by Owen Chance
He found himself, too, with strangely little to do in Madrid. Ambassador Anderson and Natalie were in meetings all day as the summit began tomorrow. And though a great deal faced Thom, there was relatively little he could do until he and Anderson came up with a more solid plan to confront Vice President Grant Adams and to thwart the Russian plan. So he waited. He emailed Jason, who had moved Thom’s things into a storage unit but refused to let Thom pay for it. Jason had also sent him the links to several condos for rent in their neighborhood, which Thom perused and thanked Jason for sending. He didn’t tell Jason, however, that he would not be renting, that he would be buying, or of the sudden rush of income coming his way from the sale of the ranch. Thom wasn’t even sure he wanted to be in Washington for a while, so he simply emailed Jason a kind, if not also a little curt, email thanking him for his help.
After breakfast, Thom meandered through the Parque de El Retiro, stopping to buy Trey a postcard at the Palacio de Cristal and to sit in the cool air of one of the greenhouse’s many rooms filled tiled floor to glass ceiling with plants from every part of the world. He bought a coffee at a small café bordering the park and continued strolling east into the Estrella neighborhood, home to several of Madrid’s most reputable antiques dealers. His destination was a small shop in an alley behind the Hospital Beata Maria Ana. On a plain, frosted glass door, small, but perfect gold filigree letters read Alcocer Anticuarios.
Señor Alcocer opened his small shop in 1930, now run by his great-grandson, also Señor Alcocer. Thom entered the shop and Alcocer was sitting behind his great wooden counter, bent over a small brass set of mechanisms surely meant for one of the gas lamps in which he specialized. “Thom,” he yelled, “Hello friend, hello! I had a feeling you would be coming by. A woman dropped this off and asked me to give it to you, about half an hour ago.”
The antique dealer handed Thom a small envelope, which contained just a card of heavy, but fine cardstock inside. Thom didn’t have to read it to know what it said. Pull the thread, and the whole world unravels.
2.
The master bedroom of the presidential suite at the Barceló Emperatriz was slanted by morning sun. Mrs. Adams slept in the massive king bed, in a mess of Egyptian cotton sheets twisted around her body. She would sleep until ten, at least, Vice President Grant Adams knew. His wife had barely woken up to be driven to the hotel, where she’d fallen into the bed as soon as they walked into the suite with massive floor-to-ceiling windows and slick modern furniture. On trans-Atlantic flights she upped her Ambien dose, just as he upped his whiskey dose. But where his wife was dead to the world, Grant Adams had gotten up at 5:45 in the morning, having slept fitfully as it was, to sweat out the tumblers of North Carolina bourbon he’d thrown back on the plane. After running five miles through the sleeping streets of central Madrid alongside his small Secret Service detail, the vice president was back to their hotel and showered by seven.
“Abi,” he sat beside her on the bed tying his loafers, then touching her shoulder gently, “Want to get up and have breakfast with me?” She groaned, pulling a pillow over her head, and waved off her husband. He couldn’t blame her. She needed this vacation, perhaps more than he did, to be away from their gilded prison and the busy schedule of dull appearances and obligations that dogged every vice presidential couple. She needed to be away from their children, even, and every reminder that he’d cheated on her. Grant Adams leaned down and pulled the pillow away from his wife, kissing her forehead and adding, “Don’t sleep the whole day away. Get out and take in a museum. You love Madrid.” She smiled up at him, and Grant knew that, whatever else happened, they would be okay.
Adams walked into the suite’s living room, where Sullivan, Ambassador Anderson, and Natalie were waiting for him. Anderson rose to greet him, “Good morning, Mr. Vice President. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m early to our briefing. I thought we might have breakfast at the rooftop pool?” Anderson was being especially chipper, which piqued Adams’ curiosity. The vice president turned to the head of his detail, who nodded, “We’ve cleared the area, sir.”
