As he strode away, heading directly for two uniformed police officers, Bill Evans, who’d so far been staring in silence at the destruction, shook his head. ‘Bastards,’ he muttered, almost to himself. ‘Murdering fucking bastards. And for what?’
‘Good question,’ Richter said. ‘Unless I’m missing something, there’s nothing special about this street, so why would anyone position the bomb here?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Jackson said. ‘Do you know anything about this area, Bill?’
‘Not much. There was just a shop on the ground floor and several apartments above it, I think.’
‘But nothing government or political?’ Richter pressed.
‘Nothing that I know of.’
‘So why the bomb, then? Terrorists don’t plant IEDs just on a whim. They have a reason for what they do, maybe using twisted logic that doesn’t make much sense to anyone else, but there’s always a reason.’
‘I don’t know,’ Evans said, ‘but Tariq can make some inquiries.’
‘Couldn’t it just be simple terrorism? I mean,’ Jackson suggested, ‘a bomb positioned just to cause damage and loss of life? Something like the Canary Wharf or Bali bombings?’
‘I doubt it,’ Richter shook his head. ‘And even those two bombs certainly weren’t random. There was a reason for detonating this device here, and if we can work out what it was, we’ll be a lot closer to discovering who was responsible.’
At that moment Tariq Mazen emerged from a building further down the road, a plastic bag in his left hand, and headed over to where they were standing. Evans pointed at the bag.
‘The tapes,’ Mazen explained. ‘I’ve obtained all the videos from the surveillance-camera system for the last week. We should at least be able to find out when the vehicle was positioned, and with luck see whoever drove it here.’
‘What’s the resolution like?’ Evans asked.
‘Reasonable, according to the owner of the property, but it’s only intended for short-range work. How clear the images will be at longer distances I don’t know.’
‘Tariq,’ Evans said, ‘have you any idea why this particular building might have been targeted?’
Mazen glanced up and down Al-Mutanabi Avenue. ‘I’m not aware of anything significant here,’ he said, ‘but obviously I’ll check.’
Tall, slim and dark-haired, Josep Matero was thirty-eight years old and was completely unaware that he was being followed as he left work that afternoon. He also had no idea that he’d been followed home the previous day as well.
The first surveillance operation, carried out by a man called Jeffrey Haig, had been intended solely to check the Spaniard’s domestic arrangements — if it turned out he had a wife and children one of the other three technicians on Haig’s shortlist would have been chosen instead, because they wanted as few complications in Spain as possible.
But Matero’s wife had left him two years earlier, and he lived alone at the edge of the university area on the southern outskirts of Barcelona. Though the apartment was small it was convenient for his job. The airport lies to the south of the city, and Matero could get there on his small motorcycle in about fifteen minutes.
He was working a split shift that day, which meant he had to get back on site the same evening. He arrived home just after three, after stopping off at a local bar for a light meal of tapas and a half-bottle of rioja. The prospect of a lazy afternoon stretched pleasantly ahead of him: there might even be some football on TV.
He’d already changed out of his working clothes and was on his way to the kitchen to make coffee when he heard the unexpected knock, and stepped back into the hallway to answer the door.
He didn’t recognize the man standing in front of him. Matero opened his mouth to ask what he wanted but, before the words could form, the stranger stepped forward and punched him violently in the chest.
The pain was incredible, like nothing Matero had ever experienced, and he stumbled backwards, falling to the tiled floor. As he tried to get up, there was no strength in his limbs, and the pain in his chest was even worse. For a few seconds Matero wondered how the stranger had done it. And in the last agonizing moments of his life he wondered why.
Roy Sutter closed the door behind him and watched without emotion as his victim died on the tiles right in front of him. Then he went looking for the bathroom. When he found it, he wiped the blood off the five-inch blade of the push-dagger, threw the toilet paper down the loo and flushed it. He folded the knife and replaced it in a leather belt sheath.
It was an unusual but extremely effective assassination weapon, T-shaped with a slim stiletto blade hinged in the centre of a shaped metal handle. The attacker held the handle firmly in his palm, the blade projecting between his third and fourth fingers, and simply punched the victim in the chest or back. If the blow was delivered strongly and accurately enough, the blade would penetrate for its full length, and easily rupture the heart.
Sutter checked that the apartment was empty before he returned to the hall. He seized Matero’s feet and dragged the body into the lounge, dumping it in the centre of the room. He toyed briefly with the idea of trying to make the scene look like a burglary gone wrong, but then decided he couldn’t be bothered. The body would likely be found soon enough, but within hours he would be on a different continent.
He only needed two items from the apartment. He found the first in the fitted wardrobe in the bedroom, and the second lying on a small desk in the living room.
Less than ten minutes after he’d entered the building, Sutter walked away from it with a bulging plastic carrier bag in one hand, the gloves he’d worn the entire time already dumped in a nearby rubbish bin.
Twenty-five minutes later, and half a mile closer to the city centre, Jeffrey Haig emerged from another apartment building, where his actions had almost exactly replicated those of Roy Sutter.
Richard Watts waited patiently for a break in the stream of calls, and finally depressed the transmit button. ‘Andrews Ground, Gulfstream November Two Six, requesting engine start and taxi clearance.’
‘Two Six, engine start approved. Call ready to taxi for runway zero one right.’
‘Roger. Engine start approved, runway zero one right.’
The APU was already running, and Watts had both the Rolls-Royce Tay turbofans started within minutes. The cockpit of the G450 is fully computerized, the four flat-panel LCD screens of the Gulfstream/Honeywell PlaneView integrated avionics system facing the two pilots providing all the information required. Each pilot sees one screen displaying flight instrumentation — airspeed indicator, compass heading, horizontal situation indicator and so on — while the two central screens show navigation data and engine status.
Eleven minutes after engine start, the Gulfstream turned on to the end of zero one right, and waited a few moments for another jet to clear the active runway.
‘November Two Six, Andrews Tower. Clear take-off. Wind zero two five at fifteen. When airborne, contact Potomac Departure on one two five six five.’
‘Roger, Tower. Clear take-off and to Potomac on one two five six five when airborne. Good day, sir.’ Watts pushed the throttles smoothly forward, and the G450 began accelerating rapidly down the runway.
In the beautifully equipped cabin of the Gulfstream, Grant Hutchings and John Baxter sat facing each other in two of the sumptuous leather armchairs. The other members of the investigation team — Andy Franks and Roger Middleton — sat in matching seats on the other side of the aisle.