which requires asking someone to lie and deceive on your behalf. It's an odd relationship.'
'Got any advice?'
'It's like going out on a date. It's all in the timing. You move in too early and the girl will accuse you of being too fresh. You come on too late and you might have bored her, shown her your uncertainty. It's a delicate process and, like dating, you only get better at it by doing it…a lot.'
'You've just filled me with confidence, Mark. I haven't been out on a date for more than a year.'
'Some people say it's like riding a bicycle,' said Flowers. 'But there's a big difference between an eighteen- year-old taking up cycling and a middle-aged man going back to it. I wish you'd change your whisky, Javier. This stuff is like drinking peat bog.'
'Maybe you'd like some Coca Cola to go with it?' said Falcon.
Flowers chuckled.
'Do your people know whether your Moroccan friend is 'safe'?' he asked.
'Did I say that I was recruiting a friend, and that he was Moroccan?' asked Falcon.
Another chuckle from Flowers, followed by a big snort of whisky.
'You didn't say, but given our present circumstances it was a safe bet.'
'They seem to have researched him pretty well,' said Falcon, giving up quickly on the game.
'That's not how you find out if someone is 'safe',' said Flowers. 'Research is like trying to learn how to succeed in business by reading a self-help book.'
'I know he's safe.'
'Well, you're a homicide cop, so you should know when someone is lying to you,' said Flowers. 'What sort of conversations have you had about terrorism, Iraq, the Palestinian question, that have led you to believe that your friend is 'safe'?'
'None in which the outcome of the conversation has been crucial, if that's what you mean.'
'I can find thousands of Muslims in the tea houses of North Africa who would condemn the actions of these extremist groups and their indiscriminate violence, but I would struggle to find one who would give me information that might lead to the capture and possible death of a jihadi,' said Flowers. 'It's one of the strange contradictions of this kind of spying: it takes a profound moral certitude to behave immorally. So, how do you know he's 'safe'?'
'I'm not sure what I can tell you that would help you believe, without sounding foolish,' said Falcon.
'Try me.'
'We recognized something in each other from the first moment we met.'
'What does that mean?'
'We've had comparable experiences, which have given us a level of automatic understanding.'
'Still not sure,' said Flowers, closing an eye over his raised glass.
'What happens when two people fall in love?'
'Take it easy, Javier.'
'How do two people sort out all that necessarily complicated communication that lets them know that they will be going to bed together that night?'
'You know the problem with that? Lovers cheat on each other all the time.'
'What you're saying, Mark, is that we can never know, we can only be as certain as possible.'
'The love analogy is right,' said Flowers. 'You've just got to be sure that he doesn't love someone more than you.'
'Thanks.'
'Who are we talking about, by the way?'
'You took your time.'
'Had I known you were going to be so coy, I'd have taken you out to dinner.'
'This isn't my business, it's CNI business.'
'Do you think you'll be able to get out of Casablanca airport without my guys spotting you?' asked Flowers.
'I'm surprised you haven't had me followed before.'
Silence. Flowers smiled.
'You knew all along,' said Falcon, throwing up his hands. 'Why do you play these games with me?'
'To remind you that, in my world, you're an amateur,' said Flowers. 'What are you hoping to get out of Yacoub Diouri?'
'I don't know. I'm not even sure whether I'm going to accept the task and, if I do, whether my superiors will allow me to do it.'
'What about the investigation here?'
'There's a lot still to be done, but at least we know what went on inside and outside the mosque in the days leading up to the explosion.'
'Was that why you wanted me to research I4IT?'
'They're in the background…quite a long way in the background,' said Falcon, who filled him in on Horizonte and Informaticalidad.
'I4IT are not, in fact, based in Indianapolis,' said Flowers. 'The company headquarters is in Columbus, Ohio, due to its proximity to Westerville, Ohio, which was where the US temperance movement started, and from where National Prohibition took off back in the 1920s.'
'You're making this sound significant.'
'The corporation is owned and actively run by two born-again Christians, who discovered their faith through the excesses of their youth,' said Flowers. 'Cortland Fallenbach was a computer programmer who used to work for Microsoft until they 'let him go' due to problems with alcohol and other substances. Morgan Havilland was a salesman for IBM, until his sex addiction got out of control and he had to be removed before the company ended up in court on the end of a sexual harassment suit.'
'Did these guys meet in therapy?'
'In Indianapolis,' said Flowers. 'And having both worked for the most powerful IT corporations in the world, they decided to set up a group to invest in hitech companies. Fallenbach was a software king and Havilland understood hardware. At first they just invested and took profit from their inside knowledge of the industry. Later they started buying companies outright, merging their strengths, and either selling them or setting them up in groups of their own. But there was, and is, one important stipulation if you want to be a part of I4IT…'
'You have to believe in God?' asked Falcon.
'You have to believe in the right god,' said Flowers. 'You have to be a Christian. That doesn't mean they don't buy companies owned by Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists or Shintoists-if that's what they're called-it just means that they don't become a part of I4IT. They either strip out what they want and, if they're still valuable, they sell them on; if they're not, they let them rot into the ground.'
'Ruthless Christians,' said Falcon.
'Crusaders might be a good word,' said Flowers. 'Very successful crusaders. I4IT has world-wide assets in excess of $12 billion. They showed a profit in the first quarter of this year of $375 million.'
'What about politics?'
'Fallenbach and Havilland are members of the Christian Right and therefore deeply Republican. Their ethos, though, is based on religion. As long as you practise the same religion they believe you can understand each other. If one is a Muslim and the other a Christian there will always be fundamental differences which will prevent perfect communication. Atheists are off the page, which means communists are unacceptable. Agnostics can still be 'saved'…'
'Is this the level of discussion in board meetings before a take-over?'
'Sure. They take company culture very seriously and religion is the foundation of that culture,' said Flowers. 'Where they can get away with it, they don't employ women in the workplace, otherwise they keep to the bare legal minimum. They don't employ homosexuals. God hates fags…remember, Javier?'
'I don't remember that line from the Bible.'
'Their success and profitability is a manifestation of their righteousness.'
'How active are they outside their own corporation?'
'As far as we know, it's limited to not doing business with people whose principles they don't agree with. So they produce a lot of ultrasound equipment, for instance, and they won't sell to clinics known to perform abortions,'
