The Hidden Assassins

  None of the Sevillanos liked this patronizing little speech and they looked at the CNI man in his expensive loafers, lightweight suit and stiff, heavy, silvery tie and decided that the only thing he’d said that didn’t mark him out as a typical visiting Madrileño was his admission of a mistake.

  ‘If it wasn’t Chechen rebels, who was it?’ asked Calderón.

  ‘Not relevant, Juez Calderón,’ said Juan. ‘Proceed, Inspector Jefe.’

  ‘It might be interesting from the point of view of sources for the hexogen,’ said Calderón, who was not a man to be brushed off easily. ‘We’ve found a van with traces of explosive and Islamic paraphernalia. The Chechens are known to have access to Russian military ordnance and have the sympathy of the Muslim world. In most people’s minds those rebels were responsible for the destruction of the Moscow apartment blocks. If any of these connections have been proven invalid by the intelligence community, then perhaps the Inspector Jefe should know about them now. The source of the explosives will be an important area of his investigation.’

  ‘His investigation?’ said Juan. ‘Our investigation. This is going to be a concerted effort. The Grupo de Homicidios is not going to crack this case on its own. This hexogen will have been imported. The CNI has the international connections to find out where it came from.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said Calderón, embarking on some of his own pomposity, ‘this is where the investigation begins, and if the Inspector Jefe is about to pursue an avenue of enquiry with incorrect or misleading information, then perhaps he should be told.’

  Calderón was aware that this was irrelevant in terms of information for the purposes of the investigation, but he also knew that a demonstration of power was required to put Juan in his place. Calderón was the leading Juez de Instrucción and he was not going to have his authority undermined by an outsider, especially a Madrileño.

  ‘We cannot be certain,’ said Juan, exasperated by the posturing, ‘but a theory is being given credibility that the Russian Security Service, the FSB, were themselves responsible for the outrage, and that they successfully managed to frame the Chechens. Just prior to the explosion Putin had become director of the FSB. The country was in turmoil and there was the perfect opportunity for a power play. The FSB provoked a war in Chechnya and Dagestan. The prime minister lost his job and Putin took over at the beginning of 1999. The Moscow apartment explosions gave him the opportunity to start a patriotic campaign. He was the fearless leader who would stand up to the rebels. By the beginning of 2000, Putin was acting president of Russia. The hexogen used by the FSB was supposed to have come from a scientific research institute in Lubyanka where the FSB has its headquarters. As you can see, Juez Calderón, my explanation does not help us very much here, but it does illustrate how very quickly the world can become a dangerous and confusing place.’

  Silence, while the Sevillanos considered the reverberations of the explosion in their own city to places like Chechnya and Moscow. Falcón continued his briefing about the Peugeot Partner, the two men seen unloading goods for the mosque, the men believed to have been in the mosque at the time of the explosion, and the latest revelations about the owner of the vehicle and his nephew, Trabelsi Amar, who had borrowed it.

  ‘Anything else?’ asked Juan, while Elvira’s assistant entered the name of Trabelsi Amar into the terrorist suspects database.

  ‘Just one thing to clear up before I continue with the investigation,’ said Falcón. ‘Did the CNI or the CGI have the mosque under surveillance?’

  ‘What makes you think that we might have done?’ asked Juan.

  Falcón briefed them on the mysterious, well-dressed young men from Informáticalidad, who had frequented the nearby apartment over the past three months.

  ‘That is not the way we would run a surveillance operation and I’ve never heard of Informáticalidad.’

  ‘What about the antiterrorism unit, Inspector Jefe Barros?’ asked Elvira.

  ‘We did not have the mosque under active surveillance,’ said Barros, who seemed to be restraining great anger under preternatural calm. ‘I’ve heard of Informáticalidad. They’re the biggest suppliers of computer software and consumables in Seville. They even supply us.’

  ‘One final question about the Imam,’ said Falcón. ‘We’re told he arrived here from Tunis in September 2004 and that he is in the lowest risk category for terrorist suspects, but his history required a higher authority for clearance.’

