Midnight in Madrid (6 page)

MADRID, SPAIN, SEPTEMBER 7, 8:38 A.M.

T
he United States Embassy in Madrid stands at the north end of Calle Serrano. It is a slab building in the style of the United Nations Secretariat, though at nine stories, considerably smaller. A metal fence runs around the compound.

At exactly 8:45 on her first morning in Madrid, Alex arrived at the public entrance to the embassy. Wearing a summer-weight navy suit and carrying her new laptop, she proceeded to the consular section. She identified herself to the Marine Security Guard at the window, who checked her official passport against information provided by Washington. He buzzed her through a door at the side, into the employees’ entrance lobby, and asked her to wait.

Alex recalled from earlier visits that, given the unusual position of the building against the relentless sun of Spain, it was an incessant gripe of workers at the embassy that it was never possible to achieve a mutually acceptable air-conditioning setting for the offices on the north and south sides of the building. If the air conditioning was set to cool the south side with its greenhouse effect the offices on the north side were too cold, and if the setting left them comfortable, the offices on the south side were too hot.

She sighed. The elevators were slow and there weren’t enough of them. Finally an elevator door opened, and a young man came out, smiling, hand extended.

“Hi,” he said, “I’m Pete Wilkins, with the Treasury Attaché’s Office. I’m your control officer. The Regional Security Office asked me to give you this. I guess you found the standard welcome in your room. But this is something different. It’s your temporary embassy ID. Your data for laser eye scans has already been sent from Washington.”

When another elevator arrived, Alex and her “control officer” rode up to the eighth floor. The Political Section was on the eighth floor, which is as high as the elevator rose. And yet, also from her previous assignments, she knew that there was also a ninth floor, or, as one diplomat once drunkenly put it to her, “the Felliniesque 8½ floor.” This was where the black arts of espionage were practiced by the American faction in Madrid, the stuff that took place off the record and in the back alleys. An armada of microwave antennas were on the roof just above this intelligence section. Despite access from the Political Section it had nothing to do with the latter, whose business was traditional diplomacy.

On the eighth floor they turned to the left and walked down a corridor with offices on either side. They came to the room assigned to her morning briefing: Sala/Room 821.

Wilkins departed and Alex stepped in.

Small groups of conversation stopped. All heads in the room turned her way. Her eyes did a quick count. Nine players, all men, aged from their twenties to their fifties. Suits all around. Grave expressions breaking into smiles at the arrival of a woman. She didn’t mind. She had long since gotten used to being the only women in a room. She had also learned how to use it to her advantage.

But at some time on some day at some point in the future, couldn’t she walk into a room like this and see at least
one
other female?

She did a quick scan. Only one man did she recognize, and she didn’t know if she should acknowledge him. Before she had to decide, a handsome young man with fair skin and black hair smiled and stepped toward her.

“United States Department of Treasury?” he asked. “Alejandra LaDuca?”

“That would be me,” she answered.

“I’m José Diego Rivera, the chief curator of the Museo Arqueológico Nacional,” he said. “Thank you for being here and my deep appreciation to your government for sending you.”

“De nada,”
she said. “I hope I’m able to help.”

“Let me introduce you around,” he said.
“¿La molesta si hablamos español?”

“No me molesta,”
she answered. It didn’t bother her at all if they all spoke in Spanish.

The eight other participants present were each in some branch of international law enforcement. Rivera introduced Alex first to a man named Miguel Torres who stood to his immediate left. Torres was in the green uniform of La Guardia Civil, the paramilitary Civil Guard of Spain. These were the police brigades that mostly guarded rural areas, highways, country roads, and national buildings, but who were still remembered by some for an attempted coup in 1982. At that time, rogue members of La Guardia Civil burst into the parliament, firing shots in the air, then held the members at gunpoint. Even though it was las Fuerzas Armadas, the Spanish army, who had attempted the coup, not the Civil Guard, the guard was widely remembered as embracing the assault on the new democracy. In recent years, however, the Guardia Civil had also played a greater role of combating terrorism within Spain, mostly in the more remote areas and the borders.

Torres was tall and thin, dark-haired with grayish-white temple patches in a Paulie Walnuts style. His uniform hung on him as it might on a clothes hanger. His nose was out of joint, looking as if it had been broken and reset more than once.

To Rivera’s right stood Carlos Pendraza, a representative of another division of the Spanish police, the Policia Nacional. Alex guessed he was the alpha-cop present, the most powerful person in terms of local authority.

