Midnight In Madrid

SIXTY-TWO

MADRID, SEPTEMBER 17, LATE EVENING

Alex paid her fare at the window of the taxi cab and stepped to the sidewalk on the Carrera de San Jerónimo. Across the street stood the Hotel de Cataluña. She tipped the driver generously and turned as he gave her an appreciative nod. It was only then that she noticed that there was some disorder, that something grievous had happened.

The hotel was a restored nineteenth-century building not far from the museum triangle. A thick, hot night gripped the city. Several meters from where Alex stepped onto the sidewalk, many of the patrons of the Café Giron, where intellectuals had gone to argue for generations, stood looking up into an alley. Several couples stood on the opposite side of the street, discussing what had happened. Their faces were contorted. They spoke in hushed tones. Two women jockeyed for a good view of what had happened, got one, then shielded their eyes and abruptly averted their gaze

Alex looked up, scanning the side of the building. She was staring at the back wall of the hotel where Floyd Connelly had said he was staying. There were human figures at several windows, people looking down, gawking at a spot where a knot of other people had gathered below in an alley. One woman on the third floor was holding her hands to her face in horror. A man poked his head out, looked down, and quickly looked away. Alex worked the side of the building with her gaze. There was a seventh floor window that was wide open with window drapes out and flapping gently. She recalled where Connelly said he was staying-habitation 734-and she knew that whatever he had to say to her wasn’t going to get said.

For good measure, hoping against hope, she tried Connelly’s cell number. His voice came on. Voice mail. She disconnected.

Alex crossed the street. She walked to an alley that led behind the hotel. In front of the alley was an ambulance and in front of the ambulance was a police car. Emergency vehicles, but no one seemed to be in much of a rush. The police weren’t setting much of a perimeter yet. They had that “just arrived” look.

She passed between two iron gates that led into an alley. The alley led to a place where garbage was stored and where service vehicles could enter the hotel’s service entrance. But the garbage and the vehicles didn’t matter right now.

A Vespa with a rider on it emerged from underneath of the hotel and with a whining whirring noise, accelerated as it climbed the driveway. The small knot of men who had gathered there, some in police uniforms, gave way to the bike and rider. Alex stepped back so the vehicle wouldn’t run over her toes.

The boundaries of the alley were marked by a high, old wrought-iron fence with spikes on the top. The spikes resembled old-fashioned spears. Part of the spiked railing had been torn from the rest of the fence. It was there that the knot of men were focused.

Alex pushed through the crowd. She could see partially what had brought everyone together. A man in a blue police uniform knelt over a bulky body that was sprawled in impossible directions. The body wore suit pants and a blue shirt with a necktie, but already the color combination had turned from the prosaic into the grotesque. Fragments of the victim’s skull, tufts of white hair caked with crimson fluid, were not far from the corpse. Other men stood awkwardly behind the policeman, peering through whatever inches of space were possible between bodies.

Alex worked her way to the edge of the small crowd and managed to slide her way to the front where she could get a good look at the corpse. A wave of nausea overtook her. She suppressed it. She had seen atrocities in her life-human beings torn apart by bullets in Venezuela, by a rocket attack in Ukraine-but this was the worst she had seen.

She looked at the fence, looked upward at the seventh floor window again, turned away, and looked back. It was all clear.

Connelly had come out of the window.

He had plunged from a hundred feet up and crashed into the fence full force when he’d come to earth. The spikes had torn into and through his upper body, ripped his neck apart, had taken off half his skull. Some of the spikes had impaled themselves in his upper chest. But the impact of the big man’s fall had taken out a section of the old iron fence and brought it to the concrete with him.

And so there he lay, dead as a crushed bug, his bodily fluids continuing to flow, not a breath of life left in him. He didn’t look like Orson Welles anymore, and he didn’t look like Gutman. He didn’t look like anything human.

For a moment, which turned into several moments, all Alex could do was stare. She stared and wondered what it was that he had wanted to tell her, what it was that he wanted to pass along. It must have been good because people don’t voluntarily go out windows when they’re waiting to share a secret with a lady. Not usually. It had to have been good unless it had been nothing.

A black vehicle pulled to the curb behind her, not far from the death scene. Alex recognized it. Bodyguards jumped out and opened the door for a man in the backseat. Colonel Pendraza of the National Police emerged. Her heart beat a little faster.

Pendraza’s security people stayed with him as he approached the death scene. The uniformed police present recognized him and gave way. Miguel, his lead bodyguard, seemed to be always on duty. He was standing point as the colonel moved toward the fallen body. Alex saw the flicker of recognition in Miguel’s eyes when he saw her.

