Midnight in Madrid (36 page)

MADRID, SEPTEMBER 21, AFTERNOON

T
wo days later, after a single night of hospital recovery, Alex found herself at Madrid International Airport, seeing Peter off on his return flight to China.

They stood together at the departure gate. She saw some emotion in his eyes, but she equally saw him retreat from it, as if it would be a dangerous place for him to go.

“I guess I better get moving,” he said.

“Guess so,” she said.

For a moment they stood apart. Peter took her hand, and there was something in his eyes that she still couldn’t fathom. Again, he didn’t smile, not at first, but then he did. The small gesture served to only confuse her more.

In assessing Peter Chang, she had come to know him quite well, yet not know him at all. She didn’t know whether the man before her was large and grand or small and mean. Nor could she fathom his moral compass, though she was certain he had one somewhere.

He had murdered savagely and vengefully, something that she couldn’t accept. Yet he had twice saved her life. There were aspects of him that reminded her of Yuri Federov and yet there were strains in him that reminded her—unless she was deluding herself—of her late Robert. Or even herself.

After all, weren’t they all in the same line of work?

Wasn’t everyone imperfect? Wasn’t life a daily compromise? Were there absolutes? Were all ethics at least partially situational? Weren’t we
all
sinners?

He reached under his jacket and removed his firearm. He bundled it and gave it to her, concealing it. She pulled it into her purse.

“That’s a heck of a souvenir,” she said with half a smile.

“I’d say put it to good use,” he said. “But don’t take that the wrong way.”

“I won’t,” she said.

“Are you going to be okay getting out of Spain?” she asked, eying the security controls.

“Oh,” he laughed. “Sure. Your pal. McKinnon. Another little souvenir,” he said.

Peter pulled out a passport from his inside jacket pocket. American. He flipped it open and showed her. He was now William Kao, a native-born American who was an IT expert from New York.

She shook her head. “Do you ever lose sight of who you really are?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” he said. “Same as who I’d really like to be. Sometimes it’s confusing.”

She allowed that it was.

He continued. “Hey,” he said, “if you’re going to the safety deposit box, you might want to stash this for me also,” he said. “Never know when I might be back. If ever.”

“Probably sooner than you think,” she said, “but I wasn’t planning to go to the safety deposit box.”

“Maybe you could. For me. As a final favor.”

“All right,” she said.

“Oh, and listen,” he said. “There’s something I’d like you to have.”

He reached into his pocket. His strong hand came out with a small jeweler’s bag, a light blue one. She had seen it before, held it in her hand before.

“I don’t get it,” she said.

“Open it.”

She did. Into her hand fell the eighteen-karat étoile bangle that had been in the jeweler’s box in the safety deposit box.

“Put it on,” he said.

She did.

“There,” he said with an approving smile. “If that doesn’t make your Russian hood jealous next time he sees you, I don’t know what will.”

“Peter, it’s gorgeous,” she said, reaching to take it off, “but you bought it for someone else.”

His hand stopped hers. “No, I bought it for you,” he said, “the first day we met. Then I rewrapped it with paper from Switzerland. I figured ahead of time that I’d want to give you a souvenir of our ‘vacation’ in Spain. I do things impulsively and ahead of time, as you know.”

“But you said there was a woman in China.”

“From time to time, I lie—,” he said, “to protect everyone. And now I will be deeply insulted if you don’t keep it.”

“All right.” She relented and admired it on her wrist. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

“It’s exactly where it belongs.”

He laughed. Then he did something that shocked her.

He leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers, and she allowed him.

He held her for several long seconds. Then she pulled back.

He took her into his arms again, holding her tightly. This time the embrace was longer and lingered. She stepped back and stepped away.

“Travel safe,” she said.

“You too.”

“I’m anxious to get home,” he said. “Ever been to China?”

“No.”

“You should come visit someday. There are ways to let me know if you visit. Channels.”

“I know.”

“I know you know.”

A moment, and “I’m very sorry,” he said.

