The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

'He was the right age, physically similar and he had no family. The original Rafael Vega was an orphan who became a merchant seaman. He never married.'

'So, not only was our Rafael Vega trained, but he was well connected in the clandestine world as well,' said Falcon. 'Finally we get the break, Jose Luis, but…'

'Yes, I know,' said Ramirez. 'He isn't who he says he is… but who the fuck is he?'

'There's an American connection. Krugman was sure he'd lived there and now we know he was getting mail sent to him from there,' said Falcon. 'And there's possibly a Mexican one.'

'The Mexican wife might just be another fake,' said Ramirez. 'It would be more plausible for a man of that age to have been married before.'

'He's looking to me as if he's Central or South American origin now.'

'If you were originally Argentinian, would you use a fake passport from your country of origin?'

'Maybe not, but that still leaves the rest of the subcontinent,' said Falcon. 'Perhaps we need to have a meeting with Juez Calderon. We're due one early this week. I think this classifies as a development.'

He put a call through to Calderon's secretary. The judge was just finishing a meeting. She would talk to him and see if there was a chance before lunch. After lunch was out of the question. Falcon hung up and sat back in his chair.

'What sort of people need the level of secrecy at which Rafael Vega was operating?' he asked.

'Someone who was a covert intelligence operative for a government or a terrorist organization,' said Ramirez. 'Someone involved in the drugs trade.'

'What about an arms dealer?' said Falcon. 'The Russian connection. Where's the easiest place to get military hardware?'

'Russia, via the mafia,' said Ramirez. 'And the money is coming from the building projects. Those land deals were done directly between the original owners and the Russians. No money trail to Vega.'

'Plausible, but that just gives us more questions. Who is he supplying and, before we let our imagination run completely wild,' said Falcon, 'why kill him?'

'A terrorist organization that doesn't want a lead to their door,' said Ramirez.

Calderon's secretary called back and said that he could see them in half an hour. They drove to the Edificio de los Juzgados and went straight up to Calderon's office. He was facing away from his desk, looking through the slats of the blinds, smoking. He heard them come in. He told them to sit.

'Case or no case?' he asked, without turning around.

'Complications,' said Falcon, and talked him through the secret life of Rafael Vega.

As Falcon spoke, Calderon turned in his chair. If the last time Falcon had seen him he'd looked as though he'd come back to the city after being lost in the mountains, now he looked as stricken as a man who'd had to eat his comrades in order to survive. He was haggard, the smudges beneath his eyes were now grape-dark and his forehead was stepped with furrows. He seemed to have lost weight. His neck did not fill his collar. Falcon finished. Calderon nodded, he seemed pensive but distracted. The new information did not galvanize his ambition.

'Well, you've got a bit more background information on Vega now,' he said, 'but you still haven't given me any real development in the case – no witness, no motive. What exactly do you want?'

'We could start with a search warrant for the safe- deposit box in the Banco Banesto,' said Ramirez, cutting in, exchanging a look with Falcon.

'Whose box is it?' asked Calderon.

'It's Vega's, of course,' said Ramirez, puzzled by the judge's lack of comprehension, 'but in the name of Emilio Cruz.'

'I'll work on it,' said Calderon. 'What else?'

'We have theories. We want more time,' said Falcon, and gave him the examples of the Russian mafia connection to military hardware, and the names of the men who all appeared to know each other from Vega's address book and Raul Jimenez's photographs.

'That's all conjecture,' said Calderon. 'Where's the evidence? Vega has been running a successful construction business in Seville for nearly twenty years. He's built it more or less from scratch. So, he happens to run his business in a certain way and…'

'You seem to be forgetting that he's a man with perfect fake Spanish documents and an Argentinian alias with Moroccan visas for a quick getaway,' said Ramirez. 'I hardly think that level of secrecy would classify him as, say, a married man embarking on illicit affairs.'

Calderon shot him a look that whistled past his ear.

'I can see that,' said the judge. 'Obviously the man had a past. He's escaped from something and rebuilt his life. Maybe his past has caught up with him in some way, but that doesn't help you determine which direction you're going to take. You're talking about arms dealing, drug running, people-trafficking and terrorism, but you haven't shown me a lead that would indicate a direction. You've just got theories. The Russian land deals look odd, agreed. Their connection to Vega is unhealthy, to say the least. But we have no access to the original owner of the plots. You can look up the sale price on the deed, but that won't tell you much because everybody puts a low value on land sales for tax purposes. There has to be a chain of logic that the Juez Decano can see if public money is to be spent chasing these… notions.'

'You don't see any connection between Sr Vega's death and the suicide of his neighbour?' said Ramirez.

'You haven't told me of one, apart from names in an address book and people appearing together in photographs,' said Calderon, stifling a yawn. 'Juez Romero said he couldn't see any either. The two deaths seem to be a coincidence, with the difference that there's no doubt in one case and some uncertainty in the other. An uncertainty which is in our minds and not in any evidence you've brought before me.'

'What about the note referring to a famous terrorist act?' said Ramirez.

'That is a slice of information as relevant to the court as his files on war crimes tribunals, or the fact that he kept a battered old car in a garage, or that he wasn't who he says he was. It's all information, but like the anonymous threats it's not connected to anything,' said Calderon. He turned to Falcon. 'You're not saying anything, Inspector Jefe.'

'Are we wasting our time with this?' said Falcon, weary of it all now that Calderon's listlessness had seeped into his own bloodstream. 'We might find more bits of fascinating information which supply neither witness nor motive. We're down to three people because of the holidays. We have a serious situation in the Jefatura…'

'I heard about that,' said Calderon, staring into his desk, hands clasped between his knees.

'Our chances of finding the only witness, Sergei, grow slimmer by the day. Do we finish with it or carry on? If we carry on, which direction should we take?'

'OK, you're annoyed. I can see you've done good work and found interesting information,' said Calderon, catching Falcon's tone and trying to get some enthusiasm into his voice. 'At the moment, in my mind, given the psychological profile of the victim – of which we have clear evidence from a doctor and Maddy Krugman's photographs – and even taking your new findings into consideration, I am still more inclined to believe that Vega killed his wife and then himself. If you can accept that, I will return a verdict of suicide. If you're still curious enough to carry on, I'll give you forty-eight hours.'

'To go in which direction?' asked Ramirez.

'Whichever you like,' said Calderon. 'Do you have any chance of talking to the Russians face to face?'

'They're in Portugal,' said Falcon. 'It's possible they'll come over to look at their investments.'

'Who would they contact?'

'Probably Carlos Vazquez.'

'There's a man with something to hide,' said Ramirez.

'What about finding out who Vega really is?' said Falcon.

'How?' asked Calderon, half turning back to the window.

The American connection,' said Falcon. 'Let's say he was living there twenty years ago, and that he had escaped from something and rebuilt his life. I've just remembered that detail in the autopsy report about the old plastic surgery. It seems a likely scenario. Maybe he had a criminal record or was known in some way to the FBI.'

'Do you have contact with the FBI?' asked Calderon.

'Of course.'

'So you're going to take my offer of forty-eight hours?'