The Hidden Assassins Read online

  ‘So what has this bomb in Seville indicated to you?’

  ‘The fact that hexogen was found is a cause for concern and, judging by the level of destruction, it was not a small quantity. Just the use of this material, which the jihadis have never used before, makes us think that the design was not to frighten the population of Seville, but something bigger,’ said Pablo. ‘The British have also revealed that local sources have heard talk about something “big” about to happen, but their intelligence network has picked up no changes in any of their communities. We have to remember that, since the July 7th London Underground bombings, those communities are more aware, too. This makes MI5 and MI6 think that it will be an attack launched from the outside, and Spain has proven to be a popular country for terrorists to gather and plan their campaigns.’

  ‘So how are you expecting Yacoub Diouri to help you?’ asked Falcón. ‘He doesn’t do much business in England. He goes to London for shopping and the two fashion weeks. He has friends, but they’re all in the fashion industry. I’m assuming, by the way, that you want Yacoub to act for you because he’s not involved in international terrorism, but that he might have contacts with people whose involvement in these activities he is unaware of.’

  ‘We’re not going to ask him to do anything unusual or out of character. He attends the right mosque and he already knows the people we want him to make contact with. He just has to take it a step further.’

  ‘I didn’t know he attended a radical mosque.’

  ‘A mosque with radical elements, where it is possible, with a name like Diouri, to become “involved”. As you know, Yacoub’s “father”, Abdullah, was active in the independence movement, Istiqlal, in the fifties; he was one of the prime movers against European decadence in Tangier. His name carries huge weight with the traditional Islamists. The radicals would love to have a Diouri on their side.’

  ‘So you know who these radical elements are?’

  ‘I go to church. I’m a moderate Catholic,’ said Pablo. ‘I don’t have much time to get involved in church-related business or socialize with other members of the congregation. But even I know all the people who hold strong views, because they can’t keep them in and they can’t disguise their history.’

  ‘But you can have powerful convictions and have enthusiasm for radical ideas without being a terrorist.’

  ‘Exactly, which is why the only way to find out is to be involved and get to the next level,’ said Pablo. ’What we’re trying to find is a chain of command. Where do the orders come from to activate the dormant cells? Where do the ideas for terrorist attacks originate? Is there a planning division? Are there independent recce and logistical teams who move around, giving expert help to activated cells? Our picture of these terrorist networks is so incomplete that we’re not even sure whether a network exists or not.’

  ‘Where are the British in all this?’ asked Falcón. ‘They’re expecting another major assault from the outside. They must know about Yacoub from his trips to London. Why haven’t they tried to recruit him themselves?’

  ‘They have. It didn’t work,’ said Pablo. ‘The British are very sensitive to anything that happens in southern Spain and North Africa because they’re in the middle, with their naval base in Gibraltar. They are aware of the potential for attacks, like the explosive dinghy launched at the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000. They have sources in the ex-pat criminal communities operating between the Costa del Sol and that stretch of Moroccan coast between Melilla and Ceuta. The nature of the drug-smuggling business is that it is cash heavy and requires access to efficient money-laundering operations. Other criminal communities are inevitably involved. Information comes from all angles. When we told the British that hexogen had been used in the Seville bomb yesterday, it resonated with something they already knew, or rather something they’d heard.’

  ‘Did they tell you what that was?’

  ‘It needs to be corroborated,’ said Pablo. ‘The most important thing, at this stage, is to find out whether Yacoub is prepared to act for us. If he’s already turned down the Americans and the British, it could be that he’s not interested in that sort of life, because, believe me, it is very demanding. So let’s see if he’s a player and take it from there.’

  The car had arrived at a private entrance to the airport, beyond the terminal buildings. The driver talked to the policeman at the gate and showed a pass. Pablo dropped the window and the policeman looked in with his clipboard. He nodded. The gate opened. The car drove into an X-ray bay and out again. They drove beyond the air cargo area until they arrived at a hangar where six small planes were parked. The car pulled up alongside a Lear jet. Pablo picked up a large plastic bag of that morning’s newspapers from the floor of the Mercedes. They boarded the jet and took their seats. Pablo flicked through the newspapers, which were full of the bombings.

