antiterrorist squad of the CGI, and Falcon and Ramirez from the homicide squad. Elvira turned. His face was grim.
'There's no easy way to put this,' he said, 'so I'm just going to give you the facts. At around six o'clock this morning Juez Esteban Calderon was placed under arrest on suspicion of murdering his wife. Two patrolmen found him earlier this morning, attempting to dispose of his wife's body in the Guadalquivir. Given these circumstances, he will no longer be acting as the Juez de Instruccion in our investigation. It will also be impossible for our own homicide squad to conduct the murder enquiry, which will be carried out by these three officers from Madrid, led by Inspector Jefe Luis Zorrita. Thank you.'
The three homicide officers from Madrid nodded and filed out of the room, stopping briefly to introduce themselves and shake hands with Falcon and Ramirez. The door closed. Elvira resumed the meeting. Ramirez stared at Falcon in a state of shock.
'We have decided to appoint a Juez de Instruccion from outside Seville,' said Elvira, 'and Juez Sergio del Rey is on his way down from Madrid now. On his arrival an announcement will be made to the press at a conference to be held in the Andalucian Parliament building and until that time I would ask you to keep this information to yourselves.
'Following the suicide yesterday of Ricardo Gamero of the CGI, there have been some major developments and the CNI will now explain these to us.'
Something had been sucked out of Elvira's face overnight. The staggering import of his announcements had left him haggard. He sat back in the teacher's chair, inanimate, with his chin resting on his fist, as if his head needed that sort of support to keep it in place. Pablo made his way to the front.
'Just prior to the suicide of the CGI agent, Ricardo Gamero, we had received information from British intelligence that they had successfully identified the other two men photographed by Gamero's source, Miguel Botin. These two men are of Afghan nationality, living in Rome. They were known to MI5 because they were arrested in London two weeks after the failed 21st July bombings and held for questioning under the Terrorism Act. They were released without being charged. The British were not able to establish what these men were doing in London at the time, other than that they were visiting family. The known addresses of these two men in Rome were raided by the Italian police last night and found to be empty. Their current whereabouts is unknown. What concerns us about these suspects is that they are believed to have connections to the high command of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and are believed by the British to have forged links with the GICM in Morocco. In the last year they are known to have visited the UK, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain and Morocco. All these countries are believed to have GICM sleeper cells. There is considerable intelligence work still to be done to ascertain Miguel Botin's role, Imam Abdelkrim Benaboura's relationship to these two men, and their involvement with what has happened here in Seville.
'After Ricardo Gamero's suicide we conducted a search of Miguel Botin's apartment and discovered a heavily annotated copy of the Koran which matches the edition found in the Peugeot Partner driven by Hammad and Saoudi. Large chunks of the notes are exact transcripts and we believe that this is a codebook. It is now thought that as each sleeper cell is activated they are issued with a new codebook, which they use until their mission is complete.
'The significance of finding this copy of the Koran in Miguel Botin's apartment is that it could mean that Ricardo Gamero's source was a double: working with the CGI and operating for a terrorist cell. This throws considerable confusion into the current investigation, because it would mean that the only intelligence Botin was communicating to Gamero was what his commanders wanted us to know. This would mean that Hammad and Saoudi, the two Afghans, and the Imam were all expendable.
'There is one final confusing detail about Botin's actions in this scenario. As you know, a great deal of manpower has been spent trying to find the fake council inspectors and the electricians. Inspector Jefe Falcon has found a witness who was in the mosque on the Sunday morning, after the fuse box blew on the Saturday night. This witness saw Botin give the electrician's card to the Imam, and he watched as the Imam called the number and made the appointment. Inspector Jefe Barros has informed us that this was not something sanctioned by him or anyone in his department. The CGI was still waiting for authorization to bug the mosque.
'We now have to examine the possibility that the council inspectors and the electricians were members of, or in the pay of, a terrorist cell. It could be-and we might only have a chance of verifying this when the forensics have reached the mosque-that the council inspectors laid a device to blow the fuse box and that the electricians were brought in to set a bomb that would wipe out the Imam, Hammad and Saoudi, and Botin himself.'
