surface. You'd like him. We talk about you.'
'Does that mean he's comfortable with your 'spying' activities for the CNI?'
'It's to his advantage and, as you know, he tells me things, too.'
'Where does he stand on the integral line between 'friends of America' and 'Wahabi fundamentalist'?'
'He's both and yet neither.'
'So he's an important member of the royal family, who is in the balance,' said Falcon. 'The ideal target for the GICM. Someone they would like to see converted to their cause.'
'Not quite,' said Yacoub. 'You're forgetting that the radicals in the GICM do see everything in black and white. They don't like grey areas. They can't stomach a man who holds conflicting opinions. However devout Faisal might be – and he is very devout, more devout than I'll ever be – he is still a very loyal family member. However powerful the arguments are that any radical could put to him, he would never betray his king.'
'How did the GICM find out about your relationship with Faisal, and do they know its full extent?'
'They do know its full extent and we are unsure how they got that information,' said Yacoub. 'I overlapped with another lover. Faisal often travels with a large entourage and other family members. There are indiscretions. There are servants. However hard you try, you can't hermetically seal yourself off from the world. And something like the homosexuality of an important family member has a way of getting out. Salacious gossip can find a crack in any wall.'
'And this was what the GICM told you when you came back from Paris in June?'
Yacoub had his feet up on the rim of the bidet. His elbows propped against his knees, his forehead in his hands. He nodded.
'And is this why the GICM have recruited Abdullah?' asked Falcon. 'The only tie more powerful than a lover is that between father and son. This is how they keep you 'close'. But what exactly do they want?'
'Faisal can never be entirely and securely converted to the cause,' said Yacoub. 'They want him dead.'
11
Nervion Plaza shopping centre, Seville – Saturday, 16th September 2006, 13.15 hrs
'I'm not going to talk to anybody except Javier,' said Consuelo, not loudly, but with such an edge to her voice that all the men stood back from her, as if she'd just unsheathed a sword.
They were in the office of the director of the Nervion Plaza shopping centre, which looked out through thin slatted blinds on to the broad avenue of Calle Luis de Morales. It was cold in the room. The sun was blinding and fierce outside. White bars of intense light, spectrum edged, laddered the far wall, on which hung a copy of a Joan Miro painting. Consuelo knew that this painting was called Dog Barking at the Moon and, indeed, it consisted of a small, colourful dog, a scimitar of white moon and an unforgiving black background, broken only by what looked like a railway track going to oblivion. It turned her stomach to look at Miro's intention; to show tiny forms in vast empty spaces. Where was Dario now? Normally he was a large presence in a small space, but now she could only think of his defenceless tininess in the larger outside world.
The thought of him came in waves; one moment she was tough and assertive, commanding respect from all the men in the room, and the next she had her face in her trembling hands, hiding that vulnerability, pressing the tears back into her eyes.
'This is not Javier's kind of work,' said Ramirez, the only one who knew her well enough to raise any sort of objection.
'I know it's not, Jose Luis,' said Consuelo, looking up from the sofa. 'Thank God for that. But I can't… I don't want to talk to anyone else. He knows me. He can get everything he needs out of me. We don't have to start from scratch.'
'You should talk to the officers from the Crimes Against Children squad,' said Ramirez. 'The GRUME have enormous experience with missing children. And it's important that we establish the possibilities and probabilities of what may have happened here immediately. Is this a case of a child having wandered off or has he been abducted and, if so, what could be the motives of…?'
'Abducted?' said Consuelo, her neck lengthening by ten centimetres.
'Don't alarm yourself, Consuelo,' said Ramirez.
'I'm not alarming myself, Jose Luis. You're alarming me.'
'This is what the GRUME do. They look at the background. They judge probabilities. Have you made enemies in business?'
'Who hasn't?'
'Have you noticed anyone hanging around your home?'
She didn't answer. That made her think. What about that guy last June? The gypsy-looking guy who'd muttered obscenities at her in the street, then she'd seen him again in the Plaza del Pumarejo, not far from her restaurant. She'd thought he was going to rape her down a back street. He'd known her name. He'd known all sorts of things. That her husband was dead. And, yes, her sister, later, had referred to him as the 'new pool guy' when she'd been looking after the kids and had seen him hanging around the house.
'You're thinking, Consuelo.'
'I am.'
'Will you talk to the GRUME officers now?'
'All right, I'll talk to them. But as soon as Javier is available…'
'We're trying to get a message to him now,' said Ramirez, patting her on the shoulder with one of his huge, steadying mahogany hands. He felt for her. He had his own kids. The abyss had opened up in him before now and changed him. They were angry with Falcon. Douglas Hamilton, who was on the brink of losing his usual calm, was jabbing him with irony. Rodney had already called him a cunt. Falcon knew from his English lessons that this was the worst thing you could say to someone in England, but to him, a Spaniard, the world's greatest insulters, it was water off a duck's back.
They were mildly irritated by the fact that the listening device they'd planted on him hadn't worked, but what was really incensing them was that Falcon wouldn't tell them anything juicy from his meeting with Yacoub.
'You can't tell us where he's been on the five occasions he's lost us. You can't tell us who trained him. You can't tell us why his son is with him in London…'
'That I don't know,' said Falcon, cutting in on the litany. 'He wouldn't tell me that.'
'Maybe we should just shoot the fucker anyway,' said Rodney.
'Who?' said Falcon.
Rodney shrugged as if it didn't matter.
'It won't come to that,' said Hamilton smoothly.
'He's in a very difficult position,' said Falcon.
'Oh, fuck right off,' said Rodney.
'Aren't we all?' said Hamilton. 'You're talking to people with two thousand suspected terrorists under constant watch. Can't you at least throw us a bone, Javier?'
'I can tell you about the Turkish businessman from Denizli.'
'Fuck that,' said Rodney.
'We're listening,' said Hamilton.
'They've signed a contract for the supply of denim to his factory in Sale,' said Falcon. 'The first shipment was received…'
'Bugger off,' said Rodney. 'You know what he's doing and you're not fucking telling us. We don't give a shit about the Turkish tosser.'
'Maybe you knew that Yacoub and the Turk had a genuine business relationship,' said Falcon, 'and you were just using their mildly suspicious backgrounds to make them appear more threatening.'
'We know about the Turk,' said Hamilton, holding up a calming hand. 'What else can you tell us?'
'Yacoub knows of no active GICM cell currently operating in the UK,' said Falcon. 'This doesn't mean there isn't one, it just means he has never been asked to make contact with it, and he's never heard any reference to one in any of his discussions with the military wing of the GICM.'
