‘And he was an uncle to you,’ said Falcón.
‘But an impostor,’ said Abdullah, looking Falcón in the eye. ‘What my father didn't tell you in the letter is that Mustafa is very charismatic. Apart from anything else, he sells a lot of carpets. The tourists love him even as he despises them. My advice to you is not to engage.’
‘I need Yousra to get me into the Diouri house afterwards.’
‘That is perfectly possible. It will be quite natural for her, under these circumstances, to go to Fès and mourn with the other women there. They will expect it of her,’ said Abdullah. ‘The woman with you, Consuelo, is this boy her son?’
Falcón nodded, stunned by the transformation of Abdullah from the slack-limbed teenager he'd known on the family holiday a month ago, to this focused young man he'd become in the last half-hour.
‘It's better that neither my mother nor Leila are told about the boy. These women in the Diouri house know each other very well and my mother is not an actress,’ said Abdullah. ‘She will have an audience with Mustafa's mother as soon as she arrives, and that woman is frightening. She might be mad, but she doesn't miss anything.’
‘All right, so how will I get into the house?’
‘I will be accompanying her, but I will not be party to their conversation. I will stay downstairs and let you in.’
‘Do you know the house?’
‘I know everything about that house. When Leila and I were children we were left to play – and you know what children are like. We discovered everything. All the secret passages and back staircases. Don't worry, Javier. Everything will be fine. I think it's best we go our separate ways now. We will arrive in Fès as the grieving family,’ said Abdullah, writing down his mobile number. ‘Call me when you are ready and I'll make sure everything goes smoothly in the house in Fès.’
They embraced again. Abdullah went to the door, fitted his feet into his barbouches. Falcón could see his mind still working.
‘Nothing will change my mind, Javier,’ he said.
‘But remember, Abdullah: your father sacrificed his life so that you would not suffer what he went through,’ said Falcón. ‘You've just read his letter. He did not want to be a spy, and he did not want that life for you either.’
As they set off for Fès the clouds in the western sky were aflame, with the reddening sun already low on the horizon. Falcón drove in silence.
‘I can nearly hear what's going on in your head, but not quite,’ said Consuelo, after half an hour.
‘The usual problem,’ said Falcón. ‘Trust. I don't know whether I've just made a big mistake in assuming that Abdullah is as his father believed.’
‘A “friend”?’
Falcón nodded, turned on the headlights as the sun disappeared behind them. The light in the car was strange, with the flamingo sky behind, dark night ahead, and the dashboard glowing in his face.
‘I just witnessed an extraordinary transformation from a boy into a man in the space of fifteen minutes,’ said Falcón. ‘This is what intelligence work does to you. You question everybody's loyalty. Abdullah's response to that letter, it just…’
‘Didn't quite ring true?’
‘It did and it didn't,’ said Falcón. ‘That's what you could hear going on in my head. For us to gain access to the Diouri house in Fès I must rely on him. I had to tell him everything. I've made myself vulnerable to him.’
‘Was there an alternative?’
‘Originally I was going to ask Yousra to let me in. Abdullah advised against it for perfectly plausible reasons. But when things matter so much, there's always a question.’
‘You're not giving me the full story, Javier. I can tell.’
He should have known.
‘In order to make Darío safe, I have to kill a man first. Abdullah's uncle.’
She looked at him, his profile, the jawline, the cheekbone, the ear, the eye. What had she done to this man?
‘No, Javier. You can't do that. I can't let you do that.’
‘It has to be done.’
‘Have you ever killed a man before?’
‘Twice.’
‘But you've never assassinated someone,’ she said, ‘in cold blood.’
‘There's no other way, Consuelo. I'm doing it for Yacoub as much as anyone else. It will happen,’ said Falcón firmly.
‘Abdullah knows this,’ said Consuelo. ‘And if he's not a friend, when you go to kill this man you might be walking to your death.’
‘We need an alternative plan in case I've been wrong about Abdullah.’
The Hotel du Commerce was on the Place des Alaouites. They parked nearby and went up to their room. It wasn't a class of hotel that Consuelo was used to staying in, but it was right in front of the golden doors of the royal palace.
They had a shower, changed clothes. Neither of them was hungry. They lay on the bed, Consuelo with her head on his chest. Falcón stared at the ceiling. There was a knock at the door.
One of Pablo's agents identified himself, looked nervously at Consuelo.
‘It's all right,’ said Falcón, introducing her. ‘She had to know.’
