'Self-taught,' said Hamilton.
'Sorry, my English. Sometimes only the Spanish word comes to me,' said Falcon. 'Didn't you… or was it MI6, try to recruit Yacoub before me? And I heard the Americans had a go, too.'
'So?' asked Rodney.
'So you vetted him, didn't you?' asked Falcon.
'MI6 said there was nothing unusual,' said Rodney. 'Apart from him being a shirt-lifter. But no fucking PhD from spy school, if that's what you mean.'
'Shirt-lifter?' said Falcon.
'It's nothing,' said Hamilton.
'Maricon,' said Rodney, fixing him with a look.
'So what's going on?' asked Falcon, giving Rodney's aggression a quick sideways glance.
'We were hoping you'd be able to tell us,' said Hamilton, pushing over a piece of paper. 'These are the five separate occasions where we've lost him.'
Falcon looked down the list of dates, times and places. Holland Park, Hampstead Heath, Battersea Park, Clapham Common and Russell Square. Twice in July, once in August and twice in September. Never less than three hours, except this last time.
'So you lost him in these places, but where did he reappear?'
'We pick him up when he's on his way back to the hotel,' said Hamilton.
'Brown's?'
'Always.'
'And after your briefing to Pablo on what had happened between you and Yacoub in Madrid yesterday, we wouldn't mind knowing what he's been up to,' said Rodney. 'You're his controller and he's lying to you. He's not working with us, but he's supposed to be on our side. If he's operating in his own interests, that's one thing. If he's been turned, then, obviously, that's another.'
'We've already got thirty-two separate possible terror groups under some sort of surveillance here in the UK,' said Hamilton. 'Seventeen of them are in London. That's nearly two thousand people we're watching nationwide. Obviously we've had to step things up since 7/7 last year, which means we're stretched. We're having to recruit at the same pace as the terrorists.'
'So we can do without your shit on our doorstep,' said Rodney. 'To put it politely.'
'Are any of these groups you're watching connected to any of the GICM cells in the rest of Europe, or Morocco?' asked Falcon.
'Let's put it this way,' said Rodney, 'we haven't been able to match any known GICM players with any of the UK groups. But that's not to say it hasn't happened. The French are telling us there's already a live GICM cell here.'
'And how do they know that?' asked Falcon.
'They picked up a Moroccan kid on a drugs bust in Ales, in southern France, who gave up some stuff on a group in Marseille in exchange for no jail. This Marseille cell were providing safe houses and documentation. The DSG went in there and beat out some good intelligence. The Moroccan kid was found dead in the river Gard a week later, with his feet beaten to a pulp and his throat slit. So the French reckoned they'd hit gold,' said Rodney, who recalled something else. 'And the Germans told us they saw Yacoub meeting a devout Turkish businessman at a trade fair in Berlin at the beginning of this month.'
'What sort of businessman?' asked Falcon. 'There's plenty of cotton in Turkey, and Yacoub's a clothing manufacturer.'
'That's why we weren't too concerned,' said Rodney. 'The Turk is a cotton manufacturer from Denizli. It's just that when we couple that with other information we find it's begging more questions.'
'What 'other information'?'
'Where does the Turk's money go?' asked Rodney.
'Wealthy, devout Muslims regard it as part of their duty to the community…'
Rodney gave him the yapping hand.
'You know how it is in Turkey, with this battle between the secular and the religious,' said Rodney. 'We could understand it if the Turk's money was being put into a local school, but it's finding its way to Istanbul and political coffers there. And they're not secular coffers.'
'All right,' said Falcon, holding up his hands. 'So what you're looking for from me is some clarification of Yacoub's behaviour over the last few months.'
'Don't get us wrong,' said Hamilton, running his tie between his fingers. 'We're very grateful to Yacoub. His observations back in June on the four-wheel-drive plot were invaluable. MI6 were nowhere on that mission. But the point was that then he was on your territory, now he's on ours, and we're not taking any chances.'
'We don't think it was a coincidence that he turned down MI6 and the Yanks,' said Rodney, and Douglas Hamilton gave him a hard stare.
'And what do you mean by that?' asked Falcon.
'Time for a smoke,' said Rodney, who got up and left. The sports shop, Decimas, on the first floor of the Nervion Plaza shopping centre, was full of kids and parents. Everybody with the same idea. The assistants were worked off their feet. Dario knew what he wanted. Black Pumas. Consuelo cornered a salesgirl and got her working on the project. Her mobile rang. Ricardo, her eldest boy, was asking, or rather telling her, that he was going down to Matalascanas on the coast for the afternoon. She told him to be back for the family dinner with Javier. She'd reached the shop entrance by the time she hung up. Two men looked in past her shoulders, then directly at her, one after the other. They raised their eyebrows, shrugged and walked off towards the escalators.
Back to Dario. He had the boots on. They were too small. Too small already? His feet growing by the month. The girl went back to the store room, got waylaid by a couple who would not take the brush-off. Consuelo's mobile rang again. The estate agent from Madrid. Working hard on a Saturday, trying to impress her. The signal was weak in the shop, started to break up. The salesgirl came back with the next size up. Immediately got snagged by somebody else. Consuelo got the boots on to Dario's feet. He trotted around the shop. Smiled. They were perfect. The girl came back, boxed them up and took them to the cash desk. Three people waiting to pay. The mobile went off again. She left Dario at the desk, walked out of the shop, went to the window overlooking the big open-air plaza in the middle of the shopping centre, the football stadium with Sevilla FC's coat of arms loomed to the left. She kept an eye on the progress of the queue from the main concourse. Two minutes. Cut off again. Went back into the shop. Tapped the desk with her credit card while Dario turned the box round in his hands. Couldn't wait to get back home, try them on, put a few past Javi this evening… if he got back before dark.
Consuelo's turn to pay. Rammed the receipt in her bag. Out of the shop. Grabbed Dario's hand, down the escalator. Mobile went off again. There'd be no signal in the garage, so she went outside into the plaza in front of the football stadium. The signal was good. She talked real estate and walked up the ramp towards the ticket office of the stadium. Dario got bored. Wandered off. Consuelo paced around aimlessly, making her points, stamping her heel. A group of kids streamed past her. Dario saw the Sevilla Futbol Club shop under the stadium and went in. She lit a cigarette, sucked in the smoke, turned to find Dario. Turned again. Did a 360. No Dario. Saw the Sevilla FC shop. Knew he'd have been unable to resist. She walked over to it. Finished the call, folded away her mobile. Had a good look around. A lot of space and too many people. She went into the shop. Dario wasn't there. Despite some reassurances from Douglas Hamilton, Falcon was still feeling the weight of Rodney's accusation when the man came back into the room with three mugs of coffee.
'I put sugar in yours. I hope that was OK,' said Rodney.
'It sounds to me,' said Falcon, still smarting, 'that you think that we, or rather the CNI, have been set up. You reckon I'm just a channel for information that the GICM wants you to know… that, in fact, we're being disinformed by our own agent. Is that right?'
'We have to remain open to all possibilities,' said Rodney, staring him out over the rim of his steaming mug. 'Pablo told us you'd lost confidence in Yacoub.'
'I don't know whether I'd go that far,' said Falcon, finding himself irrationally defending his friend, because he was thinking that he probably would go that far and it made him sick to his stomach.
'All we can do is act on our uncertainties,' said Rodney. 'You meet him and we'll judge for ourselves.'
'You want to listen in?'
Rodney opened his hands as if nothing could be more obvious.
