“Hey,” she said. “Look.”
She indicated the doorway where an armed man in a green uniform had strolled in. Not that unusual, except he was armed, which the Civil Guard people hadn’t done till recently and still didn’t do all the time.
“Your mark?” he asked.
She glanced at her watch. Midnight. The timing worked. “Maybe,” she said.
Alex and Rizzo watched as a noisy pair of men came to the bar near them. Two men with one woman. They seemed to be having some sort of good-natured argument, but Alex couldn’t understand. It was Greek to her as well as to everyone else.
“Let me get a better look,” she said to Rizzo. She stepped away.
The uniformed policeman stood and looked around, as if he were searching for someone. Then the other cop entered. Two Civil Guards in uniform, both armed. Burly, thick-waisted men with pistols on their hips.
Alex looked back to Rizzo, where he stood among the Greeks. She gave him a nod. This was them, she was convinced. He gave a nod in return and made a quick motion of touching his heart, which she took to mean, be careful.
The woman who was with the Greeks was tall, slim, and leggy, in a short blue dress. She looked like a dream or trouble or both. Rizzo tried to not let her distract him aside from the first appreciative glance.
The two policemen left.
“Corrupt cops?” Alex asked.
“Something smells wrong. Be very careful. I’m going to be ten seconds behind you.”
“Only ten?”
“Maybe five,” he said. “I’m coming through the doorway as soon as you’re outside,” he said. “Just get the artwork and get away from them,” he said. “Do everything quickly, don’t stand in any one place too long. Keep an eye on windows for snipers. I wish I’d brought my own backup.”
He gave her hand a squeeze. Not lust this time. Real concern.
“Go,” he said.
Alex gave him a hug and set her half-full glass down on the bar. She turned and moved toward the door.
Rizzo reached to her glass as he watched her. He raised her glass to his own lips and finished her drink.
One of the Greeks grinned, turned to him.
“Thirsty?” the Greek asked in Spanish with a sneering smile.
“None of your lousy business,” Rizzo snarled in English, “so get out of my face.”
The man turned, still smiling, but confrontational.
“You’re not very friendly, are you, old man?” the man answered in English. “What happened? Your woman just walked out on you?”
The woman who was with them peeled away. Rizzo worked on the man’s accent. It wasn’t quite Greek. Once again, something was wrong. His hand moved for his weapon.
“You going to get away from me or do I have to break you in half?” Rizzo asked.
“An old guy like you?” the man asked. He laughed and so did his pal.
“Go to hell,” Rizzo responded. He followed that with a sharp colorful obscenity and a little push. He took a step away from the bar. Alex was out of his sight by now, and he needed to move.
The man took exception to Rizzo’s language and stepped in front of him. Rizzo pushed him again, pushed him hard, and the man budged and shoved back. An instant later, Rizzo also realized that he had been skunked.
An arm grabbed him from behind and locked hard around his neck. A yoke job and a perfectly professional one. Rizzo knew the drill. With his heel, he smashed down onto the instep of the man behind him and uppercut with his elbow. But then he felt a jab in one of his buttocks. It was a sharp jab that was hot with pain, then suddenly very cold.
Meanwhile the man in front of him brought up a knee to Rizzo’s groin, a knee that felt like an express train when it made contact. And Rizzo continued to feel an iciness radiating far down in his backside, from the middle of the left buttock on outward, where he had been stabbed with a needle.
With a speed faster than light, Rizzo realized that the Greek wasn’t a Greek. The lousy Eurotrash accent was something more ominous than Greek, maybe.
Tunisian or Algerian or Moroccan.
An accent from a hot, oppressive country with a lot of hot sand, stinking camels, and obnoxious people stuck in the seventeenth century, in his humble opinion. Rizzo realized that a trap had just sprung shut and the pain in his buttock was turning to a cold numbness because someone had jabbed a hypodermic needle into him and he was a goner, for this evening at least, if not for good, depending on what they had loaded into the syringe…
His vision blurred and he eyed the door. Then his eyes widened. His assailants released him and he stood with a wobble.
What a small perverse world this was!
He then spotted another strange face. An Asian guy who was looking at him from the midpoint of the bar and seemed to understand what had happened. Rizzo swooned, wishing the Asian would help him or do something.
The Asian had the movements of a big cat. He turned and quickstepped out the door in Rizzo’s place, following Alex and, in Rizzo’s opinion, closing a trap on her.
Now she had a stranger on her back, not the noble old Roman bodyguard.
Rizzo cursed violently. Darkness was descending on him, but he still had lots of fight, more than his opponents expected from a geezer. With a chopping motion, he brought his hand up toward the Greek-speaking guy in front of him, a guy who was dumb enough to stand there with his hands down, just watching.
Rizzo caught the man in the Adam’s apple and felt a solid crunch on impact, a crunch that was loud enough to draw the attention of people at the bar.
The man recoiled and coughed violently.
Rizzo grabbed the man’s throat and tried to squeeze. He tried to claw.
Rizzo felt the flesh tear against the clawing of his fingernails. But Rizzo was losing strength fast. He threw an elbow backward, hitting the man behind him-the one who had jabbed him-in the ribs. But then something that must have been a fist came out of nowhere and walloped him across the back of the head.
The blow stunned him.
The ceiling spun away.
Rizzo knew he was losing consciousness. The foreign hands upon him were firm, and they threw him against the wall. He continued to fight and cursed in slow motion. He was furious. He hadn’t lost a bar fight in thirty years, but he was sure on the short end of one tonight.
There was laughter, and Rizzo heard them explaining to the bartender in Spanish, “…our friend has had too much to drink,” followed by more laughter.
“I saw you hit him,” the bartender said. “Get out of here before I throw you out.”
“We’re leaving. We’re leaving.”
Rizzo knew expletives in at least a dozen major languages and launched as many as he could. Then he settled slowly to the floor as his assailants moved away and toward the door.
Darkness overwhelmed Rizzo. As he lost consciousness, he wondered if he would ever gain it back or whether this was lights-out for good.
THIRTY
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 10, 12:01 A.M.
Alex emerged from the bar alone and stopped on the sidewalk outside. The neighborhood was busy.
She looked both ways. She checked the street for vans or suspicious cars. The area was a minefield of things she didn’t like. Groups hanging around talking, single men, couples smooching in doorways, people sitting at outdoor tables that overflowed from other bars. Any single one of these groups, or any single person within them, could be transformed into a lethal adversary at any moment.
Her insides were so tightly coiled that she saw the whole architecture of the neighborhood in terms of menace. The traffic flowed the wrong way, approaching her from behind, meaning anyone could follow. She guessed that might have been by design.