Midnight In Madrid

FIFTY-THREE

GENEVA, SEPTEMBER 16, 9:00 A.M.

Sunday morning in Geneva. Quiet streets. Quiet city.

Alex rose well before 9:00 a.m., re-ensconced at the Hotel de Roubaix. After coffee, she found her way to the Holy Trinity Anglican Church, known locally in Geneva as the Église Anglaise, for a morning service in English. She had been there twice before on visits to Europe. The church, a gray stone edifice that would have fit in easily in England or in the United States, was situated near the center of Geneva on the Rue du Mont Blanc, between the bridge and the railway station. It was a short, pleasant walk from the hotel on clean streets past closed shops.

Attending a service in English reminded her of home. It felt right. The congregation came from many different nationalities and backgrounds, which she liked. The pastor was an Englishman who had just returned from Africa. He discussed poverty around the world. His words made her think again of Barranco Lajoya in Venezuela, and the pendant that still hung around her neck.

She took communion. In the final moments of prayer, she prayed for the souls of her parents and for her late fiancé, Robert. She hoped God was listening. When she departed, she felt refreshed. She told herself she should attend services more often when people aren’t shooting at her in various places around the world. Or, she continued wryly, maybe she should attend more when they were shooting at her.

She found a café open a block from the hotel and bought a Swiss weekend newspaper. She read an amusing account in French on the new American president’s current battles with Congress. She had a light brunch. An hour later she was back at the hotel. She sat in a corner of the lobby, waiting, this time working on her laptop in a wi-fi zone. The two people whom she needed to have find her in Geneva were Peter and Federov. They both knew where to look for her. So she kept herself visible.

She accessed more of Pendraza’s files and continued her long march through them. An hour passed. She cross-referenced names and places from his files against what Interpol had sent her and what she had received in small batches from the French and Italian police and from Washington.

But her mind increasingly evoked unfavorable scenarios involving Peter. What if Interpol had picked him up? What if he had been detained when reentering Switzerland? There was a good chance that Interpol knew exactly who they were looking for, and, just as she had not completely shared information with Interpol, they probably had not shared everything with her.

Back to the laptop screen she went, one eye on the lobby, the other on the screen, glancing up and down, not completely locked in on anything. Cross-referencing, looking for links, there were overlapping references that triggered each other, but nothing definite-nothing that made sense. When, she wondered, would it?

Black bird, black fog, or black hole? Toward 2:15 p.m. she looked up from where she worked, Out of the corner of her eye she spotted a man entering the lobby, walking slowly, looking around.

The vision jolted her. Peter!

She held her position and kept her eyes on him. For several seconds she tried to weigh everything that had happened between him and her, and everything she had learned about “John Sun” and the events in Switzerland. What was he hanging around with her for? To guide her safely through to the recovery of the pietà or to cut her throat when it served his purposes. In Kiev, reluctantly, she had killed someone as well, and she prayed that God would someday have mercy on her. But was Peter any worse than she was, or vice versa.

Something told her that she would have to continue her present path, to keep giving Peter the benefit of her doubts. But was it an angel telling her or a demon? God or the Devil?

Peter turned. She caught a huge expression of relief on his face when he saw her. He made no acknowledgement but walked to her.

“Thank heaven!” she said.

“Yeah,” he said with a long sigh. “Me too!”

Then, impulsively, she stood. They embraced, then broke apart quickly. “Let’s go to the bar,” she finally said, gathering her laptop and other things. “It’s more private, but we can still keep an eye on the door.”

“That would be good,” he said.

“Follow me.”

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” he said. “I came to the hotel yesterday and you had checked out. I went to all our fall-back places. I sat for hours in that obnoxious Russian café. Nothing. You okay?” he asked.

“I’m okay. You?”

“Yes. I didn’t know whether to leave town or just ditch completely. I figured I’d give it a couple more days, at least till Tuesday. Tried to get McKinnon on the phone but it’s a weekend.”

“He should have picked up the phone anyway,” she said as they entered the bar.

Peter shook his head. “He’s got some girlfriends,” he said. “When he goes to visit them, he carries a different cell so his location can’t be traced. I don’t have that number.”

“You’ve got more problems than that,” she said. “You’ve got some you don’t even know about.”

He seemed to tense. “Uh oh,” he said.

They settled in at a table.

“Anyway, I was with Yuri Federov,” she said. “Spent the night at his place, but not the way that sounds.”

“You talk. I’ll listen,” he said.

“Fine bodyguard you are,” she said, relaxing slightly. “His people walked through the hotel walls and abducted me.”

