The Hidden Assassins Read online

  ‘My job is finding murderers.’

  ‘We had some black money to get rid of.’

  ‘And its use wasn’t discussed at a board meeting?’

  ‘Not one I attended,’ said Plata. ‘It was Diego Torres’s idea, he’s the Human Resources Director, you’d best talk to him.’

  More time leaked past. The chill of the air conditioning and his exposure in the glass office made him feel like an Arctic zoo animal. Diego Torres arrived and before he’d even sat down Falcón asked him how they’d used the apartment.

  ‘We try to encourage our employees to think creatively, not just about our business but business in general,’ said Torres. ‘Where will the next opportunities come from? Is there another strand that we can attach to our core business? Is there another business out there that could improve our own, or help it to grow? Is there a totally different project that could be worth investing in? These sorts of things.’

  ‘And you think you can achieve that by investing in a small apartment, in an anonymous block, in a poor neighbourhood of Seville?’

  ‘That was a conscious decision,’ said Torres. ‘Our employees complained that they never had time to think creatively, they were always too busy with the work at hand. They came to us demanding “brainstorming time”. A lot of companies offer this and it normally consists of sending employees away to an expensive country club, where they attend meetings and seminars, listen to gurus spouting common sense and charging a fortune, interspersed with tennis, swimming and staying up until five in the morning partying.’

  ‘They must have been very disappointed by your solution,’ said Falcón. ‘How many employees did you lose?’

  ‘None from that project, but there’s always a certain amount of churn in the sales teams. It’s hard work with demanding targets. We pay well, but we expect results. A lot of young guys think they can handle the pressure, but they burn out, or lose their drive. It’s a young person’s business. There are no sales reps over thirty.’

  ‘You’re telling me you didn’t lose anybody when you showed them that apartment in El Cerezo?’

  ‘We’re not stupid, Inspector Jefe,’ said Torres. ‘We gave them a sweetener. The idea was that they should take the brainstorming seriously. We put them in a place outside their normal environment, with no distractions, not even a decent café to go to, so that they would concentrate on the task. They went in pairs and we swapped the people around. They were told it was a finite project, three months maximum, and they wouldn’t have to spend more than four hours at a time in the apartment. They were also told that they would be a part of any of their projects which received board approval.’

  ‘Was that the sweetener?’

  ‘We’re not that tough on them,’ said Torres. ‘The sweetener was a fully paid break in a beach hotel, with golf and tennis, during the Feria—and they wouldn’t have to do any work. We let them bring their girlfriends, too.’

  ‘And boyfriends?’

  Torres blinked, as if that little comment had short-circuited something in his brain. Falcón thought Torres might be inferring something ‘inappropriate’ from his remark until he remembered that only men had been seen going into the apartment.

  ‘You do employ women, don’t you, Sr Torres?’

  ‘The receptionist who showed you in here is…’

  ‘How do you recruit, Sr Torres?’

  ‘We advertise at business schools and through recruitment agencies.’

  ‘Give me some names and telephone numbers,’ said Falcón, handing him his notebook. ‘How many people have you fired in the last year?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Two years?’

  ‘None. We don’t fire people. They leave.’

  ‘It’s cheaper that way,’ said Falcón. ‘I’d like a list of all the people who have left your employ in the last year, and I’d also like the names and addresses of all the men who frequented that apartment in Calle Los Romeros.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We have to know whether they saw anything while they were there, especially in the last week.’

  ‘It might not be so easy for you to interview my sales reps.’

  ‘You’ll have to make it easy. We’re looking for people who are responsible for the deaths of four children and five adults…so far. And the first forty-eight hours of an investigation are critical.’

  ‘When would you like to start?’

  ‘Two members of my squad will begin contacting your sales reps as soon as you’ve given me their names and phone numbers,’ said Falcón. ‘And why, by the way, did you insist on your employees being there in the hours of daylight?’