The agent took out a light brown burnous from the small cabin bag he was carrying.
‘Put this on,’ he said. ‘It has a hood to cover your face.’
Falcón wrestled into the long, ankle-length cloak, put the hood over his head, checked himself in the mirror. The pockets of the burnous went straight through to his trousers. The agent screwed a silencer on to a nine-millimetre Glock handgun, gave it to Falcón. He showed him that it was fully loaded, with one in the chamber, and where the safety catch was. Falcón put it in the waistband of his trousers. The agent laid out a large-scale map of the medina of Fès El Bali on the bed. Showed him the gate where he would come in, where the shop was and the best route from the shop to the Diouri house. He gave him a recent photo of Barakat, let him look at it for a minute, took it back.
‘You will go into Mustafa Barakat's shop at eight thirty,’ said the agent. ‘There will be one other person in the shop, a Spanish tourist. As you enter, another agent will man the door from the outside. He will be Moroccan. You will shoot Mustafa Barakat, hand the gun to the Spanish tourist and leave the premises. Do not look back. The Moroccan will close the shop behind you.’
‘I'll need a gun for when I go into the Diouri house,’ said Falcón.
‘We will make sure you have one,’ said the agent. ‘It's just a precaution that after the killing you walk away from the shop unarmed.’
‘I want you to show Consuelo where the Diouri house is,’ said Falcón. ‘She's never been to Fès before and the medina can be confusing. I want her to see it for real and memorize a route. If anything happens to me and I do not show at the gates of the house, you must knock at the door and ask for Yousra.’
‘And what will Consuelo do?’ asked the agent.
‘You will give her the weapon intended for me. She will ask Yousra to take her to Barakat's mother.’
‘What do you think might happen to you?’ asked the agent.
‘I have had to inform Abdullah Diouri of this plan.’
‘That was not what we were told,’ said the agent.
‘It was unavoidable.’
The agent looked at his watch.
‘I have to take up my position now,’ he said. ‘I will talk to Pablo. If we are to abort the mission, you will get a one-word text on your mobile telling you just that.’
Consuelo and the agent left.
Falcón looked at his watch, still some time to go. He remembered the DNA swabs, put a couple in his pocket. He took the gun out, put it on the bed, paced the room. He lay down with the gun on his chest, had to get up again. Too hot, stripped off the burnous. Time got stuck, wouldn't move on.
Forty minutes later Consuelo returned. He locked the door behind her and went back to pacing the room.
‘You saw the house?’ he asked.
‘It's not far,’ she said. ‘You're tense, Javier. Y
ou're still thinking about Abdullah. We've got to clear your mind. Tell me everything that worries you about him.’
‘Was the transformation too quick? Was it too complete? Did it feel rehearsed? Was there something playing behind his eyes when he said the words: “You can count on me”? Why did he offer his services when his father had just sacrificed his life for him? Did he pledge his loyalty a little too quickly and too hard? Is he acting?’
‘You're too wired for this.’
‘It's just the paranoia talking. I'll be all right once I'm moving.’
‘Your shirt is soaked through. Take it off. Put this on.’
He looked at his watch for the hundredth time. Not quite 20.05. He peeled off the shirt. She rubbed him down with a towel. He put on a T-shirt, got back into the burnous. He checked the gun, slipped it into the burnous and down the waistband of his trousers. He walked around. Comfortable.
‘It's time,’ he said.
She gripped his shoulders, slipped her arms around his neck, kissed his face. He held her, almost delicately, feeling the individual ribs with the tips of his fingers.
‘This isn't it, Javier. This isn't the end, I know it. This is the new beginning. Believe me,’ she said, and squeezed him hard. ‘Do you believe me?’
‘I do,’ he said, but his eyes said something different over her shoulder.
They parted. He held her hands, looked into her eyes.
‘When you came to see me that night, before the negotiations with the Russians, you could have lied to me. You could have easily drawn me into their corruption. That you didn't, that you were so furious at what they were trying to do, even at the risk of your own child, was magnificent, and I fell for you all over again,’ he said, and let her hands fall from his. ‘Whatever happens, I want you to know that I do not regret any of this.’
‘It's taken me all my life to find you, Javier,’ she said. ‘And I know you'll be coming back.’
Falcón pulled the burnous hood with its elfin point over his head. The door closed after him and she immediately wanted him back, didn't believe her own words now that he was gone. She wondered what she would do with herself if this was to be the last time she saw him. She went to the window. He came out of the building beneath her, walked towards the royal palace, turned at the end of the street, raised his hand and was gone.
