Zig Zag (17 page)

"I
know this is hard for you to believe, sweetheart. Let's see if I
can't give you a little more proof. Have you had the feeling that
people were following you recently? People who looked the same? I
dunno, redheads, or cops, or street sweepers?"

Elisa
was stunned. She felt like she'd just awoken from what she thought
was a nightmare only to find someone telling her that she had never
been sleeping. When she told Valente about the men with gray
mustaches, he gave a hollow laugh as he braked at a red light.

"Mine
were beggars. In the industry, they're known as decoys. Red herrings.
They're not really watching you at all; in fact, just the opposite.
All they're trying to do is get you to notice them. You know, like in
the movies, there's always some guy that the protagonist notices,
sitting there pretending to read the paper or wait for a bus, all the
while actually spying on him. But in real life, all you ever see are
the decoys. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about," he
added, turning his pasty face toward her. "My father is a
surveillance specialist. He says decoys are used for purely
psychological reasons. If you think there are men with gray mustaches
watching you, your brain will seek them out unconsciously and discard
anyone who doesn't fit the bill. Then you convince yourself that
you're being paranoid, lower your guard, and stop noticing other
strange coincidences. Meanwhile, the real spies have a field day.
Though my guess is that we've given them the slip for the eve."

Elisa
was impressed. What Valente was saying was
exactly
what
she'd been feeling over the past few days. She was going to ask
another question when she realized he'd pulled over. He parked
quickly beside a big Dumpster and began walking down toward Paseo de
Pintor Rosales. She kept pace with him, still feeling dazed, having
no idea where they were headed (she'd already asked and he hadn't
answered, and she had too many other important concerns to repeat the
question). So now she followed him without complaining as she tried
to fit the pieces of that mind-boggling puzzle together.

"You
say they're watching us, but who is 'they'? And why?"

"I'm
not sure." Valente's hands were jammed down into his pockets,
and though he appeared calm, she felt like he was walking awfully
fast. She had trouble falling in with his meticulous steps. "Have
you ever heard of ECHELON?"

"It
rings a bell. I read something about it awhile ago. Some kind of...
international surveillance system, right?"

"The
surveillance
system, the most important one in the world, sweetheart. My father
used to work for them, that's how I know. Did you know that
everything you say on the phone, or buy with a credit card, or search
on the Internet is tracked, examined, and filtered by computers?
ECHELON tracks all of us, every citizen in the country, and ranks us
according to our perceived threat. If the computers decide we're of
interest, up goes a red flag, and then they really start to trail us:
decoys, bugs, the whole shebang. That's ECHELON, the global Big
Brother. We have to watch our asses, they say, so we don't end up
sitting on broken glass. September 11 in New York and March 11 in
Madrid brought us right back to Adam and Eve days. We're stark naked,
and they're watching. ECHELON isn't Spanish, though. It's American.
My dad once told me that Europe has something comparable, a
surveillance system that uses similar tactics. Maybe that's who's
watching us."

"I'm
hearing you loud and clear, but I have to say ... this all seems ...
I mean, why would ECHELON, or anybody, care about us?"

"I
don't know. But I have an idea. And that's what we're going to find
out."

"What's
your idea?"

"They're
watching us because we're the top two in Blanes's class."

Elisa
laughed out loud. It was true that great physicists tended to be a
little weird, but Valente appeared to be a total freak.

"You
must
be
joking."

Valente
stopped short and looked at her, hard. He was wearing, as usual,
flamboyant clothes: white jeans and an off-white sweater with such a
wide neckline that it almost slid off one of his bony shoulders. His
straw-colored hair fell into his eyes. She heard the irritation in
his voice.

"Listen,
sweetheart. I went to a lot of trouble to organize this little
meeting. I've spent a whole week sending you little drawings and
hoping you were smart enough to decipher the message, OK? If you
don't believe me, that's your problem. I'm not going to waste any
more time with you."

He
turned around and banged on a door. Elisa thought life with Valente
Sharpe must be anything but dull. The door opened, revealing a dark
hallway and the shadowy features of a man. Valente went in and turned
to her.

"If
you want to come in, hurry up. Otherwise, fuck off."

"Come
in?" Elisa glanced into the darkness. The olive-skinned man
watched her, a strange glint in his eye. "To where?"

"My
house." Valente smiled. "Sorry it has to be the service
entrance. Still standing there? Forget it." He turned to the
man. "Slam the door in her face, Faouzi."

The
heavy wood door closed in her face with a resounding boom. But almost
immediately, it opened again, and Valente's amused face peeked out.

"By
the way, have you already answered the questionnaire? How did they
get you to do it? Was it that guy talking to you at the party? Who
did he say he was, a journalist? Student? Admirer?"

That
was it. It was as if someone had handed her the missing piece of the
puzzle, the thing she'd unconsciously been searching for right from
the start. And now she could see it all so clearly.

