Midnight in Madrid rt-2

by Noel Hynd

  Pedro would be taking the next week off. The official reason was to visit his ailing mother in Malaga. But the real reason, he confessed to Maria, was that he was going to be spending a week with a woman he had just met and whom he was falling for in a big way.

  The complication was that she, the woman he wanted to spend time with, was married to a man in Madrid, a man from a good family and who worked in the financial industry. The woman and her husband had agreed to separate, and Pedro was free to go off with her. But public appearances had to be maintained for all parties.

  Hence, the charade about the ailing mother.

  Maria smiled when Pedro brought her up to date on the newest developments in his life. They were, as they discussed it, in the stinky darkness beneath the Calle de Antocha, with heavy traffic rumbling overhead. The sunshine of Malaga to the extreme south was a world and a half away. But Maria wished him well, even though she suffered a small pang of envy. Then she posed the inevitable next question.

  “If you’re away,” she said, “who will I be assigned to work with?”

  Pedro already knew.

  “Jose Luis,” he said, referring to another track walker: Jose Luis Martinez Marques.

  Maria suffered a little cringe. She knew Marques. She didn’t like him or his approach to the job. He liked to let things slide. His observation techniques were careless, his reports shoddy. But the union protected him.

  “Well,” she said. “It’s only a week?”

  “Si.”

  “I can put up with anyone for a week,” she said. “Even Martinez Marques.”

  They laughed, Pedro and Maria, and turned their attention to a safety hazard. There were a pair of emergency lights that were flickering deep in the tunnel under Calle de Atocha. These would have to be replaced. They began making a report on a handheld computer.

  At the same time, they both became aware of a tapping sound, like someone hammering or chiseling, somewhere on the other side of the walls. Both were aware of it but neither said anything. They carried keys that could unlock doors that led to some of the old passageways that wound their way under the city. But no one ever went in there. A train rumbled into the station and glided to a halt. When it had left, the tapping sound had stopped. So they gave it no further notice.

  TWENTY-THREE

  MADRID, SEPTEMBER 8, AFTERNOON

  O n a cluttered backstreet next to the Rastro, Jean-Claude watched the block for a quarter hour before crossing the street and trying the door to a small shuttered shop across the way.

  The door was locked. But from within, a meaty hand pushed aside a curtain. Two dark eyes peered into Jean-Claude’s, then past him, and then a bolt dropped from within. The door opened quick, Jean-Claude entered, and the door closed and locked again.

  Jean-Claude found himself standing in a compact, cluttered establishment that seemed to sell both everything and nothing.

  The two men exchanged cautious greetings in Arabic.

  “You’re aware of the nature of my visit?” Jean-Claude asked.

  “I am,” Farooq answered, “but only in general terms.” Farooq retreated to a position behind a high counter. Jean-Claude assumed, given the nature of his business, he kept at least one weapon there. He held aloft a plump finger, indicating that Jean-Claude should wait for a moment. He walked to a table behind his counter and turned on an old television set. He adjusted the volume up high, then turned back to his customer.

  “Now,” Farooq said. “Perhaps you could explain your needs in greater detail? But do keep in mind that for reasons of security, I keep very little in stock here.”

  “I understand,” Jean-Claude said.

  “Good. Then I would like to understand too. What is it you desire?”

  “Detonators,” Jean-Claude said, continuing in Arabic, “for explosives. A series of very good ones with a zero failure rate.”

  Farooq nodded amiably and his eyes twinkled with mischief. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that you’re in the construction business,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t be foolish enough to tell a lie like that,” Jean-Claude answered, “and you wouldn’t be foolish enough to believe it.”

  “Perhaps you could share with me a bit about your project,” Farooq said. “I sense that you have given yourself a challenge, perhaps an ideological one.”

  Jean-Claude kept quiet.

  “What sort of explosives will you be working with? What exactly do you require?”

  Jean-Claude said nothing.

  “I could supply you with a very basic device that should work for you,” Farooq said. “It would be similar to a standard blasting cap with a primary consisting of a compound formed from lead azide, lead styphnate, and aluminum. It would be pressed into place above the base charge, which is usually TNT.”

  “I have explosives more sophisticated and more powerful than TNT,” Jean-Claude said.

  Farooq’s attitude changed slightly. His expression darkened and his tone of voice became more grave.

  “What might your target be?” he asked. “An individual? Several individuals. A vehicle? Moving or stationery? Large? Small?”

  “A building,” said Jean-Claude.

  “A building or the people in it?” Farooq asked.

  “Both,” Jean-Claude said.

  “Very good,” Farooq continued after a moment. “For your purposes then, might I suggest a relatively new item known as a ‘slapper’ detonator? This variety uses thin plates accelerated by an electrically exploded wire or foil to deliver the initial shock…”

  “No,” Jean-Claude said. “I consider that type of detonator unreliable. I’m seeking a British item known as a Number Ten Delay switch, which is unavailable in Spain except through merchants such as yourself.”