Falcón walked swiftly. Now that he was on the move his mind was clear. He felt a tremendous solidity in his torso, as if he was wearing an armour of clean and shining steel as light as his own skin. He called Abdullah on his mobile and told him he was on his way. He passed through various gates, the Bab Semarine, up Grand Rue des Merenids to the Bab Dakakan. It was only a matter of taking a right at the Bab Es Seba and a long walk by the Boujeloud Gardens and he was in Fès El Bali. He was in his stride now, walking towards the Bab Boujeloud. More activity here, more tourists. Full of hustlers. The burnous did its job. Nobody came near him. He went through the gate into the medina.
The tourist traffic became more intense. The shops were heaving with people. Brass trays glowed in the yellow light, next to mother-of-pearl inlaid furniture, camel-bone framed mirrors, silver jewellery, colourful scarves. His hood trapped the cinnamon smell from the pastilla food stalls. He dodged some mule droppings. The streets were clogging up with slow-moving gaggles of tourists. He tried not to look at his watch. Not a Moroccan thing, to be too concerned about time. He would get there. The timing would be perfect. Wood smoke shunted out the food smells. The stink of curing leather. Old men sitting out drinking tea, fingering their worry beads. A boy crouched, sweating as he fanned the flames of the fires beneath the massive blackened boilers of the hammam. The hiss of steam. The ponderous clopping of a donkey's hooves on cobbles. He turned left at the Cherabliyin mosque. The streets were darker and emptier here. He joined up with another main thoroughfare. The carpet shops. He saw his destination. His hand gripped the butt of the gun.
He stopped, took a deep breath, glanced at his watch for the first time: 20.29. Do not think. Do not engage. Two shots would be enough. He crossed the street, heading for the door to the shop, pulled the gun out of his waistband, thumbed off the safety catch under his burnous. Just as he reached the doorway a figure in a pale blue jellabah flitted in front of him, slipped over the threshold, so that they were in the shop together. What the fuck? Too late, he was committed now. The Spanish tourist was coming up off his cushion. Mustafa Barakat was standing and spreading his arms wide. He was smiling even as Falcón pulled out the gun. He was going to embrace the figure in the pale blue jellabah. Then he was not. His eyes widened over the pale blue cotton shoulders of the man, whose right arm punched in, once, twice, three times. Barakat fell back on a pile of carpets. The word on his lips never made it into the air. The killer put his foot on to the pile of carpets next to Barakat's face and drew the knife across the dying man's throat. He said something in Arabic and stood back. Barakat's white jellabah was already blossoming with a vast, shining bloom of blood. His throat gaped and gargled, blood leaked on to the carpets, the arterial pressure already gone from the ferocious stabs to the heart. Abdullah turned to Falcón, held out the knife in his bloody hand. Despite his closeness to Barakat in his death throes, his pale blue jellabah had only a small smear of blood across the arm. The CNI agent playing the tourist was in a state of shock at this development. Falcón spoke to him quickly in Spanish as he knelt down and dipped a DNA swab into Barakat's blood.
‘Take the knife. Carry on as planned. Any water?’
The agent took the knife, handed over a bottle of water he'd been carrying. Falcón put the gun back in his waistband, washed Abdullah's hand. Threw the bottle to the agent and left the shop. The metal blind rolled down behind them. Abdullah led the way off the street and down into the alleyways of the medina. He was crying. His shoulders were shaking, abdomen trembling.
‘Why did you do that?’ asked Falcón.
Abdullah stopped, threw his back against a whitewashed wall. Tears streaked his face.
‘I've loved that man all my life,’ he said. ‘Since I can remember, Mustafa has been a part of our family. I used to fall asleep on his chest in the back of the car. He rescued me when I nearly drowned in the sea at Asilah. He took me to Marrakech for my sixteenth birthday. He is my uncle.’
‘But you knew I would kill him. You didn't have to do that.’
‘He has betrayed us all. I can hardly bear to speak his name. He has disgraced us. I don't care if I go to jail for the rest of my life,’ said Abdullah. ‘At least I have restored some of our family honour.’
Falcón grabbed him by the arm, told him they had to keep moving, the news of Barakat's death might leak out. They jogged through the empty streets. It was no more than a few hundred metres to the house. The door was open a crack. Abdullah went in. Consuelo appeared out of the darkness wearing a headscarf, startled him.
‘Is it done?’ she asked.
Falcón nodded.
