by Noel Hynd
“I’m forty-one,” Chang said.
“That proves my point,” McKinnon said. “Anyway, in the 1930s, during the Civil War, Suner represented Spain in talks with Hitler. Hitler wanted Spain to get into the big war in Europe. Suner 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.”
THIRTY-FIVE
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 10, EARLY AFTERNOON
F or Maria Elena Gomez, the new week was not going well.
Jose Luis, her new partner this week in Pedro’s absence, was an even bigger pain to work with than she had imagined. On their first day together, he had been as aggravating as any man she had ever had to work with. He was slow and inattentive to detail. His attention would wander, he would want to sneak off for cigarettes, and he had a machismo attitude that she found unbearable, an attitude best exemplified by her doing all the work and him supervising. Or so it seemed.
She had had more than enough of him as they inspected the electrical junctions at the Sevilla station in the old city. While Maria was busy noting a frayed cable that could short circuit if any rain swept down into the station, she looked up to find him not taking the notes as she suggested, but rather watching a gaggle of American girls in shorts and minis, as they waited for a train.
“Are you here to look or are you here to work?” she asked him.
“I’m here to look,” he said.
“Then why don’t you find another partner?” she snapped.
“Because you’re prettier than most of the cows who work for the Metro.”
“I should report you for a remark like that,” she said. “Maybe I will.”
“I’ll deny I ever said it,” he smirked. “You know how women imagine things. If you come on to them, they complain. If you don’t, they’re insulted.”
She handed him a clipboard, almost throwing it at him. The American girls turned and watched the argument and grinned. One of them whipped out a disposable camera and snapped a flash picture. Maria felt humiliated.
“Just shut up and work,” she said tersely as a train rumbled into the station. “Or I will report you. I swear.”
He growled but finally got the message, taking the proper notes as she gave them to him, filling out the proper maintenance request that would be turned in at the end of the day.
They track-walked to the next station, Banco de Espana, in near silence, moving slowly. They twice stepped to the side en route when the red warning lines cautioned them about an advancing train. They found nothing worthy of note in the tunnel. Then when they emerged at the Banco de Espana station, Jose Luis was at it again. When they came up into the station, they were confronted by a huge Real Madrid billboard featuring the goalkeeper, Iker Casillas making a brilliant diving one-handed save.
Jose Luis took the occasion to sing the praises of Real Madrid.
“I support Atletico,” she said sharply.
He laughed. “ Sabes, no comprendo que una bonita mujer sensata como tu seas hincha de ese equipo de perdedores.” I don’t understand how a pretty girl like you could be a fan of a bunch of losers like that.
“ Por que no te callas! ” Why don’t you just shut up? “For the rest of the week.”
Jose Luis smirked in response. She knew that lurking beneath the surface, he was one of those men who didn’t feel women should even have these jobs walking the tracks. She was in a genuinely foul mood by now. The attack on Atletico she even felt as a shot at her late father. She felt sadness mixing with her anger and wished the week was already over.
But it wasn’t. Not by a long shot.
THIRTY-SIX
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 10, MID-AFTERNOON
M cKinnon lurched back into the living room of the suite. He sat down hard, a crash landing of sorts, into the big chair.
Alex turned to him.
“Let’s talk about The Pieta of Malta,” Alex finally said. “And maybe you can also bring me up to speed on why we’re here and why two people have already been shot dead right in front of me.”
“Of course,” McKinnon said. “But everyone in this room needs to get to know everyone else in this room. Peter, you’ve been here in Spain before, also, haven’t you?”
“Several times,” he said. “This is one of my favorite places in Europe.”
Turning to him, Alex asked, “And you speak Spanish, I assume?”
“ Claro que si, Senorita, ” he said. “Spanish, French, English, Cantonese, and Mandarin,” he said. “Interchangeably.”
“Peter works for the Chinese government,” McKinnon said.
“Which branch? You don’t exactly look like a trade delegate, looking to dump a lot of cheap toasters on the Marcado Comun.”
“The Guojia Anquan Bu,” he said without a smile.
“The Ministry of State Security?” she asked. “Peking’s version of the CIA.”
“Exactly,” McKinnon said. “Our counterparts, and, as is often the case with counterparts, sometimes our interests coincide. As in this case. Let me backtrack. Mr. Chang has worked with the Agency in Europe before.”
“So the Chinese government has an interest in The Pieta of Malta also?” Alex asked.
“Very much so,” McKinnon said. “ The Pieta of Malta. It’s like a ‘black bird’-a Maltese Falcon-for our new century.”
Alex waited for a moment. McKinnon’s eyes jumped to Peter’s then back again. “When you were at the embassy earlier this week, Alex, you attended a briefing by a Senor Rivera, the curator of the Museo Arqueologico.”
“That’s correct.”