  ‘Those are the hours they work anyway. They sell from nine in the morning until eight at night while businesses are open. Then there’s the paperwork, team meetings, course studies, product information classes. Twelve-hour days are the short ones.’

  ‘Let me have a list with addresses and phone numbers of all the board members, too.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Along with those other lists I asked for,’ said Falcón. ‘I am busy, too, Sr Torres. So if you could bring them to me in the next ten minutes it would be appreciated.’

  Torres stood and went to shake Falcón’s hand.

  ‘I’d like you to bring me the lists, Sr Torres’’ said Falcón. ‘I’ll have more questions by then.’

  Torres left. Falcón went to the toilet; there was an electronic plaque above each urinal, which streamed quotes from the Bible and inspirational business maxims. Informáticalidad extracted the best out of its employees by embracing them in a culture not unlike a religious sect.

  The receptionist was waiting for him outside the toilets. It looked as if she’d been sent to make sure he didn’t roam too freely around the corridors, despite all the offices being controlled by security key pads. She took him back to Torres, who was waiting with the lists.

  ‘Is Informáticalidad part of a holding company?’ asked Falcón.

  ‘We’re in the high-technology division of a Spanish company based in Madrid called Horizonte. They are owned by a US investment company called I4IT.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Torres. ‘The I4 bit is Indianapolis Investment Interests Incorporated and IT is Information Technology. I think they started out investing only in Hi-Tech, but they’re broader based than that now.’

  Torres walked him back to reception.

  ‘How many ideas and projects did your reps come up with while they were in Calle Los Romeros?’

  ‘Fifteen ideas, which have already been incorporated into our working practices, and four projects which are still in the planning stage.’

  ‘Have you ever heard of a website called www.vomit.org?’

  ‘Never,’ said Torres, and let the door slowly close.

  Back in his car Falcón checked his mobiles for calls. Informáticalidad’s building, a steel cage covered in tinted glass, reflected its surroundings. On top of the building were four banners with company logos: Informáticalidad, Quirúrgicalidad, Ecográficalidad and finally a slightly larger placard featuring a huge pair of spectacles with a horizon running through them and above, the word Optivisión. High technology, robotic surgical instruments, ultrasound machines and laser equipment for correcting visual defects. This company had access to the internal workings of the body. They could see inside you, remove and implant things and make sure you saw the world the way they saw it. It disturbed Falcón.

  12

  Seville—Tuesday, 6th June 2006, 15.45 hrs

  As Falcón pulled away, car rippling along the glass façade of the building, he put a call through to Mark Flowers, who was euphemistically known as a Communications Officer in the US Consulate in Seville. He was a CIA operative who, after 9/11, had been pulled out of retirement, posted to Madrid and transferred to Seville. Falcón had met him during an investigation back in 2002. They had stayed in touch, or rather Falcón had become one of Flowers’ sources and, in return, recei
ved intelligence and a more direct and proactive line to the FBI.

  ‘Returning your call, Mark,’ said Falcón.

  ‘We should talk.’

  ‘Have you got anything for me?’

  ‘Nothing. It came out of the blue. I’m working on stuff.’

  ‘Can you get some information for me on a company called I4IT, that’s Indianapolis Investment Interests Incorporated in Information Technology.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Flowers. ‘When can we meet?’

  ‘Tonight. Late. Our people want to “interview” me,’ said Falcón. ‘If you come afterwards you might be able to give me some advice.’

  ‘Falcón hung up. The radio news gave its latest summary of events: a group called the Mártires Islámicos para la Liberación de Andalucía had called both TVE and RNE to claim responsibility for the attack. El Corte Inglés had been evacuated and there was a stampede in the Calle Tetuán because of a bomb scare. All roads out of Seville, especially the motorway south towards Jerez de la Frontera, were jammed with traffic.

  Falcón had to resist the image of a vast dust cloud on the outskirts of Seville, thick with panicked cattle beneath.