  ‘How about that for a headline?’ he said, and handed Falcón a British tabloid.

  THE SECOND COMING? COUNT THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST: 666 6 JUNE 2006

  20

  Casablanca—Wednesday, 7th June 2006, 08.03 hrs

  The plane touched down just after 8 a.m. Spanish time, two hours ahead of Moroccan time. They were met by a Mercedes, which contained a member of the Spanish embassy from Rabat, who took their passports. They were driven to a quiet end of the terminal building and after a few minutes they were through to the other side. The Mercedes drove to where the rental cars were parked. The man from the Spanish embassy handed over a set of keys and Falcón transferred to a Peugeot 206.

  ‘We can’t have an embassy vehicle turning up at his residence,’ said Pablo.

  The diplomat handed over some dirhams for the tolls. Falcón left the airport and joined the motorway from Casablanca to Rabat. The sun was well up and the heat haze was draining the colour from the dull, flat landscape. Falcón sat back with the window open and the moist sea air baffling over the glass. He overtook vastly overloaded trucks farting out black smoke, with boys sitting on top of sheet-wrapped bales, their legs hooked around the securing ropes. In the fields a man in a burnous sat on a bony white donkey, which he tapped and poked with a stick. Occasionally a BMW flashed past, leaving a flicker of Arabic lettering on the retina. The smell was of the sea, woodsmoke, manured earth and pollution.

  The outskirts of Rabat loomed. He took the ring road and came into the city from the east. He remembered the turning after the Société Marocaine de Banques. The tarmac gave out immediately and he eased up the troughed and pitted track to the main gate of Yacoub Diouri’s walled property. The gate-man recognized him. He swung up the driveway, lined with Washingtonian palms, and stopped outside the front door. Two servants came out in blue livery with red piping, each wearing a fez. The hire car was driven away. Falcón was taken inside to the living room, which overlooked the pool where Yacoub swam his morning lengths. He sat down on one of the cream leather sofas, in front of a low wooden table inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The servant left. Birds fluttered in the garden. A boy dragged a hose out and began spraying the hibiscus.

  Yacoub Diouri arrived, wearing a blue jellabah and white barbouches. A servant set down a brass tray with a pot of mint tea and two small glasses on the table and left. Yacoub’s hair, which he’d allowed to grow long, was wet and he now had a close-cropped beard. They embraced with an enthusiastic Arabic greeting and held on to each other by the shoulders looking into each other’s eyes and smiling; Falcón saw warmth and wariness in Yacoub’s. He had no idea what was readable in his own.

  ‘Would you prefer coffee, Javier?’ asked Yacoub, releasing him.

  ‘Tea is fine,’ said Falcón, sitting on the other side of the table.

  Falcón’s question was humped up in his mind. He felt an unaccustomed nervousness between them. He knew for certain now that Spanish directness was not going to work; a more spiralling, philosophical dynamic was called for.

  ‘The world has gone crazy once again,’ said Diouri wearily, pouring the mint tea from a great heig
ht.

  ‘Not that it was ever sane,’ said Falcón. ‘We’ve got no patience for the dullness of sanity.’

  ‘But, strangely, there’s an unending appetite for the dullness of decadence,’ said Diouri, handing him a glass of tea.

  ‘Only because clever people in the fashion industry have persuaded us that the next handbag decision is crucial,’ said Falcón.

  ‘Touché,’ said Diouri, smiling and taking a seat on the sofa opposite. ‘You’re sharp this morning, Javier.’

  ‘There’s nothing like a bit of fear for honing the mind,’ said Falcón, smiling.

  ‘You don’t look frightened,’ said Diouri.

  ‘But I am. Being in Seville is different to watching it on television.’

  ‘At least fear provokes creativity,’ said Diouri, veering away from Falcón’s intended line, ‘whereas terror either crushes it or makes us run around like headless chickens. Do you think the fear people experienced under the regime of Saddam Hussein made them creative?’

