Midnight in Madrid rt-2

by Noel Hynd

  Jean-Claude had made his living acquiring coveted property, then selling it. But it had often occurred to him that one could make even more money by selling the same item more than once. One particular purchaser from the Orient had paid in full for the artwork but then met with a terrible accident before he could take possession of the object in question. Jean-Claude, of course, mourned the man’s ill fortune but was able to secure a second bid very quickly from an Italian businessman. The latter gentleman delivered a fifty percent down payment.

  It’s too bad, Jean-Claude mused, that he would also not be able to sell the item a third time. But sometimes a dealer had no choice except to complete a transaction.

  “My first buyer met an unfortunate end. After payment was made. I have since found a second buyer. Now, where is our cargo?”

  “Not far from here.”

  “We can retrieve it now?”

  Habib opened his hands in an expansive gesture. “Of course,” he said. “We will go for a short drive. As soon as I lock up the money.”

  “Have it your own way,” Jean-Claude said. “Do you also wish to have your own bodyguards come with us now?”

  Habib shrugged and laughed. “And why should I, my friend? You come here through an honest and devout contact in Madrid. You have paid in cash for the merchandise you want. You appear to be pious and a man of honor.” Habib also gave a pat to his midsection to indicate that he was carrying a pistol. “And I have taken some small precautions. Aside from that, what can I do? My enemies are not you, my brothers in Islam, but rather the Americans, the Zionists, and the Christian fascists here in Italy. Some day, I know, they will come and kill me, but, inch’ Allah, not tonight.”

  “Understood,” said Jean-Claude with a slight nod.

  “You will then excuse me for one minute?” Habib asked.

  Jean-Claude’s gunmen stepped aside to allow Habib to go to the door and leave the room. Habib left the door open. Jean-Claude listened to the sound of his footsteps and the direction the older man walked with the attache case. The men in the room exchanged glances but said nothing.

  Less than three minutes later, Habib returned.

  “Very well,” Habib announced to the room. “Your merchandise is at a farmhouse nearby. I have a van, my friends,” Habib said. “We can all go together or you can follow if you wish to use your own vehicle.”

  “For safety’s sake, we will use our own vehicle,” Jean-Claude said.

  “Then let us complete our business.”

  THREE

  NAPLES, ITALY, AUGUST 26

  Five minutes later, Habib was on the road that exited Naples to the south. Ten minutes later, he was outside the city limits, driving steadily through the night, one eye on the road, one eye on his rearview mirror. His van was small, old, and drafty. It rattled. From a tape player bolted to the dashboard, Arabic music whined softly, a stream of ballads by Kazeem Al-Saher, the Iraqi pop icon who now made megahits in Lebanon.

  In the follow-up car, which bore French plates, one of Jean-Claude’s guards drove while Jean-Claude rode shotgun. The third man was in the backseat.

  Both cars moved quickly. The night was cloudy, but there were stars. The drive took another quarter of an hour on main arteries and then Habib led the way onto a side road. Next he accessed a smaller one. They went through farmland; vineyards, it looked like to Jean-Claude. Then they were on a long driveway in an area that was surprisingly rural. Finally, Habib’s van rolled to a halt, and the following car came to a standstill a few meters behind it.

  The travelers all stepped out in unison. There was only one building, a small barn. There was a pasture nearby. Jean-Claude surveyed it carefully as his eyes adjusted, looking for danger. But from the pasture the only movement or sound was from sheep. In the same field were several haystacks, positioned at predictable intervals and standing like tall rotund sentries in the starlight.

  Habib went to the door of the barn. He fished around in a large flower pot and found a metal key, one which looked like it might have belonged to a medieval church. When he pushed it into a keyhole it turned with a loud click. He led the other three men into the barn, lit a heavy battery-powered lantern, and continued to lead the way, throwing a single bright beam before them.

  The interior of the barn was half the size of a basketball court, but seemed smaller because it was cluttered. There was no livestock, only equipment and tools on a dirt floor.

