said Flowers. 'As far as any active anti-religious movement goes, we haven't heard of anything.'
'Do you think Informaticalidad using this apartment for brainstorming sessions is weird?'
'If you ask me what's weird, it's companies and governments spending billions of dollars and euros a year on management consultancies, who come in and give them the kind of common sense that my grandmother could have told them for free,' said Flowers. 'Informaticalidad sound like a company who haven't bought into the bullshit industry and have come up with a cheaper, and probably more productive, solution which leaves them with an asset at the end of it all. If you can place any of those Informaticalidad brainstormers in the mosque, now that's a different story…'
'Not so far,' said Falcon. 'Another thing: have you got any information on an organization called VOMIT?'
'VOMIT…yes, I've seen their website. We thought it stood for Victims of Muslim and Islamic Terror until one of our operators saw the Spanish. They can only be accused of not presenting the full picture, but that's just a matter of imbalance. It's not criminal. There's no incitement to take revenge, no bomb-making advice, weapons training or active recruitment to 'a cause'.'
'If it's just a few geeks with some phones and a computer, that's one thing,' said Falcon. 'If it's a multi-billion- dollar corporation with world-wide resources, wouldn't that be different?'
'First of all, I don't see that connection. Second, there'd have to be more of a perceived threat to get us to do any digging on VOMIT,' said Flowers. 'And anyway, Javier, why are you sniffing around the wacky fringes of this attack instead of getting stuck into the guts of it? I mean, VOMIT, I4IT…'
'The guts of the problem are under a few thousand tons of rubble at the moment,' said Falcon. 'Informaticalidad was an unignorable part of the scenario outside the mosque. VOMIT were introduced into the frame by the CNI. We have some suspicious occurrences in the mosque, which have not been adequately explained.'
'Like what?'
Falcon told him about the council inspectors, the blown fuse box and the electricians.
'I know what you're thinking,' said Flowers.
'No, you don't, because I haven't decided on a scenario yet myself. I'm keeping an open mind,' said Falcon. 'We know that two terror suspects-Djamel Hammad and Smail Saoudi-made deliveries to the mosque, which could be innocent or could have been bomb-making material. A deposit of hexogen-or cyclonite, as you call it-was found in the back of their van…'
'Fucking hell, Javier,' said Flowers, sitting up. 'And you don't call that damning evidence?'
'It looks bad,' said Falcon, 'but we're not talking about looks here. We've got to get beyond appearances.'
'Is there any more of this whisky? I'm getting the taste for this liquid-charcoal stuff.'
'Falcon topped him up and gave himself another jolt of manzanilla. He sat back, feeling as he always did in his conversations with Flowers-stupid and flayed.
'You know, Mark, you still haven't told me anything I couldn't have found out for myself inside half an hour on the internet, whereas I've told you…everything. I know you like to keep your account with me in the black, but I'd appreciate some real help,' said Falcon. 'Why don't you tell me something about the MILA, or Imam Abdelkrim Benaboura?'
'There's a good reason why you don't get as much information from me as I do from you,' said Flowers, who let those names flash past him without a flicker. 'I'm running a station that covers southern Spain and its relations with Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. I have no idea what is going on in Madrid, northern Spain or southern France. I only see a small corner of the whole picture. London, Paris, Rome and Berlin make their contributions, but I don't see any of it. Like you, I'm just a contributor.'
'You're making yourself sound very passive.'
'I'm getting information from all sorts of different sources, but I have to be very careful how I use it,' said Flowers. 'Spying is a game, but I never forget that it's being played with real people, who can get killed. So you only get information that doesn't endanger you or any of my other sources. If I'm in any doubt, you won't be given it. Be glad that I'm not a risk-taking station head.'
'Thanks for that, Mark. Now why don't you tell me about Los Martires Islamicos para la Liberacion de Andalucia?'
'I first heard about them at the end of last year as El Movimiento rather than Los Martires. My source in Algiers told me that they were a disaffected faction of the Algerian GIA, the Armed Islamic Group, who had crossed the border into Morocco and teamed up with a local group, whose goal at the time was the liberation of the Spanish enclaves in Morocco: Ceuta and Melilla. The Algerians brought with them a network, with operatives already installed in Madrid, Granada, Malaga and Valencia.'
'But not Seville?'
'I'm coming to that,' said Flowers. 'My source told me that what the Moroccans could supply was finance. They were cash rich from their connections in the hashish trade in the Rif mountains. What they didn't have was a network and a strategy. Both Ceuta and Melilla are small enclaves, well protected and well supplied by the Spanish mainland. The Algerians saw the money and told them to think big. Liberate Andalucia, cut off the Spanish supply line to Ceuta and Melilla, and this Western corner of the Islamic kingdom is whole once again.'
'You'd need an army and a navy to take Andalucia.'
'And there's the British in Gibraltar, who might have an opinion on the matter, too,' said Flowers. 'But that is not the point. The liberation of Andalucia is an inspiring ideal that fills the hearts of Islamic fanatics with a warm Allah-infused glow. It is the dream that will draw followers to the cause. My source also read the Algerians' intentions wrong. They didn't want access to the hashish trade because of finance, they wanted to tap into their smuggling routes to get people and material across to Spain.'
'Has that been happening?'
'Nobody's been caught,' said Flowers. 'Smuggling routes generally exist because they're allowed to. There's a constant stream of hashish from Morocco and cocaine from South America coming into the long, unpatrollable Iberian coastline, and there's plenty of money to keep the authorities happy and quiet.'
This talk made Falcon's sweat run cold. The money, organization and corruption were all in place to make a devastating campaign on Andalucia seem likely rather than crazy.
'What about Seville and the MILA?' asked Falcon.
'Some Afghans arrived in Morocco in January.'
'Where in Morocco? How do your sources get such information? Why aren't we getting it?'
'There's no base. There's no town hall with posters outside advertising 'MILA Meeting Tonight'. I have one source, at the wrong level, who is able to give me bits and pieces. You don't just walk into these groups off the street. You have to be vouched for. It's all to do with family and tribal ties. I believe my source's information, but I'm wary of sharing it because he's peripheral to the group's leading council.'
'Which means it could be invention?'
'You see, Javier, being given information doesn't necessarily make the picture any clearer.'
'Tell me about the Afghan connection.'
'Some Afghans arrived, offering the group a Seville connection. They said he was capable of giving recce and logistical support, but did not have the capacity to carry out an attack.'
'Name?'
'He couldn't give me one.'
'One of the worshippers in the mosque here told me that there had been a visit from a group of Afghans and that the Imam had spoken to them in Pashto.'
'I'd be careful about putting those two pieces of information together without more corroboration,' said Flowers.
'What's the news on Abdelkrim Benaboura?' asked Falcon. 'He doesn't seem to be high risk and yet there's a clearance problem with his history. What does that mean?'
'That they don't know who he is from a certain date, which is normally around the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002 when the US went into Afghanistan and the Taliban regime broke up and dispersed. You have to remember, until 9/11 the US and European intelligence network in the Islamic world was negligible. We sorted out who was who on our own turf in the years that followed, but there were, and still are, very large gaps-as you'd expect from an introverted religion that stretches from Indonesia to Morocco and Northern Europe to South Africa. Factor in the difficulties of identification, given the clothes these people wear, the headgear and facial hair, and