  ‘What about the fear that comes with freedom? All those choices and responsibilities?’

  ‘Or the fear from lack of security,’ said Diouri, sipping his tea, enjoying himself now that he knew Falcón was not going to be too European. ‘Did we ever have that conversation about Iraq?’

  ‘We’ve talked a lot about Iraq,’ said Falcón. ‘Moroccans love to talk to me about Iraq, while everybody north of Tangier hates to talk about it.’

  ‘But we, you and I, have never had the original conversation about Iraq,’ said Diouri. ‘That question: Why did the Americans invade?’

  Falcón sat back on the sofa with his tea. This was how it always was with Yacoub when he was in Morocco. It was how it was with Falcón’s Moroccan family in Tangier; with all Moroccans, in fact. Tea and endless discussion. Falcón never talked like this in Europe. Any attempt would be greeted with derision. But this time it was going to provide the way in. They had to circle each other before the proposal could finally be made.

  ‘Almost every Moroccan I’ve ever spoken to thinks that it was about oil.’

  ‘You learn quickly,’ said Diouri, acknowledging that Falcón had acquiesced to the Moroccan way. ‘There must be more Moroccan in you than you think.’

  ‘My Moroccan side is slowly filling up,’ said Falcón, sipping the tea.

  Diouri laughed, motioned to Javier for his glass, and poured two more measures of high-altitude tea.

  ‘If the Americans wanted to get their hands on Iraqi oil, why spend $180 billion on an invasion when they could raise sanctions at the stroke of a pen?’ said Diouri. ‘No. That’s the facile thinking of what the British like to call “the Arab street”. The tea-house huffers and puffers think that people only do things for immediate gain, they forget the urgency of it all. The invention of the Weapons of Mass Destruction pretext. Haranguing the UN for more resolutions. Rushing the troops to the borders. The hastiness of the planned invasion, which made no provision for the aftermath. What was all that about? Where was Iraqi oil going to go? Down the plug hole?’

  ‘Wasn’t it more about the control of oil in general?’ said Falcón. ‘We know a bit more about the emerging economies of China and India now.’

  ‘But the Chinese weren’t making a move,’ said Diouri. ‘Their economy won’t be larger than America’s until 2050. No, that doesn’t make sense either, but at least you didn’t say that word that I have to listen to now when I go to dinners in Rabat and Casablanca and find myself sitting next to American diplomats and businessmen. They tell me that they went into Iraq to give them democracy.’

  ‘Well, they did have elections. There is an Iraqi assembly and a constitution, as a result of ordinary Iraqi people taking considerable risks to vote.’

  ‘The terrorists made a political mistake there,’ said Diouri. ‘They forgot to offer the people a choice that didn’t include violence. Instead they said: “Vote and we will kill you.” But they had already been killing them anyway, when they were walking down the street to get some bread with their children.’

  ‘That’s why you have to swallow the word democracy at your dinners,’ said Falcón. ‘It was a victory for the “Occupation”.’

  ‘When I hear them use that word, I ask them—very quietly, I should add—“When are you going to invade Morocco and get rid of our despotic king, and his corrupt government, and install democracy, freedom and equality in Morocco?”’

  ‘I bet you didn’t.’

  ‘You see. You’re right. I didn’t. Why not?’

  ‘Because of the state security system of informers left over from the King Hassan II days?’ said Falcón. ‘What did you say to them?’

  ‘I did what most Arabs do, and said those things behind their backs.’

  ‘Nobody likes to be called a hypocrite, especially the leaders of the modern world.’

  ‘What I said to their faces were the words of Palmerston, a nineteenth-century British prime minister,’ said Diouri. ‘In talking about the British Empire he said: “We have no eternal allies and no perpetual enemies. What we have are eternal and perpetual interests.”’

  ‘How did the Americans react to that?’

  ‘They thought it was Henry Kissinger who’d said it,’ said Diouri.

