Midnight in Madrid rt-2

by Noel Hynd

  Without asking, the second cop picked up Jean-Claude’s backpack and looked into it. Luckily, it was empty, other than tools. But the cop wasn’t satisfied. He picked up a chisel and turned it over and over, examining it with growing suspicion.

  The lead cop continued to eye the small ID card issued by the French government. He raised his glasses for a good look. His gaze jumped back and forth between Jean-Claude and the card.

  “?Frances?” the lead cop asked.

  “Si. Oui.” Jean-Claude answered. He knew if he were asked to stand up, things would get worse.

  “What are you doing with these things?” the second cop asked of the tools. “Breaking into cars? Homes?”

  “I’m a workman. A carpenter,” Jean-Claude said. Then he added, with a smile, “Like Jesus.”

  The two cops didn’t think that was funny. Not at all and particularly not coming from a French Arab. They only glared. Jean-Claude knew he had miscalculated with that remark.

  “ Se levanta, por favor,” the lead cop said. Stand up!

  Jean-Claude’s insides nearly exploded. He would have bolted, but the second cop had blocked his exit, not by coincidence. The second cop’s meaty hand was on his sidearm also. Not by coincidence either.

  The first cop pulled out a handheld tracking computer and ran Jean-Claude’s ID through it like a credit card. He waited. Cop number two engaged the suspect in small talk.

  “Where is your job? As a ‘carpenter,’” the policeman asked with obvious cynicism. “What exactly do you do?”

  Jean-Claude talked his way through a pack of lies and half truths. The cop did not take notes.

  “Why are you in Spain? Where do you live?” the cop asked next. Cop number one was eyeing his computer. The gun in Jean-Claude’s pocket felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds.

  There was silence. Everyone else in the cafe was now staring. Even the proprietor had moved into a position to watch but knew better than to interfere with the police.

  Jean-Claude told more lies but told the truth about his home address, which he now knew might not be safe to go back to. He was registered with the local authorities, as required by law. A lie here would have raised even more suspicion. The sweat continued to roll off him. Then the first cop stepped back a pace and did something that Jean-Claude liked even less. He pulled out a small digital camera and took Jean-Claude’s picture, so fast that Jean-Claude couldn’t object, not that it would have mattered.

  The cop checked the image he had taken, then put the camera away.

  Jean-Claude glanced at his watch. There was a quiet moment.

  “Late for something?” the second cop asked.

  “Just wondering about the time,” Jean-Claude explained.

  “Why would it matter?” the cop asked.

  “It doesn’t,” said Jean-Claude.

  “Then why did you look?”

  “I just looked. That’s all.”

  “Maldito moro,” muttered the cop. Damned Arab. “Why do you people come here?”

  Jean-Claude held his tongue. Then he felt the detonation. He was certain! He had felt a small shock wave, a small rumble, from the point of impact about a hundred feet away. It was much like the feeling of a truck rumbling by on a city street, or the sensation New Yorkers feel when a subway train rumbles under a building. Then it was gone, the rumbling, vanishing as abruptly as it had arrived.

  He had heard it. Or thought he had. He glanced around in every direction, the second cop still fixing him in his gaze. Much as Jean-Claude was thrilled by the explosion, he felt as if he had guilt written all over him. He half expected to see some kind of commotion on the street, people asking questions, people wondering. Like New York after September 11, like London after the horrible attacks on the transportation system in September of 2005, Madrid had remained a city on edge, a city jittery at the sound of any strange, loud noise.

  But there was absolutely no notice being taken here on the streets.

  None. The pipe bomb had contained itself, at least for now.

  Then the lead cop put the computer away. “ Esta bien,” he said.

  He returned the ID card. The second cop tossed the knapsack back to the ground, still open, the tools rattling, the cop still glaring.

  The first cop looked him up and down. “You don’t belong here. People here wash. This isn’t a bar for workmen or riffraff.”

  “ Arabes,” the second cop muttered.

