was no mistaking his need to know why she hated him.
'I'm listening,' said Zarrias.
'She could not forgive the way you talked to her that morning, when you'd already planned for that bomb to explode and she hadn't sold her properties.'
39
Rabat-Friday, 9th June 2006, 08.45 hrs
Yacoub was in the library in the group's house in the medina when they came for him. With no warning there were suddenly four men around him. They put a black hood over his head and tied his hands behind him with plastic cuffs. Nobody said a word. They took him through the house and out into the street, where he was thrust into the footwell in the back of a car. Three men came in after him and rested their feet on his supine body. The car took off.
They drove for hours. It was uncomfortable in the footwell, but at least they were driving on tarmac. Yacoub controlled his fear by telling himself that this was part of the initiation rite. After several hours they came off the good road and began labouring up some rough track. It was hot. The car had no air conditioning. The windows were open. It must have been dusty, because he could smell it even inside his hood. They spent an hour dipping and diving on the rough track until the car came to a halt. There was the sound of a rifle mechanism, followed by an intense silence as if each face in the car were being searched. They were told to carry on.
The car continued for another fifteen minutes until it again came to a halt. Doors opened and Yacoub was dragged out, losing his barbouches. They ran him across some rocky ground so fast that he stumbled. They paid no attention to his lost footing and hauled him on. A door opened. He was taken across a beaten earth floor and down some steps. Another door. He was hurled against a wall. He dropped to the floor. The door shut. Footsteps retreated. No light came through the dense material of the hood. He listened hard and became aware of a sound, which did not seem to be in the same room. It was a human sound. It was coming from a man's throat, a gasping and groaning, as if he was in great pain. He called out to the man, but all that happened was that the voice fell silent, apart from a faint sobbing.
The sound of approaching feet kick-started Yacoub's heart. His mouth dried as the door opened. The room seemed to be full of people, all shouting and pushing him around. There was the sound of screaming from the next room and a man's voice, pleading. They picked Yacoub up bodily, held him face down, and took him back up the stairs, outside, across rough ground. They dropped him and stood back. Whoever had been downstairs in the cells was now out in the open with him, crying out in pain. A rifle mechanism clattered close to his ear. Yacoub's head was pulled up and the hood removed. He saw a man's feet, bloody and pulpy. His hair was grabbed from behind and his vision directed towards the man lying in front of him. A gunshot, loud and close. The man's head jolted and matter spurted from the other side. His bloody feet twitched. The hood was pulled back over Yacoub's head. The barrel of a gun was put to the back of his neck. His heart was thundering in his ears, eyes tight shut. The trigger clicked behind his head.
They picked him up again. They seemed gentler. They walked him away. There was no rush now. He was taken into a house and given a chair to sit on. They removed his plastic cuffs and black hood. Sweat cascaded down his neck and into the collar of his jellabah. A boy put his barbouches down by his feet. A glass of mint tea was poured for him. He was so disorientated that he could not even take in the faces of those around him before they left the room. He put his head down on the table top and gasped and wept.
After being inside the hood, his eyes were already accustomed to the darkness of the room. There was a single bed in the corner. One wall was covered with books. The windows were all shuttered. He sipped the tea. His heart rate eased back down to below the one hundred mark. His throat, which had been tight with hysteria, slackened. He went over to the books and studied the titles of each one. Most of them were about architecture or engineering: detailed tomes on buildings and machines. There were even some car manuals, thick manufacturer's plans for some four-wheel-drive vehicles. They were all in French, English or German. The only Arabic texts were eight volumes of poetry. He sat back down.
Two men came in and gave him a formal, but warm, welcome. One called himself Mohamed, the other Abu. A boy followed them, carrying a tray of tea, glasses and a plate of flat bread. The two men were both heavily bearded and each wore a dark brown burnous and army boots. They sat at the table. The boy poured the tea and left. Abu and Mohamed studied Yacoub very carefully.
'That is not normally part of our initiation procedure,' said Mohamed.
'A member of our council thought that you were a special case,' said Abu, 'because you have so many outside contacts.'
'He felt that you needed to be left in no doubt as to the punishment for treachery.'
'We did not agree with him,' said Abu. 'We did not think that anyone bearing the name of Abdullah Diouri would need such a demonstration.'
Yacoub acknowledged the honour accorded to his father. More tea was poured and sipped. The bread was broken and distributed.
'You had a visit from a friend of yours on Wednesday,' said Mohamed.
'Javier Falcon,' said Yacoub.
'What did he want to discuss with you?'
'He is the investigator of the Seville bombing,' said Yacoub.
'We know everything about him,' said Abu. 'We just want to know what you discussed.'
'The Spanish intelligence agency had asked him to approach me on their behalf,' said Yacoub. 'He wanted to know if I would be willing to be a source for them.'
'And what did you tell him?'
'I gave him the same answer that I'd given the Americans and the British when they'd made the same approaches,' said Yacoub, 'which is why I am here today.'
'Why is that?'
'In refusing all these people, who dishonoured me by offering money for my services, I realized that it was time for me to take a stand. If I was certain that I did not want to be with them, then it should follow that my loyalties lay elsewhere. I had refused them because it would be the ultimate betrayal of everything my father stood for. And, if that was the case, then I should take a stand for what he believed in, against the decadence that he so despised. So when my friend left I went straight to the mosque in Sale and let it be known that I wanted to help in any way that I could.'
'Do you still consider Javier Falcon to be a friend?'
'Yes, I do. He was not acting for himself. I still consider him to be an honourable man.'
'We have been following the Seville bombing with interest,' said Mohamed. 'As you've probably realized, it has caused great disruption to one of our plans, which has demanded a lot of reorganization. We understand that some arrests were made last night. Three men are being held. They are all members of the political party Fuerza Andalucia, a party holding anti-Islamic views, which it wants to translate into regional policy. We have been watching them closely. They have recently elected a new leader, who we know little about. What we do know is that the three men they have arrested are being held on a charge of suspected murder. It is believed that they killed an apostate and traitor called Tateb Hassani. That is of no interest to us, nor are these three men, who we believe to be unimportant. We would like to know-and we think that your friend, Javier Falcon, will be able to help- who gave the orders for the mosque to be bombed?'
'If he knew that, then I am sure they would have been arrested.'
'We don't think so,' said Abu. 'We think that they are too powerful for your friend to be able to touch them.' Seville-Friday, 9th June 2006, 10.00 hrs Falcon knew that his goading of Angel Zarrias would not help in any material way, but he hoped that it would cause some unseen structural damage, which might lead to a breakdown later on. Angel Zarrias had revealed himself, of course-how could he not? While he'd been squaring up to do battle with the corruptive powers of materialism and the ruthless energy of radical Islam, his partner, the woman he loved, was having a tantrum like some spoilt two-year-old, consumed by her pathetic needs and concerns. It represented to him all that was wrong with this modern existence that he'd grown to despise, which was how he
