“At first, go to a meeting at the US Embassy. You’ll meet some of our covert people in Spain and some people from various other European police agencies. You’ll be the point person for the US government and our combined intelligence agencies while you help the Spanish government recover a piece of ancient Christian artwork. Please say yes soon: I want to go home and catch the end of the family barbeque. Spare ribs don’t wait forever.”
She turned and looked at the glittering Mediterranean, where tanned hard-bodied bathers romped, splashed, and laughed. She looked the other way, toward a busy promenade lined by small shops. On high white poles against a clear sky there flapped an array of flags from three dozen nations. The fresh salty air caressed her nostrils.
Europe really didn’t seem so awful.
A breeze swept across the beach. Something in the back of her mind reminded her of the grittiness of Washington in September, and on top of that, the tedium of some of the desk-bound investigatory work that would be on her desk. At least here she could call her own shots.
“I suppose I could handle Europe for a few more weeks, Mike,” she said.
“Excellent! We’ll book you into the Ritz in Madrid as a little perk,” he said, naming one of the best-and most expensive-hotels in the Spanish capital. “You’ll be comfortable there.”
“I suspect I will be,” she said.
“Do everyone a favor and take a soft route to get there,” he added. “Something that doesn’t leave a trail.”
In other words, she thought, don’t fly.
“Oh, and you’re going to need a new laptop. Do you want to shop for one and charge it to Treasury or should we deliver it to your hotel?”
“I’ll buy one new in Madrid,” she said. That way she could be sure it was never out of her sight from the time she acquired it. She could install her own software and security codes.
“Anything else?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “This little artifact that went missing from the museum-it’s got some legend to it. There’ll be a curator in Madrid who will give you the full story.”
“What sort of legend?” Alex asked.
“People claim it’s got supernatural powers. Spiritual stuff. Nothing you need to take seriously, but it might be an angle on why someone swiped it.”
“I’ll call you from Madrid, Mike. Thanks.”
“Oh, and finally,” he said. “You’ll love this part. This missing piece? It’s called the Pietà of Malta. Do you like that, the Malta part? Shades of Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor? You know the old movie, right?”
“I grew up in California and went to UCLA, Mike. How can I not? Peter Lorre and fat old Sidney Greenstreet. No tuxedo for Bogie, no Sam at the piano, and no fake fez for Greenstreet, but what the heck?” she added. “And I’ve read as much Dashiell Hammett as anyone under thirty.”
“And no falcon, either,” Gamburian said. “But still kind of cool, huh?”
“Maybe a little. Depends on who ends up shooting at me this time.”
“Enjoy yourself, Alex,” he said. “Travel safe. And thanks.”
FIVE
SCHWARZENGEL GLACIER AND ZURICH, SWITZERLAND, SEPTEMBER 5
A late summer thaw had come to the mountains seven kilometers south of Saint Gallen. Drip by drip, trickle by trickle, the Schwarzengel Glacier had re-created itself, advancing and retreating, some of it so slowly that no one might have noticed other than the geologists who monitored the area. In this one remote spot, it was noticed only by those who took note of the changing snowscape and stared hard into the ice near Koizimfrau Ridge.
There, a heat wave had floated a glove up to the surface, one of those gloves with wool on the inside and leather on the outside, but with the fingers cut away. And then a dead Chinese national was found not far behind the glove.
Yuan was unmistakable. He was still big and strong, still wearing his parka, still bound in his tight head gear. Underneath his parka, among other layers of clothing, was a Euro Disney sweatshirt bought from a gift shop in Paris.
Donald Duck in French. The perfect absurd touch.
Yuan’s dark hair was still thick too. His right eye carried a star fracture to the pupil, damage that he probably sustained in his rough trip from the basement of the monastery to this isolated location. His blue leather Hermès wallet was zipped in the pocket of his navy parka.
The wallet contained a Swiss phone card, his health card, his social-insurance card, three credit cards issued in Hong Kong, and his international driver’s license, for which he’d had his picture taken two days before he left China.
His passport was there too, valid and issued in Beijing. It indicated that he was fifty-five years old and further revealed that he traveled on official Chinese government business.
Yuan wasn’t alone. The heat wave had been extreme.
Also found during the melt was a twenty-year-old man who had said goodbye to his wife and newborn baby in 1995, gone snowboarding in late spring, and turned up now along with Yuan in the big thaw, his red hair still matted down on his forehead and a wedding ring still on his hand. And there was the Australian hiker, missing since 1977.
None of this by itself was unusual. The previous year, there were the two climbers who had remained roped together for more than thirty years, a man and a woman, their black leather boots still tied tight to their feet, their wooden skis still waxed and strapped to their backs. It had become part of the Alpine summer routine in this area, watching faces and corpses emerge from the big melt.
As always, the Swiss Gendarmerie Nationale was ready for the reappearance of the people who had been taken in by these mountains. They kept lists of those who were missing and waited for them to come forth.
That was the first unusual thing that the local police noticed about Yuan when his body had been found on the morning of September 5. Yuan’s name was not on any of the lists. The second thing they noticed was that there was no record of him being in Switzerland or anywhere in the European Union, diplomatic passport or not. Then a third thing: under his parka was a fully loaded semiautomatic, a Glock G18.
What the Glock had to do with snowboarding or mountaineering or hiking was anyone’s guess, but Lieutenant Rolf Hunsicker, who drew the investigation that would follow into Yuan’s death, spent little time on that question. After all, the dead Chinaman had obviously been killed somewhere else not that long ago and then dumped in a remote area.
That conjured up three questions which would vex Lieutenant Hunsicker until they were resolved.
Dumped: How? Why? And by whom?
The cantonal police sent Yuan’s remains by helicopter to a medical examiner’s office in Zurich. An autopsy was performed that same evening.
Cause of death, suffocation. From smoke. And that hadn’t happened out in the snow. There were also some strange bruises, and the funny configuration of the body when it had been found, as if it had been taken by helicopter to that place and then dumped from above. Well, stranger things have happened. But if they had a chopper, that also suggested that Yuan must have had some wealthy powerful enemies. Then again, almost everyone in Switzerland had wealthy, powerful enemies as well as wealthy, powerful friends.
Sometimes they even overlapped.
SIX
BARCELONA, SPAIN, SEPTEMBER 6, MORNING
Alex stood on a platform at Estació de Sants in Barcelona, waiting for the train that would take her to Madrid. The station, built in the latter part of the twentieth century, was surprisingly modern, with none of the soaring vaults of the older Estació de Françia, the next depot down the line. And the subterranean waiting platforms were new, clean, and functional, having been constructed for the high-speed line that went into operation in 2008. The “AVE,” La Alta Velocidad Española, the train that would take her to Madrid, was a marvel of modern rail technology. It glided smoothly into the station exactly on time at 10:16 a.m., looking like a beige spaceship.