The Policia Nacional were the units that dealt mostly with national security, major crime, and potential terrorism in the larger cities. Pendraza was regally featured with gray hair and a very light complexion. When he spoke, his accent carried the inflections of Madrid. He made no attempt to speak any language other than Spanish. Alex wondered if he was uncomfortable with other languages or just holding back. He also possessed a certain intelligence and dignity. He was, she guessed, in his mid-fifties and easily the oldest man in the room.

Though the two Spaniards were of competing police agencies, both were perfectly gracious when introduced. Spaniards, like most Europeans, tended to like Americans personally even if they disagreed with various aspects of American foreign policy. Both men were near the top in their divisions, but not right at the top. They were colonels, not generals.

Further to the curator’s right, and to Alex’s left, stood a trio of men in dark suits, all with ID tags that pegged the service they were here to represent. Like the Spaniards, they were high up in their respective organizations. Alex also knew that the representatives of the other police agencies would have been chosen with an eye to their fluency in Spanish and their familiarity with Spanish culture and law.

Closest to Rivera was a heavy-set balding man named Maurice Essen, a Swiss-German who was a representative of the International Criminal Police Organization. The latter was better known by its telegraphic address, Interpol, and was currently headquartered in a set of gray modern buildings in Saint-Cloud, France, just outside of Paris and not far from the world-class racetrack.

Next to Essen was a very youthful Englishman of Scotland Yard, Rolland Fitzgerald, and next to him was a stocky dark-haired Frenchman named Pierre LeMaitre, who had been sent by the Gendarmerie Nationale de France, the French National Police.

Fitzgerald was bright-eyed and hollow-cheeked and hawklike in the sharp quirky way he turned his head from side to side to follow conversation. He was about thirty-five. LeMaitre was small, almost chubby, his dress dowdy and his expression dour. His accent, which Alex overheard when he spoke briefly in French with Fitzgerald, had the almost rube-like inflections of Normandy. He was as unglamorous a Frenchman as she had ever seen, and she guessed that he was probably a pretty good investigator. In her experience, it always turned out that way. He hadn’t gotten to where he was on looks or charm.

The introductions proceeded in Spanish, yet all the Europeans other than Colonel Pendraza were careful to say a few words to her in English. First, they wished to be courteous, but second, and more importantly, they wished to make her aware of their fluency in her native language in case it proved important later. It was the proper gesture.

Arriving last was the one other American who would be in the room, a jowly man with thick glasses, pink lips, and a clipped gray moustache. His name was Floyd Connelly. He bore an unflattering resemblance to an aging Orson Welles and moved with the speed and grace of a sea tortoise.

Connelly, however, represented the United States Customs Service. Customs people in the US, she knew from experience, tended to be plodders, more mulish and stubborn than innovative, more bureaucratic than maverick. But they also had unending access to federal records. So he was a contact she would nurture if she could.

The one man in the room whom she did know loitered outside the introductions. He was an Italian national, tall and trim with short dark hair. His name was Gian Antonio Rizzo. He was immaculately dressed in a Via Condotti suit. Rizzo was recently retired from the municipal police in Rome after having put in a quarter century on the job in that city, often with distinguished results. He also had had a less-evident employer over those years, off the books and off the record, one based in Langley, Virginia, which was how Alex happened to know him.

They had worked together in Paris. Alex had not seen Rizzo since she had checked out of the American Hospital in Neuilly two months earlier. Rizzo gave her a brief hug and spoke in English as a courtesy. They exchanged a few words, but little of substance with the other men present. There was an unspoken expectation between them that they would talk more afterward.

Rivera, the curator, glanced at the Rolex on his wrist. It was 9:00 a.m., the given time of the meeting. He moved to the head of a round conference table as an assistant closed the door to the room and departed.

Taking the cue, the assemblage of law enforcement people within the room moved to seats at the conference table. Rivera stood at the head of the table.

Rivera waited for all others to sit, then eased into his own chair. He quietly turned on an anti-bugging device that sat on the table before him.

Alex sat thoughtfully at the round table in the conference room, her new IBM laptop open in front of her. She glanced at the others and there was much she could already conclude.

First, whatever she was here for was no small matter and probably had some larger import than anything that was shared around the table today. Second, by the assemblage of people around the table, whatever the heist had been, it had already escaped the boundaries of one country—with potential repercussions to match.

And third, if Rizzo was there, it wasn’t a coincidence. Her employers were hooking her up with someone she knew.

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, SEPTEMBER 7, 9:32 A.M.