  The Number Ten Delay was a sort of “timing pencil.” It consisted of a brass tube, with a copper section at one end, which contains a glass vial of cupric chloride. A spring-loaded striker was held under tension and kept in place by a thin metal wire. The timer would be primed by crushing the copper section of the tube to break the phial of cupric chloride, which then would slowly eat through the wire holding back the striker. The striker would shoot down the hollow center of the detonator and hit a percussion cap at the other end of the detonator and the combustion would follow. A delay switch ranged from ten minutes to twenty-four hours, accurate within plus or minus three minutes in an hour’s delay and plus or minus an hour in a twelve-hour delay.

  Farooq nodded thoughtfully. “I see,” he said. “Then for the first time I understand the high quality of explosives that you have. In what form are the explosives now?”

  “Twenty individual bricks,” Jean-Claude said.

  “They would be military quality then, I would suspect.”

  Jean-Claude said nothing, which was an implied yes.

  Farooq thought for a moment then washed his hands at a sink behind his counter. “And you have them in your possession, these explosives?”

  “Spare me the stupid inquiries. Would I be here if I didn’t? Again, I know the product that I need. Can you get them for me with no chance that they can ever be traced.”

  Farooq was toweling his hands dry by now. “I believe I can,” he said softly.

  “Perfect,” Jean-Claude said after a few minutes of examination. “I need two packs with the twelve-hour delay. Can you get them for me?”

  “Yes, I can. It will take a few days, but I have my own resources.”

  “How much will this cost me?”

  The owner wrote an outrageous money figure down on a piece of paper.

  “I will also require the entire payment in advance,” Farooq added.

  “You’re a robber!” Jean-Claude snapped.

  “I am a businessman,” the dealer said. “And, my friend,” the old Arab said. “You are not just buying detonators and the ability to strike at Western infidels. You are also buying my silence and good will. I have been in business for a long time. There must be a reason, and the reason is
that my first dissatisfied customer will return and kill me. So I don’t expect you to become one. My price is high, but I deliver with discretion and safety for the buyer. So do we do business or do I ask you to leave?”

  Jean-Claude glared at him. Then he nodded, peeled off a wad of money, and paid.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  MADRID, SEPTEMBER 8, AFTERNOON AND EVENING

  F rom the National Police Headquarters, Alex walked back to the Ritz, relaxed for an hour, and then fired up her laptop again. She was trying to get an overall feel of art theft, a grip on it and the people who commit it. There was no way to approach a case without having a feel for it.

  Hours passed. She had a light dinner delivered to her room. She felt stale, almost unproductive. She had learned a lot this day but wasn’t sure she had made any real progress or yet had an angle on the case. After her dinner, she prowled through more odds and ends about art theft and art thieves.

  Item: The original of a Norman Rockwell reproduction titled Russian Schoolroom was found in the collection of the American movie mogul Steven Spielberg in 2007. Spielberg had paid about $200,000 for the 16 x 37 canvas in a legitimate purchase and then had alerted the FBI immediately when he learned of its questionable provenance.

  Item: Art thieves-as professional criminals-do a simple risk-versus-reward evaluation. They know that even if they receive only a fraction of the work’s market value, the cash gained was at low risk of death or injury. And museums and private collectors are an easy touch.

  Item: Nor had anyone seen any trace of the biggest art theft in European history. In February of 2008, a gang swiped four paintings worth an estimated $163 million from the E.G. Buehrle Collection in Zurich, Switzerland. They took works by Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh.

  “These paintings were extremely valuable on the open market, but they never went onto the open market,” said a Swiss detective at the time. “So they’re priceless but they’re also worthless.”

  Item: Some thieves often try to ransom the art back to the museum or the insurance company. Usually, an insurance company would rather get art back at a fraction of its original price than pay the owner its insured value. Ransoming art to an insurance company through an intermediary adds ten to twenty percent to the market value, which often turns into quite a lot of money.

  Item: Art thieves rarely face justice. A work of art does not require a title document in order to be transferred from one owner to another, so a stolen object easily enters the legitimate stream of commerce. Even if the original thief can be identified, there is also a statute of limitations on prosecution for theft.

  And a final item, having its numbing effect on Alex:

  Even if a stolen work is recovered, the original owners may not get it back. Art stolen from a Los Angeles mansion in 2003 and sold in Sweden remained with its Swedish purchasers. Even though the thief was caught, the Swedish government refused to return the paintings, claiming that according to Swedish law, the auction buyers had purchased the paintings in good faith. Laws governing art theft were a maze of contradictions from one country to the next, often offering the trained investigator little more than frustration.

  Alex leaned back and took stock. Whoever had pilfered The Pieta of Malta from the museum in Madrid was not to be mistaken for a high-society, tuxedo-wearing, Thomas Crown Affair style thief.

  She stared at her computer screen, a picture of confusion and doubt. Maybe it was time to return to America. She could opt out of this Pieta of Malta case very easily.

  Maybe she should, she told herself.

