'I'm sure he would have done. When people leave church they go to the two cafes around the corner. They socialize.'
'Did you notice regular meetings?'
Father Roman shook his head.
Falcon sat back. He needed more ammunition for this conversation. He was tired, too. The flight to Casablanca and back seemed to have been from a month ago. The fullness of every minute, with not only his own findings but the ramifications of concurrent investigations under the colossal concentration of manpower rolling out all over Spain, Europe and the world, made hours feel like days.
'Were you aware that Informaticalidad not only used your church but two others inside the old city for the same purpose?' said Falcon.
'Look, Inspector Jefe, it's quite possible that this company has an unspoken employment policy of only taking on practising Catholics. I don't know. These days, I believe, you're not allowed to ask a recruitment agency to discriminate on your behalf. What would you do?'
'They do have an unspoken employment policy,' said Falcon. 'They don't take on any women. I suppose that's not dissimilar to the Catholic Church.' On the walk back to his car, Falcon called Ramirez, who was still searching Miguel Botin's apartment.
'We're not getting anywhere here,' said Ramirez. 'I don't know what it is about this place, but we're sure somebody's been around here before us. It's a bit tidy. We've turned the place upside down and we're going through his library now.'
'I have a witness who saw him give a card to the Imam.'
'Maybe they're still with him in his bag under the rubble.'
'What state was the bombsite in when you last saw it?'
'The heavy work is over. The crane has gone. They're working by hand now, with just a couple of tippers standing by. They've put scaffolding up and sheeted off the remaining rubble. About six teams of forensics are ready to go in. They reckon they'll get into the mosque itself by mid-morning tomorrow.'
'When you've finished at Botin's apartment, let everybody go home and get some sleep,' said Falcon. 'It's going to be another big day tomorrow. Have you seen Juez Calderon?'
'Only on television,' said Ramirez. 'He's been giving a press conference with Comisario Lobo and Comisario Elvira.'
'Anything we should know?'
'There's a job waiting for Juez Calderon as a chatshow host if he gets bored of being a judge.'
'So he's not telling them anything, but it looks as if he is.'
'Exactly,' said Ramirez. 'And given that we've come up with fuck-all today, he's making us sound like heroes.' The drive back home was eerily quiet. At nearly 10 p.m. the streets should have been alive and the bars full of people. A lot of places were closed. There was so little traffic Falcon went through the centre of town. Only a few young people had gathered in the Plaza del Museo under the trees. The mood was sombre and the narrow streets tense with anxiety.
An investigation of his fridge revealed some cooked prawns and a fresh swordfish steak. He ate the prawns with mayonnaise while drinking a beer direct from the bottle. He fried up the fish, squeezed some lemon over it, poured himself a glass of white rioja and ate, his mind picking over the detail of the day. He went over the dialogue with Father Roman. Had the priest been trying to avoid the sin of lying by omission, evasion and ducking the question? It felt like it. He poured himself another glass of white wine, pushed back his plate and folded his arms and had just started to contemplate the big event of the day-the suicide of Ricardo Gamero, when his first visitor arrived.
Pablo had come on business. He refused a beer and they went into the study.
'You mentioned Yacoub had some conditions before you fell asleep on the plane this morning,' said Pablo.
'The first condition is that he will only talk or deal with me,' said Falcon. 'He won't meet any other agents, or take phone calls from anyone but me.'
'That's quite normal except, of course, you'll be in different countries. I'll talk you through the communication procedure later, but it won't exactly be direct contact,' said Pablo. 'It puts you under a lot of pressure.'
'He also says he's not making a lifelong commitment,' said Falcon.
'That's understandable,' said Pablo. 'But you know, spying can have an addictive effect on certain personalities.'
'Like Juan,' said Falcon. 'He looks like a man with a few secrets. As if he's running two families that don't know about each other.'
'He does. He has his wife and two kids and the CNI, and they don't know anything about each other. Keep going with the conditions.'
'Yacoub will not give us any information that could jeopardize the life of any of his family members,' said Falcon.
'That was to be expected,' said Pablo. 'But does he suspect any of his family members?'
'He says not. But they're all devout Muslims and they lead very different lives to him,' said Falcon. 'It could be that he finds out that they are closely involved or at some remove, but he will not be an instrument in their downfall if they are. These people have totally accepted him as one of their own and he won't give them up.'
'Anything else?' asked Pablo.
'My problem: Yacoub doesn't have any training for this work.'
'Most spies don't. They just happen to be in a position where information comes their way.'
'You make it sound easy.'
'It's only dangerous if you're careless.'
Falcon had to raise his concentration levels to take in Pablo's briefing about the method of communication with Yacoub. He got him to boil it down to the basics, which were: they would communicate via email, using a secure website run by the CNI. Both Falcon and Diouri would have to load their computers with different encryption software. The emails would go to the CNI website to be decrypted and passed on. The CNI would obviously see all emails and make their recommendations for action. All Falcon had to do this evening was to call Yacoub and tell him to go to the shop in Rabat and pick up a couple of books. These books would give Yacoub all the information he needed. Falcon made the call and kept it short, saying he was tired.
'We've got to get him working as soon as possible,' said Pablo. 'This whole thing is moving fast.'
'What whole thing?'
'The game, the plan, the operation,' said Pablo.
'We're not sure which. All we know is that, since the bomb went off yesterday, the level of encrypted emails on the web has gone up fivefold.'
'And how many of those encrypted emails can you read?'
'Not many.'
'So you haven't cracked the code from the Koran found in the Peugeot Partner?'
'Not yet. We've got the world's best mathematicians working on it, though.'
'What do the CNI make of Ricardo Gamero's suicide?' asked Falcon.
'Inevitably we're thinking that he was the mole,' said Pablo. 'But that's just a theory. We're trying to work up the logic around it.'
'If he was the mole, from what I know about him, I'd find it hard to believe he was passing information to an Islamic terrorist movement.'
'Right, but what about Miguel Botin? What do you know about him?'
'That his brother was maimed in the Madrid train bombings, giving him good reason to be operating against Islamic terrorism,' said Falcon. 'That his girlfriend was a school friend of Gamero who remains a devout Catholic, having so far been reluctant to convert to Islam. And it was Botin who followed the Imam and took shots of Hammad and Saoudi and these other two mystery men, which he handed over to the CGI. He was also prompting Gamero to get the Imam's office bugged. That's about it.'
'He doesn't sound like a promising candidate as a terrorist, does he?'
'Have you searched Botin's apartment?' asked Falcon.
Pablo cradled his knee, nodded.
'What did you find there?'