Midnight in Madrid rt-2 Read online

  The tour concluded in front of the broken display case, which had been emptied of other antiquities by the museum staff and put on display elsewhere. The case had been taped up and cordoned off, though there was still an air of ignominy about it. It stood in shame on the main floor like a cat with a broken tail.

  “Fingerprints, there were none,” Rivera said in conclusion. “DNA tests haven’t helped. Our security cameras have no good pictures of the thieves, as I’m sure the local police explained to you in your meetings yesterday. These thieves were very good and very careful.”

  “Something I’ve been wondering,” Alex pressed, continuing in Spanish, “many of these other pieces would have an infinitely higher value on the black market. So I’m trying to understand their mindset. What is it about this piece that is completely different from any other object here or, say, in the Louvre or in one of the great museums in London or New York?”

  Rivera thought for a moment, then smiled slightly. “Very perceptive question,” he said. “You’ve read all the material I gave you?”

  “Yes, I have,” she said.

  “Nothing stands out?” he asked.

  “Many things stand out. But nothing is sobresaliente. There is no single feature that dominates all others. So again, I’m trying to put my mind inside an expert’s.”

  Rivera smiled. “All right, since you asked, there is perhaps one aspect to this piece that I find particularly engaging,” Rivera said. “It’s something I note as a good Christian and as a Roman Catholic. It’s in the material I gave you, but to some degree it’s buried. Do you know where I might be going with this?”

  “ No tengo la menor idea,” she answered. Not in the slightest.

  “There was a young Italian of the twelfth century named Giovanni di Bernadone,” Rivera said. “I’m sure my distinguished guest from Rome, Gian Antonio Rizzo, can tell us the name under which Bernadone is better remembered.”

  Rizzo nodded slightly.

  “As anyone who survived fourteen years of Catholic education could tell you,” Rizzo said, “Giovanni di Bernadone later became known as Saint Francis of Assisi. He was the founder of the Franciscan order, patron saint of animals, birds, anything that creeps or crawls, and more recently the blasted Green Party and our soon-to-be-completely-ruined environment.”

  “And for what is St. Francis best remembered?” Rivera pressed.

  “Aside from the crows and the jackasses?”

  “Aside from los cuervos and los asnos, yes.”

  “St. Francis was an early evangelist,” Rizzo said. “When St. Francis lived, Christianity had been established in Europe for many centuries, but Francis sought to spread it into Islamic territories. At great personal risks, I might add.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Not too much different from today,” Fitzgerald added.

  Rivera smiled. “St. Francis of Assisi went to Egypt on a mission of peace about eight hundred years ago,” Rivera said. “This was at the time of the Fifth Crusade, launched by Pope Innocent III. In 1219, Francis left, together with a few companions, on a pilgrimage of nonviolence to Egypt. Crossing the lines between the Sultan Malek-el-Kemel and the Crusaders in Damietta, he was received by the caliph, whose Islamic army was defending the Holy Land from the Christian armies. Francis challenged the Muslim scholars to a trial of true religion by fire. But they refused. So Francis proposed that he would enter a blazing fire first and, if Francis left the fire unharmed, the sultan would have to recognize Christ as the Savior of mankind. The sultan didn’t take Francis up on his offer. But he was so impressed that he allowed Francis to preach to his Islamic subjects. He didn’t succeed in converting the sultan or very many of his subjects. But the last words of the sultan to Francis of Assisi were, ‘Pray for me that God may deign to reveal to me that law and faith that is most pleasing to him.’”

  The journey of Francis of Assisi, as a poet, as a minister, and as a lay evangelist, Rivera stressed, was one of attempted reconciliation between Islam and Christianity. For that reason, St. Francis was revered in the Islamic world for many centuries up until and including modern times. “By scholars of both religions,” Rivera concluded, “he is often seen as an architect for interfaith dialogues.”

