‘Yes. All with the same gun,’ the doctor concluded.
‘I want to see the other two,’ Barnes demanded.
More fast finger movement on the keyboard, and the information appeared on the computer screen. Doors 15 and 16 held the bodies of the English couple. Davids went to 15 first and slid out the rack to reveal… no body.
‘This is unexpected,’ Davids uttered, paralyzed with surprise.
‘Are you sure this is the right one?’ Barnes asked.
‘It’s what the computer says,’ the doctor informed him.
He opened 16. Nothing.
‘Fuck,’ Barnes swore. ‘Do you see this?’ He whirled around to ask Thompson.
Irritated, impatient, Barnes started opening all the refrigerated compartments and sliding out the racks.
‘Hey,’ the doctor protested.
‘Keep quiet,’ Thompson warned, also opening the compartments and reading the tag attached to each corpse’s toe.
Thirteen corpses later, some compartments empty, they still hadn’t found a sign of the English couple. They reviewed the list, and everything seemed to be in order with the rest.
‘Who could have taken them away?’ Barnes asked the doctor.
‘No one. The bodies aren’t even prepared for transfer yet.’
‘And when will that be? Who takes them?’
‘In this case, since they’re foreigners, the family or a representative of their country of origin, but always accompanied by a family member.’
‘Could there be an error? Could they already have been handed over and the information not yet entered in the computer?’ Thompson wanted to know.
‘It seems strange to me, but I’m going to find out,’ Davids informed him, much friendlier now than in the beginning. It was the morbidity of the situation. Irony. Irony.
He picked up a telephone attached to the wall next to the entrance door and punched three numbers, an internal extension. Three seconds later he started a conversation in his nasal Dutch that ended with violently slamming down the receiver, leaving it dancing on the end of the cord.
‘He’s coming,’ he explained.
‘Who?’ Barnes and Thompson asked.
‘The boss. Dr. Vanderbilt,’ he explained. ‘ Zoon van een wijfje ’ — son of a bitch.
The reasons for his blasphemies were his own, of no interest to us, nor to Barnes, Thompson, or Staughton, who came in white as a cauliflower, cleaning his mouth with a cloth handkerchief and covering his nose with it.
‘Everything is sterilized. It doesn’t smell of anything,’ Davids pointed out, fed up with all the interruptions. They were going to set his work back. Staughton paid no attention to the remark. He looked at the open doors of the gigantic refrigerated bay and the thirteen corpses slid out from the compartments. He looked at Thompson curiously. The latter, seeing him, turned his eyes away.
‘Don’t ask,’ he advised.
Meanwhile, the doctor, who must have been the previously mentioned Vanderbilt, Dr. Davids’s boss, came in. He was wearing a blue suit with an indigo tie underneath his open white gown. His posture radiated confidence and arrogance. He cut short the ‘ Goede nacht, heren ’ — Good evening, gentlemen — upon seeing the macabre spectacle. It looked like someone wanted to buy bodies, or parts of them.
‘ Davids, sluit alles, nu,’ he shouted at Davids, the equivalent of ordering him to close up all the shit, without the profanity, but inherent in the tone he used. ‘What’s going on, gentlemen? Are you trying to screw things up?’ he offered in a joking tone.
Barnes gestured to Thompson to place himself in Davids’s path and keep him from carrying out his chief’s order.
‘Stop there, Davids,’ Barnes said. ‘Nobody is touching anything in here until you tell me where the two missing corpses are.’
‘But what’s going on, gentlemen? Where do you think you are? In your own country? Here you don’t give orders about anything,’ Vanderbilt made clear, abandoning his conciliatory tone.
‘This American was murdered in your country in this city. If you knew how important he is for the United States, you’d think twice. If we were able to get to Baghdad in three weeks, we can easily get here in three days.’
‘Okay, okay. You needn’t get all worked up. Besides, you’re under Dutch jurisdiction. That body isn’t going anywhere unless I give the authorization.’
He’s put us in our place, Barnes thought.
‘Very well. Where are the corpses of the English couple?’ he asked.
‘They’ve been reclaimed. They’re on their way to London at this very moment.’
‘It’s not in the computer,’ Davids told him, surprised.
‘Because I haven’t put it in. I just did the transfer forty-five minutes ago.’
‘Who took the bodies?’ Barnes’s voice cut through sharply. Something had gotten away from him. What?
‘A family member.’
‘Name,’ Barnes demanded.
‘He knows perfectly well that the matter is under investigation and secret-’
‘The name.’ This time he shouted to leave no doubt about who was giving orders here.
Dr. Vanderbilt went to the computer and entered several codes and other input. An instant later he turned the monitor so they could see the name. His face was unfriendly, but it didn’t matter. What was done was done.
Barnes approached the monitor and read the information. Staughton and Thompson did the same.
‘What?’ an astonished Staughton exclaimed.
‘Son of a bitch,’ Geoffrey Barnes swore, not wanting to believe the name he read.
18
‘God, whose only begotten Son, who with His life, death, and resurrection obtained for us the gift of eternal life, grant us, who celebrate these mysteries of the Holy Rosary, follow Him and attain what He promises. For Christ our Lord,’ the priest recited.
‘Amen,’ the believers responded.
So the service was celebrated in the great chapel of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, where the largest incensory in the world, the botafumeiro, hangs motionless, without incense but commanding the greatest respect. For seven hundred years they have followed the tradition of using the great incensory, not this one, which is a little less than a hundred and fifty years old, but others, the idea being to purify the surroundings spiritually, although, in regard to smells, it was an effective means of repelling the odor that emanated from the pilgrims, after hundreds and thousands of miles of pilgrimage for their faith.
Marius Ferris had spent the entire day here attending all the rituals of the daily liturgy. He had visited Jacob’s Crypt, where the remains of the apostle lie. He remained kneeling in prayer for more than an hour in the narrow place, ignoring the passersby who approached that place below the altar, with its entrance through a narrow door that opened onto some even narrower stairs. Marius Ferris had continued to pray to Santiago the Greater, kneeling on the prie-dieu, with his eyes shut, forehead contracted, feeling every word he offered. From time to time a tear formed under his eyelid and ran down his cheek to evaporate.