Midnight in Madrid (18 page)

“Tomorrow?” she asked. “The day after tomorrow?”

“The day after tomorrow would be perfect,” he said, “if you could get your butt on the move that fast. Can that be done, considering this is an urgent request from those who sign the checks that allow you to cavort at a hotel like the Ritz in Madrid?”

“Okay,” she answered. “That can be done.”

“Perfect,” McKinnon said.

Then Peter turned to her. “I thought you and I might have dinner tonight,” Chang said. “Get to know each other a little better. How does that sound?”

She looked him squarely in his sharp, dark eyes.

“Dangerous,” she answered. “But the answer is yes. I owe you something, don’t I?”

Peter leaned back in his chair. For the first time, he smiled broadly.

MARSEILLES, SEPTEMBER 10, LATE EVENING

H
assan Lazzari, a Turk by way of Sicily, sat nervously in a nearly deserted café on the grand port in Marseilles. He was nursing a coffee and was positioned carefully at a small table away from everyone else. He sat there like a large stone, his posture erect, his features fagged, his face unshaven for the last few days.

It was late in the evening, night to most people. Lazzari was looking over the lights of the harbor and the tourists walking by the piers. Far up on the hills, overlooking the harbor, stood the Chateau d’If where the Count of Monte Cristo had been imprisoned, at least in the famous novel, and long before a popular sandwich was named for him.

Well, Hassan Lazzari didn’t feel like having a sandwich and didn’t much feel like any more coffee either. But he did feel imprisoned, imprisoned by his nerves and a sense of impending disaster.

The coffee was lukewarm and he had lost interest in it. He was there to become rich, to accept a bag full of money, but so far nothing had happened. He started to slouch. Then he straightened up in his chair when he saw a Frenchman approach him and figured it was the man he was waiting for. He figured that, because the approaching stranger—with hands visible—was carrying a small tote bag and looking right at Lazzari.

The Frenchman approached the table. “Mind if I join you?” he asked. They spoke French.

“Not if you brought the money,” the Turk said.

The Frenchman indicated a small duffel bag next to him. “Would I be here without the money?” he asked.

“You might be,” the Turk said. “No way of knowing.”

The Frenchman smiled indulgently.

Lazzari leaned back and allowed his outer shirt to fall open. Under his left armpit there was a powerhouse of an automatic pistol. The Frenchman’s eyes fell onto it, then lifted back into the Turk’s eyes.

The message was clear. No nonsense. Nonsense would be dealt with quickly, efficiently, and brutally. That’s the message that Lazzari was sending.

The Frenchman put the bag on an empty seat. The Turk looked at it nervously, reached to open it, but flicked his eyes back and forth between the bag and the delivery person.

“You’re Jean-Claude?” the Turk asked.

“I’m Jean-Claude,” the Frenchman said.

“How do I know that?”

“You don’t. And why do you care, anyway? Your money is there. Count it if you like.”

“I’m not going to pile up twenty-thousand euros on a café table, you fool,” Lazzari said.

“Then we’ll go to a back room if you like. I know the management here. The evening man Fajit is a friend of mine.”

“No back rooms,” the Turk said. “No friends.”

As if to reassure his client, Jean-Claude cautiously pushed up his shirt sleeves and laid his hands on the table.

“What might I do to put you at ease?” Jean-Claude asked.

“You can keep quiet, to start with.”

Then, impulsively, the Turk sighed and leaned forward. He leaned so far forward that he lifted up slightly from his seat. Reaching out, he roughly shoved his hands all over Jean-Claude’s shoulders, ribs, and waist, frisking him thoroughly. He groped at Jean-Claude’s crotch, under it and around it, searching for any trace of a weapon.

The Frenchman kept still and did nothing to protest.

The Turk eased back down in his seat.

“Why would I come here to deceive you?” Jean-Claude said. “You give me too much credit. You’re the one who has outsmarted us and the one who will profit tonight. Count the money,” he said, nodding toward the bag. “Everything you asked for is there.”

The Turk pulled the canvas duffel back to him. Without pulling any money out, he kept Jean-Claude and the rest of the café in view as he quickly inventoried the money.

It looked as if it was all there. He pulled out a few banknotes at random and scrutinized them. He liked what he saw, which had a calming effect.

“It looks good,” he said. “All right. It looks good.” He closed the duffel and prepared to stand. He still didn’t like this setup. He didn’t like it at all and wanted to be out of there as quickly as possible.