  “We are quite alone, my friends,” Habib said quietly. “There is a farmer who owns the site, but he is a friend. And he will not be here again till Monday.”

  Jean-Claude nodded curtly.

  Habib walked to the rear of the structure. Jean-Claude watched him carefully. There was an array of pitchforks and rakes, but Habib seemed to be trying to position himself. He put down his lantern and held his arms out at angles as if taking imaginary vectors. The other three men stood by quietly and watched. Habib shuffled his right foot along the floor as if he were looking for something in the layer of straw. Then he found it.

  Kneeling, he pushed away some earth and revealed a metal ring on a trap door. Under this section of the barn, a small foundation had been dug into the earth, reinforced by wooden planks.

  “I’m afraid I will need your help now,” Habib said gently. “I’m an old man. Fifty-two. And your cargo is quite heavy. Would you do me the honor of some assistance?”

  “Of course,” said Jean-Claude.

  Habib cleared away the trap door. One of Jean-Claude’s assistants, a man with a nasty scar across his left brow, stepped down into a small storage area. He cleared away an array of farm equipment and then came to a piece of old canvas.

  “Lift that and you will find what you want,” Habib said.

  The man in the crawl space lifted the canvas. Beneath the canvas was a pair of black duffel bags, new and sturdy, carefully wrapped in heavy transparent plastic. The man in the pit lifted the two bags and pushed them onto the floor of the barn.

  Jean-Claude knelt down. From his pocket he drew a knife and with a click popped the blade forward. He cut open the transparent plastic and unzipped the first bag. He reached in. Within the bag were what appeared to be white bricks of some sort of plaster-style construction material. He pushed carefully through the whole bag and took an inventory. It was as expected. He opened the second bag and confirmed a similar inventory. He looked approvingly at what was before him.

  “Will the owner of the barn not know this has been taken?” Jean-Claude asked.

  Habib chuckled. “The owner of the barn does not know what was here. In truth, he does not know anything was here.”

  “You are very cautious,” nodded Jean-Claude. “I like that.”

  “Cautious and reckless at the same moment,” Habib said. “You could murder me and dump my body in that pit,” he said, indicating the hidden foundation, “and I wouldn’t be found for months. Maybe years.”

  “How do you know we won’t?” Jean-Claude asked.

  Habib shrugged. “I don’t,” he said.

  The two gunmen were nervous. Habib smiled to the other two men, who did not return the kind gesture.

  Jean-Claude zipped both bags closed and stood.

  “As expected?” Habib asked. “The cargo?”

  “Exactly.”

  “You are pleased with the transaction?”

  “Completely.”

  For the first time that evening, Habib broke into a broad grin. “Then I am pleased too, my friend,” he said.

  Jean-Claude returned the smile. He opened his arms to suggest an embrace. Habib stepped forward. Jean-Claude wrapped his powerful arms around the older Arab and locked him in a tight embrace. Jean-Claude then pushed back and tried to break apart. But Habib continued to hold him and became very serious, almost like a scold.

  “Let me tell you something, my young compatriot,” he said. “I take one look at you, my friend, and I see a very smart but a very angry young man. About some things, I do not care. You can kill as many Wester
n infidels as you wish. My only concern is that you do not get arrested with anything that could be traced to me.”

  “Why would I get arrested?”

  “Informers, snitches, and traitors are everywhere, even in our community!” Habib said. “People loyal to the Jews, to the Americans! Are you so foolish that you do not know that?”

  “I’ve been careful. Extremely careful.”

  “So far, yes. But already I hear rumors of what is afoot in Madrid. Already I hear stories that suggest that our organizations could be counterattacked by police and saboteurs in Switzerland and Spain.”

  A moment passed. Habib released Jean-Claude.

  “All right,” Jean-Claude finally said. “We need to keep moving.”

  “Please help me reseal our hiding chamber,” said Habib.

