“So, this is the tattoo,” Lumaga said.
To Marcus’s eye, the ink of the stars seemed blacker now that her cold, bloodless skin was paper-white.
“Let me see the girl’s drawing again.”
Marcus showed it to him.
“What’s the tattoo’s significance?” Lumaga asked.
“I think she just liked it,” Marcus said in little more than a whisper. Morgues, like churches, weren’t places for loud talking. “She said it helped her find her North Star.”
“And you believe that whatever she wore to make the girls believe her skin was gray, simply rolled up one day and exposed the tattoo?”
“I can’t be sure, but, yes, I think so.”
“Her ID and plane tickets were in one of these anti-pickpocket belts that is worn under the clothes,” he said.
Lumaga flipped through the documents.
“When she flew to Italy—where did she say she was coming from?” he asked Marcus.
“Marseilles.”
“That was a lie. She flew from Madrid.”
“What the hell?” Marcus said.
“Spain again,” Lumaga said. “I’m dreaming about Spain these days.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sorry, it’s another case. So, Celeste Bobier is at the center of this whole mess. She came here for a purpose—to subvert our investigation, to kidnap the girls and murder their protectors. We need to find out everything there is to know about her.”
“I’m going to Spain,” Marcus said, giving Celeste’s body a last look.
“But you’ve lost your employer,” Lumaga said.
“This isn’t about a job anymore. This is about Victoria and Elizabeth. I’m going to find them or die trying.”
25
The Madrid weather was depressing. It was midday and the sky was the color of mud. Rain came down in sheets. Standing under a cheap umbrella Marcus had borrowed from his hotel, he waited on the sidewalk, smoking a cigarette outside a restaurant on Calle de Gallur, well east of the city center. It had been fifteen years since he last saw Abril Segura, but he recognized her at a distance. She had always liked Burberry trench coats and she was wearing one today, but it was her determined gait that he remembered best—always leaning forward as if fighting a stiff wind.
“Oh, my God! Sweetheart!” she said in heavily accented English before exchanging cheek-kisses. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
“It could have gone either way,” he said, flicking away his cigarette.
He studied her while she studied the menu. She had changed, but not as much as he might have thought. She was still a strikingly handsome woman—high cheekbones, narrow nose, full lips, and her figure was as sleek as he remembered. She had to be well into her sixties, but she didn’t look anything near it.
“The sea bass, for sure,” she said. “It’s always good here. I come often. It’s near work.”
“We’ve met here before,” he said.
“Have we?”
By work, she meant CIFAS, the Spanish Armed Forces Intelligence Center. Marcus spent four years in Madrid assigned to the American Embassy, and Segura was then, and remained, a senior counterterrorism analyst. They had been colleagues on a myriad of security matters, and for a time, they had been close. That was the euphemism that Marcus’s wife used once when she saw them off together in a corner at an embassy cocktail party. “You and that woman seem—close,” she had said.
They ordered. He told her it was good she’d kept the same mobile number. Otherwise, he would never have been put through to her desk at CIFAS.
“Cell phone numbers are like fingerprints,” she said. “They stay with you throughout life.” She clinked wine glasses. “So, I must say, you’re looking good, Marcus.”
“What a liar.”
“No, really.”
“You’re the one who’s looking good. Really good.”
“I’ve had help,” she whispered. “I have an aesthetician who is a maestro with a syringe.”
“I’ll drink to that,” he said. “Still single?”
“Yes and no. I’m still married to the job. In the old days it was the Russians. Now it’s the Russians and the Chinese and the jihadis. It never ends. How’s your wife. It was Alice, no?”
“She’s been gone for years. Cancer.”
“I’m so sorry, Marcus. You never remarried?”
“Nope.” He chuckled and said, “There’s still hope for us, I guess.”
She didn’t participate in his laughter, but she smiled and said, “We were quite good together. I always liked younger men. There was a time when I might have thought about it. I was in love with you, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Of course, you didn’t. Tell me why you’re here, Marcus. You haven’t been in the game for a long while. I know you didn’t come to Madrid to look up an old flame, although that would be frightfully romantic if you had.”
“Have you heard about the missing American girls who resurfaced in Italy four years after they were abducted?”
Her expression revealed that she knew all about it. “What does that have to do with you?”
“I’m in the middle of it, right in the goddamn middle of it.”
He told her everything, like one counterterrorism professional briefing another about a complex matter. And, like the experienced interlocutor she was, she didn’t interrupt him during a monologue that spanned the luncheon service. When he finished, her entrée was mostly consumed and his untouched.
“So,” she said, reaching for her wine glass, “no spaceship.”
“No spaceship.”
“No aliens.”
“No aliens.”
“This woman—Bobier—she was no psychic. She was sent to deflect you. To set you up.”
“It appears so.”
“Did her masters assassinate her, or was she killed accidentally?”
“Hard to know. There’s a third possibility.”
“What would that be?”
“That she died protecting me.”
She considered this and said, “You have an effect on women. You haven’t eaten. Should I ask them to heat up your plate?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I’m not your
