“It’s not plastic — it’s silicon. It’s a NAND chip.”
“A what?”
“Negative-AND. It’s a logic gate that performs a Boolean function in electronics.”
“Are you still speaking in English, Harry?” Harriet said.
“Now he’s speaking my language,” Lucia said.
Harry said, “It’s a chip, probably from a mobile phone, and Reyes didn’t go to these lengths to hide it because he was bored.”
“But why would he hide it here?” Lucia asked. “When anyone could find it?”
“Because he was a genius,” Harriet said.
“I don’t understand,” said Lucia.
“Your man Pablo chose this painting not only because of its symbolic value, but because it was totally restored in the year 2000. He knew it wouldn’t be touched again for decades, perhaps centuries.”
“And being a security guard he could see it every night, just by looking at the painting,” Lucia said, tears coming to her eyes.
“Whatever it is,” Harry said, “someone took his life for it, and now we owe it to him to…”
Lucia cried out, “Harry!”
He moved to turn in her direction but before he was halfway there a heavy hunting knife slammed into the center of the painting a few inches from his face.
SIXTEEN
Lucia turned to see a man dart out of the shadows and run towards Harry. She knew immediately in her heart it was the man who had killed Pablo — the man who had attacked them in the apartment and fled across the rooftops after shooting at the police. Now he had stalked them to the Prado and wanted his revenge… and the NAND chip.
She stared at Harry, but the Englishman didn’t flinch. He slipped the NAND chip inside his pocket square and readied himself for the fight, but when the killer collided with him both men smashed back into the painting with a heavy grunt and the fighting began.
Lucia screamed and stepped back in horror as the man wrestled Harry to the floor and began pummelling his head and chest with a vicious salvo of blows from his black gloved hands.
After struggling for a few moments, Harry brought his knee up into the man’s groin and smashed him hard where it counted most. The man grunted in pain and recoiled instinctively, giving Harry enough time to bring his legs up and force his opponent away with his boots.
The man staggered backwards and tripped over his own legs as he went, cracking the back of his skull on the edge of the table and collapsing in a heap in the shadows beneath it.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Harry said. “And you need to call Marta and tell her that her apartment is compromised. They must have followed us to the Prado from there — she’s in real danger, Lucia. She has to get out!”
Harry threw her his phone and Lucia made the call as they sprinted through the museum. “She’s all right,” she said as she passed the phone back. “She’s alive!”
“Thank God.”
“I told her to get away and stay with family.”
“Good.”
They sprinted through the shadows of the museum’s corridors and galleries, and when they reached the entrance they saw the crumpled body of Miguel on the steps. “Ay, dios mío!” Lucia reached down to help him, but Harry placed a firm hand on her shoulder and stopped her.
“He’s dead, Lucia. I’m sorry.” As he spoke, he gently pulled the dead man’s gun from his holster and checked the magazine. Although some visitors objected to viewing art and artefacts under armed guard, the Prado’s guards had been equipped with firearms for some time, and Harry knew it was a grim opportunity, but his training meant he had no problem taking the weapon.
“He’s coming!” Lucia said. “Look!”
She pointed across the foyer where the assassin was pounding toward them. He had wrenched the puukko knife out of the painting and was now carrying it in his gloved hand.
“Time to go,” Harry said.
“What’s happening to me?” Lucia said, looking into his eyes. “I was happy a few hours ago, and now it’s like I’m in hell.”
“I promise when all this is over I’ll take you to Paradise, but for now, we’re running.”
They burst through the entrance door on the north side of the building and after the gentle, moderated heat of the museum, the cold air smacked their faces and stung their lungs. Harry scanned the area for other threats — expecting the assassin to have an accomplice — or at the very least for some kind of police presence, but there was nothing.
The night was still except for the gentle thrum of the occasional traffic coasting along the Calle de Felipe IV on its way toward the Fountain of Neptune roundabout. For that, at least, he was grateful, but the sight of Miguel lying dead in the foyer was more than enough to remind him about how much danger they were in. The Spanish police were already chasing them for the murders of Pablo Reyes, Vidal and the murdered police officers back at the apartment, their only hope of not being blamed for Miguel’s death too was if the museum’s CCTV footage exposed the real killer.
“Come on!” Lucia said. “We have to get away from here.”
Harry checked his pockets to make sure his iPhone and the NAND chip were still safe, and with that done they jogged down the steps and sprinted toward the street where they had parked the Vespa. The bronze face of the Francisco Goya statue looked down at them impassively as Lucia climbed on board the scooter and kickstarted it.
“Maybe we need a car,” Harry said. “I can steal one.”
“No time, and too dangerous.”
“But we’ll be safer.”
“Get on and stop arguing!” she screamed. “It’s my city and I say we go on this!”
Harry looked over his shoulder as the assassin sprinted across the small car park and began to run up the stone steps toward the Goya statue. He was now holding a gun in his right hand, and Harry knew this meant at least one other security guard was lying dead back there.
The man fired. The bullet hit the kerb and ricocheted into the night with a gentle ping and a cloud of concrete plaster.
“You’ve convinced me,” Harry said and leaped on the back of the Vespa. He linked his arms around Lucia’s waist just as she swerved the moped out in the street.
As they raced into the night, he turned to see a black Roketa skid into view. The man who was hunting them down was driving it toward them like a demon.
Lucia looked in the mirror. “That looks like Miguel’s bike. He must have taken the keys when he killed him… bastardo!”
In her anger, she turned the accelerator on the handlebar and the Vespa increased to its top speed of nearly sixty miles per hour. In a car this was a gentle speed, but on the back of a scooter weaving in and out of the traffic in the middle of the night Harry thought it felt like a white-knuckle ride.
The killer fired on them and almost blew out their rear tire. Lucia swerved to avoid a second bullet and quickly brought it under control, impressing Harry who now turned to see their pursuer rapidly gaining on them. As Lucia deftly navigated the Vespa along the boulevard, Harry fired on the assassin with the security guard’s gun to return the favor. With two shots he blew out the headlight and destroyed his front tire. The Roketa skidded wildly in a shower of sparks as the rider fought to bring it under control, which he did, and responded by increasing speed and driving on the rim, regardless.
“We need to lose them, Lucia!”
“You think?”
Harry held on tight around Lucia’s waist as he tried to keep his balance on the speeding bike and take another shot. The man pursuing them fired again, and this time the bullet pinged off the rear licence plate with a loud ricochet. “That was too close for comfort,” he said.
“We can lose him down here.”