  Jean-Claude held them in his gaze and suppressed everything he might have wanted to say. “I can drink here like anyone else,” he said.

  “Then drink,” said the cop.

  It was only then that Jean-Claude realized he had never touched his coffee.

  “I will,” he said softly. And he did, as the cops departed and the cafe settled down again.

  Jean-Claude drew a long breath and exhaled. Not far away, just up the block, loomed the United States Embassy and all the security that surrounded it. Jean-Claude glared at all the Americans around him, glanced away, then fully understood why he had been questioned and why he would have to be much more careful in the coming days.

  And that photo! Where was that going to show up?

  He knew the whole equation for him in Spain had now changed. He knew the explosion he had set off that day would have kicked up massive amounts of dust and smoke. And there still could be a collapse on the streets or a fire. But there could be no question of moving forward, as rapidly as possible.

  That photograph. Time was limited!

  FORTY-FOUR

  OUTSIDE MADRID, SEPTEMBER 11, 1:47 P.M.

  B y noon they had come to their first destination, the austere gray palace of Escorial, built more than four centuries earlier by King Felipe II. Unlike many of the great palaces of Europe, this one had its macabre touch. The inner courtyard had been conceived as a contemplative retreat and as a mausoleum. It had served as a final resting place for the revered Carlos I of Spain, Felipe’s father, who had also been the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

  They took the official tour, which lasted less than an hour, and then spent another hour exploring the architecture by themselves. The gigantic building, with its almost three thousand windows, was situated on the slopes of the Guardarrama mountains. From its top floors, it offered a view in every direction of what had once been the Spanish Empire, from Italy to the south, to the Netherlands to the north, and to the Americas in the west.

  Walking these grounds put Alex in touch with centuries of Spanish civilization. Peter, always wishing to add to his knowledge of Western culture, observed critically and with great interest, asking questions of the guides when necessary.

  They paused for a late lunch at a cafe in the nearby town of Santa Cruz, after which Alex glanced at her watch. “We still have time for the Valley of the Fallen,” she said. “It’s more modern. I have a feeling I’ll relate to it better. Still game?”

  “Still game,” he said. “What is it, this place where we’re going?”

  Moments later, they stood by the roadside outside the restaurant. Alex scanned the horizon and found what she was looking for. A white stone cross stood many stories high on a peak ten miles in the distance. “See that?” she asked. “That’s where we’re going.”

  They slid back into the car and she took out a map. They drove southward for another half hour on a winding highway that passed by bulls, those reared for bullfights, grazing in green fields. Then the road abruptly rose into a hot, foggy mountain. The road led into Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caidos, the Valley of the Fallen, where Franco’s most megalomaniacal monument had been built.

  During the 1950s in this place, thousands of prison laborers, many of them who had been prisoners of war from the Civil War, tunneled hundreds of yards into a granite mountain ridge to build one of the world’s biggest and most sinister basilicas. The church was now part of a Spanish Civil War memorial. It stood beneath a cross nearly fifty stories high, a cross that on a clear day can be seen from scores of miles in every direct
ion.

  The site had expressed Franco’s desire for national atonement in the 1950s when Spain made her first shaky steps of returning to the world community. Franco’s rule, as Franco himself liked to see it, was not a victory of the Falange, the Spanish version of fascism, but of a traditional Catholic conservative Spain. Franco, on his crusade to save Christian civilization in his homeland, had modeled himself after monarchs like Philip II. To Alex, the site brought to mind the architecture of the Third Reich.

  Alex and Peter Chang solemnly walked the grounds of the basilica and the giant cross. The day was brutally hot. In this place, the remains of murdered Republicans were unearthed from mass graves and trucked to the valley to be mixed with dead Nationalists, so it could be designated a place for all Civil War victims.