He looked back at Jean-Claude.

“I will give you a few words of warning,” the Turk said. “I’ll tell you one time. I should be back in Italy by noon tomorrow. If I am not, keep in mind that I am Sicilian in addition to being Turkish. I have relatives and friends. If anything happens to me while I’m transporting this money, you personally will be hunted down within twenty-four hours by some of the most savage killers in Europe. Then you will be tortured with knifes. You will be left to die slowly in an unspeakable way that will make you wish that you had never been born. Is that clear?”

Jean-Claude again smiled tolerantly.

“You’ve made your point and you’ve made it very clearly,” Jean-Claude said. “I think of this as part of the cost of doing business. A tax, so to speak. I don’t wish any aggravation past this evening any more than you do.”

“You will not hear from us,” said the Turk who for the second time attempted to leave. But Jean-Claude held his hand, keeping him at the table.

The Turk’s other hand inched toward his weapon.

“There is no need for a firearm,” Jean-Claude said disdainfully. “But now I just need assurance from you. I need your word to me that this is the only ‘tax’ the people in my organization are going to need to pay to you. I’ve already removed the little ‘bugs’ that you were so conniving as to place in our shipment of merchandise. And I have had the entire shipment searched millimeter by millimeter to make sure there are no other little hidden presents for us. So actually, you would have difficulty locating us after our mission is complete. So let’s just be clear that neither will ever see the other again under any circumstances.”

“You have our word,” said the Turk.

“Then you have ours as well.”

Jean-Claude extended a hand. It was firm, strong, and dry. Their hands clasped.

“Travel wisely with the money,” Jean-Claude said.

The Turk gave a little snort in return.

“I have an accomplice with a rifle in a window across the street,” Lazzari said. “You will give me ten minutes to leave. If you move from this table, you’ll be gunned down like a rabbit. If you reach under your clothing to find a weapon I may have missed, you’ll be gunned down also. If you make any effort to come looking for me or my brother, you will also be killed. Understand?”

“I understand perfectly,” Jean-Claude answered. “I’m in fear of my life here. There is no way I would dare to do anything.”

He sat back down and smiled.

“That’s good. That’s good.” Lazzari said. Yet somehow, Jean-Claude was too calm. He hadn’t sounded convincing to his business associate.

Fretfully, Lazzari turned on his heels. He moved swiftly along the narrow passageway between café tables. He hit the sidewalk, his pace accelerating. Jean-Claude watched him go, doing a slow count of seconds as the Turk disappeared with a bag of money.

MADRID, SEPTEMBER 10, LATE EVENING

T
hey sat at a table that evening, Alex and Peter Chang, at a small restaurant in the Bailén amidst remnants of Moorish Madrid and in the shadow of the grand Basilica de San Francisco. They were in a small room with burnt-ochre walls and oak paneling, a quiet chamber behind a noisy brass tapas bar. They sat in a booth in the back that afforded both of them cover, as well as a view of both the entrance and the exit.

In Spanish, with an affable young waiter, they ordered a dinner of tuna steaks in soy and ginger with a bottle of Rioja. When the waiter departed, Alex switched the conversation back to English.

“You speak Spanish with a very slight accent,” she said, “but your English is perfect. Better than most native speakers, I’d say,” she said. “And what there is of an accent almost sounds British, but with a few American inflections thrown in. How did that happen?”

“I was born in Hong Kong and grew up there,” he said. “I went to British schools on the island and then later in England when I was older. My mother was a teacher, my father owned a shipping company. Only five ships, but papa kept them busy.”

“Only five, huh?” she said. “That’s five more than most people.”

“Then, when I was in my early twenties, I spent a few years in New York.”

“Doing what? Working?”

“Political studies. Columbia University. New York City,” Peter Chang said. “I was a teaching fellow and earned my master’s degree. I lived in New York for five years. I loved the place. Broadway theater. The smut of Times Square. Two ballparks and the dirty pretzels from the vendor who was always outside the School of International Relations on 110
^th
Street. What a city!”

He finally grinned. There was a chilliness to Peter, she noted. She had to push hard to get past a cautious exterior. She wondered what lurked beneath, passion or poison.

“As you know, Hong Kong was a crown colony of the United Kingdom when I was growing up,” he continued. “My family remained even after the transfer of the island’s sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China in 1997. I went back, horrified that Peking now controlled the island. But it wasn’t as bad as I’d guessed. One thing led to another, and the new government offered me a very comfortable career.”

