'But I had told Pablo.'
'A limited amount.'
'Only what I knew, but I had told him,' said Falcon. 'That was already a betrayal of Yacoub's trust but, given his volatile state and my inexperience, I felt it was a necessary step.'
'So telling Pablo gave you some comfort. I can understand that,' said Flowers. 'But why wouldn't you let the Brits listen in on your conversation with Yacoub in Brown's Hotel?'
'I wanted to re-establish trust. I couldn't do that with MI5 listening in.'
'And how did Yacoub persuade you that he was still trustworthy?'
'Instinct.'
'You know, there are a lot of people out there who can make you believe that they love you,' said Flowers. 'Especially when it's so important to them that they believe it themselves.'
'What can you do about it?'
'Let other people take a look,' said Flowers. 'People who are capable of total objectivity.'
'But not people who are paid and sworn in by a government which has interests.'
'So Yacoub is protecting his son,' said Flowers, changing tack, 'and how many others?'
'Just one other person.'
'Is that person a lover?'
'You're not going to wring it out of me, Mark,' said Falcon. 'I know you're clever. Yacoub does, too. You've carefully reminded me that Yacoub has lied to me, that I've already betrayed him because I needed the support of the CNI. So what's one more little betrayal? And the answer is: possible death. Yacoub will lose control, because all the intelligence agencies will set about protecting their interests and that will create more unknowns. A decision could easily be taken that, despite Yacoub's intelligence coups, he is expendable.'
'You're making this sound very serious,' said Flowers, 'as if there could be grave geopolitical consequences. You're making it sound like something we really have to know.'
'But not yet.'
'We talked about pressure earlier,' said Flowers. 'The one thing I can tell you, Javier, is that I know about pressure. I am an expert in pressure… exerting it, I mean.'
'The thing about pressure, Mark, is that it's always exerted in order to cause pain. The GICM keep Yacoub under control by embracing his son. The Russians want to stop me from investigating their role in the 6th June Seville bombing, so they kidnap Consuelo's youngest child. Even we do it in the police force. We encourage a woman to inform on her criminal lover by threatening her brother with a heavy jail term.'
'That's right, Javier. We're all in the same business. The good guys and the bad guys. So what's your point?'
'Try offering solutions instead of threats,' said Falcon.
'What could I do for you that would make you feel sufficiently indebted to me that you would tell me what Yacoub is up to?'
'If you could get Consuelo's son back for me,' said Falcon. 'That would engender an enormous sense of gratitude in me.'
Flowers nodded, the light in the patio meant that only half his face was visible, the other half was completely opaque. The one seemed to inform the other, thought Falcon. Threats were always a lot easier to pull off than solutions.
19
Falcon's house, Calle Bailen, Seville – Monday, 18th September 2006, 22.05 hrs
It seemed later than it was. Flowers had only just left. Falcon sat in the patio, slumped in his chair, feet spread wide. He had been exhausted by the day and its lack of progress and, followed by the relentlessness of the CIA man's questions, he'd felt his lids growing heavier and his shoulder blades tightening. Now he felt as empty as that husk of a plant hiding in the corner of the patio but, with Dario in the centre of his consciousness, his mind was alive with the horror of the boy's situation and his helplessness beside it.
He began to wonder whether it was his particular fate to be haunted by abused, traumatized or persecuted children. Ever since he'd discovered how ruthlessly his father, Francisco Falcon, had exploited him as a small boy, he seemed to have become a magnet for these most vulnerable members of society. It did not escape him either, the appalling irony of his compulsion to discover what had happened to Raul Jimenez's missing son, Arturo. Then, having found that he'd been brought up in Morocco as Yacoub Diouri, to exploit him by making him an agent of Spanish intelligence, the CNI.
The patio was dark. He'd turned off the light. Wooden beams groaned somewhere far off in the large old house. He leaned forward, pinched the skin between his eyes, trying to tear out this ghastly nexus, but all that came to him were images in the chain of events of the last few years. An orphaned child being carried away by his aunt, two teenagers used as sex slaves buried in a shallow grave, four dead children covered by their pinafores after the 6th June bombing had destroyed their pre-school. He slapped his legs, stood up, cleared away the empty glasses and remains of crisps and olives, took them back to the kitchen. He hoped this mild activity would stop the fever in his brain. This is the blight of modern mankind, he thought, a world so full of accessible information, lives so crammed with work and relationships, people so constantly connectable that we've all developed what Alicia Aguado would probably call tachy-rumination. Nothing meditative about it, just a feverish mental grazing.
A bell rang, followed by three blunt thuds on the huge wooden door. Mark Flowers coming back with more questions. The afterthoughts. He made his way back through the house, under the gallery, around the patio. More thuds on the door, like a dull ache, followed by a sharper tapping. He slapped on the lights, opened the smaller door within the massive oak gates. Consuelo was standing there on one leg with her shoe in her hand.
'I couldn't seem to make any impression with my fist,' she said, slipping her shoe back on. 'You should get the bell fixed, or have a knocker fitted.'
'The bell works fine,' said Falcon, 'it just takes time to get from one end of the house to the other.'
'Are you going to invite me in?'
'Please,' he said.
They kissed formally on both cheeks, manoeuvred around each other awkwardly, and headed for the patio. She settled herself at the table. He offered her a drink. She'd take a small manzanilla sherry. He brought two and some olives. They sat in silence staring at the same point, exquisitely aware of each other's presence, but behaving as if there was some performance going on in which they could take no interest because of the vastness of what had come between them.
'I'm surprised to see you here after what happened the other night,' said Falcon.
'I didn't expect to have to come and see you,' she said.
'To have to come and see me?'
'We've been thrown together, Javier. It seems we cannot avoid each other,' she said. 'It's the only explanation I've got for what is happening. When we first met I was your suspect. Then I became your lover.'
'Then you left me,' he said.
'But I came back, Javier,' she said. 'Thanks to Alicia, I came back a different person.'
'And now?' said Falcon. 'Do we have Alicia to thank for you coming here this evening?'
'Not this time,' she said. 'I spoke to her. She listened. It's made me feel stronger.'
'And that didn't… No, I forgot, you had to come back,' said Falcon. 'I know why you're here, because I can't stop thinking about Dario myself, but who or what particularly has thrown us together this time?'
'This time, Javier, it's our enemies.'
They looked each other directly in the eye for the first time since she'd appeared at the door.
'Does that mean you've heard from the Russians?'
She nodded.
'But I told Inspector Jefe Tirado to call me if there were any developments,' said Falcon. 'He assured me nothing had happened. No phone calls…'
'I called them.'
