He made a call on his mobile, spoke in Russian.
'Did you know Marisa Moreno?' asked Falcon.
The Cuban shrugged. Closed down the phone. He nodded to the Russians, started boxing the disks, closing down the laptop. A hard day at the office and now the final unpleasantness.
'What about the money?' said Falcon. 'You don't want the money?'
'That's going to be too complicated now,' said the Cuban.
'And the locked disks with the encrypted data?' he asked, as they came for him.
'We don't have the means to crack that code,' said the Cuban.
Two Russians, one on either side, took Falcon out into the night. Consuelo ran at the door where they were holding Dario under sedation. One of the Russians caught her around the waist, lifted her bodily off the ground, whirled her round, brought her into his chest. The other grabbed her thrashing legs and they carried her out.
They walked around the house. Torches came out. There was no moon. The darkness had such a palpable thickness it surprised Falcon just by giving way to each of his faltering steps. There was the smell of water on the breeze. They were near the lake. The torch beams lit the ground and occasionally swept ahead over two mounds of freshly piled earth at the edge of the long grass. He couldn't quite believe that this was happening to him… to them. How could he, with all his experience, have allowed this madness to take place?
The pit was deep. The digger in the barn. It all made ludicrously cogent sense now. What do you do with this sort of brilliant hindsight? They stood him at the far edge, then turned him so that he had his back to the lake and was facing the low farmhouse. The other Russians arrived with Consuelo, now passive. They righted her and stood her next to him. He grabbed her hand, entwined it with his, kissed the back of it.
'I'm sorry, Consuelo,' he said, resigned now.
'I'm the one who should be sorry,' she said. 'I got too involved in the game.'
'I can't believe I let this happen.'
'And I didn't even get to see Dario,' she said, her distress weakening her. 'What will they do with him now? What have they done with my poor, sweet little boy?'
He kissed her, a fumbling, bumping kiss, but it planted his shape on her and hers on him. The Russians pulled them apart, pushed them to their knees at the edge of the pit. Their hands were still locked together. The two men who'd brought Consuelo to the pit were already back at the house. The remaining torch was dropped to the ground where its beam played over the pit, lighting up the dark soil, moist from the lake. The slides on the two handguns were racked. Heavy hands were placed on the crowns of their heads. They squeezed each other's hands until the bones cracked. An owl hooted. Its mate responded with a little titter. Was that the last sound of this life?
No, there was just one more.
22
Granja de las Once Higeras – Tuesday, 19th September 2006, 04.47 hrs
The shots, two dull thuds, simultaneous. First Consuelo, then Falcon fell forward, their positions on the edge of the hole too precarious to avoid it. Their reluctance gave them a slight advantage over the Russians, who had no choice. They fell like two beef carcasses, their knees knocking into the backs of their erstwhile victims, taking them to the grave. The torch beam still cast its light across the dark hole and lit up the black, gaping wounds in the back of the heads of the two men, who had landed face down in the pit. Consuelo, trapped under the legs of the inert Russian, was struggling and whimpering with panic. A man landed on his feet next to them. His face was covered in dark paint and his camouflage outfit was just visible in the torch beam. He heaved the slack limbs of the executioners away so that Falcon and Consuelo could roll out. The man put his fingers to the necks of the dead Russians.
'How many inside?' he asked, in heavily accented Spanish.
'Two Russians and a Cuban,' said Falcon.
'Stay here… in the hole,' he said, and scrambled out.
Other men rushed past. It was impossible to say how many. It was too dark. One of them kicked the torch into the pit. Falcon pulled Consuelo silently towards him. He sat with his back to the wall of the pit. She crouched between his legs, his arms encircling her. The smell of earth was as thick as chocolate, sweet as life. They heard nothing. They waited. The stars emitted their ancient, uncertain light. The smell of the lake filled the hole with the promise of further days. He kissed her hand, perfume and dirt. Her knuckles wriggled on his lips.
A loud bang. Consuelo started, dropped her head on to her raised knees. Muffled shots. Silence. After a while an engine started up. The digger in the barn. It reversed out. Headlights illuminated the night on the other side of the farmhouse. The digger's engine farted up and growled forward. It stopped for a minute or two and then continued slowly. The beams of light swung round, settled over the pit, crawled forward, narrowing. Falcon stood up. The silhouette of a man approached, walking in front of the digger.
'It's safe now,' said a voice.
A hand came down. Falcon lifted Consuelo towards it and she was hauled out. She started running immediately. The hand came down again. Falcon walked up the earth wall of the pit and out. He moved to one side as the digger came through. Consuelo had fallen down twenty metres away. The digger tipped its bucket and two bodies fell into the pit on top of the inert Russians. Consuelo scrambled to her feet and ran again. The man shouted an order in Russian. Two men came out from behind the farmhouse, caught hold of her, held her there. She struggled but didn't seem to have much left in her.
The man turned to him, his painted face unreal in the harsh light from the digger.
'The boy is there… room on right as you enter, but…'
'They said he was under sedation.'
'He's not breathing. Pillow on face. Maybe two hours ago,' said the man. 'Look before her. Not good.'
'They killed him?'
'You knew the boy?' asked the man, nodding.
'They smothered him with a pillow?' said Falcon, again, completely mystified.
'Hours ago. Before you here. Nothing you could do.'
'Why would they do that?' asked Falcon; the Inspector Jefe, who'd never seen the logic of murder, whose job it was to return sanity to the grossly illogical, was dumbfounded. 'They had no reason to do that.'
'These people not think like that,' said the man. 'Go now. She very unhappy.'
Consuelo was screaming herself helpless in the arms of the two men. She wasn't fighting them, all her fight had gone into hysterical, wounded animal screaming. He ran over to her. They laid her down on the ground. She stopped as if choked when Falcon's face came into her vision.
'What's happened?' she said, weakly. 'What have they done?'
'I'm going to go in there now to have a look at things,' said Falcon. 'When I'm ready, in a minute or two, then you come in. All right?'
She looked at him as if he was a doctor who'd just told her that she was going to die, but there was a good chance of it being peaceful.
'Tell me,' she said, too emotionally exhausted to speak properly.
'I'm going to take a look,' he said, stroking her face. 'I'll call for you. Two minutes. Count the seconds.'
He trotted over the rough ground to the farmhouse, ducked through the low front door. Off to the left, the laptop and disks still on the table, three chairs blown over, the remains of a stun grenade in the corner. Beyond the table, through the door, the Cuban, stripped naked, tied to a chair, arms hooked over the high back, ankles secured to the legs, thighs apart, genitals exposed, wild, animal fear in his eyes.
'Not for you,' said a heavily accented voice to his right. 'In here.'
He went to the door, wiped the sweat out of his eyes, tried to calm himself down. He searched for that professional distance. Nothing there. The door was hanging ajar. A beefy Russian, with painted face and a handgun, thick cylindrical silencer attached, beckoned him. He forced himself through it, found his throat clogging with grief which, only a moment before, had been breathing in the damp earth with relief. As he crossed the threshold, playing soccer in the garden with Dario flickered through the gate of his mind, and he wasn't sure whether he could cope with this.