“Impressive résumé,” she said.

“You flatter me,” he said.

“But hardly as impressive as your abilities with a pistol,” she said. “Or should I say,
pair
of pistols? Where did you learn
those
skills?”

“I was taken aside, given special treatment, special training. Same as yourself.”

The waiter arrived with the bottle of Rioja and the conversation jumped back to Spanish. Peter did the tasting, gave his approval, then asked for the wine to be decanted so it could air. The dialogue between Alex and Peter stayed on small matters until the food arrived and, not by surprise, turned out to be spectacular.

Peter lowered his tones and switched back to English when the conversation turned serious again. “Let me bring you up to date on
The Pietà of Malta,
” he said. “Our own intelligence knew the trail of a transaction involving the bird. Black market sale: $1,250,000 from the sale of a stolen piece of art. The physical transaction of the artwork was made in Switzerland with the money returning to Spain by electronic transfer.”

“So someone paid to have it stolen?”

“Someone paid
a lot
to have it stolen,” Peter said. “Which brings us to motivations.”

“Arguably it could have been a private collector,” she said. “One of those immensely wealthy people who get their charge merely out of possessing the item. Or it could have been stolen by people who wanted to raise money. But if the money returned to Spain, what was the purpose of it?”

“Here we get into the notion of artwork financing criminal activity or terror activity. And the latter would most likely be aimed at America or Americans,” he said. “Listen, another agent from my agency went to Switzerland to intercept the transaction. The agent carried five checks on the Bank of Hong Kong to complete the transaction.”

“And?”

“He was murdered when he was supposed to retrieve the carving from an old monastery,” he explained. “Then his body was dumped in the mountains. Concurrent with his disappearance, the checks were cashed through an Arab bank in Ri’yad. And as I mentioned, much of the money eventually came back to Spain by electronic transfer. It was laundered first through Zurich, then through a bank in the Cayman Islands.”

Alex picked up on the explanation.

“So whoever was brokering the deal had your agent killed, took his money, then sent the pietà in another direction. Perhaps to the Middle East. Or at least, that’s what we speculate.”

“You could put forth that theory,” Peter said.

“Do
you
put forth that thesis?” she asked.

“Most of it. Or variations on it. It’s the foundation of what I’m working with.”

“Bad way to do business,” she said, harkening back to those who had brokered the sale of the stolen art.

“Yes. It’s a
very
shortsighted way to do business,” said Chang with a certain iciness. “Selling the same stolen art work twice. Or at least twice. It leaves everyone unhappy and puts in motion some very unfortunate repercussions.”

“I can imagine,” Alex said.

“It was enough reason for me to fly to Switzerland to arrange for the agent’s body to be sent home to China,” he said. He paused very slightly. “While I was there, I picked up where the other agent left off and embarked myself on the trail of the bird and the transactions involving it. How’s your tuna?”

“It’s fine.”

“How’s the wine?”

“You’re consuming the same meal as I am. Both are excellent. Why are you changing the subject?”

“I’m not.”

“When were you in Switzerland?”

“You
are
a lady tiger, aren’t you? Persistent and not easy to distract from a line of inquiry.”

“I can be. When were you in Switzerland?”

“I was in Switzerland four days ago. I knew you were to be assigned to the case,” Chang said. “But I had no authorization to make contact with you until I consulted with both my people and the Americans. But I also knew you were potentially a target.”

“How could you have known
that
?” she asked. “You would have had to have left Switzerland before I knew I was assigned to the case.”

“You’re smart,” he said. “I’ll give you five seconds to think about it. I doubt if you’ll need all five.”

She used three of them. Then, “Ah. Federov!” she said.

“Correct. I knew you were going to be assigned, because when I passed information about the brokerage of stolen artwork along to the CIA in Rome, Federov’s name came up. Mark McKinnon saw the name and knew you had previous dealings with the Russian. So Mark contacted me before he contacted you. That’s also obviously why the opposition, whoever they are, knew you were to be assigned. And that’s why they drew a target on your beautiful head.”

“But backtrack for a second. How did you find the Federov connection?”

“I hacked the computer of a certain Swiss businessman.”

“You what?”

“I hacked into his computer and downloaded all the contents into mine.”

“His computer wasn’t coded?” she asked.

“Not very efficiently.” Chang answered. He laughed. “I’m Asian so I’m good at those things. The Switzer was a dumb old white guy as far as security software went. It wasn’t much of a challenge. And his laptop was like a little box of gold,” Chang said. “That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about tonight.”