Pendraza moved to the front and looked at the body. Alex gave him a few seconds, then walked toward him. One of the bodyguards intercepted her, raising a powerful arm to block her path.

“I need to see the colonel,” she said in Spanish. She spoke past the bodyguard who stopped her, and addressed Miguel.

Miguel turned to ask the colonel, who was a few feet away. The colonel glanced in Alex’s direction. He gave a nod. Alex moved past his bodyguards and into the small group that surrounded the corpse.

They too spoke Spanish. “Bad night,” she said.

Pendraza had seen his share of corpses in his career. “They’ve all been bad recently, the nights,” he said. He paused. “American, right?” the colonel asked.

“Yes.”

“I recognize him,” the colonel said. “Or what’s left of him. The pietà again?”

“That would be my guess,” Alex said.

An electric drill went on with a screech. Emergency workers started to cut away the sections of the fence that had impaled the body. It sounded like dental work on steroids. Alex looked away. The workers were disengaging the spiked rails from the corpse, and to do that, they needed to cut away a small section of Connelly’s shoulder.

“It’s been a completely rotten day,” Colonel Pendraza said. “There was a woman murdered in the Metro a day or two ago. One of our track walkers. They only found the body this afternoon.”

“Where exactly?” Alex asked.

“It was up by the Calle Maldonado,” he said. “Nice neighborhood. What’s this city coming to?”

She thought about it. Then it hit her. “That’s not too far from the US Embassy,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

“About a block away,” he said. “And there are a lot of embassies in the area. Not just yours. Don’t jump to conclusions.”

She tried to assimilate the information. “Where was the body found? In a Metro station?”

“No. In one of the underground tunnels.”

“What tunnels?”

“There’s a whole network of them,” he said. “Don’t worry. They’re old and they’re sealed. There’s no danger.”

“Can I have a look?”

His eyes narrowed. “At what?”

“The area where the body was found. The tunnels.”

“Why would you want to?”

“Because it’s near the US Embassy.”

“If you wish to,” he said. “Call my office in the morning. I’ll arrange a police permit and keys to some of the locked doors.”

“Should I clear it with the Guardia Civil?” she asked.

“If you want to waste your time, certainly,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said.

Two police technicians were removing the spikes from the corpse, working by hand. Alex fought against a feeling of sickness. She stepped back from the work that was being done. Her eyes wandered, then did a double take.

Peter Chang stood on the opposite side of the street. He was in a suit with a computer bag on his shoulder.

“Excuse me,” she said to Colonel Pendraza.

Pendraza nodded. Alex moved through the crowd and crossed the street. She found a different Peter Chang than she had ever seen before. Peter’s fine suit was torn in two places. He had a small welt across his cheek and another across his forehead. No blood, just the evidence of combat.

“Peter, what are you doing here?” she asked.

“Same as you, I suppose,” he said. “Let’s move,” he said. “I want to get away from here.”

“I’m not leaving just yet,” she said.

“Well, I’d like to get off this block before the police seal it up.”

She looked at the rips in his clothing and the gash to his temple. “What’s going on?” she asked. “You were in a fight of some sort?”

“Yeah, I was.”

“Heck of a coincidence, you should be here,” she said suspiciously, suddenly wary of him. “Every time I see you after dark, someone winds up dead.”

“Yeah. Midnight in Madrid. Not healthy. Someone always gets killed.”

“Why are you here?” she pressed. “And what happened to you?”

“I was supposed to meet him,” he said, motioning to Connelly. “I got a call.”

“From Connelly? Why would he call you? How did he even know you.”

“He didn’t. I got a call from my own people.”

“Who? Your government? Guojia Anquan Bu. Your Ministry of State Security?”

“That’s them,” Peter said, speaking rapidly. “And Mark McKinnon called them. Do I have to remind you, he works with them when it suits common purposes.”

“Peter…?”

“Come on along,” he said. “Talk to me.” He took her arm forcefully, and they moved several paces away.

She sharply pulled her arm away. “Don’t force me along. I don’t like that!”

“I need to be out of here,” he said.

“Why? What happened here?” she demanded.

“Connelly came back here with a woman about an hour ago. I asked the hotel staff. He expected to get lucky, and my guess is she let her friends in. That, or the friends were waiting. Lurking maybe. Either in the hall or in his room.”

Alex shuddered. She looked carefully at his clothing.

“I arrived at his suite and the door was unlatched,” Peter said. “I pushed it open and ran smack into them. They must have just shoved him out the window.”

