Nobody could accuse the GICM high command of having no sense of humour. The power boat they'd bought for this mission was called the 35 Executioner. It was dark blue, ten metres long and had twin Mercury 425-horsepower engines, capable of speeds in excess of 130 kilometres per hour. It looked sleek, almost flashy, as it rocked gently against the small wooden jetty where it was moored.
He unclipped the awning over the rear of the boat and dropped himself into the cockpit. He inserted the third and fourth keys in the ignition panel on the right-hand side of the dashboard, but did not turn them on. He threw the sweater off his shoulders into the passenger seat. He opened the hatch, leading to the cabin, which had been stripped out and a false wall installed. Yacoub felt his way around to the side, peeled back the edge of the carpet. He ran his fingers over the wood until he felt the metal ring inset and lifted out a thirty-centimetre square of wood. He found the pen torch first, turned it on, put it in his mouth. Blood on his hands from his chin. He lifted out a compass and a mobile phone, which he turned on, and a pair of binoculars. All that was left was a switch mechanism from which two copper cables emerged. He could now see the five jerry cans of fuel strapped to the bulkhead, two five-litre flagons of water and a tupperware box of food.
The phone was ready. One message. He opened it, nodded, turned off the phone and threw it in the cache. He checked his ankle, fat and soft as a ripe mango.
Back outside he rolled up the awning, threw it in the cabin, checked the stern lockers, more jerry cans of fuel. He opened up the two engine hatches. He stood in front of the driver's seat and familiarized himself with the gauges, switches and controls. In the middle of the dashboard was the SatNav screen, which he would not deploy until he was outside Spanish territorial waters. He turned on the battery switches and flipped on the blowers. He gave them five minutes, checked that the shift handles were in neutral and the throttles down all the way. He armed the safety switch. He turned the ignition keys one click clockwise. Indicator lights and audible alarms came on for a moment. He turned them on to the start position and released. The engines came alive with what seemed like a colossal noise in the silent bay.
The pressure gauge told him that the water flow through the engine was normal and he glanced over the side at the exhaust tips. While the engines warmed up he checked the bilge and engine compartments, made sure there were no leaks or weird noises. He closed the engine hatches. He raised the throttles slightly to check response. Good. Checked shifters. He slipped the moorings, pushed himself away from the jetty. He put the shifter into forward gear and, at very low throttle, moved out into the open sea, which was almost as flat as the cove's protected waters.
It was warm but he continued sweating, even with the gentle cooling breeze. The first part of this mission had its difficulties. He had no SatNav and no moon. He had to find a bearing out to sea and get himself out of Spanish territorial waters. The compass could be illuminated by pressing a button and he did this once a minute to check his course. There were a few lights out on the water – fishing boats, which he had to avoid. He, himself, was unlit. He maintained low revs. The coastline of the Costa del Sol gradually revealed itself. The lights of Estepona appeared to the west.
It took him more than an hour to get three kilometres from the shore and only then did he open up the throttles a little, feeling the eagerness of the two big engines beneath him. He scoured the blackness for fishing boats, checked his bearing, looked back to the east at the lights of Fuengirola, Torremolinos and Málaga.
The danger was different now. He wasn't so scared of being picked up by the coastguard, but he was entering one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Colossal container ships, which could rise forty or fifty metres above the sea, coming in from the Atlantic, or massive Liquefied Natural Gas carriers sailing from Algeria to Sines on the Portuguese coast. If they hit him they wouldn't know it. He listened and searched the darkness.
Thirty kilometres out he switched on the SatNav to see where he was. He was supposed to be heading for a point forty-five kilometres south-east of Estepona and about the same distance north-east of the Monte Hacho, just outside the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the north-east tip of Morocco. He was further east than he'd anticipated, the current much stronger than he'd allowed for. He was more than fifty kilometres from his rendezvous point with around two and a half hours to go before first light.
