In the last two years we have been examining a domestic phenomenon, which first came to light on the internet. I hesitate to call this phenomenon a group, because we have found no evidence of organization, or communication, for that matter. What we have found are newsletter pages on a website called www.vomit.org. This was thought to be an American site because it first appeared in the English language, but the CIA and MI5 have just recently told us they now believe VOMIT stands for Victimas del Odio de Musulmanos, Islamistas y Terroristas.’

‘What’s the content of the newsletter?’

‘It’s an updated list of all terrorist attacks carried out by Islamic extremists since the early 1990s. It gives a short account of the attack, the number of victims, both dead and injured, followed by the number of people directly affected by the death or injury of a person close to them.’

‘Does that mean they are contacting the victims’ families?’ asked Elvira.

‘If they are, the victims seem to be unaware of it,’ said Juan. ‘Victims get approached by the media, the government, the social services, the police…and, as yet, we haven’t found anyone who has been able to tell us that they’ve been contacted by VOMIT.’

‘Did this start in 2004 after the Madrid bombings?’ said Elvira.

‘The British first came across the pages in June 2004. By September 2004 it also included Muslim on Muslim attacks, such as suicide bombings against police recruiting offices in Iraq, and since the beginning of 2005 there has also been a section on Muslim women who have been the victims of honour killings or gang rapes. In these cases, they only report on the type of attack and number of victims.’

‘Presumably the posting of these pages on the web is completely anonymous,’ said Calderón, who didn’t wait for an answer. ‘There must have been a Muslim reaction to this, surely?’

‘The Al Jazeera news channel did a piece on these web pages back in August 2004 and there was a huge internet response in which various Arab-sponsored websites enumerated Arab victims of Israeli, American, European, Russian, Far Eastern and Australian aggression. Some of them were extreme and went back in history to the Crusades, the expulsion of the Moors from Spain and the defeat of the Ottoman empire. None of the websites came up with as powerful a banner as VOMIT, and a lot of them couldn’t resist spouting an agenda, so although they were read avidly in the Arab world, they didn’t penetrate the West at all.’

‘So what makes you think that VOMIT has gone from being a passive, unorganized internet phenomenon into an active, operational entity?’ asked Falcón.

‘We don’t,’ said Juan. ‘We review their web pages daily to see if there’s any incitement to violence, disrespect shown to Islam, or attempts at recruitment to some kind of cause, but there’s nothing except the clocking up of attacks and their victims.’

‘Have you spoken to victims of the Madrid bombings?’ asked Falcón.

‘There is no common theme of vengeance amongst them. The only anger was directed at our own politicians and not against North Africans in general, or Islamic fanatics specifically. Most of the victims recognized that many Muslims had also been killed in the bombings. They saw it as an indiscriminate act of terror, with a political goal.’

‘Did any of them know about VOMIT?’

‘Yes, but none of them said they would seek membership if it existed,’ said Juan. ‘However, we do know that there is anger out there from fanatical right-wing groups with strong racist views and anti-immigration policies. We are keeping an eye on them. The police handle their violent activities at a local level. They are not known to have a national organization or to have planned and carried out attacks of this magnitude.’

‘And religious groups?’

‘Some of these fanatically right-wing groups have religious elements, too. If they advertise themselves in any way, we know about them. What concerns us is that they might be learning from their perceived enemies.’

‘So the other possible scenario—that this was an organized attack against a Muslim community—is based solely on what? That it’s about time there was a reaction against Islamic terrorism?’ asked Calderón.

‘Each terrorist atrocity is unique. The circumstances that prevail at the time make it so,’ said Juan. ‘At the time of the March 11th attack, Aznar’s government were expecting an ETA attempt to disrupt the forthcoming elections. A couple of months earlier on Christmas Eve 2003 two bombs of 25 kilos each had been discovered on the Irún-Madrid intercity train. Both bombs were classic ETA devices and had been set to explode two minutes before their arrival in the Chamartín station. Another ETA bomb was found on the track of the Zaragoza-Caspe-Barcelona line, which was set to explode on New Year’s Eve 2003. On 29th February 2004, as everybody in this room knows, the Guardia Civil intercepted two ETA operatives in a transit van which contained 536 kilos of Titadine, destination Madrid. Everything was pointing to a major attack on the railway system prior to the elections on 14th March 2004, which would be planned and carried out by ETA.’

‘That was the information, and the extrapolation from it was sent to the government by the CNI,’ said Calderón, keen to stick it in.