“What?”

A waiter appeared. They ordered soft drinks and finger food. There were other Americans in the bar, so as a mild precaution, Alex switched to Spanish and spoke in low tones. She brought him up to date on the events of the last several hours. Then Peter, continuing in Spanish, ran though his own set. He had experienced no problems with the Swiss police, he said, but had been completely flummoxed when he had come to this hotel and there had been no record of her arrival or departure, or at least none they were willing to share. She sensed Federov’s hand in the mix on that detail too but didn’t explain.

When they were caught up, she shifted the topic of the conversation. “Do you know what we’re going to do now?” she asked.

He hunched his shoulders. “You tell me,” he said.

“We’re going to trade information,” she said.

“About what? Are we on the black bird again?”

“I think so. I’m going to tell you something for free,” she said. “And then I’m going to ask you a few questions. And since what I have to say is going to have considerable value to you, I expect you to give me straightforward answers in return. Shall we try that?”

“Nothing to lose,” he said.

“I have information that a certain ‘John Sun’ was in Zurich very recently, an emissary of your government. Except there is no John Sun. John Sun is a pseudonym for another agent of the government of China, one that will remain nameless right now.”

His eyes settled in on her. “Keep going,” he said.

She told him what she learned about John Sun without revealing her sources. “So I take it that it would come as a double surprise to you to learn first that John Sun’s fictitious identity has been blown. And second, that Interpol is looking for a Chinese agent traveling on a different passport who might match Sun’s description.”

A long pause, and, “It would, yes. And this would be a very good thing for me to know. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I should plan accordingly,” he said.

“Yes, you should.” She paused. “I get the idea that somewhere, stashed away in various dead drops, car panels, and safety deposit boxes, you probably have a whole library of passports, diplomatic or otherwise. You could also pass for American, Canadian, or English if you worked at it, Peter. So why limit yourself to your native country?”

“I don’t. Very insightful, Alex.”

“You don’t mind if I call you ‘Peter,’ do you? It’s possibly your name.”

For the first time, a laugh. “It’s my name.” He thought for a moment. “You could even check my Columbia University records.”

“I already did,” she said. “Or at least I had my boss in Washington do it for me. Roar, Lion. Wasn’t Barack Obama there around the same time?”

“He was there several years earlier. Fortunately for both of us, we didn’t know each other.”

“That is a good break,” she said. “For both of you.”

“But what I don’t immediately understand,” he said slowly, “is how the Swiss police might have positively linked ‘Sun’ in Zurich to ‘Sun’ in Geneva.”

“I can only guess,” she said. “And my guess would be this: within their bureaus, this case has attained some importance. And similarly, if they had been more aggressive in retrieving the ATM surveillance photos in Geneva from Tissot’s neighborhood and shown them around the gendarmerie in Zurich where Sun retrieved that body, they might have gotten a match much faster. It’s a hypothesis, but it’s a sound one.”

“But all Asians look alike, right?” he asked facetiously.

“Maybe, but in your case that would work against you, not for you, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t even want to be picked up to have to explain things, would you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Are you, as Peter Chang, traveling on a diplomatic passport?”

A pause as he sensed the direction of this. “No,” he said.

“Then you could be detained, couldn’t you? Arrested, actually. And there’s even the fair chance that your arrangement with your government is such that they couldn’t admit who you are. Not for several years.”

“It could happen,” he said, after another pause, “if I were unlucky. Or careless.”

“Then if I were you, I would be very careful,” she said.

“Who else knows about this?” he asked.

“No one.”

“So,” he said, “not to put bad thoughts in the air, if anything happened suddenly to you…”

She laughed. “That would work out poorly for you too.”

“Why’s that?”

“Suppose you were picked up and questioned about the two murders in Geneva. Were your two peers, David and Charles, in Europe yet?”

“No.”

“The date of the murders was September seventh and eighth. I was alone that night, myself. In Barcelona. In my hotel room.”

He smiled.

“So who’s to say I wasn’t there, also?” he said.

She nodded. “And thank you for saving my life in Madrid the other night. What goes around comes around. Karma,” she said.

“Karma,” he agreed. “Now, what did you want to ask me?”

She unloaded. “Why did Lee Yuan want The Pietà of Malta?” she asked. “Why did he personally want it?”

“What makes you think he did?” Peter asked.