  As he drove back across the river his mobile vibrated; Ramírez wanting to know where he was.

  ‘We’ve found somebody who’s a regular at the mosque,’ he said. ‘He goes there every evening after work, for prayers. We’ll see you in the pre-school.’

  Falcón came into the barrio of El Cerezo from the north, to avoid any traffic around the hospital. In the pre-school he photocopied the lists of personnel from Informáticalidad and gave them to Ramírez with orders for two members of the squad to start interviewing the sales reps to see if they’d noticed anything. Ramírez introduced the Moroccan man, who was called Said Harrouch. He was a cook, born in 1958 in Larache in northern Morocco.

  The demolition work was too loud for them to talk in any of the classrooms, none of which had any glass in the windows, so they moved to the man’s apartment nearby. Harrouch’s wife made them mint tea and they sat in a room facing away from the destroyed building.

  ‘You’re a cook for a manufacturing company in the Polígono Industrial Calonge,’ said Ramírez. ‘What hours do you work?’

  ‘Seven in the morning until five in the afternoon,’ he said. ‘They let me go back home when they heard about the bomb.’

  ‘Do you go to the mosque at a regular time?’

  ‘I manage to get there some time between half past five and a quarter to six.’

  ‘Every day?’

  ‘On the weekends I go five times a day.’

  ‘Do you just pray, or do you spend time there?’

  ‘At the weekends there’s tea and I’ll sit around and talk.’

  The man was calm. He sat back from the table with his hands clasped across his stomach. He blinked slowly with long lashes and no wariness of either policeman.

  ‘How long have you lived in Seville?’

  ‘Nearly sixteen years,’ he said. ‘I came over in 1990 to work on the Expo site. I never went back.’

  ‘Do you like living here in this neighbourhood?’

  ‘I preferred living in the old city,’ he said. ‘It was more like home.’

  ‘How are the people here?’

  ‘You mean the Spanish people?’ he asked. ‘They’re all right, most of them. Some of them don’t like so many of us Moroccans being here.’

  ‘You don’t have to be diplomatic,’ said Ramírez. ‘Tell us how it really is.’

  ‘After the Madrid train bombings a lot of people are very suspicious of us,’ said Harrouch. ‘They might have been told that not every North African is a terrorist, but it doesn’t help when there are so many of us about. The Imam has done his best to explain to local people that terrorism is a problem with an extreme minority, and that he himself does not agree with their radical interpretations of Islam, and does not approve of it in his mosque. It hasn’t helped. They are still suspicious. I tell them that even in Morocco you would struggle to find anyone who actively approves of what these few fanatics are doing, but they don’t believe us. Of course, if you go to a teahouse in Tangier you will hear people getting angry about what the Americans and the Israelis are doing. You will see protests on the streets about the plight of the Palestinians. But that is just talk and demonstration. It doesn’t mean we’re all about to strap bombs to our chests and go out and kill. Our own people were killed in the suicide bombings in Casablanca in May 2003 and Muslims died on those trains in Madrid in 2004 and in London in 2005, but they don’t remember that.’

  ‘That’s the nature of terror, isn’t it, Sr Harrouch?’ said Falcón. ‘The terrorist wants people to know that this can happen in any place, at any time, to anybody—Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist. This seems to be the state we are in now, here in Seville. People can no longer feel safe in their homes. What we want to find out, as soon as possible, is: who wants us to be terrified or, if that’s too difficult, why they want us to be terrified.’

  ‘But, of course, everybody will assume it is us,’ said Harrouch, putting his fingertips to his chest. ‘As I left work this morning, I was insulted in the street by people who can only think in one way when they hear that a bomb has gone off.’

  ‘On 11th March the government automatically thought it was ETA,’ said Ramírez.

  ‘We know that there are anti-Muslim groups,’ said Falcón.

  ‘We’ve all heard of VOMIT, for instance,’ said Harrouch. Then, registering the policemen’s surprise: ‘We spend a lot of time on the internet. That’s how we communicate with our families back in Morocco.’