She was having trouble believing him. This was John Sun speaking, suddenly.

“They charged right into me. I tried to grab them and bring them down, but there were three of them. Speaking Arabic, by the way, in case that drops you a hint of any sort. There was a scuffle. They got the first hits in, and the next thing I knew I was on the floor.”

Alex knew that Peter could take out three people easily; he could take out ten people. And he was armed. This wasn’t adding up.

“I didn’t know what happened,” he said. “I went in, saw the open window, and looked down. Then I got out of there fast,” he said. “I didn’t have time to look around. I just grabbed his laptop and his notebooks,” he said. “That’s all I could get.”

“You did what?”

He motioned to the cache he had in the computer bag. “You want the Spanish police looking at this stuff?” he asked. “Might as well have the contents published in El Mundo.”

“You could have stayed for the police,” she said. He started to move down the block and she followed, with both reluctance and persistence.

“Oh, sure! After what you told me about the Swiss? And bloody Interpol? I have to get out of this country,” he said. “My picture is all over the hotel security cameras, and they’ll be going through them tonight. Count on that.”

Peter was still moving, looking around, highly nervous, highly agitated.

“Uh oh,” he said. “Look at this. The cops are setting a ring around this place. Look. There are cops on each end of the block.”

“That’s normal,” she said.

“Not good for me, Alex,” he said. “Let’s just get out of here.”

She looked at Peter, and something clicked in having to do with his trepidation of the Spanish police. It seemed so obvious that she realized that she had been suppressing it since the first time she saw him in this place tonight.

Peter had killed Connelly. His face was battered and his suit was torn because the chunky failing old Yalie had put up the fight of his life. Peter had beaten her to Connelly because Connelly had something to tell her that reflected unfavorably on Peter. Peter, in short, was a double agent of the most treacherous sort. He couldn’t be trusted any more than she could throw him. Peter was the most dangerous liar she had ever met in her life with a spirited competition in progress for second place.

An entire kaleidoscope of deceit opened before her as she gazed at him, new vistas in every direction, forming and reforming in endless patterns of duplicity.

He must have sensed what she felt because he raised his eyes, looked at her, and became colder than ever.

“Look,” he said. “Talk to Mark McKinnon if you can ever get him on the phone. It’s obvious all those explosives are in Madrid. Connelly heard from an informer that there was going to be an attack on the embassy. Right now it’s been shut down, the embassy. There’s a US Marine bomb squad going through with dogs and radio detectors.”

“Why do you know that and I don’t?”

“Because I talked to McKinnon and you haven’t,” Peter said. “He was going to give us the details. Mark asked me to get over here, obviously Connelly wanted to see you. It’s pretty clear that he was set up. Connelly bought half a bill of goods from someone, but his good information was laced with the bad stuff. But he stumbled across enough solid stuff so that he took a pavement dive from a hundred feet up.”

Peter continued to glance around nervously. As he spoke to Alex, his eyes frequently went over her shoulder, back to the death scene.

Again, Peter’s hands were moving quickly. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a leather billfold. From it, he pulled a small laminated card, the size, shape, and texture of an American driver’s license.

“Keep this for me,” he said. “Keep this until I ask for it back. Please! It’s critical.”

She looked at it. It was his Swiss consular ID. Well, it wasn’t Peter Chang’s; it was John Sun’s.

She stared at it and looked back up. “This links you to a couple of murders, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe,” he said.

“I honestly didn’t want to believe that about you,” she said. “That you were capable of that.”

“Aren’t we all, under the right circumstances?”

“It’s not a situation I ever hope to be in again,” she said.

“Nor I,” he said. “But as long as you or I carry a weapon and are sworn to protect ourselves, innocent people, and our countries’ interests, the possibility will be there.”

“Maybe you just seem a little too enthusiastic about it,” she said. “Killing people.”

“And maybe someday you’ll hesitate too long and wish you hadn’t,” he answered.

There was loud conversation from the group of police across the street. She looked back down to the John Sun ID that she held in her hand.

“Why are you giving this to me?”

“Because I trust you to do the right thing,” he said. “And I don’t want to have to walk past the police with it. Not here, not tonight. If they stop me and find me with two IDs, I’m going to be answering questions for ten years. All right?”

“All right,” she said, taking it.

“Who’s the old fascist over there?” he asked. “The one everyone is sucking up to?”

She glanced. “That’s Colonel Pendraza. Policia Nacional.”

“Yes. Of course. He knows who I am,” Peter said softly. “I need to get out of here,” he said again.

“Is there really going to be an attack on the US Embassy?” she asked.

