“Are you here to look or are you here to work?” she asked him.
“I’m here to look,” he said.
“Then why don’t you find another partner?” she snapped.
“Because you’re prettier than most of the cows who work for the Metro.”
“I should report you for a remark like that,” she said. “Maybe I will.”
“I’ll deny I ever said it,” he smirked. “You know how women imagine things. If you come on to them, they complain. If you don’t, they’re insulted.”
She handed him a clipboard, almost throwing it at him. The American girls turned and watched the argument and grinned. One of them whipped out a disposable camera and snapped a flash picture. Maria felt humiliated.
“Just shut up and work,” she said tersely as a train rumbled into the station. “Or I will report you. I swear.”
He growled but finally got the message, taking the proper notes as she gave them to him, filling out the proper maintenance request that would be turned in at the end of the day.
They track-walked to the next station, Banco de España, in near silence, moving slowly. They twice stepped to the side en route when the red warning lines cautioned them about an advancing train. They found nothing worthy of note in the tunnel. Then when they emerged at the Banco de España station, José Luis was at it again. When they came up into the station, they were confronted by a huge Real Madrid billboard featuring the goalkeeper, Iker Casillas making a brilliant diving one-handed save.
José Luis took the occasion to sing the praises of Real Madrid.
“I support Atlético,” she said sharply.
He laughed. “Sabes, no comprendo que una bonita mujer sensata como tú seas hincha de ese equipo de perdedores.” I don’t understand how a pretty girl like you could be a fan of a bunch of losers like that.
“Por que no te callas!” Why don’t you just shut up? “For the rest of the week.”
José Luis smirked in response. She knew that lurking beneath the surface, he was one of those men who didn’t feel women should even have these jobs walking the tracks. She was in a genuinely foul mood by now. The attack on Atlético she even felt as a shot at her late father. She felt sadness mixing with her anger and wished the week was already over.
But it wasn’t. Not by a long shot.
THIRTY-SIX
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 10, MID-AFTERNOON
McKinnon lurched back into the living room of the suite. He sat down hard, a crash landing of sorts, into the big chair.
Alex turned to him.
“Let’s talk about The Pietà of Malta,” Alex finally said. “And maybe you can also bring me up to speed on why we’re here and why two people have already been shot dead right in front of me.”
“Of course,” McKinnon said. “But everyone in this room needs to get to know everyone else in this room. Peter, you’ve been here in Spain before, also, haven’t you?”
“Several times,” he said. “This is one of my favorite places in Europe.”
Turning to him, Alex asked, “And you speak Spanish, I assume?”
“Claro que sí, Señorita,” he said. “Spanish, French, English, Cantonese, and Mandarin,” he said. “Interchangeably.”
“Peter works for the Chinese government,” McKinnon said.
“Which branch? You don’t exactly look like a trade delegate, looking to dump a lot of cheap toasters on the Marcado Común.”
“The Guojia Anquan Bu,” he said without a smile.
“The Ministry of State Security?” she asked. “Peking’s version of the CIA.”
“Exactly,” McKinnon said. “Our counterparts, and, as is often the case with counterparts, sometimes our interests coincide. As in this case. Let me backtrack. Mr. Chang has worked with the Agency in Europe before.”
“So the Chinese government has an interest in The Pietà of Malta also?” Alex asked.
“Very much so,” McKinnon said. “The Pietà of Malta. It’s like a ‘black bird’-a Maltese Falcon-for our new century.”
Alex waited for a moment. McKinnon’s eyes jumped to Peter’s then back again. “When you were at the embassy earlier this week, Alex, you attended a briefing by a Señor Rivera, the curator of the Museo Arqueológico.”
“That’s correct.”
“And the curator mentioned that this missing artifact had a tie to St. Francis, the highly revered saint, at least according to legend.”
“That’s right. That was mentioned,” Alex answered. “And if the case is so important to the two of you, why weren’t the two of you at the briefing?”
“I wasn’t invited. And I wasn’t even aware of the case till Peter contacted me.”
“That doesn’t make sense, Mark. You had someone in that meeting on your agency’s behalf,” she said, thinking of Rizzo.
“Very true. And as you yourself know, sometimes the Indian chiefs don’t know what the braves and warriors are up to. May I go on?”
“Please do.”
“I’ve done a bit of study on this myself in the last week,” McKinnon said. “First eight years of my own schooling, I went to Catholic schools in Chicago. Nuns. Franciscan order. A bunch of tough-assed old Irish biddies with red faces, black-and-white habits, and the usual fondness for hitting you with a ruler. So I know a bit about St. Francis and how he is known in the modern world.”
“In what sense?” she asked.
“His evangelism. Do you know where I’m heading with this?” McKinnon continued.
“I discussed the point with Señor Rivera yesterday,” Alex said. “So what’s the point? How does this impact the theft of the pietà?”
“On our black bird? Follow along. The US government was asked to help the Spaniards recover The Pietà of Malta,” McKinnon said. “Were any tangible leads offered to you in your meeting yesterday morning?”
“No,” she said. “None. A lot of information, but no leads.”
“So you were in a roomful of people poised to accomplish nothing, in other words,” McKinnon said.
“Keep a lid on that wise-guy stuff, okay, Mark? You know how these things work as well as I do,” she said.
“Sure. But that’s where counterpart agencies would appear to have common goals. Peter’s government wishes to see that the pietà is returned also.”
“What interests do the Chinese have?”
“Peter will get into that with you later today in a one-on-one,” McKinnon said. “Right now, suffice it to say that Peter represented a wealthy buyer in Peking. The buyer had his interests, and his interests were betrayed.”
“A wealthy individual buyer or the Beijing government?” she asked immediately, turning toward Peter.
“For now, let’s say both,” Mark said. “In China today, these things usually overlap.”
“Understood. Betrayed how?” she pressed.
“They paid,” Peter said, “and the bird, the pietà, was not delivered.”
“Hence, Peter’s presence in Europe,” McKinnon said. “He works much the way you do, Alex. Assessing problems, inventing solutions to them. Sometimes painfully difficult solutions.”
“I’m flattered by the comparison,” Alex said.
“As am I,” said Peter, interjecting politely.
“But here’s where we get into the hardball,” Mark McKinnon said. “We feel the larger part of the operation, if there is one, might be against the United States in some way. America has a huge number of targets in Spain, as you know. One can only protect so much for so long. And a high-profile US inquiry into the motives behind the theft might accelerate whatever plans are out there against us.”
“But,” she said, picking up his line of thought, “if we were able to work through another agency, with Chinese help for example…”
“Exactly. There would be no tip-off to the opposition. It would look as if we’re just trying to get a chunk of granite back for the dumb Spaniards who were careless enough to let it get stolen in the first place. So let’s look at the big picture here,” McKinnon said, turning back and focusing on Alex. “You’re now involved here in the blackbird investigation. What attributes do you bring to the table? Well, there are all the obvious ones: brains, looks, ability to penetrate certain circles and blend in, a knowledge of several languages, some of which might not seem to apply to this case but might in a broader sense. But often it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”