by James Codlin
The professor went to the websites of the various libraries that his friend in Spain had indicated David Broch had visited. There was something about the nature of the libraries and the works they housed that bothered Lenin, but he was exhausted and couldn’t bring any conclusion to the fore of his consciousness. He looked his watch, but his vision was blurred by hours of concentration, stress, and lack of sleep. On the armchair next to the desk, Gina had already dozed off.
Lenin put his head down on his arms, vowing to rest his eyes for only a moment.
*
King Carlos’s chamberlain appeared with a mobile phone on a silver tray. “Majesty, Mr. Waro Moto requests that you call him at your earliest convenience.”
The king dismissed the chamberlain, tapped Moto’s number, and checked the screen to ensure that the encryption was enabled.
“Please excuse me for disturbing you, Your Majesty,” Moto said in English, “but a clarification is required. Martín Ibarra was briefly out of our control. I was not aware of this.”
The king considered this for a moment. “Yes. Unfortunately, he briefly escaped while he was being detained in Venezuela.”
“I see. Did he contact Gina Ishikawa or Teodoro Lenin?”
“I thought they were dead.”
“It seems not,” Moto said. There was silence, and then Moto continued. “Your Majesty, it would have been better if I had known earlier about Ibarra.”
“I understand. There were legitimate reasons for maintaining silence on the matter for the time being.”
“I see. Well, Serrano and his group have him again. President Ishikawa—”
“The president’s role is not important to you, Mr. Moto.”
“Your Majesty, judging from the communications I am hearing, he has been increasingly… ambivalent. I just want to be certain that we are all moving in the same direction, and that there are not loose ends that could harm us. Particularly since Lenin and the president’s daughter have shown up again.”
“Do not concern yourself, Mr. Moto,” the king said sharply. “President Ishikawa will be controlled. And what Ibarra knows or doesn’t will not matter for much longer.”
The king broke the connection, and Moto quietly fumed.
*
“Translator!” Lenin exclaimed as he sat up abruptly. He looked around and saw sunlight flooding the room.
Gina was still slumped over the armchair when she was startled awake by Lenin’s shout. “What?” she asked.
Lenin rubbed his face with the palms of his hands. “Broch’s Spanish was execrable. Good enough for ordering a drink at a nightclub, perhaps, but not for antiquated legal works. What was that name David mentioned during his voicemail?”
“You’re right!” she said. “Someone must have been working with him. Those recordings he made on my voicemail…” She flipped through the pages of notes on the table. “Julio. That was the name.”
“When David called you while you were in Rome, did he mention anyone named Julio?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Then I will make some calls.”
Lenin called the main research libraries in Zaragoza, Salamanca, Madrid, and Seville. In each case, the librarians said they remembered the American David Broch, but they had not seen any man with him. Nor did they recognize the name Julio.
Finally, Lenin called the Archive of the Indies. He talked to the director, a jovial and helpful man whom he knew from several stints of historical research that he had conducted at the Archives in person. The director, thrilled to hear that Lenin was still alive, said that he had signed a permit to allow Broch access to certain records, but had not met him in person.
“Would the librarian on duty know anything about his visits?” Lenin asked.
“Possibly. I’ll connect you now. Good luck, Teodoro, with whatever you are trying to find.”
There were a series of clicks and beeps.
“Hello?”
“This is Doctor Teodoro Lenin calling from South America. I understand that you may have met the American David Broch while he was doing some research.”
“Yes, I did, but please hold on a moment.” Lenin heard the clicking of a keyboard, and heard the librarian whispering, “Cero, cero, cero, uno, cinco, tres, dos, siete, nueve.”
“What?” Lenin asked.
“What?” the librarian parroted back to him.
“Were those numbers for me?”
The librarian said, “Oh. No, I was just entering a file number I was working on before I closed out of the program. Sorry, I was talking to myself, not you. Now, what can I do for you?”
“Was there a man with David Broch? Someone named Julio?”
“A man? No. There was always a young woman, but no, never another man.”
“A woman? Tell me about her!” Lenin laid the phone down and put on the speaker.
“She was a mamacita, if you understand my meaning.”
“Oh, yes, I do indeed,” Lenin said, and gave Gina an embarrassed eyeroll. “Um, did you by any chance learn her name?”
“She seemed just as interested in the American as in their research.”
“Really? Is that so?” Lenin looked up at Gina with a combination of amusement and exasperation. “And so, what was her name?”
“They couldn’t seem to keep their hands off each other!”
“How interesting,” Lenin said, maintaining a neutral tone while he threw out his arms and looked at Gina with amazement and dismay. “Lucky man. What was her name, please?”
“Name? I don’t know.”
Lenin banged the palm of his hand into his forehead.
“All I can tell you is that she sometimes wore T-shirts with ‘Universidad de Zaragoza Derecho’ printed on it.” The man laughed. “Stuck in my mind because they were always at least a size too small.”
Gina gestured to Lenin, who said, “Hold on a moment, will you?” before muting the phone.
“Remember the phone message David left with the flamenco music playing in the background?” Gina asked. “There was a woman’s voice.”
