She seethed. “Can I get some help around the embassy? Please?” she pleaded. They were back at the bench.
“I’ll tell you,” he said. “You make a point. So maybe. Next week. How’s that. In the meantime, go to a hardware store, get a pick, a shovel, some gardening gloves, and a pair of bib overalls, and feel free to look around all you want, okay?”
“Why are you playing dumb, Mark?”
He ignored the question.
She scanned the street around them, the people, the traffic. “With all due respect, you’re being a jerk, Mark.”
“Yes, yes. What else is new? Request denied. I have to keep a lid on the budgets. And I’m not convinced enough that you know what you’re talking about.”
“No?”
“No,” he said.
“Why? Because I’m female?” she asked, heating up.
“No, because you see things that other people don’t see, which would be fine, except the things you see sometimes aren’t there. See that lamppost over there?” He waited for an answer.
She glanced. “I see it,” she said.
“Nice lamppost. Distinctive Madrid architecture. Quite charming. Except you probably look at it and see a potential gibbet.”
“Not to put too keen an edge on it, but in the Middle Ages, that’s exactly what they used the lampposts for. Hanging people.”
“See. That’s what I mean. Did anyone ever tell you that you’re overeducated?”
“Frequently,” she said. “It’s how I got hired.”
“There you go. But I didn’t hire you. I go for more utilitarian types, like Peter.”
“Four,” she said next.
“Four?”
“Four guns,” she said. “That’s how many people you have watching your back right now. You’ve got the guy at the souvenir stand, and the guy in the maintenance truck. Then there’s your driver who’s been circling the block. I also see,” she said, indicating, “the guy standing outside the leather shop. He’s supposed to look like a customer, but all he’s been doing is watching us, and he’s got American shoes. If you want to have a pavement team, do something about the shoes.”
“You are good,” he said. “I wish you also understood when you should just shut up and let our people handle things.”
“You’ve got your own back covered nicely, Mark. Unless the embassy blows from underneath, in which case people are going to ask how it could have happened, and I’m going to tell anyone who asks that it started with a theft of a ‘lamentation’ from the Museum of Old Stuff here in Madrid, and the CIA guy wouldn’t listen to me. So now can I please have some backup? Or assign your own people and let me go with them.”
He thought further and sighed.
“I got to admire your nerve. You’re a bureaucratic extortionist. You don’t even work for us. You’re Treasury.”
“But we’re both looking out for American interests, aren’t we?”
“All right, all right,” he said. “Maybe next week. Maybe by Monday. I can pull some people off some cases in Malaga and bring them up here to burrow through the dirt with you. The people they’re working for won’t be happy, but let ’ em scream. They ’re not as smart as you, they shut up sooner, and they’re not in my face every day. How’s that?”
“Not acceptable. I need something sooner,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Right. So would everyone. That’s all, LaDuca. Have a good evening.” He turned away from her.
A moment passed, and he drew ahead of her. Then, furious, she followed him and stepped in front of him, blocking his path. He stepped around her and moved to the curb. His car, already shadowing him, moved to a sudden jerky halt in a no-stopping zone and waited for him. Behind it, an irate Madrid cab driver blasted a horn. McKinnon’s driver rolled down his window, raised an arm, and responded with a universally understood gesture of ill will.
But she fell into stride right next to him. “Okay, now I’ll remind you of something else,” he said, moving toward the car. “What’s your assignment here, your mission?”
“To find the pietà and discover why it was stolen.”
“What’s Peter’s?”
“I assume it’s to take care of business for the late Lee Yuan,” she said after a moment.
“Don’t lose sight of that,” he said. “Connelly’s laptop had everything in it we needed. Names and addresses. The whole Madrid network that wants to bomb our embassy. A handful of amateurs and one very dangerous central guy. We even have a photo now. The ones we don’t get will be hiding in caves eating beetles with their spiritual leader for another twenty years. So we’re going to roll them up.”
“Roll them up, how?” she asked.
McKinnon arrived at his car and opened the rear door. “In the only way that it will stay rolled up,” he said. “So stay out of it!”
McKinnon arrived at his vehicle and attempted to step into it. Alex drew her weapon and held the door with her other hand. She pointed her pistol at the car’s rear tire.
McKinnon looked at her in openmouthed bewilderment. His driver started to make a move to get out. McKinnon waved him off.
“Tell your ape to stay behind the steering wheel,” she said softly. “And if he hits the gas, I pull the trigger.” McKinnon gestured again, and his driver eased back into the car.
“You’re crazy!” McKinnon said. “You fire a shot here and-”
“And the Madrid police will be all over us. But I’ve got permission to carry a weapon here, Mark. Do you? Are you carrying a piece? Does the Spanish government know you have an operation going here? They know I do. In fact, I’m here with their permission. Can you say the same for yourself?”
The eyes of McKinnon’s driver were burning a reflected gaze at Alex through the rearview mirror. She glanced his way and back quickly.
McKinnon threw a long line of expletives at Alex. She gave him a similar one in return, nice and fast, his own attitude zapping back at him like a verbal yo-yo. She held her pistol steadily on the right-side rear tire.
“Give me something more, Mark,” she said to him. “I want to recover that piece of art, and I want to know where else this case is going.”
A second elapsed as he considered his many alternatives.
Then, “May I reach into my jacket pocket without you blasting my rear tire?” he asked. “That’s a new Pirelli back there. I’d hate for something to happen to it.”
“Try it slowly, Mark. You’ll find out quickly.”
He reached to his left side pocket and pulled out a cell phone. He punched in some numbers. Then he handed the phone to her. The small screen came alive, and on it was a clear image of a man who appeared to be in the custody, temporarily at least, of the Madrid police.
“That’s our pigeon,” he said. “Jean-Claude al-Masri. French citizen, Moroccan born. Resident here in Madrid. We’ve got the whole book on him, from smuggling explosives to recruiting his own terror network here in Spain. The dumb local cops had him, then let him go. What do you expect? We’re not going to let that happen twice. His file is attached to the photo.”
“It is, is it?” she said.
“It is.”
She looked at the photo. Then, with a quick one-handed procedure, she worked his phone keyboard with her thumb as he spoke.
“If you don’t believe me,” McKinnon continued, “then talk to your buddy Colonel Pendraza because two hours ago he gave us a thumbs-up to whacking Jean-Claude just as long as Pendraza doesn’t officially know about it. Oh, and your other new best friend Peter is on the case right now.”
She was still making thumb entries on his keyboard as he watched her.
“LaDuca, what are you doing?” he suddenly asked.
“I just sent myself the photo and the file,” she said. “I want both. Now I have them. Thanks.”
She started to politely hand the phone back to McKinnon, but he snatched it away from her. She put away her weapon and stepped back from the car.