‘If you want to stay alive to see your son then you have to do as you're told,’ said the Cuban. ‘These men do not care one way or the other whether you survive this or not. To them, killing you would be no more trouble than lighting a cigarette.’
The Cuban came round to stand in front of them. He was the only one of the men in the room who was not physically intimidating. He had spectacles above his kerchief.
‘Do not do anything of your own accord. If I ask you to do something, move slowly. Most important: keep calm.’
The four Russians ranged behind him were all heavily built and Falcón knew, just by looking at them, that his fist, even if delivered with maximum force, would make no impression. They had the solidity of labourers. There was nothing gym-built about their physiques, even though two of them were wearing track suits with no vests underneath so that chest hair sprouted out over the zips. Their muscle looked as if it had been generated over decades of not just giving, but also taking, punishment. They all wore heavy gold watches on thick wrists and had messily tattooed hands that looked hardened by the breaking of facial bones.
‘Are we going to meet Señor Donstov?’ asked Falcón.
‘He will arrive in due course,’ said the Cuban. ‘First, we must take a look at the disks.’
‘Before you do anything, I want to see my son.’
‘You will see your son as soon as we have established that these disks are genuine,’ said the Cuban. ‘You can understand that.’
The Cuban pulled out one of the four raffia-seated chairs, sat at the table and opened a laptop. Falcón handed over the disks. There was a room behind where the Cuban was sitting, door closed, and another room behind the four Russians, who were all now smoking. There was no electricity. The room was lit by an assortment of gas and kerosene lamps, which gave off a harsh white and oily yellow light under the wooden roof. The floor was of unglazed clay tiles, some light and smooth, others dark and roughened from saltpetre coming through. The walls were thick and had not seen whitewash for a few years so that they were flaking and the tiles below were powdered white.
The Cuban worked his way through the twenty-five disks, making notes on a pad as he went. He had the volume turned down so there were no accompanying grunts and groans as he played through the footage, fast-forwarding, playing, fast-forwarding again.
‘What's going to happen here?’ asked Falcón, who'd taken in every detail of the Russians, including the fact that they kept themselves completely separate from their captives. He couldn't put his finger on the meaning of this distance, but he knew it made him feel uneasy.
‘Patience, Inspector Jefe,’ said the Cuban. ‘All will be revealed in due course.’
‘My son isn't here, is he?’ said Consuelo, hysteria rising in her voice. ‘There's something that's telling me he's not in this place. Where is he? What have you done with him?’
‘Your maternal instinct is wrong. He is here,’ said the Cuban, looking at the room beyond where the Russians were standing. ‘He's under sedation. We had to give him a small injection. You can't keep a boy like that still or quiet.’
‘Let me see him then. You've got what you want. You're going through all those disks but you know you've got it all.’
‘I'm just doing what I've been told to do,’ said the Cuban. ‘If I deviate from my orders things will go wrong.’
‘I'm going to see him,’ said Consuelo, and she was up and off her chair and across the room.
The Russians threw down their cigarettes. The one closest to the door drew his gun from behind his back. Two closed in on her. She battered at them with her fists, kicked with her feet. They were impervious, didn't even close their eyes to her swatting or so much as wince with annoyance. The Cuban spoke in Russian. They picked her up off the floor. Her legs flailed. They brought her back across the room, thumped her in the chair. One raised his terrible hand to her. The Cuban spoke again in Russian.
‘I'm asking them to be gentle with you,’ he said, in Spanish now. ‘If he slapped you, I doubt you'd wake up before next week, or he might just accidentally break your neck. They don't know their own strength, these people.’
‘I don't like this,’ she said, fear in her eyes for the first time and not for her own skin. ‘I don't like this at all.’
‘The only reason you're upset is that you are trying to fight against it,’ said the Cuban. ‘I know it's difficult, but just relax.’
‘Then tell us what's going to happen,’ said Falcón. ‘She'll calm down if you tell her how you're going to proceed.’
