LITMIR.BIZ

       9

       Seville—Tuesday, 6th June 2006, 12.45 hrs

      Ferrera had found one occupant who’d given her a sighting of the Peugeot Partner late yesterday afternoon, Monday 5th June. The van had stopped on Calle Los Romeros, opposite the mosque, and two men had unloaded four cardboard boxes and some blue plastic carrier bags. The only description of the men was that they were young and well built and were wearing T-shirts and jeans. The boxes were heavy enough that they could only be carried one at a time. Everything was taken into the mosque. Both men came out and drove away in the van. Falcón told her to keep looking for witnesses and if necessary to go down to the hospital.

      Back in the car park the Mayor and the deputies from the Andalucían Parliament had gone and Comisario Elvira and Juez Calderón were coming to the end of an impromptu press conference. Another body had been found on the seventh floor. The rescue workers had not made contact with anybody alive in the rubble. Pneumatic drills were being used to expose the steel netting in the reinforced concrete floors and oxyacetylene torches and motorized cutters were breaking up the floors into slabs. These slabs were being lifted away by the crane and put into tippers. With each piece of information given, more questions came at them. Elvira was visibly irritated by it all, but Calderón was playing at the top of his game and the journalists loved him. They were more than happy to concentrate on the good-looking, charismatic Calderón when finally Elvira took his leave and headed into the pre-school, where they’d set up a temporary headquarters in the undamaged classrooms at the back.

      The journalists recognized Falcón and came after him, preventing him from following Elvira. Microphones butted his face. Cameras were thrust between heads. What’s the name of the explosive again? Where did it come from? Are the terrorists still alive? Is there a cell still operating in Seville? What have you got to say about the evacuations in the city centre? Has there been another bomb? Has anybody claimed responsibility for the attack? Falcón had to force his way out of the scrum and it took three policemen to push the journalists back from the pre-school entrance. Falcón was straightening himself up in the corridor when Calderón burst through the roaring crowd at the gates.

      ‘Joder,’ he said, remaking his tie, ‘they’re like a pack of jackals.’

      ‘Ramírez just told me about the explosive.’

      ‘They keep asking me about that. I haven’t heard anything.’

      ‘The common name is RDX or hexogen.’

      ‘Hexogen?’ said Calderón. ‘Wasn’t that what the Chechen rebels used to blow up those apartment blocks in Moscow back in 1999?’

      ‘The military use it in artillery shells.’

      ‘I remember there was some scandal about the Chechens using recycled explosives from a government scientific research institute, which had been bought by the mafia, who then sold it to the rebels. Russian military ordnance being used to blow up their own people.’

      ‘Sounds like a typical Russian scenario.’

      ‘It’s not going to be easy for you,’ said Calderón. ‘Hexogen can come from anywhere—Russia, a Muslim Chechen terrorist group, an arms dump in Iraq, any Third World country where there’s been a conflict, where ordnance has been left behind. It might even be American, this stuff.’

      Falcón’s mobile vibrated. It was Elvira, calling them into a meeting with the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia and the antiterrorist squad of the Comisaría General de Información.

      There were three men from the CNI. The boss was a man in his sixties, with white hair and dark eyebrows and a handsome, ex-athlete’s face. He introduced himself only as Juan. His two juniors, Pablo and Gregorio, were younger men, who had the bland appearance of middle managers. In their dark suits they were barely distinguishable, although Pablo had a scar running from his hairline to his left eyebrow. Falcón was uncomfortably aware that Pablo had not taken his eyes off him since he’d walked into the room. He began to wonder whether they’d met before.

      There was only one representative from the antiterrorism unit of the CGI. His name was Inspector Jefe Ramón Barros, a short, powerfully built man, with close-cropped grey hair and perfect teeth, which added a sinister element to his brutal and furious demeanour.

      Comisario Elvira asked Falcón to give a résumé of his findings so far. He started with the immediate aftermath of the bomb and moved on quickly to the discovery of the Peugeot Partner, its contents, and the times it was seen by witnesses in the car park.

      ‘We’ve since discovered that the fine white powder taken from the rear of the van is a military explosive known as hexogen, which my colleague, Juez Calderón, has told me was the same type of explosive used by Chechen rebels to blow up two apartment blocks in Moscow in 1999.’

      ‘You can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers,’ said Juan. ‘There’s considerable doubt now that it was the Chechen rebels. We’re not great believers in conspiracy theories in our own back yard, but when it comes to Russia it seems that anything is possible. There is a natural inclination, after such a catastrophic attack as this, to make comparisons to other terrorist attacks, to look for patterns. What we’ve learnt from the mistakes we made after March 11th is that there are no patterns. It’s the government’s business to quell panic by offering some kind of order to a terrified public. It’s our job to treat every situation as unique. Carry on, Inspector Jefe.’

      None of the

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