'Brilliant,' said Rodney.
'Let's at least get something straight,' said Hamilton. 'Do you know what he's been up to when he's lost the MI5 tails?'
'Not exactly. All I do know is that it's a private matter…'
'Which requires top-level spy craft?'
'In order to stay private… yes,' said Falcon.
'All right,' said Hamilton. 'The person or group that he's met on these occasions, you're saying they're not an active GICM cell.'
'I can confirm that,' said Falcon. 'I can also confirm that they are in no way your enemies.'
'Then why the fuck can't you tell us who they are?' said Rodney, in a crescendo.
'Because you'll start to make assumptions,' said Falcon. 'I'll tell you one thing and you'll put it together with other, perhaps unrelated, bits of information about Yacoub. You'll build a picture. The wrong one. Then you'll act in your own interests and not those of my agent, and that will more than likely put Yacoub and his son in serious danger.'
'What's Yacoub's interest?' asked Hamilton.
'That everybody close to him gets out alive… and he doesn't necessarily include himself in that number.'
'Fuck me, now he's giving you the sacrificial lamb shit,' said Rodney.
'Why does he think that we wouldn't help him?' asked Hamilton.
'Yacoub turned down approaches from both MI6 and the CIA,' said Falcon, 'because he had very good reasons for thinking that they would quite quickly find him expendable.'
'Let's just take him out,' said Rodney, bored by it all. 'Then we won't have to worry about him any more.'
Falcon had been waiting for this moment. He needed to create a little scene and Rodney had just given him the opportunity. He took three steps across the room, lifted Rodney out of his chair and slammed him up against the door.
'You're talking about my friend,' said Falcon, through gritted teeth. 'My friend who has given vital information at considerable risk to himself, which prevented an attack on a landmark building in the heart of the City of London containing thousands of people. If you want to put yourself in the way of more information like that, then you'll have to be patient with him. Yacoub, unlike you, is not in the business of endangering people's lives.'
'All right,' said Hamilton, grabbing Falcon's tensed bicep. 'Let's calm things down.'
'Then get this trigger-happy imbecile out of my sight,' said Falcon.
Rodney grinned and Falcon realized that the man had been playing a part all along, getting under his skin, trying to lever him open.
Falcon, still simmering, allowed himself to be guided back to his chair.
'Just give us something to go on, Javier,' said Hamilton, 'that's all we ask.'
'All right,' said Falcon, who'd been prepared by Yacoub for this free gift. 'A number of agencies, including the CNI, have been concerned by the appearance of a stranger in Yacoub's household.'
'In Rabat?'
'That's where he lives, Rodney.'
'What the fuck's that to us?'
'Then that probably concludes our business,' said Falcon coldly, preparing to leave.
'Take no notice of him,' said Hamilton. 'Tell us about the stranger.'
'He's a family friend. His name is Mustafa Barakat. He runs a number of tourist shops in Fes, which was where he was born in 1959 and has lived his entire life.'
'What's he doing in Yacoub's house?'
'He's a guest. It's not the first time, although it is probably the first time since foreign and Moroccan agencies have taken an interest in Yacoub's life.'
'We'll check him out,' said Rodney, as if that was a threat. 'She'll talk to you now,' said Ramirez, addressing the two officers from the Crimes Against Children squad, GRUME, who were standing in the corridor outside the director's office.
'What's her problem?' asked the younger one.
'She's been investigated by the police before,' said Ramirez. 'That's how we know her. We suspected her – or rather, I suspected her – of murdering her husband, Raul Jimenez.'
'And Falcon didn't?' asked Inspector Jefe Tirado, the older GRUME officer. 'Is that why she'll only talk to him?'
'They're close,' said Ramirez, and cut off that line of questioning with his hand.
'She didn't kill her husband, did she?' asked the younger officer, nervously.
'Just stick to the fucking point,' said Ramirez, ignoring him. 'Stay focused on her missing son, don't try to broaden things out too quickly. Concentrate on the immediate facts and then work back… slowly.'
'But that's not how we work,' said the young officer.
'I know. That's why I'm telling you,' said Ramirez. 'If you start rooting around in her private life, her business associates, her family album before you've gained her complete trust, then she'll clam up until Falcon gets here.'
'And when is that going to be?'
'I don't know. Maybe ten or eleven o'clock this evening.'
'I hear she lost sight of the boy when he went into the Sevilla Futbol Club shop,' said Tirado. 'You know they don't have CCTV out there. It's going to be hard going for us to establish whether he wandered off or was abducted. You got any feeling for what might have happened, Jose Luis?'
'I doubt the kid wandered off,' said Ramirez. 'You're going to find out that she's a complicated woman.'
'I don't even understand them when they're simple,' said the young officer, looking down the corridor.
Ramirez made a short mental appeal to the Holy Virgin.
'Stick to the facts. Broaden out slowly,' he repeated the mantra. 'We may have to wait for Falcon, anyway.'
'What does that mean?'
'It means Falcon's stirring a lot of pots at the same time and a fair few of them have shit at the bottom.'
They opened the door. Consuelo's voice barged out into the corridor.
'What do you mean, they don't have CCTV?' she asked. 'Why don't you have CCTV? In England I've heard they have CCTV everywhere… even on roundabouts in the middle of nowhere.'
'This isn't England,' said the director, feeling sorry for her but having to tamp down his irritation, too, as he was having to repeat himself again and again because not much was sticking in her mind.
'But there must be something.'
'Good afternoon, Senora Jimenez, my name is Inspector Jefe Tirado,' said the senior GRUME officer, as he entered the room. 'We are from the Crimes Against Children squad. There is, of course, plenty we can do. We're going to check all the footage of every camera in the Nervion Plaza, and that includes the internal shops' CCTV. As you know, there are cameras in the central area, too, and it's possible that we will get sufficient angle on some of them to include the Sevilla FC stadium and shop. There are already officers conducting interviews with people in and around the shop and stadium. I expect that we will find out very quickly what has happened to your son, Dario.'
Consuelo stood up and shook the man's hand. At 18.00 Falcon was on his way back to Heathrow. Douglas Hamilton had told him he'd make sure they held the flight, but Falcon wasn't sure the man liked him enough to actually do it. Despite the aggression from the two men, Falcon was relaxed. Yacoub had told him the truth. They were back on track and he didn't mind doing some blocking for him. There were still moments of panic when he thought about the ruthlessness of the GICM, but he calmed himself with the thought of Faisal's Saudi security detail.
He turned his mobile on without thinking. It exploded with messages and missed calls. He went into the inbox. Twelve messages from Consuelo. He leaned back in his seat. The Jaguar coasted along the raised section of the Great West Road, past empty high-rise office space. He allowed some exhaustion to creep into his neck and back as he savoured the weight of the unread messages. He smiled to himself, thinking: Javier Falcon, the romantic. He'd never have believed it. He shrugged and opened the first message.
'Dario missing. Help.'
