by Noel Hynd
“You know enough now. So stay away,” he said.
McKinnon slammed the door and barked an order to his driver. The vehicle screeched out into traffic and was gone in an instant, flagrantly running a red light in the process.
SIXTY-FOUR
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 18, EVENING
O n a side street cafe in the Rastro, business was finally slacking off in the early evening. Samy had been nervous that day, waiting for some kind of shoe to drop and wondering why there had been no massive explosion under the United States Embassy. But Samy had also stayed true to Jean-Claude’s command to go to work as usual, act as usual, have a normal day as much as possible, and pretend that nothing strange was going on at all. Anything else might attract suspicion.
After all, no one knew who the conspirators were, Jean-Claude had sworn, other than each other? They just needed to wait.
Nonetheless, Samy had been on pins and needles all day, waiting to hear something, waiting for a special report to break into the news on Spanish television, watching everyone with paranoia, particularly anyone who looked like a cop or who looked in any way suspicious.
Gradually the little cafe called Klafouti had emptied out. Now it was almost midnight. There were two couples there at separate tables and a single man in a suit, an Asian, sitting by himself, reading. One of the couples got up and left. Then the other couple, by virtue of the blackberry wine they had been drinking liberally, started cuddling and smooching. Soon they got up and left too, weaving merrily toward the door.
Ali, the heavy man with the moustache who was Samy’s boss, spoke to Samy in Arabic. “I’m going to put the Cerrado sign on the door,” Ali said, indicating he was ready to close. “And I’m turning the window light off. Let’s go home.”
Samy thought that was an excellent idea.
Ali went next door to use the bathroom at the grocery store that was run by his cousin. In the rear of his store, Samy started cleaning the counter behind the pastry display case. The single man who had been reading a newspaper, the lone customer remaining, got up, yawned, stretched, and gave Samy a nod.
“ Buenas noches,” Samy called back.
The man nodded in return, then took some steps toward the door.
Samy turned his back and busied himself with neatening up. Then Samy heard the door close and he heard steps. He figured Ali was back and said something to him. But there was no answer. A second later Samy felt something indefinably amiss and knew something was wrong.
He turned abruptly. The single man, the Asian, was standing on the other side of the pastry case, staring at him. Samy froze. He knew this was trouble.
D avid Wong looked at Samy carefully.
“? Que quiere usted, Senor?” Samy asked. What do you want?
“Do you speak English?” Wong asked in English.
Samy understood but quickly shook his head. The Asian’s eyes were fixed on him like lasers.
Wong reached into a pocket and pulled out a picture of Lee Yuan, his mentor, just as Yuan had been Peter’s mentor and the mentor of his partner Charles Ming.
“Do you know anything about this man?” the Asian asked softly.
Samy shook his head again. He looked to the door, the escape route. The man in front of him had closed it, locked it apparently, and pulled the shade down.
Samy fumbled in English. “I don’t know any Chinaman,” he said.
“Now you do,” Wong answered.
For a moment Samy was paralyzed. Then there was a knocking on the front door. He heard Ali’s voice calling. “Samy? Samy, you in there?”
“ Ayudame! Ayudame!” Samy screamed in Spanish. Help me! Help me!
Samy suddenly backpedaled. He tried to edge around the display case to where there was a narrow passage on the far side from where he could sprint to the door.
Wong lowered his left hand, and the picture of Lee Yuan was gone. Then the right hand came up, and it held a small gun, one of those Italian jobs that are just perfect for killing in small areas like stores, washrooms, and public transportation.
Samy yelled in terror when he saw the outline of the weapon. At the front door, Ali knocked sharply now, frantically next, then started to pound at the wooden frame. When all that failed, he hit the door with his shoulder.
Samy scrambled but Wong fired. The first bullet caught the waiter in the shoulder but hurled him sideways against the wall. Then the well-dressed Asian was on him like a big cat. Samy began to sputter and plead, half prayers, half curses, a desperate plea for his life.
Wong wasn’t listening any more than a cat would consider pleas from a mouse.
Wong pounced on his fallen prey, pushed the nose of the pistol to Samy’s head. Samy tried to cover it with his hands, but Wong pushed the gun between the Arab’s frenzied trembling palms and fired point blank.
One shot. Two shots.
The bullets blew out Samy’s eye socket, half of his brain, and the back part of his skull, all of which splattered and coated the floor beneath him.
Wong quickly stuffed his gun back under his suit jacket and went to the door. He threw the door open. Ali now stood in front of him in shock and surprise.
“ Buenas noches,” Wong said.
“What’s going on?” Ali asked in Spanish.
Wong smiled. “ Nada,” he said.
As Ali spoke to Wong, his gaze traveled past Wong and settled on Samy’s sprawled body on the floor. Wong caught the moment of realization in Ali’s eyes and jumped on it.
Wong brought up a knee that impacted like an express train into Ali’s groin.
When the cafe owner doubled over in absolute agony, Wong uppercut a vicious fist into the man’s face, crushing his nose with a tremendous crunch, splintering it to pieces within its skin. A downward smash of the elbow to the back of Ali’s head, sent him to the floor. There Wong left him, sobbing in a huddled mass at the doorway to his cafe, but in all ways better off than Samy had been for the encounter.