The foursome made their way up to the rooftop deck of the five-star hotel, an eighteenth century manor that had been converted into more of a lush resort in the middle of Madrid than just your run-of-the-mill luxury hotel. As they stepped into the sun, Anderson said, “Natalie, Sullivan, I would appreciate having breakfast with the vice president alone.” He led Adams by the elbow to a table set with flowers and coffee, croissants and eggs, fruit and orange juice, on the opposite side of the expansive rooftop, beyond the infinity pool overlooking Spain’s Baroque parliament building, and beside a giant potted palm tree. Natalie and Sullivan sat in a lounge area near the elevator they’d just exited, mostly ignoring each other, nibbling on croissants and becoming engrossed in their respective cellphones. Before Sullivan even finished half of his first cup of coffee, Natalie got up, saying, “If you’ll excuse me, I need to take care of some scheduling issues.” She seemed frustrated, or something close to it, though Sullivan only looked up and smiled as she left.
Back across the rooftop, Anderson dropped the niceties he had deployed for the morning thus far. “Grant,” he asked the vice president, “I’m just going to come out and ask you: are you working for the Russians?”
Adams coughed, choking up a small piece of bright orange cantaloupe he was forced to spit into his hand. But he did not laugh at the incredulousness of his colleague’s question, for there was, he feared, much evidence to the contrary if Anderson was willing to risk this confrontation.
3.
Just as Adams coughed up a piece of melon, two photographers appeared on the rooftop opposite the Barceló Emperatriz. This was not unusual. Madrid, especially before the day’s smog settled in, was particularly picturesque in the golden morning light. Between the hours of seven and nine, photographers from the local art school or working for any number of travel magazines could be seen on all the best roofs across the city’s center. But these were no ordinary photographers. They held no camera, but a listening device pointed at Ambassador Anderson and Vice President Adams. And they knew, somehow, that their meeting had been moved last minute from Adams’ suite to the rooftop pool.
4.
British Foreign Minister Kelly Franklin landed at the small executive airport north of downtown Madrid at 7:45 in the morning, just as Anderson and Adams sat down for their awkward rooftop breakfast. Her jet held a small army of staff and security agents, including one brand new agent. Dressed in a trim black suit and large reflective aviator sunglasses, he was a quiet man who spoke even less than the rest of the foreign minister’s security detail. Franklin had been told his name was Mackenzie Jones, but in reality, his name was Petrov Lubyanka. M.I.6 had snuck him into Madrid under the nose of their own foreign minister.
5.
Ambassador Anderson waved over a waiter, who brought Vice President Adams a glass of water. Adams drank, coughed again, took another gulp of the water, and then finally cleared his throat. “Paul,” he said weakly, “I know it looks like I have cozied up to Vasily’s Kremlin.” The ambassador nodded, but said nothing. “But I am not a traitor. The Russians set me up and are holding an affair over my head, trying to get me to…”
Adams grabbed his throat and started coughing violently again. Anderson knew something was wrong, and yelled across the pool, “Sullivan, get a doctor!” The Secret Service agents rushed over as Anderson helped the vice president stand up. But then Adams stopped choking and collapsed, his eyes rolling towards the back of his skull. They laid him out flat on the rooftop. Almost immediately, the Vice President of the United States of America was not breathing.
Chapter Twenty-five
1.
A medical team always traveled with the vice president, and they rushed to the rooftop under the direction of an Army doctor who had cut her teeth on the battlefields of Kandahar province, just like Grant Adams himself. She found a faint heart beat and performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as the am
bulance was called to the Barceló Emperatriz. The ambassador and Sullivan were rejoined by Natalie, and they gave the medical team room to work.
In just under a minute, the doctor let one of her deputies take over on-sight care as she spoke to Anderson, “Sir, his heart beat is extremely slow and his breathing is constricted. We need to get him to the hospital and into an O.R. before the lack of oxygen gives him brain damage, if it hasn’t already. Call the White House. The vice president has had a stroke.”