He had to have faith in his instruments. There was no longer any coastline to guide him. He turned the vessel direction south-west and gave it few more revs. He checked all the gauges, was puzzled to see the fuel had dropped to three-quarters. He'd been told the tank had a capacity of six hundred litres, that the extra jerry cans strapped to the cabin bulkhead and in the stern lockers were just for emergency. As he fussed over this new problem a cliff of black metal loomed out of the darkness and he heard the rhythmic thump of massive engines. He swung the wheel to his right, opened up the throttles, put a hundred metres between himself and the towering hull of a dry cargo ship. Eased back. Shaken. He didn't feel competent in this situation, had no real knowledge of the sea or boats, couldn't even name things properly. What was a cleat? He calmed himself, desperate for a smoke. His ankle throbbed. Panic rose again as he battled disorientation, a sudden queasiness and a tremendous desire not to be out in the middle of a black ocean on what seemed to be a matchstick, surrounded by mobile skyscrapers. His boat canted and rolled as the vast, unseen wake of the ship passed beneath him. Get the breathing going again. Don't hyperventilate. Look at your instruments. Get back on course. Proceed.
As he increased power he winced at every slight modulation of noise coming to his ear, every variation in tone of the blackness coming towards him. His nerve trailed behind him like a frothy, bubbling wake. He tightened his grip on the wheel, forced himself into a routine. He stared at the fuel gauge. Below three-quarters now. This boat went through 150 litres an hour at a cruise speed of 100 kilometres per hour. He doubted he'd been over fifty kilometres per hour the entire trip, so how had he gone through a hundred and fifty litres? He looked at his watch. He'd been on the water just over two hours. Maybe that consumption was normal. Ignore it. Don't get obsessive. He checked his course, raised the throttles. The boat surged. The darkness parted before him. The thought occurred to him that he didn't want to be on a boat with a dead engine and an LPG tanker bearing down. Panic quivered below his diaphragm. He should have worn a nicotine patch, couldn't remember when he'd last been six hours without a cigarette.
Don't look at the fuel gauge.
The fuel gauge was at the halfway mark. He rapped it with a knuckle. There was a problem. Three hundred and fifty litres in three hours at the speed he was going? He pulled back the throttles, centred the shift, turned off the engines and the battery switches. Silence. The waves slapped at the sides of the boat, which lolloped on the water. He got down on his hands and knees and sniffed. He plugged the torch in his mouth and opened up the engine hatches, sniffed. Was he seriously going to be able to fix a fuel leak? He didn't even know if there were tools on board. He checked the bilge for the smell of fuel until he wasn't sure what he was smelling any more.
This had not been part of his training. Refuelling the boat in mid ocean. He turned off the fuel valves, closed the engine hatches. Found the funnel in the stern lockers, heaved out a jerry can, located the fuel fills on the right of the cockpit. Slow down. Think. What was he going to gain by this? Was he just going to pour fuel into the ocean? He checked his watch. Plenty of time. The boat rose and fell. Let's do it. He jammed the funnel in, fitted a nozzle to the jerry can, poured the fuel in, looking about himself crazily for approaching walls of metal, listening, trying to hear above his tinnitus for the distant thump of marine engines. He'd never felt such physical vulnerability. As the fuel chugged into the tank he began to think that what was happening to him now was just a physical expression of his mental condition over the last three months. The sense of powerful forces ranged against him, happy to crush him with
out a second thought, yet he was unable to see them, just living inside his head, his tiny inner world, desperately clinging to the bits and pieces of his life that made him feel human. He changed jerry cans. A larger wave jogged the boat, fuel cascaded down his leg. Damn. This was dangerous. He re-concentrated his efforts. Poured the last of the second jerry can into the tank. That'll do. At least he would be able to see if this had made an impression on the fuel gauge. He took off his soaked trousers, threw them overboard. He hosed down the deck, reasoned that mid ocean would have aired the cockpit of fumes. He washed his hands. Heart in his mouth, he turned on the battery switches. He didn't burst into flames. He let the blowers run.
Again he looked around. Spooked himself. Leapt for the ignition, started the engines. Nothing. Shit. He had just poured fuel into the ocean. Wait. Calm down. Open the fuel valves.
