Midnight in Madrid rt-2

by Noel Hynd

  “He was there several years earlier. Fortunately for both of us, we didn’t know each other.”

  “That is a good break,” she said. “For both of you.”

  “But what I don’t immediately understand,” he said slowly, “is how the Swiss police might have positively linked ‘Sun’ in Zurich to ‘Sun’ in Geneva.”

  “I can only guess,” she said. “And my guess would be this: within their bureaus, this case has attained some importance. And similarly, if they had been more aggressive in retrieving the ATM surveillance photos in Geneva from Tissot’s neighborhood and shown them around the gendarmerie in Zurich where Sun retrieved that body, they might have gotten a match much faster. It’s a hypothesis, but it’s a sound one.”

  “But all Asians look alike, right?” he asked facetiously.

  “Maybe, but in your case that would work against you, not for you, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t even want to be picked up to have to explain things, would you?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Are you, as Peter Chang, traveling on a diplomatic passport?”

  A pause as he sensed the direction of this. “No,” he said.

  “Then you could be detained, couldn’t you? Arrested, actually. And there’s even the fair chance that your arrangement with your government is such that they couldn’t admit who you are. Not for several years.”

  “It could happen,” he said, after another pause, “if I were unlucky. Or careless.”

  “Then if I were you, I would be very careful,” she said.

  “Who else knows about this?” he asked.

  “No one.”

  “So,” he said, “not to put bad thoughts in the air, if anything happened suddenly to you…”

  She laughed. “That would work out poorly for you too.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Suppose you were picked up and questioned about the two murders in Geneva. Were your two peers, David and Charles, in Europe yet?”

  “No.”

  “The date of the murders was September seventh and eighth. I was alone that night, myself. In Barcelona. In my hotel room.”

  He smiled.

  “So who’s to say I wasn’t there, also?” he said.

  She nodded. “And thank you for saving my life in Madrid the other night. What goes around comes around. Karma,” she said.

  “Karma,” he agreed. “Now, what did you want to ask me?”

  She unloaded. “Why did Lee Yuan want The Pieta of Malta?” she asked. “Why did he personally want it?”

  “What makes you think he did?” Peter asked.

  “I hate it when I ask a question and get another one in return,” she said. “But the other night you mentioned your personal connection to Lee Yuan. And you mentioned finishing his business for him. Well, if it were just a wealthy collector in China who got swindled, I don’t think you’d be here. So my guess is that Lee Yuan wanted the carving himself. It wasn’t delivered to him, his money was taken by criminals who were out to finance some activity somewhere else. But they didn’t bargain on who he was or the fury they would unleash by harming him.”

  “You need to consider who Lee Yuan was,” he said. “Let me explain. Lee Yuan was a man each of us respected greatly in his later years. But he had a very difficult life. The great events of the time, the turbulence of recent history, surrounded him. In one sense, the events gave rise to his greatness as an individual. In another sense, they compromised his time on earth.”

  “In what way?” she asked.

  “Yuan was a boy during the Great Leap Forward,” Peter said. “He was five years old and his family was sent to camps in the countryside for reeducation, same as millions of others. Same as the parents of David Wong, whom you met the other night. Yuan’s parents were practicing Christians during the Cultural Revolution. Practicing religion was considered social turmoil. But they were devout people who continued to practice. They had come of age in the era of Sun Yat Sen and Chiang Kai Shek. They were products of their time, some say heroic, some say foolish.”

  “What do you say?”

  “I am too smart to say,” Peter said with a smile. “They were what they were, and the past is the past. It can be rewritten, but the truth cannot be erased. They were arrested for owning Bibles. And Yuan’s father was a Christian scholar. He was particularly fascinated by the works of St. Francis of Assisi. He owned books on Saint Francis too.”

  “Ah,” she said.

  Peter paused, then continued.

