‘I've had some long days recently,’ said Falcón, handing him the tumbler of whisky. ‘Lost track of where I am. What time is it?’
Flowers was just about to look at his watch. Remembered.
‘You're not going to catch me out that easily, Javier.’
It was their little joke since Falcón had noticed Flowers looking ostentatiously at his watch one day – a Patek Philippe. At the time it had meant nothing to Falcón, until he saw in an in-flight magazine that it retailed for €19,500. He'd brought this up with Flowers, who'd said: ‘You never actually own a Patek Philippe, Javier. You merely look after it for the next generation.’ Later Falcón had found out that Flowers had quoted him the strap line from the Patek Philippe advertisement, and he'd started teasing him. One of the reasons Falcón did this was to feel more relaxed in the company of a man he did not entirely trust.
‘Long days,’ said Flowers, setting his tumbler down on the table, ‘in London.’
‘And here.’
‘What's happening here?’
‘Consuelo's youngest child was kidnapped on Saturday while I was in London.’
Flowers nodded. He knew that. Which meant that he'd spoken to the CNI.
‘I'm sorry,’ he said. ‘That's a big pressure. What the fuck is that all about, Javier?’
Falcón recited the litany about Marisa Moreno and the threatening phone calls from the Russians. Flowers wanted to know how the Russians got into the mix and Falcón began at the beginning with Lukyanov's car accident, the money, the disks and Ferrera making the link to Marisa's sister, Margarita.
‘That is some heavy police work, Javier.’
‘I've got a very good squad. They're all prepared to do that little bit extra, and that's where you get your breaks,’ said Falcón. ‘You might be interested in the identity of one of the guys we saw on the disks.’
‘Don't tell me it was somebody in the American Consulate – I have to look them in the eye every day.’
‘A guy called Juan Valverde.’
Flowers didn't react.
‘Should I have heard of him?’ asked Flowers. ‘If he's a soccer player, I'm lost, Javier.’
‘You remember that company I asked you to investigate for me back in June?’
‘I4IT, owned by Cortland Fallenbach and Morgan Havilland.’
‘Juan Valverde is their Chief Executive Officer in Europe,’ said Falcón. ‘Do you know if they have any investment plans for Seville, or in southern Spain?’
‘I just got the information you asked for back in June,’ said Flowers. ‘I'm not following their stock, Javier.’
‘There's another guy on those disks you will have heard of.’
‘Try me.’
‘Charles Taggart.’
‘The fallen preacher?’
‘He's a consultant for I4IT.’
‘On what?’ asked Flowers brutally.
‘Religious matters?’ said Falcón, and they both laughed. ‘I thought you were supposed to be a reformed sinner to be a part of I4IT.’
‘Once a sinner, always a sinner,’ said Flowers. ‘I don't believe in this redemption shit: confess your sins, clean your slate, get out there and commit some more. Just keeps the Church in work.’
‘What do you do with your sins, Mark?’
‘Keep them to myself,’ said Flowers. ‘If I confessed them all, I'd age a priest, and myself, by a hundred years.’
‘What was your line, Mark?’ said Falcón. ‘It takes a profound moral certitude to behave immorally.’
‘In the spy game, Javier,’ said Flowers.
They drank. Flowers breathed in the heavy night air and crunched ice with his teeth.
‘London,’ said Flowers. ‘You know how it happened? I got a call from my station head in Madrid telling me that you're running a rogue agent and the Brits are … what was that expression they use? Hopping mad. I like that. I said: “How can he be running a rogue agent? If an agent's gone rogue, nobody's running him.” So what the fuck are you doing, Javier?’
‘I have an agent…’
‘Let's call him Yacoub, so we don't get confused,’ said Flowers. ‘He is your only agent.’
‘Yacoub is under extraordinary pressure.’
‘What did he expect, going into this business?’ said Flowers. ‘Pressure's what we've lived on since the beginning of time, since we've felt the need for our genes to survive, since the first cavewoman saw her man asleep on the floor and thought he should be out hunting. Pressure is a constant. It's like gravity, without it we'd drift aimlessly.’
