Flowers was just about to look at his watch. Remembered.
'You're not going to catch me out that easily, Javier.'
It was their little joke since Falcon had noticed Flowers looking ostentatiously at his watch one day – a Patek Philippe. At the time it had meant nothing to Falcon, until he saw in an in-flight magazine that it retailed for €19,500. He'd brought this up with Flowers, who'd said: 'You never actually own a Patek Philippe, Javier. You merely look after it for the next generation.' Later Falcon had found out that Flowers had quoted him the strap line from the Patek Philippe advertisement, and he'd started teasing him. One of the reasons Falcon did this was to feel more relaxed in the company of a man he did not entirely trust.
'Long days,' said Flowers, setting his tumbler down on the table, 'in London.'
'And here.'
'What's happening here?'
'Consuelo's youngest child was kidnapped on Saturday while I was in London.'
Flowers nodded. He knew that. Which meant that he'd spoken to the CNI.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'That's a big pressure. What the fuck is that all about, Javier?'
Falcon recited the litany about Marisa Moreno and the threatening phone calls from the Russians. Flowers wanted to know how the Russians got into the mix and Falcon began at the beginning with Lukyanov's car accident, the money, the disks and Ferrera making the link to Marisa's sister, Margarita.
'That is some heavy police work, Javier.'
'I've got a very good squad. They're all prepared to do that little bit extra, and that's where you get your breaks,' said Falcon. 'You might be interested in the identity of one of the guys we saw on the disks.'
'Don't tell me it was somebody in the American Consulate – I have to look them in the eye every day.'
'A guy called Juan Valverde.'
Flowers didn't react.
'Should I have heard of him?' asked Flowers. 'If he's a soccer player, I'm lost, Javier.'
'You remember that company I asked you to investigate for me back in June?'
'I4IT, owned by Cortland Fallenbach and Morgan Havilland.'
'Juan Valverde is their Chief Executive Officer in Europe,' said Falcon. 'Do you know if they have any investment plans for Seville, or in southern Spain?'
'I just got the information you asked for back in June,' said Flowers. 'I'm not following their stock, Javier.'
'There's another guy on those disks you will have heard of.'
'Try me.'
'Charles Taggart.'
'The fallen preacher?'
'He's a consultant for I4IT.'
'On what?' asked Flowers brutally.
'Religious matters?' said Falcon, and they both laughed. 'I thought you were supposed to be a reformed sinner to be a part of I4IT.'
'Once a sinner, always a sinner,' said Flowers. 'I don't believe in this redemption shit: confess your sins, clean your slate, get out there and commit some more. Just keeps the Church in work.'
'What do you do with your sins, Mark?'
'Keep them to myself,' said Flowers. 'If I confessed them all, I'd age a priest, and myself, by a hundred years.'
'What was your line, Mark?' said Falcon. 'It takes a profound moral certitude to behave immorally.'
'In the spy game, Javier,' said Flowers.
They drank. Flowers breathed in the heavy night air and crunched ice with his teeth.
'London,' said Flowers. 'You know how it happened? I got a call from my station head in Madrid telling me that you're running a rogue agent and the Brits are… what was that expression they use? Hopping mad. I like that. I said: 'How can he be running a rogue agent? If an agent's gone rogue, nobody's running him.' So what the fuck are you doing, Javier?'
'I have an agent…'
'Let's call him Yacoub, so we don't get confused,' said Flowers. 'He is your only agent.'
'Yacoub is under extraordinary pressure.'
'What did he expect, going into this business?' said Flowers. 'Pressure's what we've lived on since the beginning of time, since we've felt the need for our genes to survive, since the first cavewoman saw her man asleep on the floor and thought he should be out hunting. Pressure is a constant. It's like gravity, without it we'd drift aimlessly.'
'I know what pressure is, Mark,' said Falcon. 'If your station head is talking to the British then you'll know that the GICM have recruited Yacoub's son, Abdullah, as a mujahideen.'
'That's almost standard procedure for an agent like Yacoub,' said Flowers. 'A group like that won't expose themselves to an outsider with questionable friends and lifestyle without getting some insurance.'
'I didn't see it.'
'That's because you're an amateur,' said Flowers. 'A raw recruit, who was doing the recruiting. The senior CNI guy, Juan, he would have seen it even if Pablo didn't. They just wouldn't have told you about it. Didn't want to confuse your mind.'
'You mean they didn't want me to fail in my recruiting mission.'
Flowers shrugged, throwing up his hands, as if it was all so obvious it wasn't worth talking about.
'This is the problem I've got with Yacoub,' said Falcon. 'He doesn't trust anybody any more. He describes himself as being in the goldfish bowl, with all these agencies and his enemies looking on.'
'Maybe more like a murky aquarium,' said Flowers. 'I hear he's good at keeping himself out of sight when he wants to.'
'Wouldn't you?'
'I've got nothing to hide.'
'You still hide it.'
'Look, Javier, Yacoub is a valuable asset. He's the perfect agent, who has got to the heart of the enemy. We all have a vested interest in keeping him and his son alive and happy. We want the sort of intelligence he can give us,' said Flowers. 'We, more than anybody else, understand what he's going through. There's no reason for him – or you – to stop talking to us. It's the only way we can help.'
'When I was about to recruit Yacoub, you told me that he didn't like Americans. That's why he wouldn't work for you.'
'And what's so different about you and the CNI?'
'He won't talk to the CNI, he'll only talk to me, because he trusts me.'
'Does he?' said Flowers, fixing him with a look across the table. 'Why didn't he tell you that he'd already been trained?'
'Probably the same reason that Juan and Pablo didn't warn me about the sort of tricks the GICM would play on Yacoub. Not distrust, just omission,' said Falcon. 'And, anyway, this previous training was limited to making sure he wasn't being followed and losing a tail if he was. Not full spy craft.'
'How would you describe Yacoub's state of mind since you met him in Madrid?'
'The fact that you know we met in Madrid supports the goldfish-bowl theory,' said Falcon. 'You're all looking at him and you don't trust what you see.'
'This is the War on Terror, Javier. It's called pooling resources.'
'He was distraught in Madrid. Nervous. Desperate. Evasive. He alarmed me. He'd thought he'd 'lost' his son and it had made him, in my estimation, unreliable.'
'So how did he get to be so much more persuasive in London?'
'He'd come to terms with his situation. It had made him calmer.'
'He lied to you in Madrid.'
'Not so much lying as the paranoia giving him the inclination to mislead.'
'What happened to you between Madrid and London?' said Flowers, keeping the questions coming thick and fast. 'One moment you're nervous enough to seek advice from Pablo, the next you're so relaxed you're going it alone and giving Yacoub a free rein.'