“Right! Maybe that was her. She had asked him to come back to the dance floor and then what had she said?”
Gina consulted their notes. “You get to see for free what others have to pay for.”
Lenin snapped his fingers. “A flamenco dancer, perhaps?” Lenin unmuted the phone. “Did she have to show an ID card to get into the library?”
“A very good thought, sir, but no,” the librarian said. “Since Mr. Broch had proper authorization from the director himself, she was admitted as his assistant without having to present identification.”
“Is it possible she signed for any of the records he checked out?”
“Hmm. No, that would not have been possible. Documents can only be signed out to the person named on the research permit.”
Gina punched the mute button impatiently. “Ask him what she looked like! Hair color, eye color, height, frame.”
Lenin did as he was instructed and Gina scribbled down the responses. “Thank you, sir,” he said. He exchanged a few pleasantries and the librarian hung up.
“Now we just need to canvass the flamenco clubs in Zaragoza,” Lenin said. He started typing.
*
The satellite systems operator at Moto Electric’s headquarters in Tokyo answered the call from the company’s Network Operations Center in Spain the moment it flashed on his console.
“Tokyo,” he said into his headset.
“Seville, here,” was the response in Japanese.
“Yes?” the operator asked.
“In accordance with Moto-san’s instructions, we have been monitoring commercial traffic originating in San Juan Diego for unusual patterns. In the last few minutes we have several… unusual calls. There were a series of calls from a hotel in San Juan Diego to various research libraries in Spain, and then the Archive of the Indies here in Seville. Since that original call, there has been another call made from that same number
in San Juan Diego to a number in Zaragoza. That call destination is… unique.”
“How so?”
“It is a flamenco club, very unusual in northern Spain.” Sensing impatience and irritation at the other end of the line, the Seville NOC technician continued quickly. “We were ordered to report anything unusual. Calls to libraries and a historic archive in Spain followed by a call to an ethnic dance club seemed—”
“Stand by,” the operator said. He keyed his console, connecting the man with his supervisor.
*
Waro Moto was perspiring heavily as he stepped off the treadmill. A young man handed a towel to Moto, who wiped his face with it. The young man bowed, handing him a phone. Moto pressed it to his ear and listened for a time.
“Yes. Yes, I agree. Very unusual. You were right to contact me. Please dispatch a team immediately to the origination point and the final termination point.”
He hung up the phone and turned to his assistant. “Tell the NOC in Spain to continuously monitor all traffic coming from the identified origination point in San Juan Diego. There seems to be yet another loose end.”
ChapTER NINETEEN
Lenin’s call was to a cabaret called La Morería just south of the Ebro River. The man answering immediately became defensive when Lenin asked about an English-speaking dancer matching the description that he had been given.
“Who wants to know?”
“My name is Teodoro Lenin. I am a professor of history at an American university.”
“You talk like an Argentine.”
“I am one. Very astute of you. And I have researched in Spain. I can give you references.”
The voice on the other end laughed wryly. “References. If you want to talk to her, come here and pay the cover fee like everyone else.”
“Please. She knows a friend of mine, David Broch, an American who is in peril. Just say his name and she’ll want to help.”
“Call me back in ten minutes.” The line went dead.
Lenin and Gina sat in silence, waiting for the allotted ten minutes to tick away. Finally Lenin gave her a “here goes nothing’ shrug” and dialed the phone, clicking on the speaker so that Gina could hear as well. The phone rang four times, and Lenin’s heart began to sink. They were going to be ignored.
But on the fifth ring, the phone was answered.
The voice on the other end was still cool, but Gina thought she heard a bit of genuine concern. “I want to know what this is about.”
“Is she there with you right now?” Lenin asked.
There was no answer.
“Ask her if she has heard of me.”
“She’s already said that she has.”
“And she must have told you I am truly a friend to the American. Please, it’s most urgent that I talk to her. Lives are in danger.”
“So I hear. Hold on a second.”
Lenin and Gina heard the muffled, indistinguishable sound of voices as the mouthpiece of the phone on the other end was covered. Then there was heavy, feminine breathing coming through the line.
“Miss? This is Teodoro Lenin. We have a mutual friend, David Broch. He—”
Lenin heard what sounded like a cough, and then soft sniffling.
“They killed him. They killed him.” The woman had the accent of Aragón and a trace of the Caló inflection that was heard among the Romani people of Spain known as gitanos.
Gina’s eyes widened, and she covered her mouth with her hand. Lenin’s heart dropped, as well, but he steeled himself and tried his best to maintain his composure. He took a deep breath. The woman needed to hear a calm voice or they risked losing her to her fears.
“Miss, listen to me, please. I’m trying to help. I know there’s nothing I can do now for Mr. Broch, but there are others who are also in danger. Please, I need your help.”
The sniffling continued, but it was the only response.
“First, what is your name, Miss?” Lenin asked.
She hesitated, then said, “Alejandra.”
“Thank you. Alejandra of whom?”
Another hesitation.
“Please. This is very important. Much as you trusted Mr. Broch, I need you to trust me.”