The engine started. He couldn't see with the light of the pen torch still burning faulty images on to his retina. He switched it off, jammed it in his underpants. Looked at the fuel gauge. Had it gone up? He checked the SatNav. He'd drifted off course again. The currents so strong out here. Filling up with fuel had cost him nearly two kilometres. Should he put another two jerry cans in? He listened again, stared hard into the grainy darkness which, rather than remaining stationary, seemed to be approaching him. How had he talked himself into this insane plan?
Turned off the ignition. Back to the jerry cans. Pen torch back in the mouth. Where was the funnel? He'd left it sticking out of the tank. It must have gone overboard. His eyes roved the side where the fuel fills were and it was then that he saw the words ‘saddle tank’ and ‘main tank’. He nearly burst into tears with gratitude as he remembered something from his training. He knelt down, crawled back to the rear bench seats, switched the fuel from main tank to saddle tanks.
Engines sounded off to his right. He nearly coughed out the pen torch until he saw the container ship pass four hundred metres away. He envied those men high up, standing in the green light of the bridge, having a smoke and a coffee while their radar told them everything. Back to the SatNav. He was going south-east fast.
He started up the engines, wheeled the boat round, opened the throttles. Making headway towards the Straits of Gibraltar, he glanced at his watch. First light must be coming soon; he was desperate for an end to this blindness, this sense of impending steel hulls.
The current must be immensely strong. They'd told him it was what did for most small boats full of African immigrants. He'd seen the bodies once, lined up on a beach outside Tarifa, the Guardia Civil standing back from the stink. He gripped his forehead, banished these morbid thoughts. The current. He'd have to overshoot the target by a couple of kilometres and drift back into position.
He reined in his galloping mind. First light would come and all would be well. He looked behind him for a glimmer. Still uniformly black. He breathed back another rush of what he thought was panic, but then he was laughing, giggling uncontrollably as if he'd smoked some weed and suddenly seen the hidden absurdity of everyday life. He sat back in his seat, the hysteria trembled inside him, his thoughts quivered on the margins of sanity.
And with that came an extraordinary calm. His trepidation vanished. It was as his father-in-law had told him before undergoing his heart op in Paris: ‘You push your fear like a rock up a mountain in the days beforehand and then, suddenly, they come for you and you deliver yourself into their hands and hope that Allah is with them. It is the calmest you will ever feel in this life.’
And it happened just when he hadn't been looking for it. First light. The miracle of the planets. The glow spread along the seam of the world. Ships revealed themselves against the gathering light. He would have loved to see land; even after a few hours he missed it enormously. He couldn't imagine how those lone yachtsmen who circumnavigate the globe could bear the solitude with the endless great unknown beneath them.
More light; 07.50 – twenty minutes to sunrise. His fear long gone, torn away from him and replaced by the confidence of illumination. The target should have left Tangier nearly two hours ago. He smiled to himself. This was going to work. The horizon blushed magenta, crimson, pink and violet, glowing yellow and white before creeping into blue, which became anil and made his chest ache at the thought of what he would miss. A thin streak of grey cloud, parallel to the perfect line of the horizon, like a stiletto piercing the flesh of a blood orange, made his jaw tremble with emotion.
08.07. He was at the rendezvous point. He dug out the binoculars, surveyed the sea. Five ships, now, to the west; a tanker to the east. A splashing sound ahead caught his attention and he lowered the binoculars. A school of dolphin within ten metres of the boat. Diving and surfacing, leaping and plunging. He shouted at them for joy.
The sun came up at 08.11. The horizon quivered as if a meniscus had to be broken for the red orb to push up into the sky. He spread his arms like a jubilant conductor before his orchestra and then turned his back on it, surveyed the Straits of Gibraltar again with the binoculars. He was looking for a boat, not a big ship, although this vessel was sizeable, given that it wasn't cargo-carrying. It was forty metres long, about twelve metres high, had a Moroccan flag and was called the Princess Bouchra. But he still wasn't sure of scale out here. Even a one-hundred-and-fifty-metre tanker looked like a toy on the water.