“I’m told the information is solid.”

“Who’s the information from?”

“Chinese and American sources,” he said. “And I never told you this, but there’s some British thrown in. Some MI6.”

“How did that get into the mix?” she asked.

“When the explosives were sold out of Cyprus, the British were within a day of seizing them. They made arrests anyway. Two of the men arrested told the same story: that money had come from Spain, money raised by a museum theft, and now the value was returning to Spain in bombs and bodies.”

“If I can ask a dumb question, why are the Brits being so generous with you?”

He spread his hands. “Hong Kong, lady, remember? I’m one of the ‘good’ yellow people. Isn’t that how it works? I’m ‘Western,’ so I can be trusted.”

“Do the Spanish police know there may be an attack on our embassy?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then why aren’t we telling them?”

“Same reason I’m working this case,” he said. “We’re trying to take care of things unofficially. Is that so difficult?”

“We could use their help,” Alex said. “All I’ve got to do is cross the street and talk to the colonel.”

“Don’t bother,” he said softly. “In fact, that would be very unwise.”

“Why?”

“Alex, do you have a gun?”

“You know I do. We just discussed-”

“Are you allowed to use it?”

“In self-defense. And in defense of anyone I deem fit. Even you.”

“I’m honored. But that’s where we’re different,” he said. “And it’s another reason I’m still here.”

“I just lost you.”

“If Mark needs someone taken out, hit, killed, he can’t ask you or even one of his CIA lackeys to do it. Not without special permission. And for that he has to go back to Washington, and the request has to go to an intelligence committee, and after a week or a month or a year he might get a go-ahead. And he might not.”

Two uniformed Madrid police approached them. They seemed to be looking cross-eyed at Peter, but they kept going.

“But if Mark asks me to do it, or my team,” Peter said, “and it coincides with our interests, well, it gets done, doesn’t it? No questions asked, or more to the point, no answers needed to be given.”

“Oh, Lord,” she said with a shudder.

“Someone has to get the dirty work done,” he said.

“Sometimes I’d prefer to be back at a desk in Washington, dealing with financial squabbles.”

“But instead you’re out here,” Peter said. “On the front lines. Where it’s more exciting.”

“And where I feel more compromised,” she said.

He laughed slightly. “Let me ask you,” he said, “if you could have stopped the September 11 attacks on America by personally shooting every one of the hijackers, would you have done it? If you could have murdered Hitler and Stalin and avoided World War II, would that have been worth two bullets to end the lives of two thoroughly evil and godless men?”

“I would have looked for some other way to-”

“That wasn’t the question,” he said. “And I think I know your answer.”

She snapped back defensively, the flash of police beacons still illuminating the streets with harsh staccato lights. “What are you?” she asked. “A philosopher with an Uzi?”

“Everything is a situation.”

“Have a nice night,” she said coolly.

Alex turned away in growing distaste.

“And you also,” he answered.

She glanced to the opposite side of the street, trying to sort out her thoughts. She noticed that Colonel Pendraza had disappeared. She turned back to talk to Peter again, maybe to voice some uselessly argumentative tract about violence and murder breeding more violence and murder until it bred even more violence and murder. Or maybe she’d just ask him straight up if there had really been three young Arabs or if he had defenestrated blustery old Connelly himself, and if so, on whose orders.

But by then, with her mind teeming with questions and paranoia, Peter was gone too.

She looked in every direction.

No Peter Chang.

Like the Swiss police a few weeks earlier, she had never before encountered a man who could disappear into thin air so quickly and efficiently.

She left the block and retreated to a quiet doorway. She pulled out her cell phone and called Mark McKinnon. She reached him and reported what she had seen, what she knew. An attack on the US Embassy in Madrid was perhaps imminent.

Quietly, McKinnon took the information from her. He promised to alert embassy security immediately. But beyond that, he offered nothing in return and rang off.

From talking to McKinnon, she had the same sense as talking to a wall.

She pondered not returning to the Ritz that night. She felt vulnerable. So she found a late bar, stayed there for a few drinks, and pondered checking into a different hotel. Then she decided not to.

Instead, she returned to the Ritz and entered her room with her pistol drawn. She searched it thoroughly, found no intruder or evidence of an intrusion, and threw all the bolts on the door.

Then, riding the worst wave of paranoia in her life, she eventually dummied up pillows from the closet to resemble her body and put them under the blankets in the bedroom.

She turned around the living room sofa and slept there, facing the door and the locked balcony. She kept the pistol at arm’s length.

Sleep, what there would be of it, did not come easily.