“So talk,” she said, only slightly distracted by the best tuna filet she had ever encountered.

“I also recovered the banking records that showed exactly into what account the checks from China had been deposited. Normally, the trace on a route of a check deposited in Switzerland will hit security roadblocks and we’d need the help of the Swiss authorities to follow the money all the way back to the deposit.”

“Usually that cooperation is forthcoming,” she noted.

“Yes. But one is always at risk of certain bankers alerting the opposition by letting the depositor know that questions were being asked. So I hacked into the system for the complete records of that account,” Chang said. “I followed the money.”

Her fork stopped in mid-motion. “You hacked into the entire Swiss banking system?” she asked.

“Well, just one of the big banks. That was enough this time. Okay, I needed some help from one of our Hong Kong–trained techies. So she flew over from London for a day and got the job done. It’s like a Trojan Horse virus via microwaves on the bank’s main computer. If we know what account to connect with, we can drop our virus in and monitor transactions, past and current. From there we can monitor any other account that receives or disperses a transaction from the first account. Then the Trojan Horse self-destructs leaving no trace.”

“Do the Swiss know you have this capability?”

“Some of the banks do,” he said. “Sometimes they ask
us
for some help figuring out what their depositors are up to. One dirty hand washes the other.”

She shook her head in amazement. Tens of thousands of depositors with numbered accounts wouldn’t have found Peter’s tale anywhere nearly as amusing.

“Anyway,” Chang continued, “the money was dispersed to other accounts within minutes after it had cleared. One of the accounts was in Spain, two were in Saudi Arabia. We followed the international routing numbers and sent our Trojan Horse after it.”

“So that would link the people who were fencing
The Pietà of Malta
to people in the Middle East as well as Spain,” she said.

“It would appear that way,” Peter Chang said. “But the first deposit was closely followed by another deposit and a similar transfer,” he said. “For the same amount of money. And then the second transfer dispersed the money almost in the same manner, except there was fifty thousand dollars siphoned off, which went to a bank in Athens that specializes in trade with the Mideast.”

“Did you get names off the accounts?”

“Not real ones. No surprise there. The trail dead-ends into fake passports and IDs. Very professional stuff, by the way.”

Thinking it backward, she said, “Athens, huh?”

“Athens. Yes. Why is that significant?”

“When my Italian buddy had a needle stuck in his butt the other night,” she said, “he said the people who did it were speaking Greek. Maybe that’s nothing. Maybe it suggests we’re on the right track.”

“Maybe. And maybe not,” Peter Chang said. “Look, my brief only addresses the sale to China, my government’s displeasure on how the transaction was handled, and the fate of the gentleman who was murdered in Switzerland. But as long as I’m in this, I don’t mind assisting you with your own investigation. Don’t get me wrong—I’m being paid to do this. Paid very well. And I, on behalf of my government, don’t personally like our opponents here either. So now you know pretty much everything that I know. If you’d like me to stay with you on this, I’m here. If not, I’ll walk.”

“I’d be honored if you stayed with me on this,” she said.

“So I’ll cover your back, and, if necessary, you cover mine,” he said.

“It’s a deal.”

She reached across the table. They shook hands. His hand was intense and strong. It almost gave her a shudder. She finished her plate, and the last few sips of wine with it. She was feeling slightly buzzed, a safe but pleasant level.

A busboy arrived and cleared the table. The waiter arrived with a dessert menu. Alex maintained her will power for almost a quarter minute until the waiter talked them into taking some coffee accompanied by a plate to share of
buñelos de viento
, puffs of choux pastry stuffed with sweet vanilla or chocolate cream.

“Death from gunfire is one thing,” she said with a shrug. “Death from triglycerides and cholesterol is something else. What’s on your agenda for tomorrow?”

“I need to do some banking,” he answered. “Accompany me when I do it. There are some things you should see.”

“Can we do it in the morning?” she asked. “First thing?”

“That would be best,” he said. “Did you have a conflict?”

“I was going to go out to the Escorial,” she said, “and perhaps the Valley of the Fallen where the big monument stands to the Civil War dead. It’s about an hour outside the city. Ever been out there?”

“No.”

“Interested?”

“I am,” he said. “I have a car. I can drive.”

She considered it. “Okay,” she said. “On a professional level, right?”

“Completely,” he said.

“It’s a deal.”