  Here also was the tomb of Franco and the founder of the Falange Party, Franco’s onetime rival, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, son of the dictator of the 1920s. The site culminated at the high altar with the graves of those two men. As Alex and Peter stood before it in silence, they noticed several fresh bouquets of flowers laid on each tombstone. A young Spanish family meandered glumly through silence, gazing up at the glowering statues of soldiers and saints. On the plaza outside, there was a view toward Madrid. Above their heads, a series of dark rain clouds moved in and the top of the giant cross disappeared within the sky.

  “Okay,” Alex finally said around five in the afternoon. “I’ve had enough for one day.”

  “Me too,” Peter said.

  A few minutes later, they were back on the road. Several kilometers into the return trip, Alex spoke again.

  “Something occurred to me late this afternoon, Peter,” Alex said. She spoke over the efficient hum of the air-conditioning in the Jaguar.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “We’re looking for this Pieta of Malta, or looking for the reasons someone stole it. I was thinking about how we started referring to it as the ‘black bird.’ Like in the movie.”

  “Yes,” he said. “So?”

  “Well,” Alex continued, “it occurs to me that, in the movie, everyone’s chasing the bird all over the place. But in the end, the bird they’re looking for is a fake. It doesn’t exist. Or at least the real one never appears.”

  Chang frowned. “What are you suggesting?” he asked.

  “Maybe The Pieta of Malta isn’t really out there,” she said.

  “Oh, it’s out there,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Three people dead in Switzerland. Another two in Madrid. And that’s just what we know about.”

  “You’ve actually seen it?” she pressed.

  “I know that it exists,” he said.

  “But have you actually seen it?” she asked.

  “I’m certain that it exists,” he said. “It’s out there somewhere. The black bird. The Pieta of Malta. Whatever you want to call it. More than likely right under our noses. That’s what happens with stolen art.”

  “What happens with stolen art is that it never gets recovered,” she said.

  “This case is going to be different.” For a moment he drove silently, obviously thinking. “Well, okay, there’s another theory too,” he said. “No one will ever find The Pieta of Malta. Or at least not in our lifetimes. You know as well as I do that sometimes stolen art disappears forever. And you know what else? Sometimes the thieves get scared. They fail to move it, and they don’t want to get caught with it. So they destroy it.”

  Alex folded her arms and gave the impression, accurately, of being ill at ease with his explanations and the direction of their dialogue.

  “We have no choice but to move forward,” he continued. “Even if we don’t find the pieta, it’s our task to follow the trail of money. What conspiracies were put in motion by this? That’s our mission, not a little chunk of plaster from eighteen centuries ago. My job is to roll up the network of people who harmed one of my peers. Your job is to protect your country in case the theft is somehow financing an operation against America. Am I correct?”

  “True enough,” she said.

  “And now I’ll offer you something that you will like,” he said. “It’s an offer, not an obligation. So you’re free to decline it.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Two of my peers have arrived in Madrid from China,” he said. “I’m joining them for dinner. Will you come along and meet them?”

  “Where would we be meeting?” Alex asked.

  “I know a little tavern,” he said. “It’s very Spanish. A little touristy maybe, but not far from your hotel. There’s nice food and good drinks. Late in the evening they have live music.”

  “Who are your peers?” she asked.

  “They work with me. They’re friends as well as coworkers.”

  “From China?”

  “Yes. From Shanghai. I think you’ll like them.”

  “What line of work exactly?” she asked.

  He smiled. “Same as you and me. Dirty stuff for our respective governments.”

  “Ah,” she answered. She thought about it. “All right,” she said. “I’m interested.”

  “What time do you have to leave tomorrow for Geneva?” he asked.

  “Evening,” she said. “Late. I’m taking an overnight train. What about you? Are you flying or driving?” she asked.

  “I’m going to fly.”

  “I envy you. How do you move your gun from country to country?”

  “I don’t,” he said. “I stash it here and get another one in Switzerland.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I might have known.”

  She watched the roadside sail by. There was a light rain falling now, and Peter was doing about eighty. She might have objected but didn’t. He seemed completely in control.