‘And it was wrong, Juez Calderón. We were wrong,’ said Juan. ‘Even after listening to the tapes of the Koran found in the Renault Kangoo van near the Alcalá de Henares station, and the discovery of the detonators not previously used by ETA, and the fact that the explosive was not Titadine, as customarily used by ETA, but Goma 2 ECO, we still couldn’t believe that ETA was not behind it. That is the very point I am making, and it is why we should consider all scenarios in this present attack and not allow our minds to harden around a core of received opinion. We must work, step by step, until we have the unbreakable line of logic that leads to the perpetrators.’

‘We can’t leave people in the dark while we do this,’ said Calderón. ‘The media, the politicians and the public need to know that something is happening, that their safety is assured. Terror breeds confusion—’

‘Comisario Elvira, as leader of this investigation, has that responsibility, as do the politicians. Our job is to make sure that they have the right information,’ said Juan. ‘We’ve already started looking at this attack with a historical mind—the apartment bombs in Moscow, the discovery of Islamic paraphernalia in a white van—and we can’t afford to do that.’

‘The media already knows what was found in the Peugeot Partner van,’ said Calderón. ‘We cannot prevent them from drawing their conclusions.’

‘How do they know that?’ asked Juan. ‘There was a police cordon.’

‘We don’t know,’ said Calderón, ‘but as soon as the vehicle was removed and the journalists allowed into the car park, Comisario Elvira and I were fielding questions about the hexogen, the two copies of the Koran, a hood, the Islamic sash, and plenty of other stuff that wasn’t even in the van.’

‘There were a lot of people out in that car park,’ said Falcón. ‘My officers, the forensics, the bomb squad, the vehicle removal men, were all in the vicinity of that first inspection of the van. Journalists do their job. The cameras were supposed to be kept away from the bodies of the children in the pre-school, but one guy found his way in there.’

‘As we’ve seen before,’ said Juan, breathing down his irritation, ‘it’s very difficult to dislodge first impressions from the public’s mind. There are still millions of Americans who believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible in some way for 9/11. Most of Seville will now believe that they have been the victim of an Islamic terrorist attack and we might not be able to come close to confirming the truth of the matter until we can get into the mosque, which could be days of demolition work away.’

‘Perhaps we should look at the unique circumstances which led to this event,’ said Falcón, ‘and also look at the future, to see if there’s anything that this bombing might be seeking to influence. From my own point of view, the reason I was very early on to the scene here was that I was at the Forensic Institute, discussing the autopsy of a body found on the main rubbish dump on the outskirts of Seville.’

Falcón gave the details of the unidentifiable corpse found yesterday.

‘This could, of course, be an unconnected murder,’ said Falcón. ‘However, it is unique in the crime history of Seville and it does not appear to be the work of a single person, but rather a group of killers, who have gone to extreme lengths to prevent identification.’

‘Have there been any other murders with similar attempts to prevent identification?’ asked Juan.

‘Not in Spain this year, according to the police computer,’ said Falcón. ‘We haven’t checked with Interpol yet. Our investigation is still very new.’

‘Are there any elections due?’

‘The Andalucían parliamentary elections last took place in March 2004,’ said Calderón. ‘The Town Hall elections were in 2003 so they are due next March. The socialists are currently in office.’

Juan took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket.

‘Before we left Madrid we had a call from the CGI, who had just been informed by the editor of the ABC that they had received a letter with a Seville stamp on the envelope. The letter consisted of a single sheet of paper and a printed text in Spanish. We have since discovered that this text comes from the work of Abdullah Azzam, a preacher best known as the leading ideologue of the Afghan resistance to the Russian invasion. It reads as follows:

‘“This duty will not end with victory in Afghanistan; jihad will remain an individual obligation until all other lands that were Muslim are returned to us, so that Islam will reign again: before us lie Palestine, Bokhara, Lebanon, Chad, Eritrea, Somalia, the Philippines, Burma, Southern Yemen, Tashkent…”’ he paused, looking around the room, ‘“and Andalucía.”’

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. Calderón left immediately. The three CNI men spoke intently amongst themselves, while Falcón 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. Falcón and Barros were asked to leave the room. Barros paced the corridor, avoiding Falcón. Some moments later Elvira called Falcón 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 Falcón.

‘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. Falcón 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 Falcón. ‘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 Falcón. ‘But I think I’m going to follow up the Informáticalidad 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 Andalucía 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 Falcón. ‘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 Jiménez.’

‘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 Falcón 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 Inglés 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 Andalucía 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 Policía 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 café 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.