Midnight In Madrid

THIRTY-FOUR

MADRID, SEPTEMBER 10, EARLY AFTERNOON

Alex moved quietly through the lobby of the Ritz and took the elevator up. The hallway on the fifth floor was quiet. A maid was working with a vacuum cleaner in a room two away from hers. The maid gave Alex a polite nod as Alex passed.

Alex came to her own door, paused out of caution, listened, heard nothing from within, and swiped her room card in the slot. She pushed the door forward. The door was still moving when Alex saw two legs lazily folded, belonging to a man in a suit sitting on her sofa.

“LaDuca!” roared out a booming male voice. “Finally! About time you got here!”

American, with slightly mid-Atlantic Coast inflections. It was a voice that she recognized instantly. She pushed the door the rest of the way open, reaching by instinct for her new weapon at the same time. The legs unfolded and shifted toward her. She stepped forward without closing the door, her pistol aloft and pointed.

The man looked at her. The man’s hands were in plain sight, holding no weapon.

“Oh, honestly, Alex. Don’t be overly dramatic.” Mark McKinnon, the CIA’s chief honcho assigned to western Europe, whom she had most recently worked with in the ragged aftermath of Kiev.

McKinnon gave her a smile. There was a bottle of Bushmill’s Irish whiskey on the table in front of him, with a bucket of ice and a bottle of water. There was a glass in his hand. He seemed more relaxed than he should have been, but it was Bushmill’s Eighteen Year Old. The good stuff relaxes a man real fast.

But someone else was in the room too, and that someone was behind the door.

She stepped away but was not quick enough. From the other side of the door came a lithe, agile man of about six feet. He had his hand on her pistol like a velvet hammer, quickly turning her hand upward against the thumb, removing the pistol quickly, and taking it from her. He did all this with such a deft touch that he managed to not hurt her at all, much like a parent removing a dangerous toy from a child’s possession.

Then with a leg, before she could say anything, he pushed the door shut and they stood eye to eye.

“Hello again,” he said. No smile. No emotion.

“Come on in, LaDuca! Have a drink with us!” boomed McKinnon, finally standing. “And relax, would you? It’s about time you formally met Peter Chang. Peter’s come all the way from Peking. I know you’ve seen him before, and I think you’re going to like working with him. Know what? My guess is that you already do!”

Peter Chang smiled very slightly. Then it was gone again.

Up close, he had movie star good looks. An Asian Adonis in a fine suit with a classic Western tie and a light blue shirt. His eyes were dark and sharp, his stature strong but nimble. His hair was perfect. Werewolf of London, she found herself thinking.

Peter gave his head a slight nod. He checked her pistol for ammunition and safety catch, and, with a little showboating Jackie Chan-style move, flipped it around in his hand so that the barrel was pointing away from her.

“Nice piece,” he said. “New acquisition? You didn’t have it last night.”

“If I had,” she said, “I might have used it.”

“That would not have been good,” he said. “If you had tried, one of us wouldn’t be here right now.”

Then he returned the weapon to her, still loaded.

“My apologies if I scared you last night,” he said.

His English was impeccable, just like his marksmanship had been. He could have worked on Saville Row as a tailor or at Claridge’s as a hotel manager.

Her nerves settled slightly. She took back her Browning, then took McKinnon up on his invitation and sat down. It was, after all, her room, even if the taxpayers were footing the bill.

“So, LaDuca,” said McKinnon, as Alex found a place in a comfortable chair. “How are you enjoying your visit to Spain…so far?”

“I’ve been here in Spain before,” she said. “More than once. There was a tax case back in 2004. The FBI sent me because they needed someone who spoke Spanish and French.”

“So you know your way around?” he asked.

“As I said, business a few times. And that’s aside from the trip I made when I was a college student.”

Chang sat quietly, his eyes set upon her like a pair of compass needles pointing north.

“Yeah, I guess those were the days,” McKinnon said. “College years. I remember them myself.”

“Prewar Berlin and the rest, huh?” she said. “Marlene Dietrich in the clubs, right?”

“Ouch! That was nasty.”

“So is finding you here. The lobby wouldn’t work for you to wait?”

Chang followed the repartee back and forth.

“No, it wouldn’t,” McKinnon said. “Not with Peter at my side, not with the security cameras all over the bloody place, and not with a couple of Madrid cops-who weren’t Madrid cops-shot dead last night. What a bloody mess. And anyway, what’s the point of our agency having master keys to every hotel in Madrid if we don’t use them from time to time?”

“I have no idea,” she said.

“Oh, I’m sure you do,” he said. “And by the way, your file did say you were here on the 2004 tax case and that you did visit Malaga with a boyfriend named Damien in 1997. Damien later went into the military, did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t. I haven’t seen him for more than a decade. So why don’t you tell me something else I don’t know, like what you’re doing here and what’s going on, at least from your jaded end of things. Who were the people in the cop uniforms and who jabbed a needle into my partner last night?”

“Bullfight fans. Tourists. The opposition. Liberal Democrats. How should I know? That’s partly what we’re gathered here so happily to discover.”

There was also some bottled water on the coffee table in front of her. She made sure the cap was still factory-sealed, then opened it and poured some into a glass.

“Can I interest you in a whiskey?” he asked. “It’s already on your room-service bill, so I might as well offer you a drink.”

“Maybe later,” she said. “Maybe I’ll need a drink after I hear what you have to say.”