  Jean-Claude’s two assistants did much of the heavy lifting, piling farm equipment back into the storage area, then sealing it again. They covered the makeshift pit with hay. Then they left the barn, carrying the two duffels to which Habib had led them. They stashed the cargo in the trunk of their car.

  Habib remained behind. Then the three travelers silently returned to their car. They drove it back to the main road and turned northward, the direction from which they had come. Jean-Claude rode in the back. Their mission now was to get as far away as quickly as possible, and this they did to perfection.

  FOUR

  BARCELONA, SPAIN, SEPTEMBER 4, LATE MORNING

  S omething told Alex LaDuca not to come out of the water. Her holiday in Spain was going so pleasantly, particularly following all the horrible events in Paris.

  Some instinct told her that the vacation was about to come to a crashing end. But she finished swimming a few final strokes in the gentle surf, fifty meters from the beach and then turned leisurely to shore. The Platja de Barceloneta was a seductive place off the east coast of Spain, with smooth waves, soft sand, and the comforting warm water. The beach was a world-class one perched on the edge of Barcelona’s city limits. It was almost lunchtime. The sun was intensifying. The Mediterranean was as blue as the sky above it. A perfect day to go out and swim a mile, which is what she had just done.

  She reached water that was waist deep. Then she was in knee-high water and waded toward shore, enjoying the caress of the water upon her legs. She was feeling good again, fit and athletic, her mind strong and straight, her body the same. She had even purchased a new bathing suit for this trip, a red Nike two-piece. Not one of those scanty two-piece jobs that barely covered anything, “three postage stamps” her girlfriend Laura back in Washington liked to call them. But her suit was a bold one, good for some modest sun bathing but also good for a thirty-minute swim.

  Red, as a guy once said to her, as in “red hot.”

  On this beach there were plenty of younger women who were there for the “top optional” experience, though these were mostly northern Europeans and a few North Americans. Alex wasn’t about to join them, but she didn’t have problems with it either. Maybe when her friend Ben teased her that she “had been in Europe too long” he had an amusing point.

  Too long? she thought. Or not long enough? To Alex, Spain remained a fascinating if polarized place, a vibrant young democracy whose older generations had endured the Franco dictatorship and the strict moral authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Spain under the government of socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero had become one of the most socially progressive countries in Europe. Today, the political right pulled one way in Spanish society and the left pulled in another. And then the Islamic population pulled in its own way.

  The latter was a relatively new factor: More than five centuries earlier King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had expelled Muslims unwilling to convert to Christianity. Now, as part of the worldwide migration of people from third world to first world countries, Spain was subject to an inflow of illegal immigrants not unlike that affecting the United States.

  When she reached ankle-deep water, she stepped between some children at play. She smiled to them and to the bronzed, bikini-clad au pair girls who attended them. Alex was starting to feel good about life again. On paper, she was still an employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, on loan to the US Department of Treasury. She was still on the payroll even as she walked on the beach.

  Her employers back in the United States, both the FBI and Treasury, had been generous about a few weeks of paid leave. Even the bureaucrats who oversaw her assignments agreed that she could use the R-and-R, first from a personal tragedy in February and then from nearly being gunned down in the Paris Metro in May. Before that, there had been the attack on the US president in Kiev, during which Alex had personally had a hand in protecting the president. The system, all agreed, owed her.

  She kept telling herself that had been the past, her professional triumph in Kiev, linked to a personal catastrophe. It had been what God intended, she told herself. She could do nothing about the past but could do much about her own future. Yet as a little bit of a spiritual nod to the past and the future, she wore around her neck a delicate gold chain that supported a stone pendant, slightly smaller than an American quarter.

  The pendant was of stone and had praying hands carved into it. Months earlier, she had bought it from a girl in the remote mountain village of Barranco Lajoya in Venezuela to replace a small gold cross she had lost in Kiev. In Paris, the stone had shattered, but she took the pieces to a jeweler in Montparnasse and had the pieces reset with a gold-plated steel edge around it to secure it together. So there it still hung. As a piece of beach jewelry, it nicely set off her tan and her swimsuit. Worn on a dressy occasion with a suit, it was equally handsome.