They left Consuelo by the main door. Abdullah led Falcón across the first patio of the house. Women's voices came from one of the upstairs rooms. In the second patio Abdullah ducked into a doorway and went down a long unlit passage to a stone spiral staircase at the end. It was only just big enough for a single person to pass.
‘There's no electricity in this part of the house,’ said Abdullah. ‘When we get to the door at the top I will go through and leave the door ajar. You must stay behind. Nobody comes to this part of the house without being invited first.’
‘Think about what you're going to say to her.’
‘I'm not going to take any nonsense,’ said Abdullah, determined. ‘She'll know I mean business just by the fact I'm in her quarters without her invitation.’
‘You mustn't give her the slightest chance.’
‘There's nothing she can do, Javier.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Falcón. ‘After all this, I don't want anything to happen to the boy.’
‘She'll be on her own up here. The boy will be kept e
lsewhere. I'll ask her where she's keeping him and, if she doesn't tell me, I'll beat her until she does.’
Abdullah took off his shoes. They crawled up two floors in the narrow staircase. At one point the women's voices in the patio were as clear as if they were next door. Abdullah reached the door at the top. It did not appear to have a handle or a lock but he felt up and down the stone wall near the door jamb and pressed. The door sprung open silently. The room had a floor of heavy wooden planking covered with carpets. The windows had broken latticework over them and the smell of jasmine from the garden below had come in with the warm night air. A floorboard creaked as Abdullah went in. A woman's voice in Arabic asked:
‘Who's there?’
‘It is me, Abdullah, my great aunt,’ he said, approaching her. ‘I'm sorry to come here without your invitation, but I wanted to talk to you about my father's death.’
‘I have already spoken to your mother,’ she said.
‘I was sure that you had been told, but I would like to talk to you about it as well,’ said Abdullah. ‘You know that your son, my uncle, and my father were very close.’
‘My son?’ she said.
‘Mustafa and my father, they were like brothers.’
‘Come here,’ she said. ‘Step into the light where I can see you. Why are you wearing these clothes? These are not mourning clothes. And what is that mark –?’
There was a sharp intake of breath. The silence of shock before the comprehension of pain. Falcón opened the door. The woman was dressed completely in black, which made the curved blade of the knife stand out in the oily yellow light. The sight of Falcón distracted her from Abdullah, who was holding his right arm, with blood oozing through his fingers. He grunted with pain. The woman tipped a lamp on to the wooden floor. The oil spilled, caught fire immediately and flames spread across the carpets and floorboards. The hem of Abdullah's jellabah was alight as he staggered backwards. The woman opened the door and disappeared into the darkness.
Falcón used a small rug from the floor to slap out the flames climbing up Abdullah's legs. He used one of the other larger carpets to smother the fire creeping across the floor. He ran to the door. She'd locked it. He kicked at it, once, twice, on the third savage blow it came open. No light. His sight still a wavering green from the flames. His hands found a door across the landing, a top stair to his right. The rest of the stairs could have been a lift shaft for all he could see. He went down the stairs, right hand on the wall. A landing. No door. More stairs. Another landing. Two doors. A window. Faint light coming from outside. He listened at one door. Then the other. Went back to the other door, tried it. It opened on to an empty room. He turned, ran at the other door, and shouldered through it into the room, crashing into some furniture and landing on his front. The door kicked back against the wall and slammed shut again behind him. Still no light. Movement in the darkness. A faint whimpering sound of a small animal, cowering in a dark corner. He got up on to his knees, no higher than that, he was aware of the window behind him. Didn't want to stand out. Something flew over his head with a swish, like a low flying bird. He rolled to one side. Feet in light slippers padded across the floor. Falcón crawled deeper into the room, turned, lay on his back. He could just make out some of the broken latticework across the window. His eyes searched for a silhouette. Somebody was coming down the stairs. Abdullah recovered, or the woman getting away. His eyes improving all the time. He lay still. By the door he was aware of a denser mass. There was a twitch of silver. He felt around him. A small table came to hand. He sat up, brought his knees to his chin, rocked forward and in one movement came to his feet and ran full tilt, table out in front of him, at the black mass. There was a collision. The woman cannoned backwards and hit the window frame. The rotten latticework did not hold, the window frame cut her mid-thigh, her centre of gravity toppled and she was out and into the night before Falcón could grab at anything. A shout, more of surprise, followed by a compact thud and a crack. Then silence. A long silence, which was broken by that whimpering in the room.