* 2) The ringleaders themselves, Lucrecio Arenas and Cesar Benito, had been murdered before they could be arrested. The former had been shot just as he was about to dive into his swimming pool in Marbella and the latter had had his throat so brutally chopped with the blade of a hand that he'd choked to death in his hotel room in Madrid. * 3) Over the last three months a plethora of agencies, at the behest of the board of directors, had gone through the offices of the Banco Omni in Madrid, where Lucrecio Arenas had been the Chief Executive Officer. They'd interviewed all his old colleagues and business contacts, searched his properties and grilled his family, but had found nothing. * 4) They'd also gone through the Horizonte Group's building in Barcelona where Cesar Benito had been an architect and board director of the construction division. They'd searched his apartments, houses in the Costa del Sol and studio, and interviewed everybody he'd ever known and likewise found nothing. * 5) They had tried to gain access to the I4IT (Europe) building in Madrid. This company was the European arm of an American-based investment group run by two born-again Christians from Cleveland, Ohio. They were the ultimate owners of Horizonte and, through a team of highly paid lawyers, had successfully blocked all investigations, arguing that the police had no right to enter their offices.

Every time Falcon threw himself into his chair he faced that chart and the hard brick wall behind it.

The world had moved on, as it always did, even after New York, Madrid and London, but Falcon had to mark time, wandering aimlessly in the maze of passages that the conspiracy had become.