  ‘Didn’t Julius Caesar say it before all of them?’

  ‘We Arabs are often derided as impossible to deal with, probably because we have a powerful concept of honour. We cannot compromise when honour is at stake,’ said Diouri. ‘Westerners only have interests, and it’s a lot easier to trade in those.’

  ‘Maybe you need to develop some interests of your own.’

  ‘Of course, some Arab countries have the most vital interest in the global economy—oil and gas,’ said Diouri. ‘Miraculously this does not translate into power for the Arab world. It’s not only outsiders who find us impossible to deal with—we can’t seem to deal with each other.’

  ‘Which means you’re always operating from a position of weakness.’

  ‘Correct, Javier,’ said Diouri. ‘We behave no differently to anyone else in the world. We hold conflicting ideas in our heads, agreeing with all of them. We say one thing, think another and do something else. And in playing these games, which everybody else plays, we always forget the main point: to protect our interests. So a world power can condescend to us about “democracy” when their own foreign policy has been responsible for the murder of the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba and the installation of the dictator Mobutu in Zaire, and the assassination of the democratically elected Salvador Allende to make way for the brutality of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, because they have no honour and only interests. They always operate from a position of strength. Now, do you see where we are?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘That is another one of our problems. We are very emotional people. Look at the reaction to those cartoons which appeared in the Danish newspaper earlier this year. We get upset and angry and it takes us down interesting paths, but further and further away from the point,’ said Diouri. ‘But I must behave and get back to why the Americans invaded Iraq.’

  ‘The half of my Moroccan family that doesn’t think it was about oil,’ said Falcón, ‘thinks that it was done to protect the Israelis.’

  ‘Ah, yes, another notion that seethes in the minds of the tea drinkers,’ said Diouri. ‘The Jews are running everything. Most of my work force thinks that 9/11 was a Mossad operation to turn world opinion against the Arabs, and that George Bush knew about it all along and let it happen. Even some of my senior executives believe that the Israelis demanded the invasion of Iraq, that Mossad supplied the false intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, and that Ariel Sharon was the commander-in-chief of the US forces on the ground. Where the Jews are concerned, we are the world’s greatest conspiracy theorists.

  ‘The problem is that it is their rage at the Israeli occupation of Palestine that blinds them to everything else. That fundamental injustice, that slap in the face for the Arab’s
sense of honour, brings up such powerful emotions in the Arab breast that they cannot think, they cannot see. They focus on the Jews and forget about their own corrupt leadership, their lack of lobbying power in Washington, the pusillanimity of almost all dictatorial, authoritarian Arab regimes…Ach! I’m boring myself now.

  ‘You see, Javier, we are incapable of change. The Arab mind is like his house and the medina where he lives. Everything looks inward. There are no views or vistas…no visions of the future. We sit in these places and look for solutions in tradition, history and religion, while the world beyond our walls and shores grinds relentlessly forward, crushing our beliefs with their interests. People will look back on the twentieth century and gasp. How was it, they will say, that a race that held the world’s most powerful resource, oil, the resource that made the whole system run, allowed most of its people to live in abject poverty, while its political, cultural and economic influence was negligible?

  ‘You know the last people in the world who should be sent to talk to the Arabs are the Americans. We are polar opposites. In becoming an American, part of the pact is to walk away from your past, your history, and totally embrace the future, progress, and the American Way. Whereas, to an Arab, what happened in the seventh century or 1917 is still as vivid today as it was when it first occurred. They want us to embrace a new future, but we cannot forsake our history.’

  ‘Why is it that, when you talk about the Arabs, sometimes you say “we” and sometimes “they”?’

  ‘As you know, I have one foot in Europe and the other in North Africa, and my mind runs down the middle,’ said Diouri. ‘I perceive the injustice of the Palestinian situation, but I can’t emotionally engage with their solutions: the intifada and suicide bombings. It’s just a terrifying extension of throwing stones at tanks—an expression of weakness. An inability to draw together the necessary forces to bring about change.’