  “St. Francis was also an accomplished poet in his own right,” Alex said, recalling. “When I studied Italian in Rome many years ago we read ‘The Canticle of the Sun’ and ‘The Canticle of the Creatures.’ The poetry was dense since it was Italian from the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance.”

  “Thank you,” Rivera said good naturedly. “What a wonderfully overeducated bunch of detectives I have here. It’s refreshing.”

  “Well, I did my Renaissance studies too,” Rizzo said. “ My only further comment is that Saint Tom had a more benevolent view of the ragheads than that scoundrel Dante Alighieri, whose The Divine Comedy placed Muhammad in hell with his entrails hanging out. Justifiably to modern readers, I might add.”

  There was laughter around the small circle of five.

  “That may be more than what we need to know, Senor Rizzo,” Rivera answered with a sly smile. “But I mention all this because in contemporary accounts of the burial of St. Francis in 1226, there is an account that a friend placed a ‘lamentation’ in St. Francis’s tomb with him. No one knows exactly why, but perhaps it was because Francis was the first known person to manifest the ‘stigmata,’ the wounds borne by Christ from the crucifixion. So a ‘lamentation’ would be a logical item to accompany Francis to the grave. And, as The Pieta of Malta has an Arabic inscription, and as St. Francis’s tomb has been disturbed at least three times over the centuries, there is further conjecture-no proof, mind you, but further conjecture -that it was this piece that actually went into the ground with St. Francis. Hence, perhaps, its mystique. Hence, the notion that a certain supernatural aura is attached to it, one that transcends an earthly grave. After all,” Rivera concluded, “it is very possible that this particular piece went into the earth with a saint and then returned to the living world.”

  The laughter by now had dissolved. Alex felt a little chill.

  Into the grave and out of it. What had she gotten into? Yet she also noted the link to the Islamic world.

  “Resurrection. Eternal life. The property of a noteworthy and revered saint, and a link to the Islamic world of the Middle Ages. All part of the equation here, my friends,” Rivera said. “All part of the unique aspects of The Pieta of Malta. So when you ask about qualities that set it apart from any other object in the museum, and perhaps even the world…to my mind? I have just told you.”

  His voice trailed off.

  “Well?” the curator finally added in conclusion. “Need I say more?”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  MADRID, SEPTEMBER 9, AFTERNOON

  J ean-Claude stood at the intersection of the Calle de Maldonado and the Calle de Claudio Coello. He studied the street. In front of him was an upscale residential neighborhood, behind him more of the same. There was also a public square, trees, and traffic.

  It was almost 3:00 p.m. There were more pedestrians than he could count, a steady bustle. Well, he reasoned, within crowds there was always anonymity as well as danger.

  His eyes settled on the green-and-white face of a Starbuck’s coffee shop that had recently opened. For a moment, he was filled with rage. Was all of Europe going to be Americanized? Was the entire world? He stifled his rage, knowing he would have his day of reckoning within the next week or two. Out of force of habit, he adjusted the long sweatshirt that he wore. Under it was a small pistol, low caliber, Italian-made.

  He walked south twenty meters until he came to the doorway of a small three-story building. There was an art gallery on the first floor and apartments above.

  He pressed the door code. A buzzer sounded and a big door creaked open.

  Jean-Claude stepped into the building. There were two men in the corridor, his accomplices, Samy and Mahoud. They waited on the main floor, a corridor that led up to e
xpensive apartments but also to a small portal that led to the utility closest where the trash was assembled.

  The two men stared at him. Then Samy nodded. Jean-Claude moved forward and Mahoud led him to the stairs that went to the basement. On the way down, they both picked up powerful battery-powered flashlights.

  The basement was damp and dark, with spider webs, scattered pieces of garbage, and broken bottles. It stank of mildew and smelled of rats. They crossed the old floor. There were things left over from an exterminator’s kit.

  “Aqui!” said Mahoud. Here!

  Mahoud led Jean-Claude across the floor to an old stone wall.

  “How old is the wall?” Jean-Claude asked.