“And the curator mentioned that this missing artifact had a tie to St. Francis, the highly revered saint, at least according to legend.”
“That’s right. That was mentioned,” Alex answered. “And if the case is so important to the two of you, why weren’t the two of you at the briefing?”
“I wasn’t invited. And I wasn’t even aware of the case till Peter contacted me.”
“That doesn’t make sense, Mark. You had someone in that meeting on your agency’s behalf,” she said, thinking of Rizzo.
“Very true. And as you yourself know, sometimes the Indian chiefs don’t know what the braves and warriors are up to. May I go on?”
“Please do.”
“I’ve done a bit of study on this myself in the last week,” McKinnon said. “First eight years of my own schooling, I went to Catholic schools in Chicago. Nuns. Franciscan order. A bunch of tough-assed old Irish biddies with red faces, black-and-white habits, and the usual fondness for hitting you with a ruler. So I know a bit about St. Francis and how he is known in the modern world.”
“In what sense?” she asked.
“His ev
angelism. Do you know where I’m heading with this?” McKinnon continued.
“I discussed the point with Senor Rivera yesterday,” Alex said. “So what’s the point? How does this impact the theft of the pieta?”
“On our black bird? Follow along. The US government was asked to help the Spaniards recover The Pieta of Malta,” McKinnon said. “Were any tangible leads offered to you in your meeting yesterday morning?”
“No,” she said. “None. A lot of information, but no leads.”
“So you were in a roomful of people poised to accomplish nothing, in other words,” McKinnon said.
“Keep a lid on that wise-guy stuff, okay, Mark? You know how these things work as well as I do,” she said.
“Sure. But that’s where counterpart agencies would appear to have common goals. Peter’s government wishes to see that the pieta is returned also.”
“What interests do the Chinese have?”
“Peter will get into that with you later today in a one-on-one,” McKinnon said. “Right now, suffice it to say that Peter represented a wealthy buyer in Peking. The buyer had his interests, and his interests were betrayed.”
“A wealthy individual buyer or the Beijing government?” she asked immediately, turning toward Peter.
“For now, let’s say both,” Mark said. “In China today, these things usually overlap.”
“Understood. Betrayed how?” she pressed.
“They paid,” Peter said, “and the bird, the pieta, was not delivered.”
“Hence, Peter’s presence in Europe,” McKinnon said. “He works much the way you do, Alex. Assessing problems, inventing solutions to them. Sometimes painfully difficult solutions.”
“I’m flattered by the comparison,” Alex said.
“As am I,” said Peter, interjecting politely.
“But here’s where we get into the hardball,” Mark McKinnon said. “We feel the larger part of the operation, if there is one, might be against the United States in some way. America has a huge number of targets in Spain, as you know. One can only protect so much for so long. And a high-profile US inquiry into the motives behind the theft might accelerate whatever plans are out there against us.”
“But,” she said, picking up his line of thought, “if we were able to work through another agency, with Chinese help for example…”
“Exactly. There would be no tip-off to the opposition. It would look as if we’re just trying to get a chunk of granite back for the dumb Spaniards who were careless enough to let it get stolen in the first place. So let’s look at the big picture here,” McKinnon said, turning back and focusing on Alex. “You’re now involved here in the blackbird investigation. What attributes do you bring to the table? Well, there are all the obvious ones: brains, looks, ability to penetrate certain circles and blend in, a knowledge of several languages, some of which might not seem to apply to this case but might in a broader sense. But often it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”
She shook her head. “Still not with you,” she said.
McKinnon and Peter exchanged a glance.
“I understand you speak Russian,” McKinnon said. “And Ukrainian.”
“So do several million other people.”
“Forgive my subtlety,” McKinnon said. Then he ambushed her. “You had a previous relationship with a Ukrainian mobster named Yuri Federov, didn’t you?”
The question jolted her. It took her a second to answer, to sense where he was leading.
“I wouldn’t call it ‘a relationship,’” she finally answered, putting aside any possible innuendo. “I worked a case earlier this year in which he was a principal. Again, you know that because you worked the same case.”
“Of course. Your last report suggested that Federov had withdrawn to Switzerland, possibly into a semi- or complete retirement. He has also dropped off the Agency radar screen, which would indicate that he has withdrawn from the business. That, or he’s dead. Have you seen him recently?”
“No. Not since I saw him in a hospital room in Paris,” she said.
He held her gaze.
“You’re sure?” he asked, seeming more sober than he had all day. The question was a direct challenge. “Good will is flowing through my veins by the quart today, LaDuca, so if you have seen him-”
“Right!” she said, cutting him off. “I’d forgotten! We had a late dinner together a week ago at Taillevant in Paris. Then we crossed the channel and spent a wonderful weekend in Brighton, knocking back lager and fish and chips. Just a good Episcopalian girl recovering from the death of a fiance by bedding her six-cylinder Russian hood.” For good measure, she followed all this with an uncharacteristic but colorful reflection on Mark’s ancestry.