  ‘His file is incomplete,’ said Juan.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘As far as we know, he’s clean,’ said Juan. ‘He has been heard to speak out against the cold-blooded, indiscriminate nature of the Madrid bombings. We understand from his visa application that part of the reason he came to Seville was to attempt a healing of the wounds between the Catholic and Muslim communities. He saw that as his duty. We were only concerned about gaps in his history that we could not fill. These gaps occurred in the 1980s, when a lot of Muslims went to Afghanistan to fight with the mujahedeen against the Russians. Some returned radicalized to their homes in the 1990s and others later became the Taliban. The Imam would have been in his thirties at the time and therefore a prime candidate. In the end, the Americans vouched for him and we allowed him a visa.’

  ‘So this bomb has killed a potential sympathizer, five men over the age of sixty-five, a man under thirty-five who was in a wheelchair, two Spanish converts and two men in their forties collecting disability benefits, which leaves only two under the age of thirty-five, able-bodied and of North African origin,’ said Elvira. ‘Can the CNI offer a theory as to why this strangely mixed group of people who, we have just been told, were not under active surveillance, should be storing high-quality military explosive and why it should have been detonated?’

  Silence. The grinding gears of the machinery outside reached them. The thunder of rubble dropping into empty tippers, the hiss and scream of hydraulics, the low roar of the crane’s unwinding cable, all punctuated by the pneumatic drills’ staccato stabbing, reminded these men of the purpose of their meeting and the disaster that had befallen this city.

  ‘Trabelsi Amar is not on any terrorist suspect database and he’s an illegal alien,’ said Elvira’s assistant, breaking the silence.

  ‘Do you believe that explosives could have been stored in the mosque without the knowledge of the Imam?’ asked Calderón.

  ‘There’s an outside chance that he didn’t recognize what it was,’ said Juan. ‘As you know, hexogen looks like sugar. The trace left on the floor indicates that the packaging wasn’t exactly hermetically sealed. It’s possible that the explosive was in those cardboard boxes, which the Inspector Jefe has told us were seen being unloaded yesterday.’

  ‘But for the hexogen to actually explode would require a detonator,’ said Falcón. ‘From the way in which they were moving it around it must be a stable product.’

  ‘It is,’ said Juan.

  ‘Then that means they must have been working on making bombs and accidentally detonated it,’ said Falcón. ‘I doubt they could be doing that in secret in a mosque of that size, with thirteen other people in it. I haven’t seen the plans, but it can’t be more than ten by twenty metres.’

  ‘So the Imam is complicit in that scenario,’ said Juan. ‘We’ll have to talk to the Americans about Abdelkrim Benaboura and we’ll find a photo ID and a history for Trabelsi Amar.’

  ‘If Soumaya is identifying Amar as his nephew, then that doesn’t sound to me like deep terrorist cover. He’s probably got photographs,’ said Falcón. ‘We have to consider the possibility that this van was not being driven by him. It could have been stolen or, for whatever reason, given to another party to transport goods to Seville. Trabelsi Amar’s function could have been simply to provide a van, which would not be reported stolen.’

  ‘We’ll make sure the CGI in Canillas communicate with the local police in Madrid, who are interviewing Mohammed Soumaya,’ said Juan, which sounded like he was undermini
ng Inspector Jefe Barros, who was still boiling in silence. ‘It’s one of the complications of these terrorist operations that the people we know about are active only in so far as they use up our time and resources. As was the case with March 11th, where none of the operatives were known terrorists or had any links to known radical Islamic organizations. They came out of nowhere to perform their tasks.’

  ‘But you’re in a better position now than you were then,’ said Elvira.

  ‘Since 9/11 and the evidence of connections made by Islamic terrorist cell members in Spain…’

  ‘You mean al-Qaeda members?’ said Elvira.