  She closed out of her laptop, drew a breath, and watched evening settle in across the city.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  MADRID, SEPTEMBER 8, EVENING

  T he Iberia flight from Geneva to Madrid glided into its landing trajectory at 10:15 that evening. In a business-class seat by a window, John Sun gazed out the window and watched the lights of the city stretch out below him. Then the plane descended from its path in the purple sky, and as the 727 banked, the traveler picked up the lead-in lights that beckoned the aircraft into Aeropuerto Barajas, one of Europe’s busiest and most modern facilities.

  There was much on his mind. In one capacity or another, he had presided over three deaths in Switzerland. Now he was just as happy to be out of the country. The farther and faster he got away from the place, the better he would feel. The business of death, the back-alley enforcement of his nation’s interests, was never an attractive business. He was experienced in it and efficient at it, but that didn’t mean he was wedded to it or even liked it. In fact, in ways that he couldn’t even explain to himself, it always unsettled him. Then again, the world was a cruel, nasty place, and all other rules of life followed from that one.

  So what else could he do?

  His mind was flooded with thoughts like these as the soil of Spain rose to meet his arriving flight. He glanced downward through his window and saw that the flight was above the grassy terrain leading to the runway.

  Then the grass was replaced by a stream of runway lights and then a blur of numbered panels, white on gray-black asphalt. Then came the welcome thump and bump of the tires. There followed the roar of the brakes and the lifting of the wing flaps, and then the deceleration on the runway.

  Sun had actually been hoping to go home to his special lady, but at least he had had a few hours in Switzerland to pick up a piece of jewelry for her, a beautiful diamond and gold bracelet. This he carried with him, though it was the least of his concerns right now. There were others to deal with first and an assignment that started to appear open-ended. So be it. Life had its strange twists and turns. Even the cultural icon of his grandfather’s generation, Confucius, would not have disagreed with that.

  The plane rolled smoothly to a halt. It taxied to a gate.

  John Sun was traveling light as always. He passed easily through immigration. He spoke fluent Spanish with the agents while also keeping an eye on the uniformed Spanish police who patrolled the airport with automatic weapons. He also easily spotted the plainclothes people. In his peripheral view, he also checked the surveillance cameras, both the obvious ones and the hidden ones. It was almost a game to him to find them without looking directly at them.

  Then he passed through customs with equal ease. A trio of uniformed customs officers, two men and a woman, waved him through to the concourse.

  Now he was officially in Spain.

  TWENTY-SIX

  MADRID, SEPTEMBER 9, MORNING

  T he Museo de Arqueologico is perhaps Madrid’s finest museum, after the immense Prado. The museum stands like a mid-nineteenth-century fortress on the Calle Serrano, not far from the Ritz and not far from the American Embassy. Founded by Queen Isabel II in 1867, the building houses archeological treasures excavated from Spanish soil from prehistoric times to the present. Key attractions have for years included religious art from countless centuries, including seventh-century votive crowns from Toledo, ceramics from the ancient civilization at El Argar, a carved ivory crucifix that had been carved for King Fernando I and Queen Sancha in 1063, which included within it a space for a sliver of wood from the True Cross and an extensive collection of Roman mosaics and Islamic pottery. It was by no coincidence that The Pieta of Malta had been on display here.

  Alex met Rizzo at the front of the museum the next morning, an hour before the institution would open to the public. They were joined by Rolland Fitzpatrick, the young Englishman, and LeMaitre, from the French SNDCE. A private guard took them to the office of Jose Rivera, the curator.

  Floyd Connelly, the unpredictable representative of US Customs, had also expressed interest in joining them, Rivera announced, so they waited for him for several minutes. After a quarter hour, however, Connelly was officially labeled a no-show.

  Thereafter, the brief tour started.

  Two weeks earlier, Rivera explained in Spanish as they walked the first floor together, three nimble thieves armed with automatic weapons had tunneled
under the three-story Museo Arqueologico late at night, penetrated the museum through a basement wall, and then emerged in the uniforms of the Policia Municipal. They had bound the four guards on duty and sabotaged the alarm system that would have alerted Madrid municipal police of a robbery in progress.

  The thieves had ignored the vast collection of seventh-century gold crowns from Toledo province, the priceless Islamic pottery, and the Roman mosaics to find The Pieta of Malta.

  They knew exactly what they wanted and exactly where it was located. Conveniently, since the museum was arranged chronologically, their target had been on the first floor, easily visible and accessible. The leader smashed its glass case, grabbed it, and the gang of them were out the door with it within five minutes.

  As Rivera guided his visitors from the site of the penetration to the actual site of the theft, he engaged in a back-and-forth of questions from the four detectives. LeMaitre and Fitzpatrick had an old-school style about them, despite their comparative youth, and made handwritten notes in their notebooks. Rizzo followed with arms folded much of the time, but held a small recorder that took in every word for later review. Alex trusted her memory and frequently found note taking a distraction, so she listened, tried to sort out the most salient details, and wrote down nothing. She knew she could always consult back with Rivera or any of the others present.