As if it were the training of James Bond, Roberto is overcoming tests.
“He manages to open an account in a bank without documentation”, is the first challenge that his instructor subjects him to.
"Go into a house in this building and let me see you drink a glass of water through the window," the training continues.
Roberto is the protagonist of
Operación Protector
, a novel about undercover agents written by the fist of someone who normally works in the shadows, the chief inspector of the National Police and expert in jihadist terrorism Iñaki Sanjuán.
As in spy stories, the first contact between the agent and his
handler
takes place in the back of a store in the center of Madrid.
It seems like a movie script, but the one who has written and lived part of what is recounted in the book laughs: “They are real tests and there are worse ones”.
In the plot, which mixes reality with fiction, the main agent has to prevent the purchase of weapons by the jihadists in Spain.
The scenarios in which it takes place are Brussels, just before the 2016 attacks in the Belgian capital, Madrid as the base of operations of the National Police Information Brigade, and the Costa del Sol, where the criminal organizations involved are based. in Agent Roberto's mission.
In one of the training phases, Roberto's journey makes the reader suffer with the tests he is subjected to at the base of the Special Operations Group, the well-known GEOs.
“It has been two years of work, I have traveled again to many of the places that appear in the book.
Everything to discover and recognize the work of undercover agents, an unknown world”, says Sanjuán, who works in the Information Brigade of the Madrid Headquarters.
All the agents who daily collect information on extremist groups, terrorist networks, youth gangs and groups of violent soccer fans work at its headquarters in the Moratalaz neighborhood.
"An infiltrator is not crazy, on the contrary, he has much more maturity than average," says the chief inspector.
fears and insecurities
Sanjuán, who does not specify for obvious reasons in which of the situations that appear in the book he has been involved, does acknowledge that there may be moments of "fear" in any mission, of those in which the drop of sweat advances hopelessly by the forehead
“An undercover agent is a human being with fears and insecurities.
That is why a lot of training and cold blood is needed.
But nothing can prepare you for the uncertainty of what's going to happen when you walk into a meeting or walk into a house,” he says.
The book gives surprises, such as the fact that sometimes it is the very heads of the illegal trafficking criminal organizations who are aware that there is a police officer among their ranks.
“In this plot, both the criminal organization that sells weapons and the police have a common enemy, which is Islamic terrorism.
But those moments of action are not the fundamental ones, as he explains to the policeman, but rather all the previous preparation of that character in the film script who is going to have to embody the infiltrator.
In this case, an agent who becomes a criminal on the Costa del Sol: "While you have a meeting with one of these criminals, they are taking photos of you, studying you, then they will ask questions about you."
Roberto, the protagonist, even has a fictitious girlfriend.
“During the time that you become that person, you live in a permanent lie that you don't even tell your closest environment,” highlights the police officer.
In the life of the infiltrators, success is that there are no shots and no shots.
“The end of a mission is not like in the movies.
We didn't go in, we fired five shots, we killed the terrorists while they shoot you with a machine gun and they don't even touch you,” says Sanjuán.
In fact, the goal of an undercover agent is quite the opposite, to avoid what sometimes seems inevitable.
The Spanish police had to retrain without interruption and go from fighting ETA attacks to fighting the enemy that is jihadist terrorism.
"We came across an organization that had a very powerful propaganda apparatus, unlimited financial resources and soldiers willing to sacrifice themselves," says the chief inspector.
Stopping them is, in part, the work of the undercover.
In these pages you can see what his double life is like,
Subscribe here
to our daily newsletter about Madrid.
Subscribe to continue reading
read without limits
Keep reading
I'm already a subscriber