It
was so obvious, so clear, so appalling.

Valente
burst out laughing, though it was an almost silent laugh: all he did
was open his mouth wide, giving her a quick glimpse of his pharynx,
and squint.

"Judging
by the idiotic look on your face, anyone would think that... Don't
tell me you
liked
that
guy!" Elisa stood very still, unblinking, not even breathing.
Valente seemed to come to life, as if her expression delighted him.
"Unbelievable. You're even dumber than I thought! You might be
good at math, but you have the social skills of a hippopotamus, hey,
sweetheart? How disappointing! For both of us." He made as if to
close the door again, and then asked, "Are you coming in or
not?"

Elisa
didn't move.

09

THE
place
was strange and creepy, like its owner. Her first impression turned
out to be right: it wasn't a house, but an apartment building.
Valente confirmed this as they climbed up what must surely have been
the building's original stone staircase.

"My
uncle bought all the apartments. Some of them belonged to his father,
some to his sister and his cousin. He totally renovated them, and now
he has more space than he needs. I, on the other hand," he
added, "don't have
as
much
as
I need."

Elisa
wondered how much space Valente thought he needed. She realized that
this damp, dark den buried in the middle of Madrid was three times
the size of her mother's apartment. But, as she followed his
footsteps up the stairs, she was sure of one thing: she could never
live there, in that murky darkness that smelled like mildewed brick.

From
someplace on the first landing came a ghostly voice; it sounded like
a starving man, repeating different versions of the same word over
and over. She could vaguely make it out: "Astarte,"
"Venus," "Aphrodite." Neither Valente nor his
butler turned a hair, but when they reached the first floor, Faouzi,
who was ahead of them, stopped and opened a door. While she was
crossing the hall toward the next flight of stairs, she couldn't help
but try to see through the door. It was an enormous room, and she
spied a man in pajamas sitting beside a lamp. The butler approached
him and spoke loudly, with a strong Moroccan accent. "What's the
matter with you today? Why so much complaining?"

"Kali."

"Yeah,
yeah, Kali, I know."

"That's
my uncle. My father's brother," Ric Valente said, still climbing
up the stairs two by two. "He used to be a philologist. Then he
went senile, and now he spends all day reciting goddesses' names. I
wish he'd die. The house is his; I have only one floor. As soon as he
dies, I'll get the whole thing. It's already been decided. He doesn't
recognize anybody, doesn't care about anything, doesn't even know who
I am. So his death will benefit everybody."

He'd
said it with such indifference, without even hesitating. It wasn't
just the words themselves, which she'd immediately thought were
cruel, but the cold way he'd pronounced them that Elisa intensely
disliked. She remembered Victor's warning
(Be
careful with Ric),
but
when she stood at the door being insulted, moments ago, she'd decided
that she wasn't going to back out. She wanted to know what Valente
had to tell her.

The
sheer size of the house dumbfounded her. The landing they were on,
which seemed to be the last one, opened out onto a foyer with two
doors on one side and a hallway straight ahead, with several more
doors coming off it. This floor smelled different than the other
ones, like books and wood. There were wall lights with dimmers, and
it was clear that this whole part of the building had been recently
remodeled.

"Is
this ... your floor?"

"Yep,
all of it."

She
would have liked him to give her a tour of the bizarre museum-like
house, but Ric Valente did not appear to be a man concerned with
niceties. She watched him stride down the labyrinthine hallway and
stop at the other end, grabbing a door handle. All of a sudden, he
seemed to change his mind and opened the double door on the other
side, reaching in to flick on the lights.

"This
is my headquarters. It's got a bed and table, but this isn't where I
sleep or eat, just where I come for entertainment."

Just
that room alone, Elisa thought, would have been the biggest bachelor
pad she'd ever seen in her life. Though she was used to her mother's
domestic luxury, it was obvious that Valente's wealth was on a whole
different scale. This room was like a loft, with two different levels
and incredibly high ceilings, white walls, an industrial column
shooting up the middle of it, and a spiral staircase that led to a
platform with a bed. The lower level was full of books, speakers,
magazines, a whole slew of cameras, two strange stages (one with red
curtains, the other with a white screen), and several spotlights.

"This
is fantastic," she said. But Valente was already gone.

She
tiptoed out, as if she were afraid to make any noise, and went into
the room to which he'd originally made his way forward.

"Sit
down," he ordered, pointing to a blue sofa.

This
room was of a more normal size, and a laptop sat open on a small
desk. There were several framed pictures, mostly black and white. She
recognized some of the Hotshots: Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrodinger,
Werner Heisenberg, Stephen Hawking, and a very young Richard Feynman.
But the biggest picture, and certainly the most conspicuous, was very
different. The last picture was a brightly colored drawing of a man
wearing a suit and tie, stroking a naked woman. The expression on her
face made it clear that this was not a pleasant situation for her,
but she couldn't do much about it given that her hands were tied
behind her back.