Vice President Grant Adams was loaded in an ambulance with his medical team and chief of staff in tow. As they drove to the Hospital Central de la Cruz Roja San José y Santa Adela, Ambassador Anderson and Natalie ran to the presidential suite, where Abigail Adams was in the shower when her husband collapsed. His sweetness had moved her out of bed, and she had planned to take in a museum and find him a gift before lunch.
2.
Señor Alcocer brought Thom, who had slipped into an attack of quick successive hiccups upon receiving the note, a glass of water from the backroom. Thom sat on the man’s workbench and drank, then laid his head between his legs until the hiccups subsided. He took a nearby notepad and pencil to hand, and scribbled, “Did she look at anything while she was here?” Alcocer glanced around and pointed to a lamp on a table opposite the register, a model from 1870s France painted with purple irises and red poppies.
Thom walked over to the lamp and felt around the lip of its heavy brass base, stopping when his finger hit a bump at one corner. He pulled on the bump with his fingers, walked back to Alcocer and showed him a small listening device before heading into the water closet just behind the workbench, where he flushed the bug down the toilet. “¿Qué cojones?” Alcocer exclaimed, “Thom, what is going on?”
Thom didn’t want to tell his friend about the deep shit in which he had found himself, an international triangulation that started with digital spying but had escalated to the assassination of an ambassador and who knew who else. He sighed. “I can’t tell you,” Thom said truthfully, “But I’m being followed, and I’m sorry to have brought this into your shop, friend.” Alcocer shook his head, “No, no, my friend is in danger.” He walked over and gave Thom a big hug, “I don’t know what I can do, but if I can help…”
A brick crashed through the shop’s glass door. Thom and Alcocer fell to the ground, covering their heads. Alcocer reached up to grab a pistol from a drawer underneath his workbench.
3.
The Army doctor was barely able to stabilize the vice president in the ambulance on the drive to the Hospital Central de la Cruz Roja San José y Santa Adela, where he was immediately prepped upon arrival and taken into surgery. Grant Adams had, indeed, suffered a sudden stroke during breakfast, and the swelling on his brain stem threatened to shut down his nervous system entirely.
Led by a police escort, Abi Adams rode with Ambassador Anderson and Natalie to the hospital as surgeons began to operate on her husband. They rode mostly in silence. Abi had herself collapsed in shock upon leaving the bathroom in her robe and Natalie telling her the news. Natalie and the ambassador were able, with the aid of a Secret Service agent, to bring Abi to her feet, and Natalie helped her get dressed in a linen pant suit with simple white blouse, though her hair was still wet from the shower. Abi looked beautiful, striking as ever despite this hurry. She may have to appear before the press later, once her husband was brought out of surgery. She hoped she had to appear before the press. It would mean her husband had survived.
An entire wing of the Hospital Central de la Cruz Roja San José y Santa Adela’s expansive surgery center was coordained off. Sullivan Andrews and a doctor greeted them at the entrance to the surgery center, and the doctor quickly updated Mrs. Adams, explaining how the surgery team was currently relieving the pressure that had built up on the vice president’s brain stem as a result of his stroke, and that they should have more news within the hour. Secret Service agents led Abi, Sullivan, Natalie, and Anderson into a quiet waiting room, where they sat on buttery leather sofas and ignored the cookies and coffee someone had laid out for them. Absentmindedly, Abi clicked her heel on the white marble floor to the faint click of the clock’s second hand.
4.
As planned, Petrov was sent to scout security for a place Britain’s Foreign Minister would never actually visit: a restaurant near the conference center where the NATO Summit was set to begin the following day. This only served to get him away from the other agents and Franklin’s staff. He headed straight to Chueca, Madrid’s gay neighborhood, and into a salon named, appropriately enough, Romeo Y Julius.