“I hate it when I ask a question and get another one in return,” she said. “But the other night you mentioned your personal connection to Lee Yuan. And you mentioned finishing his business for him. Well, if it were just a wealthy collector in China who got swindled, I don’t think you’d be here. So my guess is that Lee Yuan wanted the carving himself. It wasn’t delivered to him, his money was taken by criminals who were out to finance some activity somewhere else. But they didn’t bargain on who he was or the fury they would unleash by harming him.”

“You need to consider who Lee Yuan was,” he said. “Let me explain. Lee Yuan was a man each of us respected greatly in his later years. But he had a very difficult life. The great events of the time, the turbulence of recent history, surrounded him. In one sense, the events gave rise to his greatness as an individual. In another sense, they compromised his time on earth.”

“In what way?” she asked.

“Yuan was a boy during the Great Leap Forward,” Peter said. “He was five years old and his family was sent to camps in the countryside for reeducation, same as millions of others. Same as the parents of David Wong, whom you met the other night. Yuan’s parents were practicing Christians during the Cultural Revolution. Practicing religion was considered social turmoil. But they were devout people who continued to practice. They had come of age in the era of Sun Yat Sen and Chiang Kai Shek. They were products of their time, some say heroic, some say foolish.”

“What do you say?”

“I am too smart to say,” Peter said with a smile. “They were what they were, and the past is the past. It can be rewritten, but the truth cannot be erased. They were arrested for owning Bibles. And Yuan’s father was a Christian scholar. He was particularly fascinated by the works of St. Francis of Assisi. He owned books on Saint Francis too.”

“Ah,” she said.

Peter paused, then continued.

“After their books were burned, Lee Yuan’s parents were held in a Beijing detention center for nearly a year as the Red Guard considered what to charge them with. And still they prayed. They were sent to a camp in the freezing northeast of China for reeducation instead. This was maybe in the Western year of 1967 or 1968. Yuan was sent to an orphanage and never saw his parents again. He later learned that his parents had been beheaded by the Red Guard, executed in a public square as an example to others.”

Alex could tell that Peter was choosing his words with great care. She listened to them in the same way.

“It was said that the parents of Yuan were saying prayers to Jesus when the executioners’ swords descended upon their necks,” he said flatly. “And I have no reason to doubt that story. Lee Yuan, however, made the best of his new life,” Peter continued after a moment. “He studied in the orphanage. He became an outstanding officer in the army, then moved to state security and intelligence. As an adult, he didn’t practice religion but he always had an interest in it. And why not? Religion had led him to be who he was, by his parents’ practice of it. So in that way, it may have been part of him too. Who is to say?”

“Did you ever discuss any of this with him?” she asked. “Christianity? His parents?”

“No. I knew the history. There was nothing further I wanted to hear. Equally, I’ve learned in life that there are doors you must not open, windows you should not look through. Questions you do not ask. So I knew not to ask more. When the pietà disappeared from the museum, Lee Yuan took a special interest. He was fascinated by the fact that it may have been touched by a saint, buried with a saint, and the inspiration for Michelangelo’s great Christian work. And it touched upon his parents’ dear St. Francis, as well. You can imagine. Spiritually, it must have made him feel so close to the people he had lost so early in his life. Spiritually, if his parents had connected with this one saint, and then he connected to…well, you see. Superstition? Faith? I do not know. None of us do. But I know he went to Switzerland to acquire this piece on the black market. For himself.”

“And he was double-crossed?”

“Yes. The transaction was to take place in a remote monastery. Yuan liked the idea of that, as he was fascinated with the places where Christianity was kept alive through the Dark Ages. He saw parallels with recent Chinese history. So against his better judgment, he agreed to visit the place and complete the transaction there. He was never seen alive again.”

“But you and your associates have come to complete his mission,” she said.

Peter’s eyes said yes. So did a slight nod of his head.

“Official policy of your government?” she asked. “Or something more personal?”

“Both,” he said, “but neither entirely.”

“What?”

“Well, you see,” Peter said with a smile, “nothing is ever all one thing or all another. Think of it as sunlight shining over a mountain but the mountain is in a valley, and in the valley, Yin and Yang exist, the two opposite parts of the truth, which by themselves are both true and false. Yin is the dark area where the mountain stands and blocks sunlight. Yang is the place of direct sunshine. The sun traverses the sky and Yin and Yang trade places with each other. What was dark becomes light and what was obscured is revealed.”

“Are you answering my question of just obfuscating it?”

“I’m answering it,” he said. “If a Chinese agent is harmed anywhere in the word, a team of us will come after him to finish his work and to serve notice on those who would harm any of us. In the case of the noble Lee Yuan, he was much loved by many of us. So a professional mission became increasingly personal. The dark became light. Is it more of one than another? I don’t know. It changes. The central truth remains-but with gradations.”