  “After their books were burned, Lee Yuan’s parents were held in a Beijing detention center for nearly a year as the Red Guard considered what to charge them with. And still they prayed. They were sent to a camp in the freezing northeast of China for reeducation instead. This was maybe in the Western year of 1967 or 1968. Yuan was sent to an orphanage and never saw his parents again. He later learned that his parents had been beheaded by the Red Guard, executed in a public square as an example to others.”

  Alex could tell that Peter was choosing his words with great care. She listened to them in the same way.

  “It was said that the parents of Yuan were saying prayers to Jesus when the executioners’ swords descended upon their necks,” he said flatly. “And I have no reason to doubt that story. Lee Yuan, however, made the best of his new life,” Peter continued after a moment. “He studied in the orphanage. He became an outstanding officer in the army, then moved to state security and intelligence. As an adult, he didn’t practice religion but he always had an interest in it. And why not? Religion had led him to be who he was, by his parents’ practice of it. So in that way, it may have been part of him too. Who is to say?”

  “Did you ever discuss any of this with him?” she asked. “Christianity? His parents?”

  “No. I knew the history. There was nothing further I wanted to hear. Equally, I’ve learned in life that there are doors you must not open, windows you should not look through. Questions you do not ask. So I knew not to ask more. When the pieta disappeared from the museum, Lee Yuan took a special interest. He was fascinated by the fact that it may have been touched by a saint, buried with a saint, and the inspiration for Michelangelo’s great Christian work. And it touched upon his parents’ dear St. Francis, as well. You can imagine. Spiritually, it must have made him feel so close to the people he had lost so early in his life. Spiritually, if his parents had connected with this one saint, and then he connected to…well, you see. Superstition? Faith? I do not know. None of us do. But I know he went to Switzerland to acquire this piece on the black market. For himself.”

  “And he was double-crossed?”

  “Yes. The transaction was to take place in a remote monastery. Yuan liked the idea of that, as he was fascinated with the places where Christianity was kept alive through the Dark Ages. He saw parallels with recent Chinese history. So against his better judgment, he agreed to visit the place and complete the transaction there. He was never seen alive again.”

  “But you and your associates have come to complete his mission,” she said.

  Peter’s eyes said yes. So did a slight nod of his head.

  “Official policy of your government?” she asked. “Or something more personal?”

  “Both,” he said, “but neither entirely.”

  “What?”

  “Well, you see,” Peter said with a smile, “nothing is ever all one thing or all another. Think of it as sunlight shining over a mountain but the mountain is in a valley, and in the valley, Yin and Yang exist, the two opposite parts of the truth, which by themselves are both true and false. Yin is the dark area where the mountain stands and blocks sunlight. Yang is the place of direct sunshine. The sun traverses the sky and Yin and Yang trade places with each other. What was dark becomes light and what was obscured is revealed.”

  “Are you answering my question of just obfuscating it?”

  “I’m answering it,” he said. “If a Chinese agent is harmed anywhere in the word, a team of us will come after him
to finish his work and to serve notice on those who would harm any of us. In the case of the noble Lee Yuan, he was much loved by many of us. So a professional mission became increasingly personal. The dark became light. Is it more of one than another? I don’t know. It changes. The central truth remains-but with gradations.”

  She blinked. “Okay,” she finally said. “Got it.”

  “If you do, you’re better than most Westerners. Westerners see things in finite terms. Asians, not so much.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “The balance of the opposing forces?”

  “No,” she said. “Where is The Pieta of Malta? And I’d like a Western-style answer on that. Don’t tell me that its Yin is in Switzerland but its Yang is safely stashed in an outhouse in upper Mongolia. I can’t work that way.”

  He shook his head. “I answered that before. Maybe it’s in Switzerland. Maybe it’s back in Spain. Maybe shipped to China. My mission is not the black bird and never was. My personal mission is the people who harmed Lee Yuan.”

  “But it would appear,” she said coyly, “that this fellow ‘Sun’ took care of that?”