  She walked toward her towel. She felt good. But when she reached her towel, her cell phone was ringing. It served her right for buying a phone chip that was good in Spain. She reached for the phone. From habit, she answered in the language of the country she was in. “Diga.”

  There was a moment’s pause as her voice bounced off satellites. Then the response returned in English.

  “Alex, I don’t know where you are,” said Mike Gamburian back in Washington, “but I have a pretty good hunch where you’ll be in three days.”

  “Seriously, Mike,” she said. “Nice to hear from you, but don’t try to read my mind. There’s this cruise ship that’s sailing out of Barcelona for Fiji and the South Seas. They need multilingual hostesses who can cheat at blackjack and speak Russian. I’ve been hired and I’m going.”

  There was a pause. “Are you serious?” he asked.

  “No, I’m not,” she said. “But serves you right for calling me when I’m at a European beach and hardly wearing any clothes.”

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  She pictured him in his office at the United States Department of Treasury, leaning back in his leather chair, 15^th Street outside his window. Then she remembered that this was Labor Day back in America.

  “Shouldn’t you be in your backyard grilling botulism burgers for your family right now?” she asked.

  “Should be, yes. But I’m not.”

  She crouched down for a moment and grabbed her towel and sunglasses. In one motion, she put the glasses on and worked the towel across her hair and shoulders. She was happy to see her newly acquired iPod, loaded with English, French, and Spanish pop and rock, and a library of jazz and classical, lay just where she had stashed it, plus the novel she was reading.

  “Then you didn’t call to ask me how my tan was progressing. What’s going on?”

  “What’s your agenda for the rest of the week?” Gamburian asked.

  “Are we talking on a secure line?” she asked.

  “My end is fine. How about yours?”

  “It’s good, also,” she said. “Or at least I think it is. Probably no fewer than a dozen different agencies listening, how’s that?”

  “Situation normal,” he said.

  A beat and then she added, “Well, I had it in mind to fly to London for two or three days to see
some old friends and maybe see some theater. Then I figured I’d be back in Washington next week and pick up again at Treasury the Monday following and start in with whatever dull honest work you have for me. Then, if our previous arrangement holds, which it never seems to, I leave for Venezuela in a few weeks.”

  “How would you feel about going to Madrid, instead of London,” he asked, “and staying in Europe for a little longer before coming back to Washington?”

  “Why? What’s in Madrid?”

  “Great food, great wine, handsome macho Spanish men, the king of Spain, and bull fights. Plus relentless heat and pounding humidity that will make you cry. How does that sound?”

  “It stinks, Mike. No way!”

  “Good. Glad you’re pumped. Can you be there in three days?”

  Her hair was almost dry. She shook it out and liked the feeling. She pulled a thin voile cover-up around her upper body and remained standing. “And why do you want me in Madrid, Mike? I don’t suppose there’s a good reason.”

  “The Museo Arqueologico Nacional,” he said, massacring all three words. “Ever been there?”

  “Never.”

  “Here’s your chance. Uncle Sam promised help with a missing item. Apparently the museum was burglarized a couple of weeks ago. There was a pieta taken.”

  “A what? Am I hearing you right?”

  “A pieta,” he said again.

  “Like the huge one in Rome that weighs ten tons? The Michelangelo? Mary crying over the body of a slain Christ? What did they do, Mike, back a truck up to the place overnight and no one noticed? Great security.”

  Gamburian laughed.

  “You have the reference right, Alex, but not much else. This one has a bit of a history to it. It’s much older than the Michelangelo work and much smaller. A miniature. It’s a carving in pink granite on a wooden base. Maybe six inches tall and eight inches wide.”

  “Art theft isn’t my field,” she said.

  “But you learn quickly,” he answered.