“About what?”

“I’m very sorry that I’m obliged to live half a world away from you,” he said.

His words had the effect of knocking the legs out from under her.

She fumbled for the words of recovery but had none.

Peter was about to say something further, but then didn’t. It was almost as if for the first time, he was ill at ease with something—a feeling, a thought, an emotion, maybe. In any case, he gave it no voice. Instead, he turned and gave her a quick final hug. Then he turned away quickly and went to the first class check-in line for Iberia. His trip was to be a long one. Iberia to New York, then China Air to Hong Kong, and a connecting flight to Beijing. It would be twenty-seven hours before he set foot on his home soil. And who knew when or to what he would next be assigned?

She watched him all the way through the passport check, the ticketing, the checking of two sizeable bags. She had the wistful notion that someone she liked very much was stepping out of her life. She would miss him.

A quick reality check reminded her that he was a hired agent and assassin of a state that wasn’t always on the best terms with her own. And then a third instinct clicked in, that Peter Chang was a man who had done what he had to do, done it with honor, and done it in a way that she could respect.

In that way, he had been a soldier. A soldier and a very good one, one in which she had also fought with in the trenches. She respected soldiers.

As for his country, his employer, she didn’t care much for their system and their shortcomings, and vastly preferred her own. But his system worked for him, much the way hers worked for her. So who was she, she wondered, to pass judgment? At this stage of her life, he had been exactly what she had needed, in ways large and small.

She had more than the notion of liking him. She
did
like him, and it would take some time to adapt to the new reality of daily life without him.

She stood near the exit gate, not wanting to pull herself away. Her eyes were on him. There were police all over the place. She wondered,
Were the police looking for Peter?

Suddenly, he turned. He scanned the terminal and found her. He said something to the security people. They nodded. He turned and jogged briskly in her direction.

Now what? Passport trouble? Was he going to make a run for it? He came to her.

“Sorry, I meant to mention something,” he said. “I left the box for your bracelet at the bank. In the safety deposit box in the vault. I like to keep things tidy. Can you deal with that for me when you stash the pistol?”

“Of course.”

“You can dip into some of the money too, if you want. I did. No one will care. Expenses, you know. Don’t be greedy, but I know you won’t.”

He jogged back to the line, nodded with a smile to the security people and proceeded. Her eyes were still on him when he took his suitcases to be X-rayed, and put them through the giant scanners. The security people nodded and waved him along.

He turned toward the place where Alex stood from a distance of maybe a hundred feet. Somehow he knew she hadn’t left, and somehow his eyes found hers immediately, even across the crowded entrance lobby of the bustling airport. Across many travelers, a multitude of cultures, across more languages than anyone in the room could count. This was how they had met and how they would separate.

He gave her that big smile again, raised a hand and waved.

She raised hers in response but without much enthusiasm. Then he turned and was gone through the security gates where they examined his shoes, his belt, and made him stand for an electronic, and then a manual, frisk. An absurd and amusing notion struck her. If these security people only know who they were frisking, she thought to herself. Well, it happened all the time.

She caught one more glimpse of him. Then he was gone.

Completely.

She walked out of the gates to the departures lounge and onto the sidewalk, lost in many thoughts…

She went back to the car and sat for several minutes. The degree to which she was rattled surprised even her. Time spiraled a little. So much had happened in so short a time. It seemed as if it had been only a few seconds ago that she had been emerging from the warm surf in Barcelona and answering the phone. Then she had been in Madrid, then Switzerland being undressed and re-dressed by Federov, then Rome, then back to the Spanish capital where she felt as if she had lost five years of her life pinned in a filthy tunnel under the streets—where she might have lost her life completely if Peter and his hit team hadn’t found her.

She shuddered. What kind of bizarre angel had been her guardian this time? If she believed in God at all, in what ways did He work? Would human beings, would
she
, ever understand anything?

She searched the geometry of events. In Kiev, she had lost a man who loved her, and lost a piece of jewelry. Here she had gained a piece of jewelry and found—

She examined the gold bangle on her wrist.