Wong straightened the lapels of his jacket and departed at a normal pace.
SIXTY-FIVE
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 18, EVENING
T he local police granted Alex permission and provided keys to the forgotten underground Madrid. The Policia Nacional offered her a backup, but she declined. She went by herself, stubborn and overconfident, bearing her weapon, a hand lantern, and a GPS compass that she had bought for the occasion.
She unlocked a creaking old door that led to an old service passage that was at the far end of the Metro stop at Nunez de Balboa. She prayed she wouldn’t get lost in the subterranean labyrinth.
Carrying a lantern, she found herself wandering long-forgotten underground chambers that were unknown and unimaginable to the people of modern Madrid. Outside light disappeared quickly, and she relied on her lantern. There was movement around that was nonhuman. First she saw one rat, then she saw ten. First she had ample overhead clearance and then, as she neared the newer construction near the embassy, she had little. Then none.
She walked in a crouch. In her free hand, she carried a piece of chalk, marking passages as she went through them. She encountered stray cats, some alive, some dead. She came across a rat writhing in the agony of a poisonous death. Her nostrils were assaulted by the rancid odors of sewer leaks and the ground was wet and uneven under her feet.
It was cold. Then it was hot. Then it was cold again. An hour passed.
Then a second. She continued to prowl through the winding maze of underground tunnels, crawlspaces, and abandoned passageways that led toward the United States Embassy from the Metro stop at Nunez de Balboa. As she moved, she constantly consulted her handheld GPS.
She felt as if she had stepped into a moonscape or a surreal bombed-out world of a future that had endured a nuclear catastrophe or a plague or maybe something even worse. She sidestepped old sewers and crossed dried-out viaducts. She passed mute walls that had once been basements, some of which even bore graffiti or artwork. Damaged structural supports sagged overhead, and water tri
ckled in various filthy urban streams. There were old plaster walls, etched with names that appeared to be those of soldiers because many bore ranks before their names, and some had written prayers also. She wondered how many of the prayers had been answered or whether a single one of the names on the wall still belonged to someone living. She doubted it.
Alex recalled that during the bloody final days of the Civil War, troops massed underground and then came up out of manholes into the streets to kill their enemies or be killed by them. On other walls, legions of live insects fed on smaller insects.
She wandered through derelict bunkers where white plastery stalactites hung like daggers, and she crossed an obsolete rail track where no train had probably passed within the last century. At some points, the passages were peaceful, the way a crypt is peaceful, and at other times there was a stinking fetid squalor beyond comprehension, and she had to hold her hand to her mouth for fear of getting sick.
Her compass told her, however, that as she worked her way through the underground maze, she was indeed drawing closer to the area under the embassy, which meant that if she could access the area, anyone could.
More graffiti. Then a handful of murals, some of them pornographic, by artists no doubt long dead. Decrepit rungs that led nowhere marched upward on walls that had been truncated by newer construction. It was utterly silent in most places, and yet from time to time a cool wet breeze slapped her in the face, and she felt as if she were a frightened little girl exploring the basement of a haunted house.
Another mural, one of a man in prison. A mess of terra-cotta tiles. A quote from Cervantes in Spanish and a poem about tuberculosis written in black paint on yellow brick. Old shoes and bottles and newspapers emerged in the ray of her flashlight, and then another mural, a breathtaking rip-off of Dali’s Melting Clock.
Old steam pipes. Meter after meter of them. Sealed vaults in the walls. Bricked-over exits. A tipped-over rusting gurney. Pools of water, red with rust. Ghostly staircases that led into uneven walls of concrete or granite. Utter blackness, relieved only by her light.
Years ago, she had read T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and now as she prowled under a modern city, she thought of Eliot’s unreal metropolis where dread lurked in the shadows, terrible things emerged by the gleam of light, her shadow near midnight rose to meet her and where she saw fear in a handful of dust.
In another thirty minutes, she found the flashlight most recently discarded by Jean-Claude, outside a low crawlspace that led to a narrow tunnel. According to her GPS, the tunnel would lead the final few meters toward the embassy.
Alex looked at the flashlight. She knelt down and looked into the tunnel. Incredibly, there seemed to be light at the other end of it. The tunnel looked to be secure and wide enough for passage.
She picked up the flashlight. The bulb was dim but she could see.
Decision: go forward or head back? She had always learned to go forward. She decided to do something impetuous and stupid. She took off her jacket and knelt. The tunnel didn’t look too bad. She would crawl in.
Time to get dirty.
She got down on her stomach and leaned in, pushing her own flashlight ahead of her. And she entered the tunnel. A few seconds later, she was on a slow horizontal crawl through a wet partially man-made tunnel under the streets of Madrid. It was no one’s idea of fun.
She crawled her way through the passage for ten feet, then fifteen. Moving slowly. The walls then started to seize up around her.
Uh oh…The flashlight started to flicker. So that’s why it had been abandoned. The tunnel narrowed slightly.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Just so that she understood her options, she tried to move backward. Okay, a few paces. She could go either way.