  “Here’s the drill in Geneva,” she finally explained. “I check in at the Grand Hotel de Roubaix. I don’t know where it is, but I’ll find it on the map. The next day I’ll go to a cafe on the rue Seve. It’s called Chez Ascender. It’s run by a Hungarian who’s a friend of Federov’s. That’s where I’ll ask for Koller. You know the rest of the drill because I told you.”

  “Yes. I understand it,” he said.

  “My guess is that you should try to meet me in the hotel bar. Let’s say six p.m. the second day I’m there. Keep an eye open over your shoulder and I’ll do the same. We don’t want to advertise that we’re together.”

  “Okay,” he said steadily. “That makes sense.”

  “This dinner tonight with your friends. What time?”

  “Ten p.m. The place is called Tavern de Carmencita. The staff of your hotel will know it. Or should I pick you up?”

  “I’ll walk,” she said. “And I’ll be intrigued to meet your peers.”

  “They’re more than peers. They’re friends.”

  “I’ll meet them anyway.”

  “They will have women with them,” Peter warned.

  “So?”

  “Hired women.”

  She laughed. So did he. “ Expensively hired?” she asked.

  “Without a doubt. My government pays very well.”

  “Then I wouldn’t want to miss it.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  MADRID, SEPTEMBER 11, 10:00 P.M.

  B y 10:00, Alex was sitting down to dinner at Carmencita’s on the Calle de Liberdad. The menu was more Basque than Spanish, but old bullfighting posters, photographs, and memorabilia adorned the walls, presumably to keep the tourists happy.

  Peter had offered her an arm as they went through the door. She hesitated at first, then took it and liked the feel of it. His arm was like iron under his suit jacket.

  Peter’s two peers were there already when Alex arrived. The first was introduced as David Wong. The given name of the other, a slightly taller and stockier man, was Charles Ming. They were both in their early thirties, handsome, endlessly masculine, and very fit. They stood, shook Alex’s hand when introduced, and gave her a polite bow. Each was accompanied by a dro
p-dead gorgeous girl. David had a sultry blonde with an easy smile. Her name was Sabrina, and she looked as if she were Russian or Polish.

  Ming had with him a leggy brunette in a minidress. She was French, even though she gave her name as Holly. Everyone smoked except Alex. In Madrid, smokers had not yet been exiled to the streets. Ming and Wong and their companions were already into a second round of drinks when Peter and Alex settled into their table.

  Alex did a quick scan. She couldn’t tell if either of the men were carrying weapons, but she assumed they were. Both of the girls gave Alex a welcoming smile. Then it came out that Charles and David worked for Peter. He was their boss, even though he was only a few years older.

  From that, Alex made a deduction: they were all there on the same assignment, having to do with The Pieta of Malta. And from there she deduced that this must have been a case of some significance to the Chinese to have assigned so many people to it from such a distance.

  The group spoke English, occasionally lapsing into Spanish. The two girls mostly kept quiet, sipped drinks, and smoked. Sabrina, the blonde, was seated right next to Alex. At one point she turned and spoke in a low voice.

  “Are you working?” Sabrina asked.

  “What?”

  “You’re working tonight?” she asked again, giving a nod toward Peter who was telling the rest of the table about the trip that afternoon.

  “Yes, I am,” Alex answered, going along with it. After all, she was being paid to be there.

  Sabrina smiled, nodded, and gave Alex a wink. At first Alex was uncomfortable with the insinuation, then, after a glass of wine, almost found it amusing. By coincidence, Peter’s arm found its way around Alex’s shoulders at about the same instant.

  All right, she decided, no harm, no foul. She would play along, keep her ears open, and listen. The less any outsiders knew about her real job, the better.

  A waiter appeared, took another round of drink orders in Spanish from Peter and Alex, who ordered red wine, and left dinner menus at the table. The talk around the table progressed. And quickly, Alex realized that she was looking at the face of the new China.