And then a realization hit her. It more than hit her. It jolted her.

She glanced at her watch. It was past 2:00 p.m. She turned the key in her ignition and jerked the car into reverse. She had to hurry. There was still some wrapping up to do, and she just had time today.

MADRID, SEPTEMBER 21, AFTERNOON

S
he drove faster than she should have getting back into Madrid. The traffic was thick but allowed her to move around quickly. Her first stop was the rental car company. Quickly scanning the car to check for any of her own property, she found the black box in the trunk—the stealth box that would beat bank security—that Peter had mentioned.

She placed it in a black tote bag and took it with her. She dropped off the paperwork and the car keys, without going to the desk. So much the better, she mused. She had never been listed as an insured driver, so just as soon skip the desk. Nothing good could happen there.

She was in the old city. She knew the neighborhood well enough to know that the branch of El Banco de Santander where Peter kept his stash was a pleasant ten-minute walk away. She had on a good pair of walking shoes and a comfortable skirt. She pushed her sunglasses in place and hoofed the few blocks to the bank.

Twenty minutes later, she sat in the small private room that she had visited once in her life. A bank security man wearing white gloves delivered the safety deposit box to her. This was her first trip to the box alone, but obviously Peter, as he had casually said a few days earlier, had returned on the afternoon of the Connelly murder.

He had returned and made some adjustments.

“
Muchas gracias
,” she said to the bank guard.

“
Da nada, Señorita
,” he said with a slight bow. Spanish bank employees tended to elevate courtesy to an art form.

When the clerk was gone, Alex opened the safety deposit box. Everything was exactly as she had last seen it, with the exception of the cash, which Peter had drawn on. Well, those Madrid evenings, she noted with a wry smile, didn’t come cheap.

She lifted the gift box out, the one with the wrapping paper from the Swiss jeweler, and set it aside. It was slightly heavier, and she could see that Peter had opened it and rewrapped it. Typical male fingers, good at larger, more complicated tasks, not so good with the small stuff.

She smiled to herself at the thought.

She looked at the two stacks of money, the dollars and the euros. About twenty-five thousand dollars in US currency, depending on how much the people in the foreign exchange section upstairs were finagling with the daily rate.

She fingered the money and shook her head. She didn’t need any and didn’t want it. Her employer paid her for an honest day’s work and got it from her. She didn’t need to drink from a pool of poisoned water.

Twenty-five grand. In her grandfather’s day you could have bought a small house for dough like that. In her parents’ day, you could have made the down payment. These days, you were lucky to get lunch.

She pulled the black box, the one with Peter’s gun in it, out of her tote bag. She positioned it into the deposit box. It fit easily with the gift wrapped box gone.

She smiled again and gently slid the gift box into her tote. She completed her business in the bank within a few minutes, politely thanked the guard and was gone.

It was only three o’clock. She was doing fine.

She took lunch at one of the local cafés, relaxed slightly, added a bold glass of chilled Spanish white Rioja to her meal, then a second glass. She felt her nerves finally settle. She was surprised that she felt that way because the meeting at the museum was still in front of her and she was guarded about what direction it would take. She took out her cell phone and made some calls.

She emerged from the café less than an hour later and walked directly to the Museo Arqueológico. Rivera, the curator, was there in the lobby to meet her.

“Thank you for phoning ahead,” he said. He spoke English out of courtesy and out of gratitude. “I might have been out. But I cancelled the rest of my afternoon.”

“Thank you,” she said. “It will be worth it.”

They met in a special conference room. Colonel Pendraza of the National Police arrived next and Colonel Sánchez, the real Colonel Sánchez, of the Guardia Civil entered at almost the same time. There were no police there from foreign agencies, though Alex had notified them all. The meeting had been called too quickly for any to attend, and in any event, Alex had notified them by email or phone that the issue of the stolen pietà had been resolved to the likings of two governments. Floyd Connelly, of course, remained booked out of town.

