Midnight In Madrid

EIGHT

MADRID, SEPTEMBER 6, EVENING

At the front desk of the Ritz, Alex inquired about where to buy a new laptop. She knew there would be no shortage of expensive stores nearby, which catered to wealthy tourists and business people traveling on someone else’s tab. In Madrid, being a late city even by European standards, there was an array of shops open near the hotel in the early evening. The concierge at the hotel provided her with the address of the best.

She went back to her room and threw on a pair of jeans and some comfortable walking shoes. To anyone observing her, she might have looked like a graduate student on summer holiday. In actuality, the anxiety of being back on the job was setting in, and she was already entertaining premonitions of danger, made worse by the persistent memories of the events of the previous months.

She also wished, for example, that she were carrying a weapon. She hated to use it and knew that violence leads only to more violence. Yet she had no illusions about the world and the evil of some of the people in it. Sometimes guns and physical force, lamentable as they were, were as much a part of life as food, water, and air. There wasn’t much she could do about it.

She made her computer purchase within a half hour of leaving the hotel. Her clerk was a young Madrileno who was fascinated with her and couldn’t tell her nationality until she presented her passport as identification with her credit card.

He had visited London and New York, he told her, and began speaking very good English. He wished to practice it, so she indulged him by conducting the final parts of the transaction in English.

She took her new purchase back to the hotel. She booted it and started to download the proper software. The procedure would take several hours. So she left the computer and went out again for a walk. She was alone in a city she had loved very much in brief visits as a student many years previously. And her hotel-bless her bosses and the American taxpayers who were underwriting this back in Washington-was excellent.

After her computer was properly set up, Alex caught up with some evening sightseeing. Then, toward eleven, she had a light dinner and a half bottle of Rioja at a quiet little place two blocks from the hotel, one where she could find a quiet table in a corner, watch the endlessly interesting street scene, and not be bothered by anyone.

Might as well enjoy it, she told herself. She was already back in the government harness and as usual had no idea where that might lead. She would attend the next day’s meeting, take a conscientious assessment of the museum theft, and see what she wanted to do next.

It wasn’t all bad, she told herself. She was back to work and felt much better about it than she had expected she would. She was glad she had taken this assignment and noticed, as she sat in the café and tuned into several conversations around her, that she was already thinking in Spanish.