The Ignorance of Blood

‘Your gratitude?’

‘What was I supposed to do? I should be happy and proud,’ he said, and sank back down on to the sofa, buried his face in his hands and sobbed twice.

‘And you assume that this has been done to keep you “close”, to control you, to make them feel less uneasy about you.’

‘Nobody but the maddest radical would want their son to become a mujahideen … potentially a suicide bomber. All this talk you hear on TV in France or England about honour and paradise and seventy-two virgins, it's just… it's just bullshit. You might find that sort of thinking in Gaza, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, but you won't find it in Rabat – not in my circle.’

‘Let's think this through,’ said Falcón. ‘What are they trying to achieve through this manoeuvre? If it's to keep you close, then…’

‘They want to infiltrate my household,’ said Yacoub. And then, touching his temple: ‘They want to infiltrate my mind.’

‘They're not convinced that they can control you, so they set about controlling all those around you?’

‘Their whole reason for being interested in me is that they know that I can live “convincingly” in both worlds: Islamic and secular, East and West. It doesn't mean they like it. They didn't like the fact that my sixteen-year-old daughter, Leila, was wearing a swimsuit on the beach.’

‘They were watching you on the beach?’

‘When we were on holiday in Essaouira, they were watching us, Javier,’ said Yacoub. ‘Abdullah has stopped playing his music, which I thought a blessing at first, but now I'm desperate for him to be normal. And, can you believe this, he reads the Qur'an. He doesn't play computer games any more. I had a look at the history on his browser … it's all Islamic websites, Palestinian politics – Hamas versus Fatah, the Muslim Brotherhood…’

‘Where is this influence coming from?’

Another shrug.

Does he know? Why isn't he telling me? thought Falcón. Is it someone close to him? Someone in his extended family? When Yacoub had been recruited, he'd said he'd never give up a family member.

‘They find their way in,’ said Yacoub. ‘And you know, until Abdullah came to me with his news last Friday, I didn't think these developments were such a bad thing. It's good for teenagers to have something serious in their lives, something other than violent video games and hip-hop … but mujahideen?’

‘I know it's difficult for you to be calm about this,’ said Falcón. ‘But there's no immediate danger if, as you say, they're trying to keep you close. We have time.’

‘They've taken my boy away from me,’ said Yacoub, who shaded his eyes and sobbed again, before coming back at Falcón, angry. ‘He's in one of their camps. That's 24/7. When they're not running over hills and assault courses, they're doing weapons training and bomb-making. And when that's all over, they're plugged into radical Islam. I have no idea what is going to come back to me, but I'm sure it won't be the Abdullah I knew. It will be their Abdullah. And then how will I live? Looking over my shoulder at my own son?’

The enormity of Yacoub's predicament hit Falcón hard. Three months ago he'd asked Yacoub to make what should have been a personal step towards embracing radical Islam. He had been stunned at the rapidity with which Yacoub had been taken deep inside the GICM organization. It could only mean that he had something that they wanted. And now the GICM were protecting themselves and it meant enclosing not just Yacoub but his whole family as well. And, worse still, there was no way out. Radical Islam was not something you changed your mind about. Once admitted to the close fraternity and their secrets there was no walking away. They wouldn't let you. It wasn't so different – and Falcón couldn't believe he was thinking this – to being part of a mafia family.

‘You don't have to say anything, Javier. There's nothing to say,’ said Yacoub. ‘I just needed to tell someone and you're the only person I've got.’

‘You don't want me to talk to Pablo at the CNI about this?’

‘Pablo? What happened to Juan?’ said Yacoub. ‘Juan was the old, experienced guy.’

‘Juan was given early retirement last week,’ said Falcón. ‘He'd blown it over Madrid and their assessment of his work in the Seville bombing wasn't so good either. Pablo's good. Forty-two years old. Very experienced in North Africa. Totally committed.’

‘No, Javier, you must not tell anyone,’ said Yacoub, the flat of his hand taking on the threat of a chopping blade. ‘If you do they will only use it. That is how these intelligence people think: He's vulnerable, let's use it. You won't use it. I know that. And that's why you always have to be there between me and them. You are, and will be, the only one who truly understands my situation.’

Something like a cramp started up in Falcón's guts. This was different to the dead weight of his responsibility in this matter. That was just a few more rocks in the already unwieldy rucksack. This was the knot of fear making itself felt. Now he was being forced into the unique position of having to decide whether Yacoub was reliable or not. Given the choice between his son, Abdullah, and the anonymous face of the Spanish intelligence agency, there would be no doubt who Yacoub would choose. He'd said it from the very beginning and the CNI had accepted those terms.

‘What can I do to make your situation any easier?’ asked Falcón.

‘You're a good friend, Javier. The only true friend I've got,’ said Yacoub. ‘You will be the one to help me with the plan to save my son.’

‘I doubt he could walk away from being a mujahideen very easily, especially after he's been to one of their camps.’

‘I think the only way would be for him to be arrested on his way to a mission,’ said Yacoub.