Rivera convened the meeting and turned it over to Alex.

“I suspect several of you have been briefed so far,” Alex said. “To backtrack, we know that a small
objet d’art
disappeared from this museum several weeks ago. Within the past fortnight some of us in this room came together to see what the implications of the theft were and whether, in the best of all possible worlds, there was any room for recovery of the item.”

The men assembled in the room waited.

“I’m happy to announce that this is one of those rare cases where justice, perhaps in a crude way, has been dealt to those who engineered the theft. They were also on the path of a greater evil, which has quietly been averted. And as an added bonus,
The Pietà of Malta
is back here for the people of Spain.”

She set the gift wrapped box on the table.

Pendraza looked at the box. “How do we know it’s not going to explode?” Pendraza asked, making a joke of it.

“It hasn’t yet,” she said. She paused. “Don’t worry. It won’t,” she said.

The package sat benignly in front of all of them.

“You’re the curator,” Alex said, turning to Rivera. “You’re used to dealing delicately with fine objects. Please open the package.”

Rivera’s fingers did the walking. In the quiet room, the ribbon came off. The curator smiled and worked with the joy of a little girl opening a present on Christmas morning. Then away came the firm tactile wrapping paper and within was a wooden box. The box was nondescript, unmarked, sturdy but light, the type of thing that might normally house Japanese chocolates.

The curator held the box carefully in his hand, raised his eyes to Alex again. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like the honor, yourself?” he asked her.

“No, thank you,” she said

He opened it and, although he knew what to expect, astonishment crossed his face. He stared at it for several seconds and no one else in the room could see.

From his pocket, he took out a small velvet pad, the type upon which jewelers place diamonds on for inspection. He laid the pad on the table. And then, from the box that Alex had presented, he removed the contents and placed it on the mat to the further astonishment of those gathered.

And there before them was the primitive miniature carving that had served as the inspiration for Michelangelo’s masterpiece. There in the center of the room sat
The Pietà of Malta
, the earliest lamentation known to the art world, a tiny replica of Mary comforting and caressing the body of the slain Christ.

Across eighteen centuries, perhaps in and out of tombs, there it was.

There were gasps around the room.

“Think of this as a gift from the people of the United States to the people of Spain. The return of your black bird.”

“How on earth—?” Rivera began, shaking his head.

“A contact in the underworld and some invaluable assistance from another intelligence service. I’m equally grateful and indebted to both for their assistance and good will.”

“Extraordinary,” said Pendraza. “Excellent work.”

“I can tell you this much,” Alex said. “Your thieves were homegrown and highly amateur, based right here in Madrid. But they were also unpredictable and tightly knit, which made them both dangerous and a challenge. Your security system was compromised, and they walked through it. They made contact with forces within the Middle East and set in motion a terrorist plot against the United States of America. But like most amateurs, they committed mistakes that caused their undoing. Their first mistake was greed. They attempted to sell the pietà to a collector in Asia. They never delivered because they were greedy. They wanted to try to sell it twice to raise twice as much money. It turned out to be a bad way to do business.”

“Please tell us enough to make proper arrests,” Pendraza said.

“A friendly intelligence service already put them out of business,” said Alex. “I don’t even know where the bodies are. I’ll review the details with you privately if you wish. I will also need to teleconference later with the French police, the Swiss, and Interpol to cover some ancillary details. My recommendation, however, would be to terminate this inquiry and everything related to it. No good will come from any further investigation. Any subsequent time and expense will be wasted.”

Pendraza held her steadily in his gaze, as did Sanchez of the Guardia Civil.

She addressed them in return.

“Related to this is the death of the unfortunate worker in the Metro system,” she said, “the track walker Maria Elena Gómez. I suspect she stumbled across something she shouldn’t have. In any case, those responsible, and those who would have been responsible for an even more horrific incident at one of the embassies on the Calle Serrano, have been summarily brought to justice. This was not of my doing specifically. Again, another intelligence service acted, but they acted with lethal efficiency.”