‘I know what pressure is, Mark,’ said Falcón. ‘If your station head is talking to the British then you'll know that the GICM have recruited Yacoub's son, Abdullah, as a mujahideen.’
‘That's almost standard procedure for an agent like Yacoub,’ said Flowers. ‘A group like that won't expose themselves to an outsider with questionable friends and lifestyle without getting some insurance.’
‘I didn't see it.’
‘That's because you're an amateur,’ said Flowers. ‘A raw recruit, who was doing the recruiting. The senior CNI guy, Juan, he would have seen it even if Pablo didn't. They just wouldn't have told you about it. Didn't want to confuse your mind.’
‘You mean they didn't want me to fail in my recruiting mission.’
Flowers shrugged, throwing up his hands, as if it was all so obvious it wasn't worth talking about.
‘This is the problem I've got with Yacoub,’ said Falcón. ‘He doesn't trust anybody any more. He describes himself as being in the goldfish bowl, with all these agencies and his enemies looking on.’
‘Maybe more like a murky aquarium,’ said Flowers. ‘I hear he's good at keeping himself out of sight when he wants to.’
‘Wouldn't you?’
‘I've got nothing to hide.’
‘You still hide it.’
‘Look, Javier, Yacoub is a valuable asset. He's the perfect agent, who has got to the heart of the enemy. We all have a vested interest in keeping him and his son alive and happy. We want the sort of intelligence he can give us,’ said Flowers. ‘We, more than anybody else, understand what he's going through. There's no reason for him – or you – to stop talking to us. It's the only way we can help.’
‘When I was about to recruit Yacoub, you told me that he didn't like Americans. That's why he wouldn't work for you.’
‘And what's so different about you and the CNI?’
‘He won't talk to the CNI, he'll only talk to me, because he trusts me.’
‘Does he?’ said Flowers, fixing him with a look across the table. ‘Why didn't he tell you that he'd already been trained?’
‘Probably the same reason that Juan and Pablo didn't warn me about the sort of tricks the GICM would play on Yacoub. Not distrust, just omission,’ said Falcón. ‘And, anyway, this previous training was limited to making sure he wasn't being followed and losing a tail if he was. Not full spy craft.’
‘How would you describe Yacoub's state of mind since you met him in Madrid?’
‘The fact that you know we met in Madrid supports the goldfish-bowl theory,’ said Falcón. ‘You're all looking at him and you don't trust what you see.’
‘This is the War on Terror, Javier. It's called pooling resources.’
‘He was distraught in Madrid. Nervous. Desperate. Evasive. He alarmed me. He'd thought he'd “lost” his son and it had made him, in my estimation, unreliable.’
‘So how did he get to be so much more persuasive in London?’
‘He'd come to terms with his situation. It had made him calmer.’
‘He lied to you in Madrid.’
‘Not so much lying as the paranoia giving him the inclination to mislead.’
‘What happened to you between Madrid and London?’ said Flowers, keeping the questions coming thick and fast. ‘One moment you're nervous enough to seek advice from Pablo, the next you're so relaxed you're going it alone and giving Yacoub a free rein.’
‘But I had
told Pablo.’
‘A limited amount.’
‘Only what I knew, but I had told him,’ said Falcón. ‘That was already a betrayal of Yacoub's trust but, given his volatile state and my inexperience, I felt it was a necessary step.’
‘So telling Pablo gave you some comfort. I can understand that,’ said Flowers. ‘But why wouldn't you let the Brits listen in on your conversation with Yacoub in Brown's Hotel?’
‘I wanted to re-establish trust. I couldn't do that with MI5 listening in.’
‘And how did Yacoub persuade you that he was still trustworthy?’
‘Instinct.’
‘You know, there are a lot of people out there who can make you believe that they love you,’ said Flowers. ‘Especially when it's so important to them that they believe it themselves.’
‘What can you do about it?’
‘Let other people take a look,’ said Flowers. ‘People who are capable of total objectivity.’