‘I will check the disks. I'm more than halfway through them now,’ said the Cuban. ‘When I am satisfied, I will make a call and Señor Donstov will arrive to pick them up. At that moment you will be able to see your son before he is taken away by Señor Donstov. Your son will then remain with him until you comply with the rest of the agreement. Is that all right?’
Falcón and Consuelo exchanged a look. Her head, without the slightest shake, told him that it was not all right. That this was all very, very wrong. The Cuban glanced up from the screen. He knew what he had on his hands. He'd been in this situation before. He knew there was nothing a human being intuited better than the approach of their own demise. He knew how all the killing had been done in the world's civil wars; people from the same village killing each other, people who'd known each other and their families since birth killing each other. What they did was herd them together, stick them in pens and thereby diminish their humanity, so that they became nothing more than sheep to be slaughtered. The Cuban saw the same realization dawning on Falcón, who'd been looking at the Russians, trying to understand them, what they were doing over there. Now Falcón understood their separateness; the distance was so that the slaughtermen didn't smell the sweetness of their humanity and the animal caught no presentiment of the blade.
‘Why are you doing this?’ asked Falcón.
‘What?’
‘Don't make me say it.’
‘Be calm, Inspector Jefe. All will be well,’ said the Cuban, lazily, as if speaking from a hammock.
He made a call on his mobile, spoke in Russian.
‘Did you know Marisa Moreno?’ asked Falcón.
The Cuban shrugged. Closed down the phone. He nodded to the Russians, started boxing the disks, closing down the laptop. A hard day at the office and now the final unpleasantness.
‘What about the money?’ said Falcón. ‘You don't want the money?’
‘That's going to be too complicated now,’ said the Cuban.
‘And the locked disks with the encrypted data?’ he asked, as they came for him.
‘We don't have the means to crack that code,’ said the Cuban.
Two Russians, one on either side, took Falcón out into the night. Consuelo ran at the door where they were holding Darío under sedation. One of the Russians caught her around the waist, lifted her bodily off the ground, whirled her round, brought her into his chest. The other grabbed her thrashing legs and they carried her out.
They walked around the house. Torches came out. There was no moon. The darkness had such a palpable thickness it surprised Falcón just by giving way to each of his faltering steps. There was the smell of water on the breeze. They were near the lake. The torch beams lit the ground and occasionally swept ahead over two mounds of freshly piled earth at the edge of the long grass. He couldn't quite believe that this was happening to him … to them. How could he, with all his experience, have allowed this madness to take place?
The pit was deep. The digger in the barn. It all made ludicrously cogent sense now. What do you do with this sort of brilliant hindsight? They stood him at the far edge, then turned him so that he had his back to the lake and was facing the low farmhouse. The other Russians arrived with Consuelo, now passive. They righted her and stood her next to him. He grabbed her hand, entwined it with his, kissed the back of it.
‘I'm sorry, Consuelo,’ he said, resigned now.
‘I'm the one who should be sorry,?
?? she said. ‘I got too involved in the game.’
‘I can't believe I let this happen.’
‘And I didn't even get to see Darío,’ she said, her distress weakening her. ‘What will they do with him now? What have they done with my poor, sweet little boy?’
He kissed her, a fumbling, bumping kiss, but it planted his shape on her and hers on him. The Russians pulled them apart, pushed them to their knees at the edge of the pit. Their hands were still locked together. The two men who'd brought Consuelo to the pit were already back at the house. The remaining torch was dropped to the ground where its beam played over the pit, lighting up the dark soil, moist from the lake. The slides on the two handguns were racked. Heavy hands were placed on the crowns of their heads. They squeezed each other's hands until the bones cracked. An owl hooted. Its mate responded with a little titter. Was that the last sound of this life?
No, there was just one more.
