Subject: Pietà of Malta
Date: Fri, 10 September 2009 12:47:01-0400
From: “A_LaDuca” ‹A_Laduca@usdt.prv.org
To: “Connelly_F” ‹Floyd_Connelly@USACustoms.org› Add Mobile Alert
Hey, Floyd…I don’t mind communication, but empty messages are not my thing.;-) Nothing’s coming though, my friend. Do you have anything interesting? If so, please be sure to attach properly or if it’s easier, call me on my cell phone. Okay? I’m always happy to hear from you if you have something. Alex LaDuca
Then she hit Send and off into cyberspace went her message.
This Connelly guy was a piece of work, no?
Floyd, Floyd, a message in a void.
She needed a nickname for him, she mused, as she sipped her morning coffee and spread some delicious Spanish marmalade on toast. What would it be, the nickname?
“Pretty Boy” or “Pink”?
Well, not to be mean, but certainly not the former.
The latter? Pink?
Then she had it. The perfect nickname for him in her mind: Gutman. As in the Sidney Greenstreet character in The Maltese Falcon.
Connelly was Gutman. She laughed. Who was she? Samanatha Spade? Well, she’d been called worse. In fact, she liked the notion. She laughed again. Might as well have some small measure of fun with this nerve-racking pressure. She realized she was getting a little punch drunk with all this terror stuff, with the mounting demands to connect with The Pietà of Malta.
She went to Colonel Pendraza’s attachments. More vile stuff. More attempted terror in Spain. She speed-read six files. Again, nothing.
She clicked out of email. She glanced at her watch. It was almost 9:00 a.m. She finished breakfast. Enough nonsense, she told herself. Keep moving.
She went to various websites and studied her options for getting from Madrid to Geneva without using airplanes. Yes, she could rent a car, but she didn’t feel like driving. She went to a site for the European rail system and figured her next move. She would take an overnight train from Madrid. She could book a sleeping compartment and at least have a comfortable night. Well, that might be perfect. Or as close to perfect as she could hope for.
The train offered her anonymity plus a little bit of adventure. Strangers on a Train, Murder on the Orient Express. Why not? She thought of a couple of old European gems. Closely Watched Trains. The Sleeping Car Murders. She laughed.
She looked at the schedule. The train she wanted would depart from Madrid the next night and get her just north of Barcelona to the Spanish city Figueras by the following morning.
Then she could transfer to Montpellier in the south of France near Marseilles and follow that with another transfer to one of the zippy French TGV’s, trains de grande vitesse. She would be in Geneva by the next afternoon and, she reasoned, would be able to check into the hotel by four.
She knew Geneva reasonably well from previous visits.
Okay, perfect. Traveling with a firearm was a pain, but this way she could make the best of it. She used a credit card to secure a reservation. She had a prepaid card in pseudonym for just such purposes. She would buy the hard copy of the ticket from a machine. No passport or ID checks. Perfect, again.
This was what traveling soft was all about. It frightened her that she had become so good at it. She went back to email.
Nothing new.
She finished with the laptop and closed it. She dressed in comfortable clothes for the day. Snug blue jeans of a very light cotton. A yellow T-shirt and a navy blue windbreaker. Just enough upper body coverage to conceal her weapon if she chose to carry it, which she did.
By 10:00 she was downstairs at the front entrance to the Ritz, bringing her laptop with her.
Peter Chang was already there, standing beside a maroon Jaguar. He was in a sharp Hugo Boss suit and open-collared shirt with wraparound shades. A Cantonese James Bond. Peter was chatting amiably in Spanish with the doormen. The doormen had allowed him to park in a Prohibido Estacionar zone to wait for her. Alex wondered what the maroon Jag had to do with Chinese socialism but lodged no questions or complaints. It was a beauty of a car.
Peter spotted her immediately but didn’t even break a smile. He opened the car door for her, politely waving the doormen away from the assignment. Moments later they were out into traffic and on their way to the bank.
FORTY-TWO
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 11, 11:00 A.M.
You really want me to see all this?” Alex asked.
Alex stood with Peter Chang in the subterranean vault of El Banco de Santander. The branch was one of the largest in the city, as well as the most secure. They stood in a private room where Peter opened a safety deposit box from the vault.
“I don’t mind that you see what’s in the box,” Chang said. “Look, we’re working together. I have to trust you and vice versa. Do you have your passport with you?”
“Of course.”
“I want to add your signature to this account,” he said. “That way, if you need to, you can get in and out of this box without me.”
He lifted an attaché case onto the desktop. He had carried it from the car. Using his thumbs, he clicked the locks and the latches popped up with sharp metallic snaps. Then Chang opened the case. There were papers neatly arranged in a file, a weapon in a special case, a breathtaking load of cash bundled together, and a small gift box with slick white wrapping paper and a red ribbon.
He hefted the money in his hands. “Money,” he said. “I love money.” He was all business.
“In its place,” she answered.
“There’s ten thousand euros here,” he said. He flicked his fingers over the neatly bound stacks of bank notes. “Half in fifties, half in twenties. There are a few tens. If you’re in Spain and get stranded, or I’m not here, or I’ve disappeared or had to go back to China, help yourself to a reasonable amount. I mean, if you need a good lunch or dinner, just come in and grab a hundred euros. That’s about what it costs, doesn’t it, these days?”
“Just about,” she said, going along with it.
She watched in mounting wonder. He moved the money, tied up in fat tactile packs, into the safety deposit box. He then opened the metal case. Within it was a small black handgun, a Chinese-made nine millimeter automatic.
“Nice, yes?” he asked.
“Very,” she said.
He handed it to her for her examination. She used a tissue to hold it so she wouldn’t leave fingerprints on it, a move that amused him. She recognized the gun as a Norinco M-77B, a variant of the Type 77 pistol issued to the Chinese military and police.
“I’m surprised that thing didn’t set off the metal detector at the door,” she said.
He smiled and tapped gently on the case.
“This is the newest thing,” he said, referring to the metal composition of the weapon’s case. “Cool, huh? It’s like a Stealth bomber. It stymies the metal detectors so anything in one of these boxes flies under the radar.”
“Incredible,” she said.
“I’m Chinese, hey. We’re technologically advanced. Haven’t you read all that stuff in the journals these days? The Economist? The Atlantic in your country? Nostradamus said the Chinese would rule the world, remember that? Well, you might live to see it. Why are you looking at me strangely?” he asked.
“I can’t decide whether you’re brilliant, just full of yourself, or both,” she said.
“Both,” he answered. “You’re not the first to notice. And anyway, the bank knows who I am, and they look the other way. You know how banks do that when they want to. So bringing the gun wouldn’t have been a problem, anyway.”
“They know who you work for?”
“Who do you think opened the account?” he said.
The gun, packed neatly away, followed the money into the box.