  ‘We don’t like to use the name al-Qaeda because it implies an organization with a hierarchy along Western lines. This is not the case,’ said Juan. ‘It’s useful for the media to have this name to hang on Islamic terrorism, but we don’t use it in the service. We have to remind ourselves not to be complacent. As I was saying: since 9/11 and the evidence of connections made by Islamic terrorist cell members in Spain with the perpetrators of the Twin Towers and Washington DC attacks, there has been considerable stepping up of activities.’

  ‘But, as you say, there seems to be an unending stream of young operatives who you don’t know about and who can be organized at a distance to perform terrorist acts,’ said Calderón. ‘That, surely, is the problem?’

  ‘As you’ve seen from the investigations into the London bombings, there is extraordinary co-operation between all the secret services,’ said Juan. ‘Our proximity to North Africa makes us vulnerable but gives us opportunities as well. In the two years since the Madrid train bombings we have achieved considerable penetration into Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. We hope to improve our ability to pick up sleeping cells by intercepting the signals that might eventually activate them. We are not perfect, but neither are they. You don’t hear about our successes, and it’s too early to say whether we are dealing here with one of our failures.’

  ‘You said that “in this scenario the Imam is complicit”,’ said Falcón. ‘Does this mean you are looking at other scenarios?’

  ‘All we can do is prepare ourselves for eventualities,’ said Juan. ‘In the last two years we have been examining a domestic phenomenon, which first came to light on the internet. I hesitate to call this phenomenon a group, because we have found no evidence of organization, or communication, for that matter. What we have found are newsletter pages on a website called www.vomit.org. This was thought to be an American site because it first appeared in the English language, but the CIA and MI5 have just recently told us they now believe VOMIT stands for Victimas del Odio de Musulmanos, Islamistas y Terroristas.’

  ‘What’s the content of the newsletter?’

  ‘It’s an updated list of all terrorist attacks carried out by Islamic extremists since the early 1990s. It gives a short account of the attack, the number of victims, both dead and injured, followed by the number of people directly affected by the death or injury of a person close to them.’

  ‘Does that mean they are contacting the victims’ families?’ asked Elvira.

  ‘If they are, the victims seem to be unaware of it,’ said Juan. ‘Victims get approached by the media, the government, the social services, the police…and, as yet, we haven’t found anyone who has been able to tell us that they’ve been contacted by VOMIT.’

  ‘Did this start in 2004 after the Madrid bombings?’ said Elvira.

  ‘The British first came across the pages in June 2004. By September 2004 it also included Muslim on Muslim attacks, such as suicide bombings against police recruiting offices in Iraq, and since the beginning of 2005 there has also been a section on Muslim women who have been the victims of honour killings or gang rapes. In these cases, they only report on the type of attack and number of victims.’

  ‘Presumably the posting of these pages on the web is completely anonymous,’ said Calderón, who didn’t wait for an answer. ‘There must have been a Muslim reaction to this, surely?’

  ‘The Al Jazeera news channel did a piece on these web pages back in August 2004 and there was a huge internet response in which various Arab-sponsored websites enumerated Arab victims of Israeli, American, European, Russian, Far Eastern and Australian aggression. Some of them were extreme and went back in history to the Crusades, the expulsion of the Moors from Spain and the defeat of the Ottoman empire. None of the websites came up with as powerful a banner as VOMIT, and a lot of them couldn’t resist spouting an agenda, so although they were read avidly in the Arab world, they didn’t penetrate the West at all.’

  ‘So what makes you think that VOMIT has gone from being a passive, unorganized internet phenomenon into an active, operational entity?’ asked Falcón.

  ‘We don’t,’ said Juan. ‘We review their web pages daily to see if there’s any incitement to violence, disrespect shown to Islam, or attempts at recruitment to some kind of cause, but there’s nothing except the clocking up of attacks and their victims.’

  ‘Have you spoken to victims of the Madrid bombings?’ asked Falcón.

  ‘There is no common theme of vengeance amongst them. The only anger was directed at our own politicians and not against North Africans in general, or Islamic fanatics specifically. Most of the victims recognized that many Muslims had also been killed in the bombings. They saw it as an indiscriminate act of terror, with a political goal.’