Bad idea! Bad bad bad idea! Claustrophobia started to settle in.
She started to cough.
Oh, Lord, no!
The coughing stirred up dust and mortar, her eyes smarted. She coughed more.
She tried to back up.
She couldn’t.
She was stuck.
SIXTY-SIX
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 18, EVENING
N o more than three blocks away from Samy’s bistro, through the maze of streets in the Rastro, Basheer sat nervously in the living room of the small house he shared with his wife, Leila. He was watching the late sports on television and was particularly interested in a match of his adopted land Morocco against Cameroon.
Leila came out of the bedroom to see what he was watching. She was wearing only a linen robe that she normally wore around the house. When she saw her husband was viewing sports, she gave up on getting his attention.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said softly. “Then let’s get into bed.”
Basheer grunted his approval. It made sense: first his favorite activity, then his second.
Leila went to the bathroom and started the water for her shower. Playfully, she stood in the doorway and slid out of her robe. Then she tossed her robe into the living room and stood naked before her husband, trying to interest him.
Her husband smiled but didn’t budge from the sports. “Later,” he said.
A minute passed. Maybe two.
Basheer heard a noise in the entrance hallway behind him, but the account of the game he wanted was seconds away. So he didn’t investigate. There were only friends in this building, anyway, so what could go wrong?
A few seconds later, he heard a creak behind him on the old floorboards. The creak finally caused him to turn and glance behind him. He did a double take and jumped from his chair.
A Chinese guy! Stealthy as a giant cat! How the-?
C harles Ming stood with his arm extended, with a gun pointed forward.
Basheer opened his mouth to scream but never had the chance. Charles Ming squeezed the trigger hard three times. Three bullets slammed into Basheer’s chest before he had the chance to duck for cover or even scream. He hit the floor hard and in deep pain. He knew life was ebbing out of him, and all he could think of now was that this must have something to do with the bomb that didn’t go off.
Ming stepped over him and sent another bullet directly through his heart.
Ming looked at the linen robe on the floor. He heard the shower water running and knew how easy the end of this job would be. He stepped over the robe and walked to the bathroom door, which was half open.
He pushed it the rest of the way.
Behind a vinyl see-through shower curtain, he could see the body of a woman. She was young and a little plump, with black hair and very pale skin the color of a fish fillet. He studied her for a moment because he had never before seen a woman undressed without having to pay for it. He reasoned that her skin was pale because it never saw the sunshine. Unlike Western or Chinese women, she never wore a bikini or went to the beach.
But Ming made no special note of her. She was an assignment, same as her husband who was dead on the floor behind him. He gazed at her with curiosity for a few seconds. He wondered how long he could stare before she saw him.
He had his answer a few seconds later. She turned.
Her eyes went as wide as saucers. Then she screamed.
The sound of the scream pulled Ming out of his mini-reverie. He raised the pistol sharply and fired three shots into the woman’s body from a distance of five feet.
Her knees buckled, her body slammed against the back wall of the shower, and her voice went quiet like a television suddenly turned off. She dropped like a sack of potatoes, made a gurgling sound, and was still.
As a courtesy to the people downstairs, Ming stepped forward and turned off the water before he departed.
SIXTY-SEVEN
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 18, EVENING
T rapped in the claustrophobic hell of the small, rancid underground tunnel, Alex pushed with her arms. She prayed. Oh, she prayed! She almost prayed out loud, and she cursed herself for getting this far along. She stretched out her arms with every inch she could, dug her fingernails into th
e sandstone that formed the floor of the narrow passage, and she pulled with all the strength she could muster.
Nothing.
She tried again. There were tears forming in her eyes.
Nothing.
She tried a third and final time, pulling in her breath, trying to scrape through.
Nothing.
Then, something.
She groped along. She moved an inch. Then a few more inches. Then, ahead of her, a small trickle of sand and a mini cave-in.
She fought to suppress the panic. Once, years ago, she had read about miners who had been trapped in a cave-in. She felt in her gut the terror of their claustrophobic ordeal as water rose past their knees, their waists, their shoulders, their necks until they had only a few inches of breathing room at which time rescuers found them.
Well, that was them. This was her. She closed her eyes against the dust ahead of her and figured she was dead.
But she wasn’t. The dust had loosened the tight walls of the passage. She pushed the sandy dirt away and she started moving again, pushing the lantern forward with her head.
Then suddenly she could move a few inches at a time. Crawling on her stomach like an infantry soldier under live rounds, she was able to push several inches ahead at a time. Then her motion was unabated. She pushed forward with her knees and traveled several feet. The other end of the tunnel loomed in front of her.
Six feet. Then three. Then two and then her head nudged the lantern forward and it rolled forward and dropped with a clack. But she could still see the light of the lantern. And she could hear a sound of a person working.
Or something.
She reached the end of the tunnel with her hands. She dug in with her fingers and pulled herself free, the greatest feeling she had ever encountered in her life. And then she was on her feet, covered with dirt and crap and coughing and so delirious with joy over just being free and alive that she was almost oblivious to why she was in this damp, dark chamber and what she was looking for.