She blinked. “Okay,” she finally said. “Got it.”

“If you do, you’re better than most Westerners. Westerners see things in finite terms. Asians, not so much.”

“Where is it now?”

“The balance of the opposing forces?”

“No,” she said. “Where is The Pietà of Malta? And I’d like a Western-style answer on that. Don’t tell me that its Yin is in Switzerland but its Yang is safely stashed in an outhouse in upper Mongolia. I can’t work that way.”

He shook his head. “I answered that before. Maybe it’s in Switzerland. Maybe it’s back in Spain. Maybe shipped to China. My mission is not the black bird and never was. My personal mission is the people who harmed Lee Yuan.”

“But it would appear,” she said coyly, “that this fellow ‘Sun’ took care of that?”

“Not completely,” he said coldly.

She thought it through, all of it.

“All right,” she said. “Your story works. We’re still partners.”

“That’s good,” he said. “Because we have company.”

“Where?” she asked sharply.

Peter made a gesture with his eyes. Alex had been so engrossed in Peter’s backstory that she had missed something. She turned fast and saw Yuri Federov, two bodyguards close behind him, standing near the doorway to the bar. He had just spotted her.

“Trouble?” Peter asked softly. His hand was starting to drift under his jacket.

“No. It’s okay,” she said. She moved her hand quickly and stopped his before it reached his gun. “It’s Federov.”

She released. Peter’s hand stayed where it was, on his lap, just in case.

Federov approached the table, looked at her, and then looked at Peter.

“Found a new boyfriend already?” he asked in English.

“Don’t be crude, Yuri, even though that may be difficult for you.”

He snorted. “We can talk?” Federov asked.

His bodyguards were enormous men in black leather jackets. They loomed behind him like a couple of trained grizzly bears, almost as big, almost as wide, and almost as smart. Alex guessed they were the men who had abducted her.

“This is Mr. Chang,” she said smoothly. “He’s a friend and is assisting me on this case.”

Federov, who never cared much for strangers, grunted.

“You can speak in front of him or we can speak privately, Yuri,” Alex continued. “But the bottom line is this: anything you tell me I’m probably going to have to tell him. So you can do it whatever way you want, and keep in mind that the Internal Revenue Service will be thrilled by your cooperation.”

Federov glanced at Chang. “He speaks English, this Chinaman?”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

Federov looked in Chang’s direction. “Yes or no? Speak English?”

Chang shrugged. “Some,” he said, sounding slightly fresh-off-the-boat. Federov looked back to Alex.

“I have a man in Genoa,” he said, “north of Italy. He used to work on one of my ships. My people are holding him.”

“I know where Genoa is,” she said. “I’ve been there. Who’s this man and where do you have him? In the trunk of a car?”

Federov missed her irony.

“He’s at a house I own. He has things to tell you.”

“About?”

“Money. And a transfer of smuggled explosives.”

She looked quickly to Peter and searched his eyes.

“It will take me a day to get to Genoa,” she said.

“Why?”

“Air schedules.”

“I have a private plane. It’s already at your disposal.”

“You’re serious?”

“No. I came into the city to tell jokes.”

“Are you going with us?” she asked. “To Genoa?”

“It would be a good idea,” he said. “I think this man will have more to say if I’m there. I have arranged for an interpreter.”

“What does he speak?”

“He speaks Italian and Turkish. Those are the only languages that are dependable.”

“I speak Italian,” she said.

“He’s Sicilian dialect. He sounds like a drunken goat.”

She thought for a moment. “Then let me also bring in one of my own people. From Rome, if I can get him.”

“I don’t mind. Can he be in Genoa by evening?”

“I can call and ask,” she said.

Federov reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He handed it to her, almost rudely.

“I’ll use mine,” Alex said. “No need to spread private numbers around, is there?”

“None,” he said with a grin, taking back the phone.

“Nice try, anyway,” she said. Peter smiled. His hand left his lap.

Federov’s two thugs still loomed and glowered. Federov looked at Peter. Then, “This Chinaman is coming too?” he asked.

Alex looked to Peter. “Yes, the Chinaman is coming too,” Peter said. “The Chinaman wouldn’t miss it.”

Federov shrugged. “The more the merrier,” he said. “Let’s get moving.”

“Will we have trouble with weapons at the airport?” Peter asked.

“Not if you’re with me,” Federov answered. “Let’s go.”