The boat had drifted. He manoeuvred her back into position, just seven hundred metres north-west. 08.27. He scanned the ocean once more. Seven ships now to the west, four to the east. The Princess Bouchra must be visible by now. They'd worked it out meticulously. He knew everything about that boat. She must have left Tangier late. He released the binoculars, held on to the windscreen of the cockpit, checked the SatNav, perfect position.
The sun was fully up and out of the water now, its heat on his back. He stripped off his shirt and threw it behind him. He closed his eyes for a moment, relaxed them; he'd worked them hard in the dark. He brought the binoculars up to his face, opened his eyes. One, two, three, four ships. Stopped, went back. Between three and four, a smaller vessel. He throttled up, moved forward a hundred metres, two hundred, picked up the Moroccan flag at the back, moved along to the hull. Princess Bouchra. He suddenly needed to piss.
He throttled back, went down into the cabin, lifted up the cache, turned the switch 180 degrees, a red light, then a faint wheezing sound came from the point of the hull and a click. The red light changed to green. Primed. Back in the cockpit, binoculars to his face. There she was. Five hundred metres away now. He rested the binoculars on his chest. Reached for the photograph in his back pocket, wanted to kiss the memory of Yousra, Abdullah and Leila. It was in his trousers, which he'd thrown overboard. No matter, he kissed them anyway. He opened the throttles gradually, taking the boat up to full speed. The power wanted to force him back into his seat but he remained standing, hanging on to the wheel. The Princess Bouchra was getting bigger, more to scale. Hundred metres to go now. Yacoub wasn't thinking any more. He was concentrating on nothing but the porthole in the middle of the starboard side of the boat, which he aimed to hit at one hundred and twenty-five kilometres per hour.
The sea beneath his hull seemed as hard as tarmac. The bow smacked the surface, juddering his organs. The vessel was huge in his vision. Its white superstructure towering above him. He smiled at the wind in his face, the thought of being on the other side, of going straight through to another dimension, shivering through the transparent wall that would make all his suffering appear suddenly absurd. His hull and the porthole met. He slipped through the fissure of time, while the Princess Bouchra broke in half with a sound that wasn't loud enough for him to hear.
29
Falcón's house Calle Bailén, Seville – Wednesday, 20th September 2006, 09.30 hrs
There was something about the intensity of the two vibrating mobile phones on the marble top of his bedside table that seemed more alarming than usual. They kissed and came apart like molluscs engaged in some mating ritual. Falcón wiped his hand down his face,
asked himself: Was anyone completely innocent killed last night? Isabel Sanchéz. He shook his head, levered himself up on an elbow, grabbed a phone and clamped it to his ear.
‘Diga.’
‘Finally,’ said Pablo. ‘Don't bother to pick up the other one, it's me as well.’
‘I had a late night last night, with four murders and two arrests in the space of about one hour. And that doesn't include the suicide on the Huelva road. So I hope you're not going to ask anything complicated of me,’ said Falcón. ‘I've got a lot on my plate today, probably starting with a very ugly interview with Comisario Elvira.’
‘There's no easy way to break this to you, Javier,’ said Pablo, ‘so I'll tell it to you straight. Yacoub Diouri drove a power boat packed with high explosives into the side of a Saudi royal family vessel called the Princess Bouchra at around eight forty this morning.’
Silence. Falcón blinked.
‘The captain and crew abandoned ship and were picked up by a passing dry cargo vessel. The Princess Bouchra went straight to the bottom. We're not sure who was left on board.’
‘Are you sure it was Yacoub?’
‘We're absolutely positive,’ said Pablo.
‘How do you know?’ asked Falcón. ‘This happened less than an hour ago. How can you be so positive?’
‘Listen to the news. I just wanted to warn you before you saw it. It's the only story on all channels,’ said Pablo. ‘We'll talk later when you're in the office.’
Falcón threw off the sheet, sprinted downstairs in his underpants, turned on the television, sat back in his chair.