  The friend shrugged. How old was the foundation of European cities? From the time of James II? From the time of Torquemada? Mahoud shrugged. What difference did it make?

  Mahoud had worked construction for much of his teen years back in the Middle East. He was powerfully built, which was one reason he had been recruited. He put his strong hands upon some stones and the stones started to move. The rocks were old and clammy and heavy, but they fit together in the wall like a Rubik’s cube of masonry.

  Jean-Claude watched intently, then lent a hand himself. They removed a dozen rocks from the wall, then another dozen. Gradually a hole emerged at waist level, a hole big enough for a man to pull himself through.

  Jean-Claude and Mahoud kept moving stones. After a few minutes, both men had broken a sweat. But the hole was four-by-four.

  “Enough,” Mahoud said. “Come with me.”

  Mahoud lifted himself up and pulled himself through. With a short jump, he landed on dirt on the other side. He turned and extended a hand as Jean-Claude came through the hole in the wall after him. They were now on a winding path that would lead them under the city.

  With their torches casting long yellow beams in front of them, they hunched their shoulders low and followed a bizarre underground passageway that wove around and between the basements and sub-basements of the buildings on the street above them. Mahoud knew the route because he had discovered it himself, tipped off by another Spaniard born in the Middle East who bore no liking for the American presence in Spain.

  The pathway was dirt, at times very narrow, at other times heavily strewn with the debris of many years. Rumors had it that some of these passageways dated all the way back to the Inquisition of the 1400s. Other rumors maintained that the passages had been active in the Civil War of the thirties, controlled largely by anti-Franco Republican forces who would emerge to the streets, take potshots at Franco’s soldiers, and disappear again during the final treacherous endgame at the fall of Madrid. But there were an equal number of stories about brutal subterranean ambushes by Franquistas.

  Jean-Claude and Mahoud moved quickly. Above them, they could hear the distant rumblings of the city. They could smell the sewer. At times, they passed directly under thick floorboards of houses and shops and could even hear muffled voices.

  Then eventually, they reached a dead end, or appeared to.

  “This,” said Mahoud, “is the difficult part. My friend, if you’re claustrophobic…”

  “I’m not…”

  “Then we continue,” he said. “It’s about thirty meters. It’s filthy and it’s a crawl.”

  Mahoud went to his knees and loosened about twenty bricks from the base of the wall. Mahoud pulled them out and built them into a neat pile.

  “I’ll go first. Keep your arms extended at all times. Pull yourself along. There’s no glass or concrete. It will take us about ten minutes. Maybe more. In some areas the clearance is very low. In these areas you must push yourself along. I suggest going on your stomach but you could do it on your back.”

  Mahoud went first, ahead of Jean-Claude by about ten meters. The crawl space was a nightmare of tightness and loose bricks. But Mahoud had been through here already and knew the parameters. They crawled under one house, had a little breathing room, and then crawled under a second. They pushed and prodded their flashlights along in front of them. Only someone driven by fanaticism would have attempted such a crawl. Only a fanatic would have made it.

  When they came to an open space twelve minutes later, their limbs were creaky. But Mahoud had led his commander to a large passage, one that led to yet another chamber. They were now faced with another aging underground wall. Mahoud had already excavated a small hole in that, and he led Jean-Claude through that hole too. Then they came upon a stash of tools: hammers, crow bars, and various instruments of excavation.

  “This is as far as I’ve progressed,” Mahoud said. “But if I have help, I can be under the United States Embassy within another week. You have all the explosives?”

  “I have them,” Jean-Claude said. “But I need detonators. Then we’re in business,” Jean-Claude said. Despite the fact that he was dreading the reverse crawl back to the outlet to the street, he was pleased. He was, in fact, ecstatic.

  There were only five members of their cell, and they had all the equipment and knowledge they needed. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

  An hour later, Jean-Claude was back up on the Calle Maldonado, two and a half blocks north of the embassy. His clothes were filthy, but no one seemed to notice or care.

