26
Seville airport – Tuesday, 19th September 2006, 19.15 hrs
The large black Mercedes containing the men identified by Ramirez as Juan Valverde, boss of I4IT Europe, and Antonio Ramos, the Chief Engineer of Horizonte, drove directly from the airport to the Isla de la Cartuja. Lying across the river from the old city, this was where the Expo '92 had taken place. It had now been transformed into an area of prime commercial real estate. The car waited at the heliport, where it was joined by another Mercedes. The two drivers got out, smoked and chatted. Four minutes later a helicopter's faint rhythmical beating could be heard coming from the south. The clatter of blades grew louder and the drivers turned their faces as the helicopter swept in, dipped momentarily and, amid a violent thrashing and rucking up of dust, settled its runners delicately on the painted yellow H.
As the blades came to rest, an employee from the heliport trotted up and opened the door to the helicopter. Two men got out: one was a corporate Spaniard in a light grey suit, white shirt, blue tie; the other clearly American in jeans, a blue button-down shirt with a light sports jacket folded over his arm. In the thirty-metre walk to the cars, Ramirez got four good close-ups of both men with his digital camera.
The two men got out of the Mercedes, shook hands with the new arrivals, who had an air of seniority about them. They accompanied them to the second Mercedes. The heliport employee handed over a couple of suit carriers and two small cabin cases to the driver, who had the door to the car already open. The two men got in. Juan Valverde and Antonio Ramos returned to their Mercedes. The drivers got behind their steering wheels. The cars took off.
While Ramirez drove, Ferrera sat in the back and downloaded the images from the camera on to her laptop. The men's faces meant nothing to her. When they came into the wi-fi area near the town-planning management offices she sent the shots and her mobile number to the email address that Falcon had phoned through some minutes ago. Ramirez pulled up outside the town planning office on Avenida Carlos III, just next to the heliport, picked up Falcon, who got into the passenger seat. Ferrera handed him the laptop with an image of the two men. He shook his head.
They looked out at the two Mercedes. Nobody moved until the double doors of the town planning office opened and Alejandro Spinola led three people out. The first was the mayor, who was followed by a man and a woman.
'She's the head of Agesa, the company responsible for the Isla de la Cartuja,' said Ferrera. 'He's the head of town planning.'
Everybody got out of their cars. There were warm, insincere greetings all round. The unknown American smiled with perfect teeth and treasured any hand offered to him in both of his. He didn't seem to have any trouble speaking Spanish. After a few minutes they dispersed to their cars and the mayor's Mercedes joined the convoy which headed down Calle Francisco de Montesinos.
The cars pulled up at the Spanish Discoveries Pavilion from the Expo '92 site. The group gathered in front of the building, walked around it, and then down to the river, going as far as the Puente de la Cartuja. The cars met them again outside the Monasterio de Santa Maria de las Cuevas, picked them all up and drove into the secure, fenced-off area of the business park. They arrived at a vacant lot in a prime location. Again the group gathered and walked around.
'What do you think they're doing?' asked Ferrera. 'There's nothing to see. It's like some Papal delegation come to bless the site.'
'More like corporate jackals come to spray their territory,' said Ramirez.
'I've read something about the pavilion, that they want to convert it into a museum and build apartments down by the river,' said Falcon. 'And my sister, who knows everything there is to know about property in Seville, told me that the site we're looking at now is the prime piece of real estate on the Isla de la Cartuja and is reserved for a bank to build a twenty-storey office building on it.'
The cars left the secure business park and crossed the Camino de los Descubrimientos and pulled up next to the Pavilion of the Future. The delegation got out and walked the full length of the pavilion, heading away from the Isla Magica amusement park towards the Auditorium. On the way back they cut through into some parkland on the other side. At this point there was much arm-spreading and genuine excitement at the prospect of superb views of the river.
'This is where they're going to make a lot of money,' said Ramirez.
'All this belongs to the Isla Magica amusement park, but they don't use it,' said Falcon. 'There's been talk for years of making this into an area for offices, shops and hotels.'
'Well, they've just given us a tour of the biggest building project to happen in Seville in the last fifteen years,' said Ramirez.
The sun had set by the time the delegation went back to their cars. Detective Serrano followed Spinola and the mayor. Ramirez stuck with the two Mercedes containing the members of the I4IT/Horizonte consortium. Within minutes the two Mercedes had crossed the flood plain heading out of Seville and were on the road towards Huelva. Ferrera took a call on her mobile.
'Serrano says the mayor's delegation has split up back at the town planning office.'
'He should stick with Spinola and he can tell Perez to go home.'
Twenty minutes later the two Mercedes pulled up at the gate to the Hotel La Berenjena, whose emerald, sprinkler-kissed lawns stuck out in the brown, sunburnt countryside. Ramirez glided past, turned round in a petrol station a hundred metres further on.
'Give them a quarter of an hour to settle and we'll go and introduce ourselves to the manager,' said Falcon.
Another call for Ferrera. She listened, jotted things down, hung up.
'That was the CNI. They've confirmed the ID of the helicopter occupants. The Spanish businessman in the grey suit is Alfredo Manzanares, the new Chief Executive Officer of the Banco Omni. The American is Cortland Fallenbach, one of the co-owners of I4IT in the USA. They also thought we'd like to know that it was announced just an hour ago that the Banco Omni have acquired a controlling stake in the Banco Mediterraneo, which has five million customers and will be transferring its headquarters to a site in Seville in 2009.'
'Fucking hell,' said Ramirez. 'This really is coming together. When Lucrecio Arenas and Cesar Benito were alive they must have promised the Russians a slice of this construction project in return for their dirty work on the Seville bombing.'
'That was probably just part of it,' said Falcon. 'Yuri Donstov was gearing up: Lukyanov was being brought in to run the girls, another guy to run casinos, while Donstov himself already controlled the drugs. And Sokolov would be running the protection rackets for the shops and restaurants. They were preparing to claim the Russians' reward for providing the violence in the Seville bombing which was a large slice of the income from tourists' 'recreational activity'. And if the right political party had taken power, it probably wouldn't just be Seville but the whole of Andalucia. Can you imagine how much money would be involved in running gambling, prostitution, drugs and protection throughout the whole of the Andalucian tourist industry?'
'So the Russians are very disappointed that their partners are not in control of the Andalucian state parliament,' said Ramirez. 'But what are they hoping to get out of this situation here? Lucrecio Arenas and Cesar Benito, the people they had agreements with, are dead, and we reckon the Russians themselves were their executioners. Now we've seen the projects that the Banco Omni and Horizonte have got on the Isla de la Cartuja, we know they're legitimate. They have to be. The press will be all over them. After the public relations disaster that Lucrecio Arenas dragged them through, Banco Omni are going to make sure everything is whiter than white. Horizonte might have had to pay some backhanders to get the work, but that's no different to anywhere in the world. How are these Russians hoping to fit themselves in?'
'Blackmail. I think that's a fairly standard mafia ploy,' said Falcon. 'Here we are, a few hours before the signing ceremony, and some big guys pay you a visit in your hotel room, show you a DVD of yourself having sex and taking drugs, and say: 'This is the subcontracting agreement you're going to sign or we'll spoil your show, maybe worse.''
