“I’ll do that. Same going the other direction,” she said.
“Yeah. Right,” he answered, after taking a moment to figure out what she meant. “Right. Listen, my Spanish is a little weak, so I might give you a call just to compare notes on what was said here.”
“That’s fine,” Alex said. “But the handouts are in English also.”
“Are they?”
“But call me with any questions,” she said.
“Right,” he said again. “Okay.”
Rizzo and Alex watched him lumber to the door and leave. Rizzo placed a hand on her shoulder, then took it away.
“Political appointee,” she said.
“Capisco,” he said.
“Anyway, you look like you’re doing well,” he said, going back to English. “I’m very glad. You were in my thoughts for the last weeks.”
“Thank you.”
“This work can slowly kill you sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes I wake up and am surprised I’m still alive. Know what I mean?”
“Look,” she said. “The Ritz is only a few blocks from here and they have an excellent café just off the lobby. I think you should buy me coffee.”
“I think I should too,” he said.
SIXTEEN
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 7, EARLY AFTERNOON
On the outskirts of Madrid, Mahoud’s small car pulled to a halt in front of a ramshackle garage connected to a private home. The neighborhood was one of immigrants from Asia and North Africa. The home was owned by a taxi driver named Basheer. Basheer was not home at the time. He was an honest workingman in his thirties who pushed an old vehicle around Madrid for twelve hours a day, six days a week, to support his family. He had emigrated from a war-torn Lebanon to Spain in 1993. His family had found peace and prosperity in Western Europe.
Basheer was also the second member of the cell that Jean-Claude had pulled together in Madrid.
Jean-Claude stepped out and, as he always did, surveyed the street. His eyes swept quickly. He saw no danger. From a ring of keys, he found the one to Basheer’s garage. He unlocked the two doors and swung them open. He glanced at his watch.
Mahoud pulled the car into the garage. They closed the garage door and waited.
In the garage, which had space for only one car, Jean-Claude flipped open a cell phone and called a certain number. A familiar voice answered in Spanish.
“Soy aqui,” Jean-Claude said.
The response was rapid. “Veinti minutes.” Twenty minutes. But, Basheer warned, he had just dropped off some lousy American businesspeople at the airport and the traffic might be bad returning. Or he might catch a fare that he didn’t want to turn down.
Jean-Claude said he would wait and clicked off.
For a moment, neither Mahoud nor Jean-Claude spoke. There was taped music from Egypt on the car radio. It played softly. The garage was stuffy and hot, the sun pounding on the roof. Jean-Claude smoked. Mahoud coughed.
He switched back to Arabic. “Why don’t you go stand sentry?” Jean-Claude suggested. “Outside. Stand across the street and keep watch.”
“I don’t want to,” Mahoud said.
“I didn’t ask if you wanted to,” Jean-Claude answered.
Mahoud glared and hesitated. Then he opened his door, got out, and slammed it shut. He leaned forward and glared at Jean-Claude, looking as if he had something to say. He had a gun at his belt, beneath a soccer jersey. But Jean-Claude returned the glare with cold brown eyes. Mahoud exited the garage through the side door and took up his assigned position across the street.
Jean-Claude remained in the back of the old car, his duffel bags at arm’s reach. There was also a rear exit to this garage, one that led to an alley that led between buildings and to safety down another street. If he felt that they had drawn a tail, this was his escape route before his cargo reached its destination. But for now everything looked fine.
His attention drifted to a side door that led from the garage into a kitchen. The door was half open. There was activity in the kitchen now. Basheer’s wife, Leila, was there with her young child.
Leila was a trim Arab woman, very pretty with fair skin. She was very young, maybe eighteen or nineteen. She was dressed very immodestly because of the heat.
Jean-Claude watched her, his eyes riveted, more than a devout man should. Basheer, the taxi driver, was obviously a fortunate man in his home, not only to have such a young wife but such a sensual one too.
The child was a boy. Excellent. Basheer and his wife had been blessed with a son. If Jean-Claude ever had a family, he would want a woman who looked as good as Basheer’s wife and he would want to impregnate her with many sons to continue his wars. Basheer’s wife had the infant in a high chair and was fixing a meal for her offspring. She was a perfect baby machine, a nice lithe body and obviously fertile.
Jean-Claude remembered, though, that Basheer had expressed some criticism of Leila from time to time. Like many of the young Arab women in Madrid, she had some irritating pro-Western attitudes. She didn’t sufficiently hate Americans and English people, or even Spaniards. Worse, she seemed to like them and even like their culture. She and a friend, for example, had snuck off to a Batman movie and apparently liked it. The unfortunate Basheer had to raise his hand to his wife over that and punish her so that similar transgressions would not mar their future.
Leila glanced in Jean-Claude’s direction but obviously didn’t see him in the car. She continued to go about her business, fixing the meal, feeding the child, entertaining an unseen watcher with her half nudity.
Then, perhaps from feeling unseen eyes on her, she glanced again at the garage. This time, she did see him. She was startled.
Jean-Claude’s instincts told him to look away quickly, but he didn’t follow them. His eyes were riveted. He was seeing something that he hadn’t often seen in his life. So he stared awkwardly, and then smiled.
He smiled in spite of himself. Basheer was a primitive pious man. If he knew his wife had been seen in this state, Basheer would be prone to violence against both of them. He was a simple man and that was how he normally reacted.
All sorts of scenarios ran through Jean-Claude’s head, none of them good. At the very least, he hoped Basheer’s wife would simply close the door and never mention the incident.
Instead, she did the unpredictable. She did nothing. She didn’t close the door, and she didn’t cover up. Instead, she suppressed a delicate little smile and went about her business with her child.
Jean-Claude would later remember thinking, “People are right.” Leila is “too Western.” But he didn’t look away, either. And in this case he didn’t seem to mind.
SEVENTEEN
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 7, MIDAFTERNOON
Alex and Rizzo arrived at the Ritz and soon found their way to a café located on the back patio of an inner courtyard. As they found seats in a comfortable shaded area, it occurred to Alex why Rizzo had been assigned to the case.
Italy had the most art crime of any country in the world, with approximately twenty thousand art thefts reported each year. Russia had the second most, with approximately a tenth as many. Italy was also the only country whose government took art crime as seriously as it should. Italy’s Carabinieri were the most successful art squad worldwide, employing over three hundred full-time agents, so if Rizzo had contacts within their ranks, as assuredly he did, he would be invaluable.
“So,” Rizzo finally said, “it’s been about two months since I saw you last. You’ve managed to enjoy yourself a little bit, I hope.”
The café was shaded and fans blew cold air outdoors from within the air-conditioned hotel. Despite the bad associations with the events in Paris that had nearly cost Alex her life, she was glad to see someone here she recognized, and, for that matter, someone she trusted.