“As much as I enjoyed our night, I want you to leave Spain,” she said, taking a travel bag from her closet.
“Why is that?”
“I don’t want you to be hurt. Or worse. You’re up against a determined and well-funded adversary, whoever they are. Twice! Twice you were almost killed. You don’t have the resources of the American government behind you. You don’t even have a powerful employer behind you. You only have yourself.”
“Not true. I have a buddy in the Italian police. And I have you.”
“Stop kidding around, Marcus. This is serious. Leave this with the police where it belongs. The girls will be found.”
“Their names are Victoria and Elizabeth. They call me Uncle Marcus. I’m going to find them.”
She began going through her drawers and tossing clothes into her bag. “You know why you’re doing this, don’t you? You want to be vital again—although, if you ask me, you were plenty vital last night even with a skin of Glenlivet in you, and a stiff shoulder. Your last tango ended badly—by the way, did you know that Burakov had a fatal heart attack last year?”
“Good. I hope it hurt.”
“You’re guilty about Alice and it’s still eating you up. You think that being the hero today is going to assuage that guilt. It won’t.”
“Thank you, Dr. Freud. How much do I owe you?”
“You’re not going to drop this, are you?”
He swung his feet over and got his cigarettes from his trousers.
“You’re not going to smoke in here,” she scolded.
He got up and unlatched the French doors. “Balcony.”
“Fine, but put something on. I don’t want my neighbors to see a naked man.”
He obliged her and sat outside at a little wrought-iron table with his phone to his ear.
Lumaga didn’t sound fresh.
“Anything on your end?” Marcus asked.
“I already talked with the French police this morning. Other than a bucketful of 5.56 shell casings from a Slovakian manufacturer on the floor of the helicopter, there were no fingerprints or useful evidence. CCTV picked up a green SUV on a road near the landing site that was later recovered about fifty kilometers away. It was stolen a couple of days before. The trail ended there. The autopsies from Monte Prelà and Villa Shibui were concluded. No surprises—you know how everyone died. We’ve had people looking at surveillance from all the airports, all the land crossings to France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, and all the seaports for signs of the girls and there’s nothing. That’s it. I don’t have anything more.”
“I need your help with something,” Marcus said.
“Of course, anything.”
“I can’t march into some administration office at the La Paz Hospital and expect to get personnel information about Celeste and Ferruccio Gressani. Can you go back to Ferruccio’s friends and family and see if you can find out where he worked there? A department? A boss’s name? A co-worker?”
“Sure. I’ll try. Later.”
Segura had to fly to Brussels for a NATO security conference. She offered Marcus the use of her car. Like a couple, they parted with a kiss when her driver arrived, and he retrieved the BMW from the garage underneath her building.
*
Fabiana Odorico returned to the pretty house with red shutters and flower boxes in Cessaniti. Manuela Gressani was expecting her and was ready with coffee and cookies. Her scoliotic spine bowed her black mourning dress and Odorico insisted on carrying the tray from the kitchen.
“Is there any news about who killed my Ferruccio?” she asked.
“Nothing, but we are actively working on it. That’s why I’m here.”
“Tell me,” the woman said. “How can I help?”
“We need to know more about where Ferruccio worked in Madrid.”
“I found the name of the hospital for you, don’t you remember?”
“Yes, I have that. What I mean is—at the hospital, which department did he work in? Or if you have it, the name of his boss at the hospital.”
“I don’t think I know these things. Why would he tell me?”
“Did he write you using hospital stationery? Give you a hospital return address on a letter?”
The elderly woman shook her head, then asked if Odorico could pick up the tray again.
“I’m sorry,” Odorico said, “did I do something to offend you?”
The woman cackled, “Oh no! We just need to go to the dining room.”
Odorico understood when she turned the corner. Laid out on the dining room table was a scrapbook into which Ferruccio’s mother had been pasting photos and memorabilia.
“Ferruccio’s life,” the woman said sadly. “From his birth to his death. What else can I do? I haven’t pasted the recent photographs yet he sent me from his years in Spain. You’re welcome to look at them.”
Odorico sat down and munched sugar cookies while sorting through the small stacks of photos. She stopped at one of them of a young, bearded man wearing a lab coat.
“That was soon after he arrived in Madrid,” his mother said. “See how handsome he was?”
“Yes, I see. May I take this?”
“I’d prefer you didn’t. I don’t know if I have another with such a warm smile.”
“Then I’ll just take a photo of it, if that’s okay.”
“Yes, please, go ahead. I can see why you want that one. Ferruccio never looked better.”
*
The Biblioteca Pública Municipal Eugenio Trías was a modern public library within Retiro Park occupying two large pavilions at the site of an old zoo. Marcus tried to resurrect his limited Spanish vocabulary, but the woman at the information desk took pity on him and replied, “I’m sure it will be easier for you if I speak English.”
“Yes, I’m sure it will. I’m looking for old Madrid phone directories.”
“How old?”
“Modern, actually. Past decade.”
“Certainly. You’ll find what you want here,” she said, handing him a printed floor plan with her notation.
He found the Madrid municipal phone books and began with the current year. There was no listing for Celeste. He marched back in time, year by year, until six years back, there she was. C. Bobier, 45 Calle de