  ‘Did any of them know about VOMIT?’

  ‘Yes, but none of them said they would seek membership if it existed,’ said Juan. ‘However, we do know that there is anger out there from fanatical right-wing groups with strong racist views and anti-immigration policies. We are keeping an eye on them. The police handle their violent activities at a local level. They are not known to have a national organization or to have planned and carried out attacks of this magnitude.’

  ‘And religious groups?’

  ‘Some of these fanatically right-wing groups have religious elements, too. If they advertise themselves in any way, we know about them. What concerns us is that they might be learning from their perceived enemies.’

  ‘So the other possible scenario—that this was an organized attack against a Muslim community—is based solely on what? That it’s about time there was a reaction against Islamic terrorism?’ asked Calderón.

  ‘Each terrorist atrocity is unique. The circumstances that prevail at the time make it so,’ said Juan. ‘At the time of the March 11th attack, Aznar’s government were expecting an ETA attempt to disrupt the forthcoming elections. A couple of months earlier on Christmas Eve 2003 two bombs of 25 kilos each had been discovered on the Irún-Madrid intercity train. Both bombs were classic ETA devices and had been set to explode two minutes before their arrival in the Chamartín station. Another ETA bomb was found on the track of the Zaragoza-Caspe-Barcelona line, which was set to explode on New Year’s Eve 2003. On 29th February 2004, as everybody in this room knows, the Guardia Civil intercepted two ETA operatives in a transit van which contained 536 kilos of Titadine, destination Madrid. Everything was pointing to a major attack on the railway system prior to the elections on 14th March 2004, which would be planned and carried out by ETA.’

  ‘That was the information, and the extrapolation from it was sent to the government by the CNI,’ said Calderón, keen to stick it in.

  ‘And it was wrong, Juez Calderón. We were wrong,’ said Juan. ‘Even after listening to the tapes of the Koran found in the Renault Kangoo van near the Alcalá de Henares station, and the discovery of the detonators not previously used by ETA, and the fact that the explosive was not Titadine, as customarily used by ETA, but Goma 2 ECO, we still couldn’t believe that ETA was not behind it. That is the very point I am making, and it is why we should consider all scenarios in this present attack and not allow our minds to harden around a core of received opinion. We must work, step by step, until we have the unbreakable line of logic that leads to the perpetrators.’

  ‘We can’t leave people in the dark while we do this,’ said Calderón.
‘The media, the politicians and the public need to know that something is happening, that their safety is assured. Terror breeds confusion—’

  ‘Comisario Elvira, as leader of this investigation, has that responsibility, as do the politicians. Our job is to make sure that they have the right information,’ said Juan. ‘We’ve already started looking at this attack with a historical mind—the apartment bombs in Moscow, the discovery of Islamic paraphernalia in a white van—and we can’t afford to do that.’

  ‘The media already knows what was found in the Peugeot Partner van,’ said Calderón. ‘We cannot prevent them from drawing their conclusions.’

  ‘How do they know that?’ asked Juan. ‘There was a police cordon.’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Calderón, ‘but as soon as the vehicle was removed and the journalists allowed into the car park, Comisario Elvira and I were fielding questions about the hexogen, the two copies of the Koran, a hood, the Islamic sash, and plenty of other stuff that wasn’t even in the van.’

  ‘There were a lot of people out in that car park,’ said Falcón. ‘My officers, the forensics, the bomb squad, the vehicle removal men, were all in the vicinity of that first inspection of the van. Journalists do their job. The cameras were supposed to be kept away from the bodies of the children in the pre-school, but one guy found his way in there.’

  ‘As we’ve seen before,’ said Juan, breathing down his irritation, ‘it’s very difficult to dislodge first impressions from the public’s mind. There are still millions of Americans who believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible in some way for 9/11. Most of Seville will now believe that they have been the victim of an Islamic terrorist attack and we might not be able to come close to confirming the truth of the matter until we can get into the mosque, which could be days of demolition work away.’