The Ignorance of Blood. Robert Thomas Wilson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ he said, nodding. ‘That's why I like you, Javier. You keep me calm. I'm not just nervous. I'm paranoid. I'm totally fucking paranoid.’

      These last words were accompanied by a ferocious sideways slash of the air in front of him. Falcón tried to remember whether he'd ever heard Yacoub swear.

      Yacoub then launched himself into a long rant about the lengths to which he'd had to go in order to arrive unseen in this apartment.

      ‘You were careful, weren't you, Javier?’ he said at the end of it all.

      Falcón reciprocated with his own procedure, which seemed to have a mildly calming influence on Yacoub, who listened and gnawed at a hangnail. Then he lit another cigarette, sipped his tea, which was too hot, sat down on the sofa, and stood up again.

      ‘The last time you got like this was after those four days in Paris,’ said Falcón. ‘But you were OK. You were taken back into the fold.’

      ‘My cover's not blown,’ said Yacoub, quickly. ‘No, there's no problem with that. It's just that they've found the perfect way to keep me … close.’

      ‘Keep you close?’ said Falcón. ‘You mean in the sense of not straying? Does that mean they suspect you?’

      ‘Suspect is too strong a word,’ said Yacoub, tucking his hand under his armpit and chopping the air with his cigarette. ‘They like me. They need me. But they are naturally unsure of me. It's the part of my brain that isn't Moroccan that makes them nervous.’

      ‘We're Andalucíans, Yacoub, same people, same Berber genetic marker,’ said Falcón.

      ‘The problem for them is that they can't rely on me to think in a certain way. I'm not consistently Moroccan,’ said Yacoub. ‘And that makes them uneasy.’

      Falcón waited. If he'd been with another European he'd have asked the question: ‘Is this something to do with you being gay?’ But he had the same problem that the radical Islamist group, the GICM, had with Yacoub, but the other way round; Falcón couldn't rely on him to think like a European. His mentality for argument was more Moroccan. Direct questioning didn't work.

      ‘Before Friday noon prayers last week, Abdullah, my son, came to see me,’ said Yacoub. ‘I was alone in my study. He closed the door and came to the edge of my desk. He said: “I am going to tell you something that will make you very happy and very proud.” I was confused. The boy is only eighteen. I didn't remember any talk of a girl and, anyway, this would not be the way for that sort of thing to happen. I stood up as if I was about to hear important news. He came over to my side of the desk and told me that he had become a mujahideen and embraced me as a fellow warrior.’

      ‘The GICM have recruited him?’ said Falcón, cannoning out of his armchair.

      Yacoub nodded, drew on the cigarette, took the smoke deep into his lungs and then held open his arms in a gesture of total helplessness.

      ‘Directly after the Friday noon prayers, he left to continue his training.’

      ‘Continue?’

      ‘Exactly that,’ said Yacoub. ‘The boy's been lying to me. He's taken four weekends away in the last two months. I thought he was going to see his friends in Casablanca, but he's been out in the country on military-training exercises.’

      ‘How was he recruited?’

      Yacoub shrugged, shook his head. Falcón doubted that he was going to hear the precise truth.

      ‘He's been working with me at the factory, just temporarily before he goes to university at the end of the month. We go to a mosque in Salé. There are … elements there. I thought he was steering clear of them … clearly, he wasn't.’

      ‘Have you spoken to anyone about this?’

      ‘You are the first outsider.’

      ‘What about in the GICM?’

      ‘The military commander is not there at the moment. Even when he is, he's not easy to get to see. I've only conveyed my gratitude via an intermediary.’

      ‘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 СКАЧАТЬ