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.”
She set the gift wrapped box on the table.
Pendraza looked at the box. “How do we know it’s not going to explode?” Pendraza asked, making a joke of it.
“It hasn’t yet,” she said. She paused. “Don’t worry. It won’t,” she said.
The package sat benignly in front of all of them.
“You’re the curator,” Alex said, turning to Rivera. “You’re used to dealing delicately with fine objects. Please open the package.”
Rivera’s fingers did the walking. In the quiet room, the ribbon came off. The curator smiled and worked with the joy of a little girl opening a present on Christmas morning. Then away came the firm tactile wrapping paper and within was a wooden box. The box was nondescript, unmarked, sturdy but light, the type of thing that might normally house Japanese chocolates.
The curator held the box carefully in his hand, raised his eyes to Alex again. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like the honor, yourself?” he asked her.
“No, thank you,” she said
He opened it and, although he knew what to expect, astonishment crossed his face. He stared at it for several seconds and no one else in the room could see.
From his pocket, he took out a small velvet pad, the type upon which jewelers place diamonds on for inspection. He laid the pad on the table. And then, from the box that Alex had presented, he removed the contents and placed it on the mat to the further astonishment of those gathered.
And there before them was the primitive miniature carving that had served as the inspiration for Michelangelo’s masterpiece. There in the center of the room sat The Pietà of Malta, the earliest lamentation known to the art world, a tiny replica of Mary comforting and caressing the body of the slain Christ.
Across eighteen centuries, perhaps in and out of tombs, there it was.
There were gasps around the room.
“Think of this as a gift from the people of the United States to the people of Spain. The return of your black bird.”
“How on earth-?” Rivera began, shaking his head.
“A contact in the underworld and some invaluable assistance from another intelligence service. I’m equally grateful and indebted to both for their assistance and good will.”
“Extraordinary,” said Pendraza. “Excellent work.”
“I can tell you this much,” Alex said. “Your thieves were homegrown and highly amateur, based right here in Madrid. But they were also unpredictable and tightly knit, which made them both dangerous and a challenge. Your security system was compromised, and they walked through it. They made contact with forces within the Middle East and set in motion a terrorist plot against the United States of America. But like most amateurs, they committed mistakes that caused their undoing. Their first mistake was greed. They attempted to sell the pietà to a collector in Asia. They never delivered because they were greedy. They wanted to try to sell it twice to raise twice as much money. It turned out to be a bad way to do business.”
“Please tell us enough to make proper arrests,” Pendraza said.
“A friendly intelligence service already put them out of business,” said Alex. “I don’t even know where the bodies are. I’ll review the details with you privately if you wish. I will also need to teleconference later with the French police, the Swiss, and Interpol to cover some ancillary details. My recommendation, however, would be to terminate this inquiry and everything related to it. No good will come from any further investigation. Any subsequent time and expense will be wasted.”
Pendraza held her steadily in his gaze, as did Sanchez of the Guardia Civil.
She addressed them in return.
“Related to this is the death of the unfortunate worker in the Metro system,” she said, “the track walker Maria Elena Gómez. I suspect she stumbled across something she shouldn’t have. In any case, those responsible, and those who would have been responsible for an even more horrific incident at one of the embassies on the Calle Serrano, have been summarily brought to justice. This was not of my doing specifically. Again, another intelligence service acted, but they acted with lethal efficiency.”
Colonel Pendraza’s eyes went to the lamentation at the center of the table. “And where did you find this?” he asked.
“The actual retrieval of the pietà took place, I would surmise, in Switzerland. It would appear that an agent of another service called upon a businessman in Geneva, a man of questionable commercial affairs. My guess is that the agent came across the ‘lamentation’ in the man’s possession. The agent surely would have been looking for it. In any event, he passed it along to me for return to its rightful owners.”
Pendraza nodded thoughtfully. “I’m just curious,” Pendraza said. “Certainly you knew that this team from a ‘friendly’ intelligence service was in Spain.”
“Yes, I did,” she said.
“Did you know that their ultimate task was to use lethal force on the conspirators?” he asked.
“No, I didn’t,” she said. “I didn’t even know that had happened until I was released from the hospital a day later.”
“Who told you?”
“A friend of mine and, I would submit, a friend of the Spanish and American people, considering how many lives were saved. And putting two and two together, I now realize that the gentleman who approved this exercise on behalf of US intelligence was trying to distract me during the final hours of the exercise. I met with the gentleman across from La Almudena late three afternoons ago. I couldn’t understand why he was allowing the Spanish police to act so slowly. He just wanted to get to these dangerous amateurs first.”