McKinnon laughed. “Spain is a funny place,” he mused. “The present is all caught up with the past, and the past is something most people don’t want to talk about. Yet it keeps repeating itself, doesn’t it? When I was a young case officer in Madrid back in the 1980s, Reagan visited. Are you old enough to remember him?”

She was, of course. “No, Mark,” she said, “but I studied him in history class. Same as Washington, Lincoln, and Elvis Presley.”

But McKinnon was on verbal cruise control. All accelerator and no brakes.

“Reagan visited,” he continued, “and after a bourbon or two, got away from his script. The president made an uncalled for remark about how it was too bad that the Americans who fought in the International Brigades had fought for the ‘wrong side.’ They fought against Franco, in other words, instead of being on the side of Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, and the long and wonderful tradition of fascism and anti-Semitism in this hot, unwashed country. Well, you can imagine how that went over. The Spanish Left organized a ceremony of desagravío. Do you know what that is, LaDuca?”

“It means ‘atonement’ in English,” she said. “Except I also know from my time here before that there’s a strange Spanish ceremony called a desagravío that can be made on behalf of someone else who may not feel apologetic at all.”

“Exactly,” McKinnon said, punctuating the air with a finger. “You got it. In this case, the unrepentant one was President Reagan. The so-called atonement ceremony took place in the Plaza Colón. You know, that square where they got a statue of Columbus?”

“Hence the name of the square,” she said. But if McKinnon got the dig, he wasn’t letting it show.

“Remember, this was 1986,” he said. “There were still a number of broken-down old brigadistas alive, people who had fought against Franco in the 1930s. I was sent to keep an eye on the event. The Plaza Colón was hung with the old flag of the Spanish Republicans, a genuinely ugly, meaningless old rag with vertical purple, white, and red stripes. It looked like a cheap beach towel from a gas station giveaway. Anyway, the old anthem was played, one of those surprisingly bouncy ‘workers’ paradise jingles’ from the early days of Bolshevism, before the whole cause of Communism was thoroughly discredited. The main speaker was a man named Enríque Líster. Fifty years earlier as a young Communist, Lister had been one of the more effective self-taught generals of the Republican Army that fought against Franco. If I remember correctly, and there’s a chance I don’t because my brain has begun its voyage into the sunset, the ceremony took place in an auditorium under the plaza. I was in this highly uncomfortable seat, admiring the beauty of all the Spanish wives. Anyway, it wasn’t an important event, really. Nothing happened except a bunch of decrepit old lefties blew off some steam about Reagan and America. But I had a real sense of history, you know what I mean? A feeling that I was watching a final curtain call from a long-passed age. And yet, know what? All those old polarized elements from Spanish society? There’re still around today.”

“Quite correct. I’ve seen a bit of that recently,” Alex said, thinking of Colonel Pendraza.

McKinnon poured himself another whiskey. “You’ll see a lot more before you’re safely out of here,” he said. “Count on that!”

The bottle was down about four fingers. Chang didn’t have a glass going. McKinnon sipped some water also. Alex was about to interrupt, but McKinnon appeared as if he were about to add something. She rarely interrupted men when they were drinking because they frequently said too much, later to their displeasure.

“I had the same feeling around the same era here in Spain when I attended a lecture at a Catholic school by a man named Serrano Súñer,” McKinnon continued. “Ever heard of Súñer?”

Alex shook her head. “No,” she said. “Don’t know the name.”

“That’s because you’re too young. What are you now, Alex? Mid thirties?”

“Same as last time you saw me which was two months ago,” she said. “Plus you know I’m twenty-nine if you just read my c.v.”

“Peter?” he asked, looking to the other guest, almost surprising him. “Súñer? Name set off any alarms for you?”

For the first time, Chang spoke. “Súñer was Franco’s brother-in-law, wasn’t he?” Chang answered.

“Exactly,” McKinnon answered. “Bright fellow, you are. And you’re the same age as Alex, I’d guess.”

“I’m forty-one,” Chang said.

“That proves my point,” McKinnon said. “Anyway, in the 1930s, during the Civil War, Súñer represented Spain in talks with Hitler. Hitler wanted Spain to get into the big war in Europe. Súñer suggested the creation of a national ‘movement’ out of the Falange and the Carlists to match the fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany. Then they’d all go to war together and keep the Americans and Brits busy on the western front while Hitler could go at it with the Ruskies in the east. Well, Franco wasn’t buying into that one. He was determined to keep Spain out of World War II to make sure he had some soldiers left in case Uncle Joe Stalin marched his Red Bastard soldiers right up to the Pyrenees. And he did stay out of it. But the dispute ended in a falling out between the two men. Not really important anymore,” McKinnon said.

“Then why mention it?” Alex asked.

“What?” It was obvious he wasn’t quite in the bag, but well on his way.

“Why mention it?”

“Well, it was a curious feeling,” McKinnon said. “To speak with a man who had personally conversed with Hitler.”

A moment passed. McKinnon rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch. “God!” he said. “We’ve been here since 10:00 a.m. Let me hit the boy’s room, then we’ll talk more, okay?”

“Okay,” Alex said.

Chang gave her a shrug. McKinnon rose with effort and wandered off to the washroom, leaving Alex and Peter Chang to stare at each other.

“Thanks,” Alex finally said, “for saving my life.”

“No big deal,” Chang said.

“Actually, to me it was.”