‘But not people who are paid and sworn in by a government which has interests.’
‘So Yacoub is protecting his son,’ said Flowers, changing tack, ‘and how many others?’
‘Just one other person.’
‘Is that person a lover?’
‘You're not going to wring it out of me, Mark,’ said Falcón. ‘I know you're clever. Yacoub does, too. You've carefully reminded me that Yacoub has lied to me, that I've already betrayed him because I needed the support of the CNI. So what's one more little betrayal? And the answer is: possible death. Yacoub will lose control, because all the intelligence agencies will set about protecting their interests and that will create more unknowns. A decision could easily be taken that, despite Yacoub's intelligence coups, he is expendable.’
‘You're making this sound very serious,’ said Flowers, ‘as if there could be grave geopolitical consequences. You're making it sound like something we really have to know.’
‘But not yet.’
‘We talked about pressure earlier,’ said Flowers. ‘The one thing I can tell you, Javier, is that I know about pressure. I am an expert in pressure … exerting it, I mean.’
‘The thing about pressure, Mark, is that it's always exerted in order to cause pain. The GICM keep Yacoub under control by embracing his son. The Russians want to stop me from investigating their role in the 6th June Seville bombing, so they kidnap Consuelo's youngest child. Even we do it in the police force. We encourage a woman to inform on her criminal lover by threatening her brother with a heavy jail term.’
‘That's right, Javier. We're all in the same business. The good guys and the bad guys. So what's your point?’
‘Try offering solutions instead of threats,’ said Falcón.
‘What could I do for you that would make you feel sufficiently indebted to me that you would tell me what Yacoub is up to?’
‘If you could get Consuelo's son back for me,’ said Falcón. ‘That would engender an enormous sense of gratitude in me.’
Flowers nodded, the light in the patio meant that only half his face was visible, the other half was completely opaque. The one seemed to inform the other, thought Falcón. Threats were always a lot easier to pull off than solutions.
19
Falcón's house, Calle Bailén, Seville – Monday, 18th September 2006, 22.05 hrs
It seemed later than it was. Flowers had only just left. Falcón sat in the patio, slumped in his chair, feet spread wide. He had been exhausted by the day and its lack of progress and, followed by the relentlessness of the CIA man's questions, he'd felt his lids growing heavier and his shoulder blades tightening. Now he felt as empty as that husk of a plant hiding in the corner of the patio but, with Darío in the centre of his consciousness, his mind was alive with the horror of the boy's situation and his helplessness beside it.
He began to wonder whether it was his particular fate to be haunted by abused, traumatized or persecuted children. Ever since he'd discovered how ruthlessly his father, Francisco Falcón, had exploited him as a small boy, he seemed to have become a magnet for these most vulnerable members of society. It did not escape him either, the appalling irony of his compulsion to discover what had happened to Raúl Jiménez's missing son, Arturo. Then, having found that he'd been brought up in Morocco as Yacoub Diouri, to exploit him by making him an agent of Spanish intelligence, the CNI.
The patio was dark. He'd turned off the light. Wooden beams groaned somewhere far off in the large old house. He leaned forward, pinched the skin between his eyes, trying to tear out this ghastly nexus, but all that came to him were images in the chain of events of the last few years. An orphaned child being carried away by his aunt, two teenagers used as sex slaves buried in a shallow grave, four dead children covered by their pinafores after the 6th June bombing had destroyed their pre-school. He slapped his legs, stood up, cleared away the empty glasses and remains of crisps and olives, took them back to the kitchen. He hoped this mild activity would stop the fever in his brain. This is the blight of modern mankind, he thought, a world so full of accessible information, lives so crammed with work and relationships, people so constantly connectable that we've all developed what Alicia Aguado would probably call tachy-rumination. Nothing meditative about it, just a feverish mental grazing.
A bell rang, followed by three blunt thuds on the huge wooden door. Mark Flowers coming back with more questions. The afterthoughts. He made his way back through the house, under the gallery, around the patio. More thuds on the door, like a dull ache, followed by a sharper tapping. He slapped on the lights, opened the smaller door within the massive oak gates. Consuelo was standing there on one leg with her shoe in her hand.