  “Not completely,” he said coldly.

  She thought it through, all of it.

  “All right,” she said. “Your story works. We’re still partners.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “Because we have company.”

  “Where?” she asked sharply.

  Peter made a gesture with his eyes. Alex had been so engrossed in Peter’s backstory that she had missed something. She turned fast and saw Yuri Federov, two bodyguards close behind him, standing near the doorway to the bar. He had just spotted her.

  “Trouble?” Peter asked softly. His hand was starting to drift under his jacket.

  “No. It’s okay,” she said. She moved her hand quickly and stopped his before it reached his gun. “It’s Federov.”

  She released. Peter’s hand stayed where it was, on his lap, just in case.

  Federov approached the table, looked at her, and then looked at Peter.

  “Found a new boyfriend already?” he asked in English.

  “Don’t be crude, Yuri, even though that may be difficult for you.”

  He snorted. “We can talk?” Federov asked.

  His bodyguards were enormous men in black leather jackets. They loomed behind him like a couple of trained grizzly bears, almost as big, almost as wide, and almost as smart. Alex guessed they were the men who had abducted her.

  “This is Mr. Chang,” she said smoothly. “He’s a friend and is assisting me on this case.”

  Federov, who never cared much for strangers, grunted.

  “You can speak in front of him or we can speak privately, Yuri,” Alex continued. “But the bottom line is this: anything you tell me I’m probably going to have to tell him. So you can do it whatever way you want, and keep in mind that the Internal Revenue Service will be thrilled by your cooperation.”

  Federov glanced at Chang. “He speaks English, this Chinaman?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  Federov looked in Chang’s direction. “Yes or no? Speak English?”

  Chang shrugged. “Some,” he said, sounding slightly fresh-off-the-boat. Federov looked back to Alex.

  “I have a man in Genoa,” he said, “north of Italy. He used to work on one of my ships. My people are holding him.”

  “I know where Genoa is,” she said. “I’ve been there. Who’s this man and where do you have him? In the trunk of a car?”

  Federov missed her irony.

  “He’s at a house I own. He has things to tell you.”

  “About?”

  “Money. And a transfer of smuggled explosives.”

  She looked quickly to Peter and searched his eyes.

  “It will take me a day to get to Genoa,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Air schedules.”

  “I have a private plane. It’s already at your disposal.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “No. I came into the city to tell jokes.”

  “Are you going with us?” she asked. “To Genoa?”

  “It would be a good idea,” he said. “I think this man will have more to say if I’m there. I have arranged for an interpreter.”

  “What does he speak?”

  “He speaks Italian and Turkish. Those are the only languages that are dependable.”

  “I speak Italian,” she said.

  “He’s Sicilian dialect. He sounds like a drunken goat.”

  She thought for a moment. “Then let me also bring in one of my own people. From Rome, if I can get him.”

  “I don’t mind. Can he be in Genoa by evening?”

  “I can call and ask,” she said.

  Federov reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He handed it to her, almost rudely.

  “I’ll use mine,” Alex said. “No need to spread private numbers around, is there?”

  “None,” he said with a grin, taking back the phone.

  “Nice try, anyway,” she said. Peter smiled. His hand left his lap.

  Federov’s two thugs still loomed and glowered. Federov looked at Peter. Then, “This Chinaman is coming too?” he asked.

  Alex looked to Peter. “Yes, the Chinaman is coming too,” Peter said. “The Chinaman wouldn’t miss it.”

  Federov shrugged. “The more the merrier,” he said. “Let’s get moving.”

  “Will we have trouble with weapons at the airport?” Peter asked.

  “Not if you’re with me,” Federov answered. “Let’s go.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  MADRID, SEPTEMBER 16 5:49 P.M.

