'We found some cocaine in his car. Is that a sideline or…?'

'He's recently moved into cocaine distribution. Or rather, his gang leader has struck a deal for product coming in from Galicia and they've now come to some form of agreement with the Colombians with regard to their operations on the Costa del Sol.'

'So where is Lukyanov in the hierarchy?' asked Elvira.

Cortes nodded to Diaz.

'Difficult question, and we're wondering about the significance of finding him in a car bound for Seville with nearly eight million euros,' said Diaz. 'He's important. The Russians make huge profits from the sex trade, more than they make from drugs at the moment. The hierarchy has been a problem in the last year since we had Operation Wasp in 2005 and the Georgian boss of the Russian mafia here in Spain fled to Dubai.'

'Dubai?' asked Elvira.

'That's where you go nowadays if you're a criminal, a terrorist, an arms trader, a money-launderer…'

'Or a builder,' finished Cortes. 'It's the Costa del Sol of the Middle East.'

'Did that leave a power vacuum here in Spain?' asked Falcon.

'No, his position was taken over by Leonid Revnik, who was sent from Moscow to take control. It was not a popular move with the mafia soldiers on the ground, mainly because his first act was to execute two leading mafia "directors" from one of the Moscow brigades who had encroached on his turf,' said Diaz.

'They were both found bound, gagged and shot in the back of the head in the Sierra Bermeja, ten kilometres north of Estepona,' said Cortes.

'We think that it was some old feud, dating back to the 1990s in Moscow, but what it did was create nervousness among the soldiers. They found they were having to run their business and look out for revenge attacks. There have been four "disappearances" so far this year.