“Of course.”
“You can dip into some of the money too, if you want. I did. No one will care. Expenses, you know. Don’t be greedy, but I know you won’t.”
He jogged back to the line, nodded with a smile to the security people and proceeded. Her eyes were still on him when he took his suitcases to be X-rayed, and put them through the giant scanners. The security people nodded and waved him along.
He turned toward the place where Alex stood from a distance of maybe a hundred feet. Somehow he knew she hadn’t left, and somehow his eyes found hers immediately, even across the crowded entrance lobby of the bustling airport. Across many travelers, a multitude of cultures, across more languages than anyone in the room could count. This was how they had met and how they would separate.
He gave her that big smile again, raised a hand and waved.
She raised hers in response but without much enthusiasm. Then he turned and was gone through the security gates where they examined his shoes, his belt, and made him stand for an electronic, and then a manual, frisk. An absurd and amusing notion struck her. If these security people only know who they were frisking, she thought to herself. Well, it happened all the time.
She caught one more glimpse of him. Then he was gone.
Completely.
She walked out of the gates to the departures lounge and onto the sidewalk, lost in many thoughts…
She went back to the car and sat for several minutes. The degree to which she was rattled surprised even her. Time spiraled a little. So much had happened in so short a time. It seemed as if it had been only a few seconds ago that she had been emerging from the warm surf in Barcelona and answering the phone. Then she had been in Madrid, then Switzerland being undressed and re-dressed by Federov, then Rome, then back to the Spanish capital where she felt as if she had lost five years of her life pinned in a filthy tunnel under the streets-where she might have lost her life completely if Peter and his hit team hadn’t found her.
She shuddered. What kind of bizarre angel had been her guardian this time? If she believed in God at all, in what ways did He work? Would human beings, would she, ever understand anything?
She searched the geometry of events. In Kiev, she had lost a man who loved her, and lost a piece of jewelry. Here she had gained a piece of jewelry and found-
She examined the gold bangle on her wrist.
And then a realization hit her. It more than hit her. It jolted her.
She glanced at her watch. It was past 2:00 p.m. She turned the key in her ignition and jerked the car into reverse. She had to hurry. There was still some wrapping up to do, and she just had time today.
SEVENTY-THREE
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 21, AFTERNOON
She drove faster than she should have getting back into Madrid. The traffic was thick but allowed her to move around quickly. Her first stop was the rental car company. Quickly scanning the car to check for any of her own property, she found the black box in the trunk-the stealth box that would beat bank security-that Peter had mentioned.
She placed it in a black tote bag and took it with her. She dropped off the paperwork and the car keys, without going to the desk. So much the better, she mused. She had never been listed as an insured driver, so just as soon skip the desk. Nothing good could happen there.
She was in the old city. She knew the neighborhood well enough to know that the branch of El Banco de Santander where Peter kept his stash was a pleasant ten-minute walk away. She had on a good pair of walking shoes and a comfortable skirt. She pushed her sunglasses in place and hoofed the few blocks to the bank.
Twenty minutes later, she sat in the small private room that she had visited once in her life. A bank security man wearing white gloves delivered the safety deposit box to her. This was her first trip to the box alone, but obviously Peter, as he had casually said a few days earlier, had returned on the afternoon of the Connelly murder.
He had returned and made some adjustments.
“Muchas gracias,” she said to the bank guard.
“Da nada, Señorita,” he said with a slight bow. Spanish bank employees tended to elevate courtesy to an art form.
When the clerk was gone, Alex opened the safety deposit box. Everything was exactly as she had last seen it, with the exception of the cash, which Peter had drawn on. Well, those Madrid evenings, she noted with a wry smile, didn’t come cheap.
She lifted the gift box out, the one with the wrapping paper from the Swiss jeweler, and set it aside. It was slightly heavier, and she could see that Peter had opened it and rewrapped it. Typical male fingers, good at larger, more complicated tasks, not so good with the small stuff.
She smiled to herself at the thought.
She looked at the two stacks of money, the dollars and the euros. About twenty-five thousand dollars in US currency, depending on how much the people in the foreign exchange section upstairs were finagling with the daily rate.
She fingered the money and shook her head. She didn’t need any and didn’t want it. Her employer paid her for an honest day’s work and got it from her. She didn’t need to drink from a pool of poisoned water.
Twenty-five grand. In her grandfather’s day you could have bought a small house for dough like that. In her parents’ day, you could have made the down payment. These days, you were lucky to get lunch.
She pulled the black box, the one with Peter’s gun in it, out of her tote bag. She positioned it into the deposit box. It fit easily with the gift wrapped box gone.
She smiled again and gently slid the gift box into her tote. She completed her business in the bank within a few minutes, politely thanked the guard and was gone.
It was only three o’clock. She was doing fine.
She took lunch at one of the local cafés, relaxed slightly, added a bold glass of chilled Spanish white Rioja to her meal, then a second glass. She felt her nerves finally settle. She was surprised that she felt that way because the meeting at the museum was still in front of her and she was guarded about what direction it would take. She took out her cell phone and made some calls.
She emerged from the café less than an hour later and walked directly to the Museo Arqueológico. Rivera, the curator, was there in the lobby to meet her.
“Thank you for phoning ahead,” he said. He spoke English out of courtesy and out of gratitude. “I might have been out. But I cancelled the rest of my afternoon.”
“Thank you,” she said. “It will be worth it.”
They met in a special conference room. Colonel Pendraza of the National Police arrived next and Colonel Sánchez, the real Colonel Sánchez, of the Guardia Civil entered at almost the same time. There were no police there from foreign agencies, though Alex had notified them all. The meeting had been called too quickly for any to attend, and in any event, Alex had notified them by email or phone that the issue of the stolen pietà had been resolved to the likings of two governments. Floyd Connelly, of course, remained booked out of town.
Rivera convened the meeting and turned it over to Alex.
“I suspect several of you have been briefed so far,” Alex said. “To backtrack, we know that a small objet d’art disappeared from this museum several weeks ago. Within the past fortnight some of us in this room came together to see what the implications of the theft were and whether, in the best of all possible worlds, there was any room for recovery of the item.”
The men assembled in the room waited.
“I’m happy to announce that this is one of those rare cases where justice, perhaps in a crude way, has been dealt to those who engineered the theft. They were also on the path of a greater evil, which has quietly been averted. And as an added bonus, The Pietà of Malta is back here for the people of Spain.”