22
Granja de las Once Higeras – Tuesday, 19th September 2006, 04.47 hrs
The shots, two dull thuds, simultaneous. First Consuelo, then Falcón fell forward, their positions on the edge of the hole too precarious to avoid it. Their reluctance gave them a slight advantage over the Russians, who had no choice. They fell like two beef carcasses, their knees knocking into the backs of their erstwhile victims, taking them to the grave. The torch beam still cast its light across the dark hole and lit up the black, gaping wounds in the back of the heads of the two men, who had landed face down in the pit. Consuelo, trapped under the legs of the inert Russian, was struggling and whimpering with panic. A man landed on his feet next to them. His face was covered in dark paint and his camouflage outfit was just visible in the torch beam. He heaved the slack limbs of the executioners away so that Falcón and Consuelo could roll out. The man put his fingers to the necks of the dead Russians.
‘How many inside?’ he asked, in heavily accented Spanish.
‘Two Russians and a Cuban,’ said Falcón.
‘Stay here … in the hole,’ he said, and scrambled out.
Other men rushed past. It was impossible to say how many. It was too dark. One of them kicked the torch into the pit. Falcón pulled Consuelo silently towards him. He sat with his back to the wall of the pit. She crouched between his legs, his arms encircling her. The smell of earth was as thick as chocolate, sweet as life. They heard nothing. They waited. The stars emitted their ancient, uncertain light. The smell of the lake filled the hole with the promise of further days. He kissed her hand, perfume and dirt. Her knuckles wriggled on his lips.
A loud bang. Consuelo started, dropped her head on to her raised knees. Muffled shots. Silence. After a while an engine started up. The digger in the barn. It reversed out. Headlights illuminated the night on the other side of the farmhouse. The digger's engine farted up and growled forward. It stopped for a minute or two and then continued slowly. The beams of light swung round, settled over the pit, crawled forward, narrowing. Falcón stood up. The silhouette of a man approached, walking in front of the digger.
‘It's safe now,’ said a voice.
A hand came down. Falcón lifted Consuelo towards it and she was hauled out. She started running immediately. The hand came down again. Falcón walked up the earth wall of the pit and out. He moved to one side as the digger came through. Consuelo had fallen down twenty metres away. The digger tipped its bucket and two bodies fell into the pit on top of the inert Russians. Consuelo scrambled to her feet and ran again. The man shouted an order in Russian. Two men came out from behind the farmhouse, caught hold of her, held her there. She struggled but didn't seem to have much left in her.
The man turned to him, his painted face unreal in the harsh light from the digger.
‘The boy is there … room on right as you enter, but…’
‘They said he was under sedation.’
‘He's not breathing. Pillow on face. Maybe two hours ago,’ said the man. ‘Look before her. Not good.’
‘They killed him?’
‘You knew the boy?’ asked the man, nodding.
‘They smothered him with a pillow?’ said Falcón, again, completely mystified.
‘Hours ago. Before you here. Nothing you could do.’
‘Why would they do that?’ asked Falcón; the Inspector Jefe, who'd never seen the logic of murder, whose job it was to return sanity to the grossly illogical, was dumbfounded. ‘They had no reason to do that.’
‘These people not think like that,’ said the man. ‘Go now. She very unhappy.’
Consuelo was screaming herself helpless in the arms of the two men. She wasn't fighting them, all her fight had gone into hysterical, wounded animal screaming. He ran over to her. They laid her down on the ground. She stopped as if choked when Falcón's face came into her vision.
‘What's happened?’ she said, weakly. ‘What have they done?’
‘I'm going to go in there now to have a look at things,’ said Falcón. ‘When I'm ready, in a minute or two, then you come in. All right?’
She looked at him as if he was a doctor who'd just told her that she was going to die, but there was a good chance of it being peaceful.
‘Tell me,’ she said, too emotionally exhausted to speak properly.
‘I'm going to take a look,’ he said, stroking her face. ‘I'll call for you. Two minutes. Count the seconds.’