  U nder the city, Jean-Claude worked with care to remove the final stones and bricks that blocked his access to a chamber under the Calle Serrano. He worked by hand, Mahoud and Samy with him. One by one, the last bricks and rocks gave way. The old plaster and mortar crumbled. They hammered with muffled tools and opened a hole that was wide enough to crawl through. Then Samy, the smallest of them, hoisted himself up, crawled forward, and pulled his way through to the other side.

  He was three feet off the ground and did a playful tumble forward. His hands hit the soft dirt. He rolled once and came up on his feet smiling. His side of the wall was in darkness, however. So Mahoud handed him one of the flashlights.

  “What do you see?” Jean-Claude asked in Arabic.

  “I see a massive explosion that will bring misery to Western imperialists,” he said.

  All three of them laughed. This was an eerie, dark place. But this wasn’t much different from the time they had burrowed under other blocks in this same city to break into the museum several weeks ago. Do anything long enough and you get good at it. The old rule of thumb applied to this also, amateur terrorists tunneling under a city to get what they wanted.

  A pack of New Age moles, that’s what they were.

  Subversives in the old meaning of the word, burrowing underneath the established order. Old Moles, as Marx had once suggested. The small cell of self-motivated, independent jihadists thought of themselves in heroic, romantic terms. They were the substance of the work, the destiny, and the future of persecuted Islamic people in Europe and the saviors of their people, all rolled into one five-piece unit.

  Despite betrayal, despite the failure of their culture to adapt to the modern age, these amateur warriors saw themselves making headway. Jean-Claude had read Marx and had pulled some phrases from him.

  “We are like a desert stream,” he liked to tell his young warriors, “a stream that has been diverted from its course and has plunged into the depths below the sands. And now we reappear, sparkling and gurgling, in an unexpected place.”

  They knocked away a few more stones and were indeed in a place where no one expected them to be. They were sixteen feet under the basement of the US Embassy. Their plans were right on target and so was their physical position.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  GENEVA, SEPTEMBER 16, 6:00 P.M.
r />   A lex repacked her bag and checked out of the hotel.

  By six in the evening, she was standing in the lobby of her hotel, a few paces back from the door. Peter was already there. They stood apart without speaking.

  Federov arrived punctually at 6:00 in a van with a driver and his two bodyguards, one whom he now addressed as Serge, and another whom he addressed as Dmitri.

  Peter got into the van first. Alex swiftly followed.

  The van took them to a small private airport in the town of Villi-ette, ten kilometers outside of Geneva. Federov’s plane was a Cessna Citation, a small comfortable corporate jet that he had at his disposal. They took off toward 7:00 p.m. as the sun was setting and rose into a sky that was turning gold.

  Alex found a seat by a window, sat alone, and looked downward. She enjoyed the tremendous view of the Jura Mountains, which still had some snow on the highest peaks, and the Lake of Geneva. The aircraft took off to the north, banked, and turned southward in the sky. Geneva lay to Alex’s right and Lausanne and the other cities of French-speaking Switzerland lay down the lake to her left.

  They were out of Switzerland within minutes and flew for an hour over the French Alps and next the Italian Alps. The mountains were luminous with the dying light of day. Then the aircraft reached the Mediterranean, which was growing dark. The plane banked easily to the port side and continued over the sea eastward toward Genoa.

  Alex’s attention drifted. In her mind several horrible scenarios replayed over and over. The disaster in Kiev. The train to Venezuela that had ended in the blazing shootout at Barranco Lajoya. The gunfight on the streets-and under the streets-of Paris.

  “Airplanes took me to all those places too,” she thought to herself. Not this one airplane in particular, but there were always airplanes getting me to these wretched incidents.”

  She started to finger the stone pendant at her neck, an old habit kicking in, from the way she used to finger the plain gold cross her father had given her as a little girl.

  Her thoughts rambled and in the back of her mind the number 40 rose. As an age, it was not that far away, a half dozen years. By that age, she hoped that she might be married and have a family and be out of this line of work. Not that she hated it, she didn’t even dislike it. But she knew the burnout rates and knew the effect that it could have.