Unless they were at the front of my apartment? he thought suddenly. Maybe that was why the police had taken him out through the garage door. Maybe that was what the concierge had meant: These men I had to let up. The press often tried to get to people who lived in the building, and the staff was good about insulating celebrity tenants from reporters. And his telephone number was changed regularly so they wouldn’t be able to bother him.
But the caller had had it. He still wondered who that was and what he had tried to warn him about. No one could have known that he was involved with the people who had killed the American. Only Esteban Ramirez knew that and he wouldn’t have told anyone.
It occurred to him then to telephone the answering machine in his office. It also occurred to him that this telephone might be bugged, but that was a chance he was willing to take. He didn’t have much of a choice.
But before he could place the call, the door opened and two men walked in.
They were not police.
TEN
The International Crime Police Organization — popularly referred to as Interpol — was established in Vienna in 1923. It was designed to serve as a worldwide clearinghouse for police information. After the Second World War, the organization was expanded and re-chartered to focus on smuggling, narcotics, counterfeiting, and kidnapping. Today, one hundred seventy-seven nations provide information to the organization, which has offices in most of the major cities of the world. In the United States, Interpol liaises with the United States National Central Bureau. The USNCB reports to the Undersecretary for Enforcement of the U.S. Treasury Department.
During his years with the FBI, Darrell McCaskey had worked extensively with dozens of Interpol officers. He had worked especially closely with two of them in Spain. One was the remarkable María Corneja, a lone wolf special operations officer who had lived with McCaskey in America for seven months while studying FBI methods. The other was Luis García de la Vega, the commander of Interpol’s office in Madrid.
Luis was a dark-skinned, black-haired, bear-large, two-fisted Andalusian Gypsy who taught flamenco dancing in his spare time. Like the dance style, the thirty-seven-year-old Luis was spontaneous, dramatic, and spirited. He ran one of the toughest and best-informed Interpol bureaus in Europe. Their efficiency and effectiveness had earned him both the jealous loathing and deep respect of local police forces.
Luis had intended to come to the hotel right after the shooting, but the events in San Sebastián had caused him to delay his visit. He arrived shortly after eleven-thirty P.M., as McCaskey and Aideen were finishing dinner.
Darrell greeted his old friend with a long embrace.
“I’m sorry about what has happened,” Luis said in husky, accent-tinged English.
“Thank you,” McCaskey said.
“I’m also sorry to be so late,” Luis said, finally breaking the hug. “I see that you have adapted the Spanish way of dining. Eat very late at night and then sleep well.”
“Actually,” said McCaskey, “this is the first chance we’ve had to order room service. And I’m not sure either of us will be able to sleep tonight, however much we eat.”
“I understand,” Luis remarked. He squeezed his friend’s shoulders. “A terrible day. Again, I’m very sorry.”
“Would you care for something, Luis?” McCaskey asked. “Some wine, perhaps?”
“Not while I am on duty,” Luis replied. “You should know that. But please, you two go ahead.” His eyes fell on Aideen and he smiled. “You are Señorita Marley.”
“Yes.” Aideen rose from the table and offered her hand. Though she was physically and emotionally exhausted, something came alive when she touched the man’s hand. He was attractive, but that wasn’t what had stimulated her. After everything that had happened today she was too numb, too depleted to care. What he gave her was the sense of not being afraid of anything. She had always responded to that in a man.
“I’m sorry about your loss,” Luis said. “But I’m glad that you are all right. You are all right?”
“Yes,” she said as she sat back down. “Thanks for your concern.”
“Mi delicia, ” he said. “My pleasure.” Luis pulled over an arm chair and joined them at the table.
McCaskey resumed eating his spicy partridge. “So?”
“That smells very good,” Luis said.
“It is,” McCaskey said. His eyes narrowed. “You’re stalling, Luis.”
Luis rubbed the back of his neck. “Sí,” he admitted. “I’m stalling ‘big time,’ as you say in America. But it’s not because I have something. It’s because I have nothing. Only thoughts. Ideas.”
“Your thoughts are usually as good as someone else’s facts,” McCaskey said. “Would you care to share them?”
Luis took a drink from McCaskey’s water glass. He gestured vaguely toward the window. “It’s terrible out there, Darrell. Simply terrible. And it’s getting worse. We’ve had very small anti-Basque and anti-Catalonian riots in Avila, Segovia, and Soria.”
“All Castilian regions,” Aideen said.
“Yes,” Luis remarked. “It doesn’t appear as if the police there are doing everything they can to prevent these outbursts.”
“The police are standing along racial lines,” McCaskey said.
Luis nodded slowly. “I’ve never seen such — I’m not even certain what to call it.”
“Collective insanity,” Aideen said.
Luis regarded her. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s the kind of thing psychologists have been warning about regarding the coming millennium,” Aideen said. “The fear that we’re all going into it but most of us won’t be coming out alive. Result: a sense of mortality which brings out panic. Fear. Violence.”
Luis looked at her and pointed. “Yes, that’s right. It’s as though everyone has caught some kind of mental and physical fever. My people who have gone to those regions say there’s a sense of hatred and excitement you can almost feel. Very strange.”
McCaskey frowned. “I hope you’re not saying that Martha’s shooting is part of a mass psychotic episode.”
Luis waved his hand dismissively. “No, of course not. I’m merely remarking that something strange is happening out there. Something I’ve never felt before.” He leaned forward, toward the Egg. “There is also something brewing, my friends. Something that I think is very well planned.”
“What kind of ‘something’?” McCaskey asked.
“The ship that sank in San Sebastián was destroyed with C-4,” Luis said. “Traces were found on some of the debris.”
“We heard that from Bob Herbert,” McCaskey said. He regarded Luis expectantly. “Go on. There’s an ‘and’ in your voice.”
Luis nodded. “One of the dead men, Esteban Ramirez, was at one time a CIA courier. His company’s yachts were used to smuggle arms and personnel to contacts around the world. There have been whisperings about that for a while, but those whisperings are bound to become louder now. People here will say he was hit by American agents.”
“Do you believe that the CIA was involved in the attack, Luis?” Aideen asked.
“No. They wouldn’t have done something so public. Nor would they have been so quick to retaliate for the murder of your colleague. But there will be loud gossip about that in political circles. No one talks more than people in government. You know that, Darrell.”