He trotted over the rough ground to the farmhouse, ducked through the low front door. Off to the left, the laptop and disks still on the table, three chairs blown over, the remains of a stun grenade in the corner. Beyond the table, through the door, the Cuban, stripped naked, tied to a chair, arms hooked over the high back, ankles secured to the legs, thighs apart, genitals exposed, wild, animal fear in his eyes.
‘Not for you,’ said a heavily accented voice to his right. ‘In here.’
He went to the door, wiped the sweat out of his eyes, tried to calm himself down. He searched for that professional distance. Nothing there. The door was hanging ajar. A beefy Russian, with painted face and a handgun, thick cylindrical silencer attached, beckoned him. He forced himself through it, found his throat clogging with grief which, only a moment before, had been breathing in the damp earth with relief. As he crossed the threshold, playing soccer in the garden with Darío flickered through the gate of his mind, and he wasn't sure whether he could cope with this.
The room was lit by a kerosene lamp. The light was a slow, fluid yellow. There was a single bed, metal frame, pushed up against the wall. The windows were shuttered and had a metal bar across them, padlocked. Darío was lying face up, head still under the smothering pillow, bare chest. His right arm lay by his side, his left arm formed a right-angle, fist closed by his head. A sheet lay over his torso, legs awry underneath, the feet sticking out. His right foot was bandaged. There was a dark stain on the sheet where the blood had soaked through.
‘Skinny kid,’ thought Falcón, pushing himself forward. ‘Always on the move.’
Falcón felt for a wrist pulse, but he knew a dead body when he saw one. He set the legs straight, brought the arms down by the boy's side, reorganized the sheet over the body, and that was when he saw it. A large scar, as of a messy appendix operation. He checked under the armpit for the ‘strawberry’ that Consuelo had talked about, but the light was not good in the room. And for the first time he brought himself to look under the pillow. Even now he peeled it back slowly, flinchingly, as if he was going to see something he didn't want to. The face staring up at him, wide-eyed, purple-lipped was not Darío's.
‘Bring me a torch,’ he said.
The big Russian came in. Falcón pointed at his belt. He handed the torch over. Falcón shone it in the boy's face. Still not Darío.
‘What?’ asked the Russian.
‘It's not the boy.’
‘I don't understand.’
Falcón went out into the night. This time he was angry, almost insanely angry. He called for Consuelo and they released her, lifted her to her feet. She stumbled toward
s him over the uneven ground. He caught her.
‘It's not Darío,’ he said. ‘Darío is not dead.’
‘Who is it?’ she asked, utterly confused.
‘A dead boy,’ said Falcón. ‘A nameless, dead boy.’
They ducked in through the doorway, went into the room. Falcón shut the door behind him with his foot. It slammed to. Consuelo knelt by the bed, held on to the boy's arm and shook her head and sobbed as she stared into his inert face.
Falcón undid the bandage on the boy's foot.
‘They cut off his toe,’ he said, beside himself with rage. ‘They cut off the poor boy's toe.’
Consuelo sat on the floor with her back to the bed and started crying, huge racking sobs came up as if from her pelvis, physically lifting her off the clay tiles. It lasted for a few minutes until she got a hold of herself.
‘I can't take any of this in,’ she said. ‘You'll have to explain it to me.’
‘They didn't have Darío,’ he said. ‘They never had Darío. They played a game to see if they could get what they wanted.’
‘But Revnik doesn't have Darío either,’ said Consuelo. ‘We know that. He's told us.’
‘That was why Donstov's man called us back,’ said Falcón. ‘You were right. He was nervous. You'd enraged him by telling him that Revnik claimed to have Darío, which was why he cut off this boy's toe. Then he calmed down. Came back with the incentive just in case you were bluffing him. He had nothing to lose by trying to pretend that he had Darío, and it worked. He brought everything forward, made everybody work under pressure. And there is, of course, the possibility that he still has a friend in Revnik's group.’
‘But who's got Darío?’ said Consuelo.
‘I don't know.’
The sound of a muffled scream came from the other room.