C
olonel Tissot finished breakfast and prepared to address a day of business. As a merchant of munitions that were sold in the world’s gray economy, he was a busy man on most days, particularly in a “neutral” capital like Geneva. The beauty of five hundred years of Swiss neutrality was that Switzerland was a perfect place to conduct the commerce of warfare.

Well, why not? The Swiss banks and their codes of secrecy were there for a reason, were they not?

A fastidious man, quiet and unassuming in public, Tissot dressed in a light gray suit, one of several that he had bought on a recent visit to London. He tended to be a creature of habit, leaving between nine and ten each morning to meet his clients. He was, however, wary enough to alter his movements from day to day. One never knew when some pest from the past with some grievance, real or imagined, might step forth.

Tissot locked the double bolts on his door and stepped a few paces to the private elevator that served his floor. He checked to make sure he had both of his cell phones, one in his trouser pocket, the other with a small handgun in the briefcase he carried. He knew that Stanislaw would call him during that afternoon with a progress report of his drive down the southeast coast of France.

Tissot had a rueful admiration for his employee. The man had made a lifetime occupation of killing people, first in the military and then for hire. Well, it was a mean, unforgiving world, and everyone had uses for men like Stanislaw, who were just smart enough to get a job done and just dumb enough not to try thinking on their own.

When the elevator doors opened, there was a passenger whom he had never seen before. He gave Tissot a nod and Tissot reciprocated. No words were spoken. Tissot didn’t care for strangers and was leery of them. But people were always subletting in this building or entertaining promiscuous guests who stayed over. The morality of today led to a lot of strangers, Tissot mused, and he could have done without them.

Well, it would only be a few seconds, Tissot grumbled, and he did have his own weapon in his attaché case, along with his laptop.

The elevator doors closed.

Of course, Tissot pondered next, working his way through an unpleasant scenario, if this stranger in the elevator were any real threat, he would not have time to access the weapon. The man was Asian of some sort, much younger and athletic than he. Tissot had sold weapons to Asians many times. He liked them as customers but not necessarily as people. The elevator slowly descended, and Tissot put together a few other details.

The stranger in the elevator wouldn’t yield the rear of the car, insisting through his positioning that he remain behind the only other passenger. Then Tissot noticed that a band of tape had been placed over the security camera in the elevator. And then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the man was wearing gloves.

Tissot quickly raised his gaze to the mirror in the corner of the elevator. He saw that the young man behind him was staring back at him. Tissot could read the look in an instant.

“Something troubling you, sir?” Tissot asked in English. He made a move to access the gun in his brief case.

“Yes,” the stranger said.

Then the gloves were in motion. Tissot jabbed an elbow backward. He flailed and fought to open his attaché case. But the stranger ripped the case out of his hands. It thudded onto the floor.

Tissot attempted to throw another elbow and tried to stamp down on his assailant’s instep. But the assailant had him by the head, one hand under the jaw, the other on the top of his skull, turning his head in a powerful twisting motion.

The grip was so tight that Tissot couldn’t open his mouth to speak. Tissot resisted by clenching his neck muscles and trying to strike backward with his arms. But the stranger was an expert. He had his own body flush against Tissot’s as leverage.

Then the stranger put everything he had into his mission. With a tremendous twist, he moved Tissot’s head sharply to the left, then jerked it backward. Tissot felt his own muscles tighten like springs, then gradually tear with an excruciating pain. The intruder jerked Tissot’s head upward, then spun it abruptly back to the left. Tissot felt as if his body was a car involved in some catastrophic wreck.

The crack of Tissot’s cervical column was as loud as a gunshot. It filled Tissot’s body with an immense pain that swelled and carried him into an unconscious blackness. Then Tissot’s body gave one final violent contraction as death claimed it.

T
issot’s body went limp. John Sun thoughtfully eased it to the floor. He let the body rest there briefly in a small moment of victory. He picked up Tissot’s attaché case and guided the elevator to an emergency stop. Then he took the elevator back to the sixth floor where Tissot had boarded.

Using the keys from the dead man’s pocket, he opened Tissot’s door.

He dragged the corpse in. Perfect so far. No one had seen anything, and presumably no one had heard anything. No blood. Sometimes things were too easy, but he wasn’t complaining.

Sun closed the door and locked it. He set aside the attaché case for a moment. He calmly dragged Tissot’s body into one of the bathrooms, dumped him headfirst in the tub, and closed the door. He returned back to Tissot’s front door and bolted it from within.

He then settled into the apartment of the man he had killed. He had to go through Tissot’s belongings. There were certain items he wanted, and he had several hours to go through everything and look for them. But the item he wanted most, which he would take with him, was the colonel’s laptop.

He found it easily.