  ‘We only found out about it this morning,’ said Falcón.

  ‘But it isn’t directed at you, is it?’ said Harrouch. ‘It’s designed to show that Islam is a religion of hate, which is not true. We see VOMIT as just another way that the West has devised to set out to humiliate us.’

  ‘But it isn’t the West that has created that website,’ said Ramírez. ‘It’s another fanatical minority within the West.’

  ‘The fact is, Sr Harrouch, it’s going to take time for us to reach the basement where the mosque was located,’ said Falcón, drawing the discussion back to business. ‘We’re going to have to wait days for any forensic information from the site of the actual bomb. What we have to rely on, for the moment, is witness accounts. Who was seen going in and out of that building over the last seventy-two hours. So far we have had a sighting of two vehicles: a white Peugeot Partner with two Moroccan men, who were seen delivering cardboard boxes—’

  ‘Of sugar,’ said Harrouch, suddenly animated. ‘I was there when they brought it in yesterday. It was sugar. It was clearly printed on the sides of the boxes. And they had plastic carrier bags of mint. It was for the tea.’

  ‘Did you know those two men?’ asked Ramírez. ‘Had you seen them before?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know them,’ he said. ‘I’d never seen them before.’

  ‘So who did know them? Who did they make contact with?’

  ‘Imam Abdelkrim Benaboura.’

  ‘What did they do with this sugar and mint?’

  ‘They took it into the storeroom at the back of the mosque.’

  ‘Were these men introduced to anybody?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know where they came from?’ asked Falcón.

  ‘Someone said they were from Madrid.’

  ‘How long did they stay in the mosque talking to the Imam?’

  ‘They were still there when I left at seven o’clock.’

  ‘Could they have spent the night there?’

  ‘It’s possible. People have slept in the mosque before.’

  ‘Do you remember when they arrived?’ asked Ramírez.

  ‘About ten minutes after I came in from work, so about a quarter to six.’

  ‘Can you tell us exactly what they did?’

  ‘They came in, each carrying a box with a carrier bag of mint on top. They asked for the Imam. He came
out of his office and showed them the storeroom. They stowed the boxes and then went back outside and brought another two boxes in.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘They left.’

  ‘Empty-handed?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Harrouch. ‘But they came back a few minutes later. I think they went off to park their car. When they returned they went into the Imam’s office and they hadn’t come out again by the time I left.’

  ‘Did you hear anything of their conversation?’

  Harrouch shook his head. Falcón sensed the man’s nausea at the endless questions about seemingly unimportant detail. Harrouch somehow felt he was compromising these two men, who he believed had just delivered sugar and nothing more. Falcón told him not to worry about the questions, they were asked only to see if they squared with other witness accounts.

  ‘Did you hear any talk of other outsiders who’d turned up that morning?’ asked Ramírez.

  ‘Outsiders?’

  ‘Workmen, delivery people…that sort of thing.’

  ‘The electricians came at some stage. Something had gone wrong with the electrics on Saturday night. We were in the dark, with just candles, all Sunday and when I came in from work yesterday all the lights were back on. I don’t know what happened or what work was done. You’ll have to ask someone who was there in the morning.’

  Ramírez asked him for some names and checked them off against the list of men given to Elvira by the Spanish woman, Esperanza. The first three names Harrouch gave him were on the list and therefore probably dead in the mosque. The fourth name lived in an apartment in a nearby street.

  ‘How well do you know the Imam?’

  ‘He’s been with us nearly two years. He reads a lot. I’ve heard his apartment is full of books. But he still gives us as much of his time as he can,’ said Harrouch. ‘I told you he was not a radical. He never said anything that could be construed as extreme, and he even made his position clear on suicide bombing: that in his view the Koran did not regard it as permissible. And remember, there were Spanish converts to Islam in the mosque, who would not tolerate anything extreme so…’