  He walked across the street and looked in the direction of the American coffee shop. It was filled with wealthy foreigners, to his mind, packed with the cultural imperialists that he so hated.

  If he had his way, he’d blow up the coffee shop too.

  But first things first. This morning, Jean-Claude had received a message from a man named Lazzari, an Italian of Turkish descent. Lazzari had had something to do with the shipping of the explosives from Italy to Spain. And now Lazzari wanted some money to keep quiet.

  So today, instead of blowing up the American coffee shop, Jean-Claude just glared at it, cursed everyone in it, and spat. It was unending, this war against the infidels. No wonder it had been going on for centuries.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  MADRID, SEPTEMBER 9, EVENING

  W rapped in a plush white Ritz towel, Alex stood in front of the mirror at the sink in her hotel room. She was working on her hair with the hotel hairdryer when her cell phone rang in her bedroom. She clicked off the hairdryer. She looked up and the ringing stopped.

  Then, seconds later, it rang again, as if the same caller was trying again.

  Or as if the caller knows I’m here.

  She managed a quick jog to the phone and picked it up while the call was still live. “ Diga,” she said.

  “Alejandra?”

  It was a male caller. The voice had an accent and was not a voice she recognized.

  “Si,” she said. “Quien es?”

  Remaining in Spanish, the caller answered. “This is Colonel Torres of the Guardia Civil. We met the day before yesterday. At the embassy.”

  “Yes. Of course.” Now she had a face to go with the name. “What can I do for you, Colonel?”

  It was not unusual for a call to come in so late. She glanced at a clock at her bedside. It was after 9:00 p.m. That was still early for a Madrid evening.

  “Would you be available this evening?” he asked.

  “Is the invitation social or professional?” she asked.

  “Professional, I assure you.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “We’ve located The Pieta of Malta,” he said.

  “You’ve what?”

  He repeated.

  “We’ve located The Pieta of Malta,” he said. “We have it in our possession.”

  “Why that’s wonderful!” Alex said.

  A beat and he added. “Well, yes. And, no. It is and it isn’t.”

  “Why are you calling me?” she asked.

  “We would like you to take possession of it. And return it to the museum tomorrow.”

  “If you have it or know where it is, why don’t you?” she asked. “It belongs to Spain, not the United States. I would think the home team would want to make the big play.�
��

  There was a silence. “I don’t understand,” the voice said.

  “We’re in Spain, Colonel,” she said. “Apparently, you’ve found the item. Might it not look better if a division of Spanish police returned it?”

  There was something about this that didn’t smell quite right. She fumbled with a pen and a pad of paper on the desk in her hotel room. She took the phone from her ear quickly and replaced it. Good. The incoming phone number was displayed. “There is a problem,” he said.

  “Then you need to explain the problem if you want my assistance,” she said.

  The incoming number started with 91. The call was generated by a Madrid exchange. So far so good. She wrote down the whole number. Then she fumbled through her wallet, and the card section where she collected business cards.

  She heard him sigh. “Is this line secure?”

  “It’s secure,” she said.

  She found the card of Colonel Torres. The numbers matched. She relaxed slightly.

  “The return has to be done through an intermediary,” the caller said.

  “Why?”

  “We are speaking off the record? In confidence?”

  “If we need to.”

  “The pieta cannot be seen to have been in the hands of the Civil Guard at all,” the caller said. “Internal politics. There’s guilt and culpability, some of which would land upon this department. There would be repercussions, questions asked about the methods taken to effect the return of the ‘lamentation.’ It would be best if none of that happened.”

  “So I can’t admit how I found the pieta so quickly?”

  “No.”

  “Then where do I say I received it from?” she asked.

  “Make something up.”

  “Suppose I don’t find it a good idea to lie,” she said. “Or maybe I just don’t want to lie.”

  “Make something up anyway,” he said. “I know a bit about you. You know how to make situations work. There is no truth that can’t be bent. Everyone knows you have contacts. You don’t always have to explain them.”