Midnight in Madrid (3 page)

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 José 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 Arqueológico 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 pietà taken.”

“A
what?
Am I hearing you right?”

“A pietà,” 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.

“I’ve heard that before and been sorry,” she said. “What are you telling me? You want me to help the Spaniards with a two-bit burglary?”

“This feels like more than ‘two-bit,’ Alex,” Gamburian said. “That’s why we want to assign you to it.”

“Give it to me straight, Mike,” she said. “There are hundreds of major art thefts every week all over the world. What’s different about this one.”

“The uniqueness of the piece,” he said. “And we’ve been picking up some rumors and theories about some small terror cells in Spain that are intent on big things. Art theft often finances major crime. So we’re on guard.”

“Got it,” she said.

“You worked with a man named Mark McKinnon earlier this year, right? He’s one of the top ‘Agency’ guys in Europe.”

“I know him,” she said without enthusiasm.

“He’s on top of this, or at least says he is,” Gamburian said. “He’s going to be in touch with you in Madrid. Once again, you’re the perfect person on the spot.”

“Your flattery is going to get me killed some day.”

“Better you than me.”

“I’m going to hang up on you, Mike. That way you won’t hear me cursing at you.”

“Oh, come on. Hear me out, okay?”

Already within her, there was a feeling of disappointment. She had been doing much thinking and soul searching in the last few weeks. Following her recent activities from the brutally hot jungles of Venezuela to the snowy streets of Ukraine, she wondered if she was already burned out from this type of work. A voice within her urged her toward a job, an assignment, that would combat poverty, disease, and hate, the things she felt were the challenges of the new century, and part of how she wanted to live out her Christian faith.

“I still get to go back to Venezuela, right, Mike? Unfinished business and all.”

“The Caracas assignment will happen down the road, Alex. But the US government needs to assign someone
right away.
Today. We got a request at the ambassadorial level. You’re in Spain already. You’re fluent in Spanish, you’ll charm the socks off the
castizos
in Madrid, and you
do
have a bit of a background in art history.”

“How did you remember that?”

“I didn’t. I have a memory like a sieve. But I’m looking at your c.v. Christian art courses for your Master’s at UCLA. Says it right here. So, listen,” he continued. “If you say yes, I’ll put you back on the active payroll as of yesterday morning. Instead of the money coming out of the ‘Head Case’ funds you’ll be back on active duty. What do you say?”

A child’s soccer ball with the Barcelona team logo rolled onto her blanket from nearby, pursued by a smiling five-year-old boy. Alex gave him a friendly smile and gently flicked the ball back to him with her bare foot.

She held her silence, just to let Mike twist a little in the wind.

“Still there?” Gamburian finally asked.

“Before I say yes, what
exactly
are you asking me to do?” Alex asked.

“At first, go to a meeting at the US Embassy. You’ll meet some of our covert people in Spain and some people from various other European police agencies. You’ll be the point person for the US government and our combined intelligence agencies while you help the Spanish government recover a piece of ancient Christian artwork. Please say yes soon: I want to go home and catch the end of the family barbeque. Spare ribs don’t wait forever.”

She turned and looked at the glittering Mediterranean, where tanned hard-bodied bathers romped, splashed, and laughed. She looked the other way, toward a busy promenade lined by small shops. On high white poles against a clear sky there flapped an array of flags from three dozen nations. The fresh salty air caressed her nostrils.

Europe really didn’t seem so awful.

A breeze swept across the beach. Something in the back of her mind reminded her of the grittiness of Washington in September, and on top of that, the tedium of some of the desk-bound investigatory work that would be on her desk. At least here she could call her own shots.

“I suppose I could handle Europe for a few more weeks, Mike,” she said.

“Excellent! We’ll book you into the Ritz in Madrid as a little perk,” he said, naming one of the best—and most expensive—hotels in the Spanish capital. “You’ll be comfortable there.”

“I suspect I will be,” she said.

“Do everyone a favor and take a soft route to get there,” he added. “Something that doesn’t leave a trail.”

In other words, she thought, don’t
fly.

“Oh, and you’re going to need a new laptop. Do you want to shop for one and charge it to Treasury or should we deliver it to your hotel?”

“I’ll buy one new in Madrid,” she said. That way she could be sure it was never out of her sight from the time she acquired it. She could install her own software and security codes.

“Anything else?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “This little artifact that went missing from the museum—it’s got some legend to it. There’ll be a curator in Madrid who will give you the full story.”

“What sort of legend?” Alex asked.

“People claim it’s got supernatural powers. Spiritual stuff. Nothing you need to take seriously, but it might be an angle on why someone swiped it.”