'There seems to be a break in the logic chain of that scenario,' said Barros. 'It might just be believable that Botin was the unwitting agent of their destruction, but I don't see any terrorist commander allowing that quantity of hexogen, brought into this country at what one imagines was considerable risk and expense, to be destroyed.'
'The electricians and council inspectors would constitute a type of terrorist cell we've never come across before, too,' said Falcon. 'The witness said they were a Spaniard and two Eastern Europeans.'
'And how does Ricardo Gamero's suicide fit into this scenario?' asked Barros.
'A profound sense of failure at his inability to prevent this atrocity,' said Pablo. 'We understand that he took his work very seriously.'
Silence, while everybody wrestled with the CNI's possible scenario. Falcon snapped out of his shocked state and burned with his theory that too much weight was being attached to the copy of the Koran as a codebook. But it was impossible to understand how two identical copies could have ended up in the Peugeot Partner and Botin's apartment.
'Why do you think this cell self-destructed?' asked Barros.
'We can only think that it was a spectacular diversionary tactic, to occupy our domestic investigating teams and all European intelligence services while they plan and carry out an attack elsewhere,' said Pablo. 'If Botin was a double agent, his terrorist masters would have known that the mosque was under suspicion. They fed that suspicion further by bringing in the hexogen and Hammad and Saoudi, two known logistics men. They then blew it up. They don't mind. They're all going to paradise, whether as successful bombers or magnificent decoys.'
'What about the Afghans?' asked Barros. 'They've been identified, but not exactly sacrificed.'
'Perhaps Botin intended the shot of the two Afghans to be interpreted by us as an indication of an attack planned for Italy. Botin supplied those photographs when he was a trusted CGI source.'
'So, another diversionary tactic?'
'The Italians, Danish and Belgians are all on red alert, as they were after the London bombings.'
'So this letter sent to the ABC with the Abdullah Azzam text and all the media references to MILA-was that all part of this grand diversion?' asked Barros, nearly enjoying himself at being able to finally needle the CNI, who had so humiliated him and his department.
'What we're working on now is the real target,' said Pablo. 'The Abdullah Azzam text and the idea of MILA are powerful tools of terror. They inspire fear in a population. We see this as part of the escalation of this particular brand of terrorism. We are fighting the equivalent of a mutating virus. No sooner do we find one cure than it adapts to it with renewed lethal strength. There is no model. Only after we have sustained attacks do we become aware of a modus operandi. The intelligence gathered from the hundreds of people interviewed after the Madrid and London bombings is no help to us now. We are not talking about an integrated organization with a defined structure, but more of a satellite organization with a fluid structure and total flexibility.'
'Are you sure you're not reading too much into the diversionary tactic?' said Elvira. 'After the Madrid bombings-'
'We're pretty sure that ETA provided the diversion which led to the devastating success of the Madrid bombings. We don't think it was a coincidence that, 120 kilometres southeast of Madrid, the Guardia Civil stopped a van driven by two ETA incompetents, and loaded with 536 kilos of titadine for delivery to Madrid; and on the same day, 500 kilometres away in Aviles, three Moroccan terrorists were taking delivery of the 100 kilos of Goma 2 Eco used on the Madrid trains,' said Pablo. 'British security forces and intelligence were focused on an attack on the G8 Summit in Edinburgh when suicide bombers blew themselves up on the London Underground.'
'All right, so there is a history of diversion,' said Elvira.
'And a diversion that is prepared to sacrifice 536 kilos of titadine,' said Pablo, looking pointedly at Barros.
'The reality,' said Elvira, 'is that we have no idea who we are dealing with most of the time. We call them al- Qaeda because it helps us to sleep at night, but we seem to have come up against a very pure form of terrorism whose 'goal' is to attack our way of life and 'decadent values' at whatever cost. There even seems to be competition between these disparate groups to think up and carry out the most devastating attack possible.'
