“What’s the matter, Mariana?”
The response was a devastating gunshot to her temple.
Her dead body slumped to the floor and then a man in black charged into view, a smoking gun in his right hand.
It was the man who had followed him from the museum.
All his night terrors of the last few months were now a cold, hard reality and racing toward him with a snarl on its face.
He tried to slam the door on the man but it was too late. The assassin was stronger and had wedged his boot over the threshold. He fired a series of shots from the silenced pistol and the bullets ripped through the acoustic tiles of his drop ceiling and planted themselves into the plaster behind them. The man grunted and angrily threw the gun down to the floor, indicating to Pablo the small mercy that it was empty, but then the assassin wrenched a large knife from a holster on his belt and made a second charge toward him.
Pablo fought back, forcing the door against the man’s arms. The assassin howled in pain, but he was stronger and with a second effort the door was smacked back against the hallway wall and the man in black was now inside his inner sanctum. His broad chest heaved like an animal’s, and Pablo caught the smell of beer and Schmalzler snuff as the man padded forward and took a swipe at him with the knife. The flash of the blade in the low light made Pablo gasp with terror at the realization this was really happening, and worse, would Lucia be next?
The man swiped the knife again, and this time Pablo stumbled backwards, knocking ornaments off his shelves and tables and nearly tripping over in the process. He felt his heart rate quicken and his breathing became shallow and panicked. So they had found him at last. He had not been as careful as he thought.
Or someone had betrayed him.
He had spent the past few months dreading this moment, but had always told himself he was clever enough to avoid detection.
Now he knew different, and Mariana Vidal was dead because of his complacency.
The man lunged forward and grabbed his neck. They fell to the floor in a macabre tumble and Pablo hit his head on the floorboards, nearly knocking himself out. The sound of the Buena Vista Social Club drifted peacefully through his concealed speakers, its relaxed tempo mocking the horror of the moment as he fought for his life.
TWO
Lucia Serrano sung along to the radio in the steam-filled bathroom as she washed her hair and began to rinse out the shampoo. The vanillas and peaches of the body wash mingled with the hot steam and kept the earthier aroma of Pablo’s famous fideuà out of her mind.
She heard a loud banging noise from somewhere in the apartment. Pablo must have knocked something over. She smiled and shook her head at his clumsiness, praying it wasn’t the salad she had prepared earlier. When she got out of the shower she wanted a glass of chilled white wine and a sit down, not a job picking up chopped red onion and tomatoes.
But there was nothing she could ever do to pay back Pablo for everything he had done for her. She owed him so much, and if picking up after his clumsiness was the price to pay then so be it. She smiled at the thought of him forgetting his keys every morning, or knocking his wine glass off the table with his elbow while righting the world’s wrongs. He was old enough to be her father but then, así es la vida, she thought with a shrug.
Another crash from outside the bathroom made her suspicious — perhaps he had fallen? He was much older than she was, she thought again, but not at that stage, she hoped. A long period of silence followed and she put the thought out of her mind, instead focussing on their dinner date with her old college lover. Over a decade had passed since she had seen him, and she had so much to tell him.
Ten yards away, Pablo strained to suck air through the man’s vice-like grip. It felt like he was trying to breathe through a thick blanket being held tight over his mouth.
“Please… what do you want?”
“Where is it?”
“Who are you?”
“Answer my question or I will crush your windpipe and then take my aggression into the bathroom — your girlfriend is very pretty.”
He was choking now, and felt the surge of pressure as his blood was trapped in his head by the man’s violent grip on his throat. He began to see stars forming in his peripheral vision. “Please! Leave her out of it, you animals.”
The devil above him grinned. “So you know us after all.”
“I will never tell you what you want to know,” he said, and he meant it. He knew who had sent this man, and he knew how dangerous he was. He knew what they wanted, and not even Lucia’s life was worth defending if it meant stopping these maniacs. At least he had hidden the code, and somewhere where it would mock the bastard who had ordered his execution.
The man squeezed tighter, and Pablo felt his gloved fingertips punching down into the soft flesh of his throat. It felt like he was going to tear his windpipe out.
“I want the code. Where is Liška?” With the effort of choking his victim, the man grunted the words out like an angry beast. “And I want Perses.”
“I don’t know what you… mean…”
The man’s rage grew more visible. He grunted in frustration and then went to ask another question, but no sooner had the words been spat from his lips, than Pablo’s world grew dimmer and then black. The grip on his throat tightened, and then the sound of the man’s gravelly words was replaced by the sound of one of his neighbors screaming at the door. He must have seen Mariana’s body.
Pablo heard the word police, but then he felt his chest constrict and burn. He realized he was having a heart attack, but before he could panic there was a strange whining sound in his ears.
And then he was gone.
Lucia switched her hair dryer off and smiled at the thought of how far she had come as she pulled on her favorite red dress. From life on the streets to a plush apartment in Chamberí and a fantastic career. She had heard you should never give up on your dreams, and now she knew it was true.
She put on a splash of perfume before slipping on her watch and stepping out of the bedroom. As she made her way along the short corridor she thought she could smell burning — the fideuà, she guessed.
Not unlike Pablo, she thought with a sigh. He was probably outside on the balcony smoking his cigar and getting knee-deep in a differential equation. She had doubted his claim that he had truly turned away from physics and wanted to spend the rest of his life restoring works of art, but to give him his due, he was working hard at his new career. Like her, Pablo was a dreamer who would never give up on his dreams.
She saw smoke now, billowing out into the hall and a second later the alarm went off. It was then, with the ear-piercing shriek of the smoke alarm in her ears that she saw the front door. Someone had smashed it in and it looked like there had been a scuffle in the hall. The table was tipped up and Pablo’s antique Bakelite phone was upside down on the floorboards.
She felt her pulse speed up and her mouth started to go dry. Something was very wrong, and when she turned the corner into the front room she saw what it was, and screamed as the terrible truth dawned on her. Pablo was sprawled on the floor on top of a sea of smashed smoked glass — what had previously been their coffee table. His throat was horribly slashed and his eyes bulged in their sockets, full of terror and pain, all strained and bloodshot. Blood had spilled out in a thick, gelatinous pool around his head.
She took a step back, and was suddenly filled with horror at the thought of the killer still being in the apartment. She sprinted along the hall, her mind confused and pulsing with cortisol. She swung open the front door and screamed again. Mariana Vidal was dead on the floor with a gunshot would in her temple, and a few steps behind her was another neighbor. He looked at her with horror, a telephone in his hand.