A woman appeared on the patio, carrying a pair of margarita glasses. She gave one to van der Putten, then lay down on the neighboring lounge. She had long brown hair, was supermodel thin, and was taller than van der Putten by a good four inches. She wore owl sunglasses that dominated her gaunt face, giving her a distinctly alien appearance. Only extraterrestrial origins or an abiding attraction to money could explain her choice of companion, Fisher decided. To each her own.
Fisher kept scanning, studying the other homes on van der Putten’s road, looking for likely infiltration and exfiltration routes, and good cover, until finally lowering his binoculars. As he did so he caught a flash of reflected sunlight to his left. Instinctively he knew it hadn’t come from a windshield or window or mirror but rather a lens of some kind — spotting scope, binoculars, or camera. Fisher leaned forward, pulled the brim of his cap lower over his eyes, and rested his arms on the stone, casually looking around as tourists tend to do. He stopped the rotation of his head just short of the flash’s origin and used his peripheral vision to watch for it. A few moments later it came again. Fisher raised his binoculars and pointed them skyward, ostensibly watching the hawk riding the thermals above the castle but flicking his eyes left. A few hundred yards to the north and west, a cluster of villas sat atop a lesser hill. Parked at the head of an east-facing empty cul-de-sac was a gray compact car. Two men stood outside it. Both were armed with either cameras or binoculars. Above Fisher, the hawk cooperated and banked west. He followed it, one eye fixed on the two men until they came into complete focus. Neither looked familiar; both were well tanned, with black hair. Locals, he guessed. One of them was pointing a camera at van der Putten’s home; the other, a pair of binoculars at Fisher himself.
Competition, Fisher thought. Of what type, it was too soon to tell.
Fisher took his binoculars off the hawk and lowered them, resuming his touristlike scan of the lush fields beneath the castillo. After a few more minutes, the two men got back in their car, backed down the cul-de-sac, and disappeared from view, only to reemerge on Cuesta de los Yeseros, the east-west road a quarter mile below. He watched the car meander east, then disappear again, then reappear on Calle del Alamillo Bajo, the road he’d followed twenty minutes earlier to reach the castle.
This could not be a coincidence.
He briefly considered bluffing it out as a tourist, but if they were curious enough to drive up here, they would also be thorough enough to memorize his face and record the make and model of his car. He didn’t have time to get away, not in the car, at least.
He waited until the gray compact disappeared behind a line of scrub pines, then pulled out his Canon, zoomed in on van der Putten’s, and took five sets of bursts, then put the camera and binoculars away and returned to the courtyard. He followed the brochure’s map to the eastern wall, then down a set of steps the led beneath the wall, into a short tunnel, then outside through an arch built into the sloped foundation. He turned left, jogged to the base of the southwest turret, and peeked around the corner. He saw no one. He pulled back and waited.
A few minutes later he heard the crunch of tires on gravel, then the soft squeal of brakes. Two car doors opened, then shut, and then he heard feet scuffing over dirt. In his mind’s eye he imagined the two men walking to his rental car and taking down the particulars before heading for the portcullis bridge. The footsteps went quiet as they crossed onto stone. Fisher peeked around the corner and saw the tops of two heads moving toward the portcullis. He heard the soft bang of the brochure box’s lid falling shut, then counted to ten, stepped out, and walked quickly but quietly west along the wall. He was under the bridge and at the southeast turret seventy seconds later. He didn’t pause, didn’t look back, but kept going until he reached the copse of cypress bordering the entrance road. Once in the deep shade, he laid himself flat, scooped the loam into a berm before him, and went still.
His visitors took their time, spending almost thirty minutes in the castle before emerging from the portcullis and crossing back over to the parking lot. A minute passed without the sound of car doors. Two minutes. A door opened and closed, followed by a second. An engine revved up, and moments later the car was moving down the entrance road above Fisher’s hiding spot. He gave them five minutes, then retraced his steps to the castle, back through the courtyard, and across the bridge to the lot.
His car looked undisturbed, but he knew better than to take that on faith. He found the GPS transmitter — a DIY affair consisting of a prepaid cell phone, a plastic project box, and glued-on neodymium magnets — attached to a bracket on the engine’s firewall. Interesting. They were observant and thorough but were using a homemade tracker. Fisher had seen their type: mercenaries or contract security consultants who were good but underfinanced. Entrepreneurs trying to break into the business. Fisher reassembled the tracker and put it back.
He lay in the cool shade beneath the car for a few minutes, thinking. He’d found himself in a wheels-within-wheels situation. Were these men watching him or van der Putten? If the former, were they watching him because he was watching van der Putten, or because he was potential competition or a threat? If their primary interest was van der Putten, they could be anyone: enemies, personal or professional; potential employers doing homework; law enforcement; intelligence operatives… Fisher realized these mental aerobics were largely unnecessary. Bottom line: He needed to talk to van der Putten, and he needed to do it before these new players did whatever they’d come to do.
Fisher’s solution to the GPS tracker was to play his tourist role to the hilt. He left the castle and drove through Chinchón until he reached the M-316, which he took northeast toward the town of Valdelaguna three miles away. Soon after leaving Chinchón’s outskirts, the gray compact appeared in his rearview mirror and followed him into Valdelaguna. Fisher spent an hour ignoring his pursuers, who seemed to worry less about being seen as time went by and Fisher went about his photography tour, snapping dozens of shots of architecture and scenery before finally heading back to Chinchón.
By the time he got back, siesta was over and the townsfolk were moving about. Fisher found a hotel, Casa de la Marquesa, within view of the bullring, and checked in, making sure to ask the desk clerk in halting Spanish about the bullfight the next day and nearby photography hot spots, in case his watchers should decide to ask the clerk about his gringo guest.
Once in his room, a quick peek through the curtains revealed his watchers had taken up station on the patio of a cantina down the block. After a half hour, they left. Fisher checked his watch: six thirty.
19
He waited until dusk, when the town’s lights began to flicker to life. He wandered down to the bullring and found it had been converted into an outdoor dance hall complete with pole-mounted torches and loudspeakers through which strains of jota music drifted. Fisher wore brown trousers, hiking sandals, and a dark blue polo shirt over a white T-shirt, both untucked to cover the butt of the SC pistol and the folded Nomex balaclava in his waistband. He’d debated bringing more equipment, at least the Tridents or the Night Owls, but given Chinchón’s close-set houses, narrow streets, and the celebratory mood of the town, his chances of encountering a civilian were too great.