These last words were accompanied by a ferocious sideways slash of the air in front of him. Falcon tried to remember whether he'd ever heard Yacoub swear.
Yacoub then launched himself into a long rant about the lengths to which he'd had to go in order to arrive unseen in this apartment.
'You were careful, weren't you, Javier?' he said at the end of it all.
Falcon reciprocated with his own procedure, which seemed to have a mildly calming influence on Yacoub, who listened and gnawed at a hangnail. Then he lit another cigarette, sipped his tea, which was too hot, sat down on the sofa, and stood up again.
'The last time you got like this was after those four days in Paris,' said Falcon. 'But you were OK. You were taken back into the fold.'
'My cover's not blown,' said Yacoub, quickly. 'No, there's no problem with that. It's just that they've found the perfect way to keep me… close.'
'Keep you close?' said Falcon. 'You mean in the sense of not straying? Does that mean they suspect you?'
'Suspect is too strong a word,' said Yacoub, tucking his hand under his armpit and chopping the air with his cigarette. 'They like me. They need me. But they are naturally unsure of me. It's the part of my brain that isn't Moroccan that makes them nervous.'
'We're Andalucians, Yacoub, same people, same Berber genetic marker,' said Falcon.
'The problem for them is that they can't rely on me to think in a certain way. I'm not consistently Moroccan,' said Yacoub. 'And that makes them uneasy.'
Falcon waited. If he'd been with another European he'd have asked the question: 'Is this something to do with you being gay?' But he had the same problem that the radical Islamist group, the GICM, had with Yacoub, but the other way round; Falcon couldn't rely on him to think like a European. His mentality for argument was more Moroccan. Direct questioning didn't work.
'Before Friday noon prayers last week, Abdullah, my son, came to see me,' said Yacoub. 'I was alone in my study. He closed the door and came to the edge of my desk. He said: 'I am going to tell you something that will make you very happy and very proud.' I was confused. The boy is only eighteen. I didn't remember any talk of a girl and, anyway, this would not be the way for that sort of thing to happen. I stood up as if I was about to hear important news. He came over to my side of the desk and told me that he had become a mujahideen and embraced me as a fellow warrior.'
'The GICM have recruited him?' said Falcon, cannoning out of his armchair.
Yacoub nodded, drew on the cigarette, took the smoke deep into his lungs and then held open his arms in a gesture of total helplessness.
'Directly after the Friday noon prayers, he left to continue his training.'
'Continue?'
'Exactly that,' said Yacoub. 'The boy's been lying to me. He's taken four weekends away in the last two months. I thought he was going to see his friends in Casablanca, but he's been out in the country on military- training exercises.'
'How was he recruited?'
Yacoub shrugged, shook his head. Falcon doubted that he was going to hear the precise truth.
'He's been working with me at the factory, just temporarily before he goes to university at the end of the month. We go to a mosque in Sale. There are… elements there. I thought he was steering clear of them… clearly, he wasn't.'
'Have you spoken to anyone about this?'
'You are the first outsider.'
'What about in the GICM?'
'The military commander is not there at the moment. Even when he is, he's not easy to get to see. I've only conveyed my gratitude via an intermediary.'
'Your gratitude?'
'What was I supposed to do? I should be happy and proud,' he said, and sank back down on to the sofa, buried his face in his hands and sobbed twice.
'And you assume that this has been done to keep you 'close', to control you, to make them feel less uneasy about you.'
'Nobody but the maddest radical would want their son to become a mujahideen… potentially a suicide bomber. All this talk you hear on TV in France or England about honour and paradise and seventy-two virgins, it's just… it's just bullshit. You might find that sort of thinking in Gaza, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, but you won't find it in Rabat – not in my circle.'
'Let's think this through,' said Falcon. 'What are they trying to achieve through this manoeuvre? If it's to keep you close, then…'
'They want to infiltrate my household,' said Yacoub. And then, touching his temple: 'They want to infiltrate my mind.'
'They're not convinced that they can control you, so they set about controlling all those around you?'
'Their whole reason for being interested in me is that they know that I can live 'convincingly' in both worlds: Islamic and secular, East and West. It doesn't mean they like it. They didn't like the fact that my sixteen-year-old daughter, Leila, was wearing a swimsuit on the beach.'
'They were watching you on the beach?'
'When we were on holiday in Essaouira, they were watching us, Javier,' said Yacoub. 'Abdullah has stopped playing his music, which I thought a blessing at first, but now I'm desperate for him to be normal. And, can you believe this, he reads the Qur'an. He doesn't play computer games any more. I had a look at the history on his browser… it's all Islamic websites, Palestinian politics – Hamas versus Fatah, the Muslim Brotherhood…'
'Where is this influence coming from?'
Another shrug.
Does he know? Why isn't he telling me? thought Falcon. Is it someone close to him? Someone in his extended family? When Yacoub had been recruited, he'd said he'd never give up a family member.
'They find their way in,' said Yacoub. 'And you know, until Abdullah came to me with his news last Friday, I didn't think these developments were such a bad thing. It's good for teenagers to have something serious in their lives, something other than violent video games and hip-hop… but mujahideen?'
'I know it's difficult for you to be calm about this,' said Falcon. 'But there's no immediate danger if, as you say, they're trying to keep you close. We have time.'
'They've taken my boy away from me,' said Yacoub, who shaded his eyes and sobbed again, before coming back at Falcon, angry. 'He's in one of their camps. That's 24/7. When they're not running over hills and assault courses, they're doing weapons training and bomb-making. And when that's all over, they're plugged into radical Islam. I have no idea what is going to come back to me, but I'm sure it won't be the Abdullah I knew. It will be their Abdullah. And then how will I live? Looking over my shoulder at my own son?'
The enormity of Yacoub's predicament hit Falcon hard. Three months ago he'd asked Yacoub to make what should have been a personal step towards embracing radical Islam. He had been stunned at the rapidity with which Yacoub had been taken deep inside the GICM organization. It could only mean that he had something that they wanted. And now the GICM were protecting themselves and it meant enclosing not just Yacoub but his whole family as well. And, worse still, there was no way out. Radical Islam was not something you changed your mind about. Once admitted to the close fraternity and their secrets there was no walking away. They wouldn't let you. It wasn't so different – and Falcon couldn't believe he was thinking this – to being part of a mafia family.
'You don't have to say anything, Javier. There's nothing to say,' said Yacoub. 'I just needed to tell someone and you're the only person I've got.'
'You don't want me to talk to Pablo at the CNI about this?'
'Pablo? What happened to Juan?' said Yacoub. 'Juan was the old, experienced guy.'
'Juan was given early retirement last week,' said Falcon. 'He'd blown it over Madrid and their assessment of his work in the Seville bombing wasn't so good either. Pablo's good. Forty-two years old. Very experienced in North Africa. Totally committed.'
'No, Javier, you must not tell anyone,' said Yacoub, the flat of his hand taking on the threat of a chopping blade. 'If you do they will only use it. That is how these intelligence people think: He's vulnerable, let's use it. You won't