Once on leave in Madrid, Petrov had gotten the best haircut of his young Russian life here, and he hoped they could help him now. As he walked in the door, a Spanish club remix of the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” thumped from the speakers mounted above the styling stations. Even though it was just before nine in the morning, Andre, the only stylist in the shop, offered Petrov a rebujito, a cocktail the salon made with cheap sherry and Sprite, and guided him to the chair. As he sat, Petrov clinked glasses with Andre. They threw back their drinks and Andre asked him, “What are we doing this morning, darling?”
In the mirror, Petrov smiled. “I want to look like someone else entirely.”
5.
The vice president’s surgery was a success, though the damage his stroke had done would not be known for a few hours still. The lead Spanish surgeon and the American Army doctor came into the waiting room. The latter said, “We’d like to speak with Mrs. Adams and Ambassador Anderson alone, please,” so Natalie, Sullivan, and the rest of the staff who had gathered over the past hour gave them the room.
Abi took the Spanish surgeon’s hands into her own, “Thank you for saving my husband.” She then did the same for the American, and tears came to Abi’s eyes for the first time that morning. Anderson put his arm around Abi’s shoulders, and the American doctor cleared her throat, “Mrs. Adams, Ambassador Anderson, indeed the surgery was a success. But there’s something that became clear as we operated. The typical signs of stroke were not present. No other damage on the frontal lobe or in the spinal column. Nothing. Just an acute swelling at the base of the brain stem.”
She paused. “We believe the vice president was given an acute dose of serum albumin, which caused his brain stem to swell on the spot so that he collapsed in a stroke. In short, we believe this was an attempted assassination.”
Chapter Twenty-six
1.
“Mrs. Adams, Mr. Ambassador, if you’ll excuse us,” the Army doctor said, “we need to get back to Vice President Adams. I’ll come get you when we’re able to wake him up.” Abi Adams’ mouth was agape, and Ambassador Anderson squeezed her shoulder and then spoke to the surgeons, “Thank you, doctors. And please, not a word of this to anyone.”
The doctors nodded and turned to leave, to return to their patient, the Vice President of the United States of America, who had just suffered a strange stroke which reeked of an attempted assassination. At the very least, they all knew, this was a warning shot.
Anderson stared at Abi, waiting for her to speak. She avoided his gaze, picking at a small pull in the hem of her linen blazer, which seemed, at this second, to bother her more than the situation in which they found themselves, though the ambassador knew this wasn’t true, just a coping mechanism. “My mother hates linen,” Mrs. Adams finally said, giving up on her jacket and making eye contact with the ambassador for the first time since the surgeons left the room, “And I guess I should know better than to travel in it. It wrinkles so easily and snags on everything.” She paused. Ambassador Anderson had never been her husband’s biggest fan — and vice versa — but the two shared a larger political ideology and patriotism, even if little else, and Anderson was being genuinely kind to her now. “Paul, if I may,” she said, and Anderson nodded, “Of course, Mrs. Adams.”
“Please,” she said, “Call me Abi.” She walked over to a window overlooking a sculpture garden between the surgical ward and the back o
f the emergency room. Anderson followed her, and as they took in a young girl pulling an oxygen tank beside her, holding the hand of a woman that might be her grandmother or aunt or a volunteer, Abi continued, “I’m worried about Grant, Paul. He’s been under a lot of pressure the last six months, more than normal. And for the first time in a long time,” she paused as the girl looked up at them from the courtyard, then waved, “I think he’s hiding something from me.” The girl waved back, and the vice president’s wife sighed, “Something big, Paul. Something very big.”
Abi Adams straightened the front of her jacket and walked back to a large white leather sofa in the corner. She picked up a three-month old copy of People magazine. All they could do in this moment was wait.
2.
Behind the counter, Thom hyperventilated with his head between his knees as Señor Alcocer brandished the pistol and pulled a curtain just a few inches towards him so that he could peek out onto the street. Alcocer saw no one, and he shook his head, “This is not the first time this has happened, dear Thomas. I imagine it was just some kids looking for a thrill, which I admit is quite the coincidence. Are you okay, friend?”