‘Those would be extraordinary circumstances,’ said Falcón. ‘For the GICM to let you know what was being planned … unless you were directly involved.’

‘There you have it, Javier,’ said Yacoub. ‘It would also depend very much on whether my survival is considered critical.’

Falcón and Yacoub looked at each other for some time, smoke steadily rising from Yacoub's fingers and dissipating over his shaven head.

‘What?’ asked Yacoub.

‘I can't believe you said those words.’

‘We were naïve, Javier. We have absurdly idealistic minds. It was no accident that you were chosen to recruit me. All these agencies have people specifically employed to size you up, to perceive whether you have the necessary strengths and weaknesses for the work required of you. And I'm not talking about whether you're a good manager of people or handle stress well, but whether, under the right circumstances, you could torture a man to get the necessary information or …’

‘Or be ingenuous enough to be completely malleable, or perhaps, utterly predictable?’ said Falcón.

‘The CNI saw in you a need. They knew your history. They knew that you no longer viewed the world in the blinkered way that most people see it, that you demanded a different perspective. They fed it to you. You fed it to me. We didn't know the sort of people we were dealing with. Possibly we imagined that they might be like ourselves, and we could enter their world beneath the surface of everyday life and change things. And what happens? We meet completely ruthless minds who beat us into corners and force us to behave – or else.’

Falcón looked around the darkened room. Their situation – meeting in an anonymous Madrid apartment to discuss unseen dramatic developments – was so far removed from real life that he was suddenly desperate for the surface; but like the diver surrounded by sharks, who still needed to decompress, he had to hold the line, not panic.

‘You envisage a situation where you will give us information about an imminent attack, which will enable us to intercept Abdullah's group and arrest him, but…’

‘It will irrevocably undermine my position in the GICM and I will be immediately executed.’

‘No,’ said Falcón.

‘Yes,’ said Yacoub. ‘It's the only way.’

‘But you realize all that will happen is that Abdullah will end up in jail, where he will gravitate to the radical elements which exist in Spanish prisons, and he will come out even more zealous than he went in. Having done his time he will be welcomed back into the group, and all you will have achieved is your own death,’ said Falcón. ‘You have to let me draw on some experience in this matter. Pablo and others in the CNI must have come across this type of situation before. They will have ideas on how to handle it.’

‘You're my friend,’ said Yacoub. ‘I'm in this because of you. By that I mean I wanted to do this and you were the only one I could trust. I don't want you to start talking to others. As soon as you do that, I lose control and they start to run the situation; and believe me, they will look after their own interests, not mine. Before you know it, we'll be in a hall of mirrors, not knowing which way to turn. And this is my son, Javier. I can't allow him to be sucked in, manipulated, turned into a piece of the game, a fanatic's mass murderer, who will imagine in his adolescent mind that in killing and maiming…’

‘Yacoub, you're letting this get out of control in your mind.’

‘This is my Moroccan side,’ he said, leaping to his feet and pacing around the room, scratching at childhood scars on his head which had been laid bare by the severity of his haircut. ‘I get very emotional. I can't seem to calm myself down, or rather, I can calm down. I do calm down. And you know how I do it?’

Falcón waited for him to come back into his line of sight, but Yacoub leaned over the back of the armchair, his face so close the tobacco breath was sharp in Falcón's nostrils. ‘I imagine Abdullah safe … away from all this … this madness. I imagine myself under a funeral shroud and able to see the sun coming through the cotton, the breeze playing over the material, and I am at peace for the first time in my life.’

‘Try an alternative vision, Yacoub. Don't be so fatalistic. Imagine yourself at home with Abdullah, his wife and your grandchildren on your lap. Try achieving that instead of your death and his incarceration.’

‘I would, if it wasn't such an absurd dream, an impossible ideal, Javier,’ said Yacoub. ‘The boy is already a part of their organization. He has no thoughts for girls, wives, children. Normal life has become a miserable existence to him. He despises his carefree childhood. He mourns the lost hours spent on his Gameboy. His whole adolescence is a tragedy of unconsciousness to him now. There's no question of bringing him back. The irony of it all is that, in joining himself to this new world, he has, to me, become a lost soul. He wanders a world of death, destruction and martyrdom. While my stomach heaves at the thought of a market in Baghdad with two hundred dead women and children, the whole area a blackened, smoking charnel house, Abdullah smiles beatifically at the imagined grace of the martyr who has committed this godless atrocity.’

‘So you've seen him again since he went to this training camp a week ago?’ asked Falcón, confused at how Yacoub could have known all this.

‘The purpose of admitting me to the GICM in the first place was primarily to make one of their international attacks possible,’ said Yacoub inconsequentially, buying himself some time. ‘This means, as you know, I have unprecedented access to the military wing of the GICM. As soon as Abdullah told me his news, it was arranged for me to be shown his training camp. I spent some time there. We had a couple of evenings together in which I was able to see the profound change wrought in his young mind.’

‘But you didn't manage to see the commander of the military wing?’