‘I couldn't seem to make any impression with my fist,’ she said, slipping her shoe back on. ‘You should get the bell fixed, or have a knocker fitted.’
‘The bell works fine,’ said Falcón, ‘it just takes time to get from one end of the house to the other.’
‘Are you going to invite me in?’
‘Please,’ he said.
They kissed formally on both cheeks, manoeuvred around each other awkwardly, and headed for the patio. She settled herself at the table. He offered her a drink. She'd take a small manzanilla sherry. He brought two and some olives. They sat in silence staring at the same point, exquisitely aware of each other's presence, but behaving as if there was some performance going on in which they could take no interest because of the vastness of what had come between them.
‘I'm surprised to see you here after what happened the other night,’ said Falcón.
‘I didn't expect to have to come and see you,’ she said.
‘To have to come and see me?’
‘We've been thrown together, Javier. It seems we cannot avoid each other,’ she said. ‘It's the only explanation I've got for what is happening. When we first met I was your suspect. Then I became your lover.’
‘Then you left me,’ he said.
‘But I came back, Javier,’ she said. ‘Thanks to Alicia, I came back a different person.’
‘And now?’ said Falcón. ‘Do we have Alicia to thank for you coming here this evening?’
‘Not this time,’ she said. ‘I spoke to her. She listened. It's made me feel stronger.’
‘And that didn't… No, I forgot, you had to come back,’ said Falcón. ‘I know why you're here, because I can't stop thinking about Darío myself, but who or what particularly has thrown us together this time?’
‘This time, Javier, it's our enemies.’
They looked each other directly in the eye for the first time since she'd appeared at the door.
‘Does that mean you've heard from the Russians?’
She nodded.
‘But I told Inspector Jefe Tirado to call me if there were any developments,’ said Falcón. ‘He assured me nothing had happened. No phone calls…’
‘I called them.’
Falcón blinked. She told him about the email and the call she'd made from the bottom of next-door's garden.
‘And we have no record of this conversation,’ said Falcón.
She handed him two sheets of A4 with the transcript of the dialogue as best she could remember it.
‘I was not calm when I made that call,’ she said. ‘I realize now that I was stupid. I reacted in a state of excitement and panic, which was how they expected me to react.’
Falcón nodded, read the transcript several times.
‘Talk to me, Javier,’ she said, unable to bear the silence any longer. ‘Tell me what you make of it. Ask me questions. Every detail, from the top.’
‘When did this happen?’ he asked.
‘The email was timed two p.m., but I didn't see it until after four, then I had to charge the phone and open an account. I made the call at around five.’
‘Five hours ago,’ he said.
‘I didn't want to call you. You can see how complicated it is,’ she said. ‘I only wanted to do this face to face. I've been waiting outside for the American to leave.’
‘Tell me about the voice,’ said Falcón. ‘Was there only one voice?’
‘The first voice was foreign. I don't know what Spanish sounds like spoken by a Russian, but I'm certain it was a foreigner. All he said was Diga and Momentito, but I could tell.’
‘So the second voice was the one you had this conversation with, and he was Spanish.’
‘Yes, definitely Spanish-speaking, but not from Spain. I'd say South American.’
‘Or Cuban?’ said Falcón. ‘A lot of Cubans still speak Russian.’
‘That must be it. I wasn't listening to the finer points of accent. I was concentrating on what he was saying and his tone. He was quite gentle with me. The second time he asked whether I knew why Darío had been kidnapped, he put it a different way.’
‘He said: “Do you understand why your son has been taken from you?”’ said Falcón.
‘He said it like a doctor who wanted to explain the necessity of Darío's quarantine. As if he had a contagious disease and it was better for him. It made me very emotional.’
‘The next bit about…’
‘That's about you, isn't it?’ she said. ‘I was angry and, I can't deny it, Javier, I still am.’