Unwavering, McKinnon didn’t miss a beat. “Come, come, LaDuca. But you do know how to find him. Your final report on that Kiev case suggested that you might.”
“I might. It depends on whether the information he gave me is good or not. So I don’t know if I do or don’t have a way to contact him, because I’ve never tried.”
“So then you have an address filed somewhere?” McKinnon pressed.
“Not so much an address, but a procedure.”
“Would you mind sharing it with us?”
“Seriously, I would. I have the procedure memorized, but right now, I can’t quite recall it.”
McKinnon sighed and took a long sip of whiskey. Peter Chang’s eyes were like a terrier’s, fascinated, sharp as tacks, working McKinnon and Alex back and forth.
“Should I remind you that you’re talking to a superior?” McKinnon said.
“Should I remind you that you’re not acting like one,” she said. “Should I also remind you that as a member of the CIA you also have no hierarchical superiority over someone working for Treasury or the FBI? You’re in your world, I’m in mine, and I don’t have to do squat for you.”
“True, true. However, somewhere in this mess about the new black bird, we need some interagency cooperation and some access to Comrade Federov. We need access if for no other reason than to pick his disgusting mind. And the best girl to pimp that access for us would be a girl named Alex LaDuca. So consider this a cross-agency request already cleared by your ‘jefe’ Mike Gamburian in Washington.”
“You think Federov had something to do with the disappearance?” ignoring McKinnon’s metaphors.
“Not necessarily do I think that,” McKinnon said, “but look at the big picture. Federov has dealt in stolen munitions and war material in the past, and he has been involved in art thefts. He once brokered a deal for a submarine to Colombia drug runners. Whether he’s retired from crime or not, and assuming he’s alive, we could bet that he has the phone number of someone who has the phone number of someone in whom we may have an interest.”
“Sure,” she said. “But you haven’t told me how this connects with The Pieta of Malta.”
McKinnon raised an eyebrow and looked at Chang. “Peter?” he said.
“Alex,” Chang said, “if you don’t mind, Yuri Federov’s name came up when I did some business in Switzerland. The business was with a gentleman who most likely brokered the sale of the bird. A Colonel Tissot. And I use the term ‘gentleman’ very loosely.”
“And what was said?” she asked. “Between you and Tissot?”
“There was nothing specific,” Chang said. “Nothing damning, no particular bit of business,” Peter answered. “But from what I learned from Monsieur Tissot, it was as if Federov was someone that needed to be worked around. Maybe he was not involved in the case itself, but the case was in his orbit, his underworld hegemony.”
“Can you show me the reference?” Alex asked.
McKinnon picked it up from there. “Who needs a reference? Whether Federov is alive or not, his corporations out of Odessa still have financial interests in shipping all over the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. That’s enough right there to question a hood like that. You know what shipping is like in those stretches of water: you show me a boat,
I’ll show you smugglers.”
“Not to mention the fact that ships of that nature would be excellent conduits for any sort of contraband,” Chang added. “From weapons to stolen art objects.”
“So,” McKinnon continued, “Federov, your Ukrainian bottom pincher, might be able to tell us something.” McKinnon held a long pause. “If only we had someone who can find him.”
“He’s Russian, by the way,” she said.
“Okay, your Russian bottom pincher.”
“ Now you want me to find Federov,” she said, turning back to McKinnon. “And then grill him?”
“Not exactly,” McKinnon answered. “We want him to find you. Then you grill him. Did you ever see Jurassic Park, where they put the little nanny goat out as bait to lure the dinosaur? In this case, you’re the nanny goat.”
Peter was shaking his head.
“And why should Yuri Federov talk to me?” Alex asked. “Where’s my leverage to get any information out of him?”
“He still has a tax situation in front of the IRS,” McKinnon said. “It limits his business dealings around the world, exposes some of his personal assets in the United States and its territories, and restricts his entry into the United States.”
“So I could offer some flexibility on his tax problems?” she asked.
“That’s what I’m saying,” McKinnon said. “As long as his information proves useful. Check with your bossman Mike about that. The fix is in with Treasury if you can finagle a deal. Does this have a logic to it?”
She pondered it and let go with some information from her side.
“My instructions, if I ever wanted to get in touch,” she finally explained, “were to go to Geneva and register at a certain hotel under my real name. The next day I was to have lunch alone at a certain restaurant. I’m supposed to go there and ask for a captain named Koller and tell him that his aunt from New York sends her regards. I’m to sit by the Lake of Geneva reading a book at eleven the next morning. I will be met by someone, possibly even Federov, himself. I’m to repeat the procedure until he contacts me. Or until I get tired of not being contacted.”