Colonel Pendraza’s eyes went to the lamentation at the center of the table. “And where did you find this?” he asked.

“The actual retrieval of the pietà took place, I would surmise, in Switzerland. It would appear that an agent of another service called upon a businessman in Geneva, a man of questionable commercial affairs. My guess is that the agent came across the ‘lamentation’ in the man’s possession. The agent surely would have been looking for it. In any event, he passed it along to me for return to its rightful owners.”

Pendraza nodded thoughtfully. “I’m just curious,” Pendraza said. “Certainly you knew that this team from a ‘friendly’ intelligence service was in Spain.”

“Yes, I did,” she said.

“Did you know that their ultimate task was to use lethal force on the conspirators?” he asked.

“No, I didn’t,” she said. “I didn’t even know that had happened until I was released from the hospital a day later.”

“Who told you?”

“A friend of mine and, I would submit, a friend of the Spanish and American people, considering how many lives were saved. And putting two and two together, I now realize that the gentleman who approved this exercise on behalf of US intelligence was trying to distract me during the final hours of the exercise. I met with the gentleman across from La Almudena late three afternoons ago. I couldn’t understand why he was allowing the Spanish police to act so slowly. He just wanted to get to these dangerous amateurs first.”

“Understandably,” said Pendraza.

“So while it was not my decision to launch an execution team,” Alex said, “once that team was launched there was no holding them back. And honestly, I have reservations about what happened, the fate of those who were executed. They were a small band of amateurs playing at being world-changing revolutionaries. The leader, a misguided young man named Jean-Claude, organized his own murderous little cell.

“Hundreds of innocent people might have died at their hands.” She smiled wryly. “What can I say? I tend to be a person of faith who tries to live her faith. God sometimes works in strange ways.” She paused. “Then again, to paraphrase a personal friend, a streetwise philosopher of sorts, ‘The world is better off without such people.’”

“So the terminations took place on Spanish soil?” Pendraza said.

“That is correct,” she said.

“Was it done in conjunction with the American intelligence service?” Pendraza asked. “Or with their approval?”

“To answer that, Colonel,” Alex said, “let me just say that if I decline to answer your question, then, if asked, you won’t know the answer.”

He smiled faintly and nodded.

“I would have to agree with your philosopher friend,” Pendraza said. “Certainly Madrid is better off without a few extra individuals prone to terrorist attacks. I could argue that the world is better off too.”

“I have some homicide reports this morning from the city police,” Sanchez of the Civil Guard said quietly. “Four murders, maybe five. Including a fire. Related. No further victims of the fire fortunately.”

“The further details are known only to the participants and to God,” Alex said. “I suspect that might be the best way to leave things.”

Pendraza glanced around the room. “I suspect it might be,” he said.

“Is there anything else?” Alex asked.

“Maybe, if we inquire, the rival service that solved this problem for us would be able to give us a few more details,” Sanchez suggested.

Alex shook her head. “Don’t even bother asking,” she said. “They won’t. And I’m not planning to divulge what country’s intelligence service helped us. I’m disinclined to discuss it. Even when I’m back in Washington, I suspect my memory will grow hazy.”

She glanced around.

“Now,” she said, “unless anyone has something else, I’d like to excuse myself. I believe this investigation is finished.
Muchas gracias, Señores
.”

Alex rose. The small group in the room rose with her. One by one, the men around the table offered congratulatory handshakes, which she accepted as she moved toward the door. Sanchez gave her an embrace. The last man to stand before her was Colonel Pendraza of the National Police.

His eyes were gray and almost sad. He gave her a slight nod. “I have many questions, but I’m going to pose none of them,” he said. “But I wish to thank you. You and whatever other service you worked with. You spared us enormous problems.”

“De nada,”
she said.

“No, no. It was more than
nada
,” he said. “It was everything.”

Then he too gave Alex a hug, replaced his cap, seemed to stand an inch taller on the spot, and was on his way.