“Rojas. Rojas Deza.”
“Miss Rojas, do you know who retained David Broch to do the research?”
“I… I never knew their names. But David said it was to legitimize something that someone wanted to do.”
“Legitimize? What do you mean?”
“Just what the word means,” Rojas said. Her voice seemed to sharpen.
Lenin softened his voice and tried to take on the most comforting tone possible. “You are clearly someone very intelligent, and I think that you must be a law student. Otherwise you could never have helped David accurately translate all the very technical legal language in those documents.”
There was an extended silence.
“Please,” Lenin urged. “I’m trying very hard to understand about what happened to David Broch, and the specifics of the work he was doing.”
She responded, but with exasperation in her voice. “David was preparing a defense of what he called the status quo ante. It was to proclaim the Latin American declarations of independence and constitutions null and void and to restore the legitimacy of crown rule. David despised the premise, but he figured it was only a hypothetical exercise—that there was no way that anyone could actually act on what he was putting together. And he said the money was very good, and was reliably paid on time.” She paused for a moment, then let out a small, humorless laugh. “He thought the whole thing was ludicrous.”
“Miss, what you have just told me is very important. Do you have any of David’s papers—drafts or copies of the work he did? Anything at all that confirms what you just said, and that might include the names of whoever employed him?”
“Yes… there are some things—papers, flash drives. When…” Rojas took in a sharp breath. “When they… took him they also took his laptop and notes. I thought that everything was gone. But that night, I came back to my apartment and found a package with my name on it under my pillow. I haven’t gone through them yet.”
“Miss Rojas, I need to ask you to send as many pages and files as you can to me. Are the documents in electronic form?”
“The files are on a flash drive… maybe I can email them to you.”
Gina muted the phone. “I’ll set up a new account,” she said.
Lenin nodded. Gina got to work, and Lenin unmuted the phone. “I am going to set up a new email account online so that you can send them over. As for the hard copies…”
“I don’t have access to a scanner…”
“What about a fax?”
“Perhaps,” she said, seeming to mull it over. “But there are a lot of pages. I’d need to send them from a copy store. I don’t have access to a fax machine at the school.”
Lenin muted the phone and said to Gina, “Where is the contact information your mother gave to us?”
Gina, still typing on the computer, gestured at the pile of papers and notes that she and Lenin had been working on in the hotel room, and Lenin began to rummage through them. Lenin unmuted the phone.
“I will give you a fax number in just a few moments.” He paused for a moment, considering his options. “And a way to pay for the transmission and other costs.”
Gina heard him and paused her typing, giving him a questioning glance that said “really?” Lenin motioned impatiently for her to continue, and she did so, but not before giving him an arched brow.
“Alright,” said Rojas on the phone.
Buying some time while Gina set up the email, Lenin asked, “Miss, do you happen to know who ‘Julio’ is?”
Alejandra’s tone changed in an instant to seething anger. “Bastard! Son of a whore!”
“Was he the one who killed David?” he asked.
“No, but he may as well have. He was the Judas. A poor little rich boy. He became David’s friend and then he sold him to them
for pieces of silver.”
“And who are ‘them’?”
“I saw a man—just once, in the street. A priest. In a very expensive German car. He—”
She was interrupted by a loud thud and a crash. The telephone banged on something hard and Rojas screamed. The bartender shrieked a slur, and then the line went dead.
Gina and Lenin sat in stunned silence. “I had the proof,” Lenin said. “It was there, almost in my hands. But someone has denied it to me again.”
“Who?”
“Based on the bartender’s unfortunate choice of words, they were Chinese. Though I’m not sure I’d trust a club owner to distinguish one East Asian nationality from another.”
“What about my father?” Gina asked. “Could he be behind this?”
“Perhaps,” Lenin said, “but I don’t think his arm is long enough. It’s a miracle that he was able to cobble together the consensus he needed to get the military resources he has, and even those are far from fully adequate. But whomever it is seems to know our every move. How? It’s as though they have ears everywhere.”
Gina bent over and pressed her head between her hands. “Moto,” she said. “He won the San Juan Diego telecommunications contracts, both civilian and governmental. He’s the only one who could be tracking us so easily.”
Lenin stared at her. “I killed that poor girl.”
Gina stood. “And we’re next unless we get moving right now.”
They snatched up their notes and the laptop and scrambled down the stairs. As they raced into the lobby, they saw a taxi stop just outside the glass door. An Asian man in a black suit got out, staring at the hotel entrance. Lenin and Gina darted into a hallway that led out to a patio area. As they ran toward the street a bullet snapped past Lenin’s head.
Horns blew and people shouted curses as Lenin and Gina sprinted between the cars. They crouched beside a battered convertible, and the driver bellowed at them to get away from his car. The convertible’s windshield spiderwebbed as three bullets smacked through the glass. The driver yelped and punched the accelerator, smashing into the car in front of him. Undeterred, he floored the pedal, spinning his tires and slowly propelling the car he hit into the one in front of it. Horns blew again, and men jumped out of their cars, looking around and shouting.