his way across. He studied them carefully. Falcon couldn't bear the tension and looked out of the window. It took the guard some time. He knew it must be important for an Inspector Jefe to come all the way out to his apartment to show him this shot.
'That's him,' said the guard. 'I'm absolutely sure of it.'
Falcon's heart was thundering as he looked down. But the guard wasn't pointing at Lucrecio Arenas in the centre of the shot. He was tapping the face at the extreme right of the second row-and that face belonged to Angel Zarrias.
33
Seville-Thursday, 8th June 2006, 20.15 hrs
The sun was setting on the third day since the explosion. As Falcon drove back into the city his mind reached a static but profound level of concentration focused entirely on Angel Zarrias.
Back in the security guard's apartment he'd become quite angry. He'd torn the police sketch out of his pocket, smoothed it out on the dining-room table and asked the poor guy to show him the similarities. Falcon had been forced to admit a few things: that all old people looked the same, or invisible, to younger people; that Angel was 1.65m and only a little heavier than 75 kilos; that Angel had no facial hair and he did have a side parting and, even if he was a bit thin on top, he used all available hair to make it look as if he was still hanging on to it. Only when the security guard had talked him through the jaw line and nose did Falcon see Angel in the sketch, as an adult finally sees the outline of a face in a cloud, as pointed out by a frustrated child.
Ramirez met him in the car park outside the preschool.
'We found Lucrecio Arenas's house,' said Ramirez. 'It was in the Plaza Mercenarias. I sent Cristina over there to take a look and it was all closed up. The neighbours say they don't spend much time there in the summer and there's no garden, only an internal patio. They didn't recognize Tateb Hassani either.'
They went into the classroom at the back where Juez del Rey and Comisario Elvira were waiting. Eight hours' sleep in three days was ruining Elvira. They sat down. They were all exhausted. Even del Rey, who should have been fresh, looked rumpled, as if he'd been jostled by a disgruntled crowd.
'Good news or bad?' asked Elvira.
'Both,' said Falcon. 'The good news is that I've identified the man seen speaking to Ricardo Gamero in the Archaeological Museum in the hours before he killed himself.'
'Name?'
'Angel Zarrias.'
Silence, as if they'd all seen someone sustain an ugly blow.
'He's your sister's partner, isn't he?' said Ramirez.
'How did you identify him?' asked Elvira.
Falcon briefed them on his conversation outside the Taberna Coloniales and how he'd extracted the Horizonte/Banco Omni executive photograph from Angel.
'But that's only part of the bad news,' said Falcon. 'The other part is that I'm not sure whether this gets us any further down the chain.'
'Meaning?'
'What have we found out that will help us apply pressure on Zarrias to reveal more?' said Ramirez.
'Exactly,' said Falcon. 'He was the last person to speak to Ricardo Gamero, but so what? He knew Gamero from church and that's the end of it. Why did he go to Zarrias and not his priest? His priest is dead. What did they talk about? Gamero was very upset. What about? Maybe Zarrias will give the same answer that Marco Barreda gave me. Perhaps Zarrias told Barreda to tell me that Gamero had been a closet gay. We don't know enough to be able to crack him open.'
'I can't believe that Ricardo Gamero would go to Angel Zarrias at that particular moment to discuss emotional problems,' said del Rey.
'You could show Zarrias the shot of Tateb Hassani and see what reaction you get,' said Elvira.
Neither Elvira nor del Rey had heard from Pablo, so Falcon told them about Tateb Hassani and how his handwriting matched that of the documents found in the fireproof box from the mosque and the notes found in the two copies of the Koran.
'And why did you ask for that comparison to be made in the first place?' asked Elvira.
'It went back to a question I asked my officers when we first discovered the dead body on the rubbish dump: Why kill a man and take such drastic steps to destroy his identity? You would only do that because knowledge of the victim's identity would lead investigators to people known to the victim, or because knowledge of his expertise might jeopardize a future operation. Tateb Hassani's identity revealed a number of things. His expertise, as a professor of Arabic Studies, meant that he could write Arabic and would have a sound knowledge of the Koran. He had also given maths classes in Granada during the summer months and therefore spoke and wrote Spanish. His profile was not that of an Islamic militant-he was an apostate, a sexual predator and a drinker of alcohol. Once he lost his job at Columbia University, which had cost him his New York apartment, he became so desperate for money that he'd taught maths privately in Columbus, Ohio, which was the home of I4IT, who own Horizonte, who in turn own Informaticalidad. Finally, I was not comfortable with the fact that the keys found in the Imam's apartment, which successfully opened the fireproof box from the mosque, had been discovered in the kitchen drawer and not in the Imam's desk with his other keys. This struck me as a plant by someone who had access to the Imam's apartment, but not his study when he wasn't there.'
'Who would have planted the keys?'
'Botin, under instructions from Gamero?' said Ramirez.
'At the beginning of this investigation Juan was telling us to keep an open mind and not to look at this attack historically, because there is no pattern in the way Islamic terrorists work. That's true. That's their style. Each attack comes out of the blue and there's always some new twist that teases greater terror into the mind of the West. Just think about the virtuosity of the attacks experienced so far.
'When I was driving back from the security guard's apartment, something that struck me about the Seville bombing was its lack of originality. Of course, that wasn't my first thought. My first thought was: these terrorists are prepared to attack residential property. But now I'm beginning to see that the Seville bomb refers back to some element in those previous attacks. The collapse of the apartment building reminded us of the Moscow apartment blocks coming down in 1999. The discovery of the Islamic sash, the hood and the Koran in the Peugeot Partner reminded us of the Koran tapes and detonators found in the Renault Kangoo outside the station at Alcala de Henares. The use of Goma 2 Eco in the device planted in the mosque reminded us of the explosive used on 11th March. The threat to the two schools and the biology faculty was reminiscent of Beslan. It was as if the person who planned this operation was drawing inspiration from something in those previous attacks.'
'VOMIT,' said Ramirez. 'If there's anybody who knows everything there is to know about Islamic terrorist attacks, it's the author of that website.'
'And now that the security guard has pointed the finger at Angel Zarrias there's a logic to it. He's a journalist, but he's also a PR man. He knows how things work in the human mind,' said Falcon. 'I'm now asking myself: who leaked the Arabic script found in the fireproof box to Canal Sur? Or rather, who didn't have to leak it, because it was already in their possession? And who planted the stories about the MILA? Who sent the Abdullah Azzam text to the ABC in Madrid from Seville?'
'How far do you think this goes?' said Elvira. 'If they planted the Korans, the hood and the sash, was it because they knew about the hexogen?'
'I don't think so,' said Falcon. 'I think the idea was conceived as just an attack against the mosque and the people in it. They were getting information from Miguel Botin, via Ricardo Gamero, that something was happening. The CGI had been frustrated in their first attempt to get a bugging order. Gamero found another way, or rather, another way was revealed to him by Zarrias, which was that the mosque could be put under surveillance by Informaticalidad's sales reps. Once it appeared that Hammad and Saoudi were making sinister preparations they decided to kill them, and anybody else unfortunate enough to be in the mosque at the time, before they could carry out the attack they were planning.
