*
“Well, well, Marcus Handler! I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon, or even again.”
Marcus was back at Calle de la Villa de Marín standing at the door of the old professor’s apartment. With Abril gone, this gentleman was the closest thing he had to a friend in Madrid.
“Javier, it’s good to see you. I need your help.”
“Come in. I’m just making tea.”
Marcus was brutally honest. As the old man sipped his tea, he told him what he hadn’t told him before—that he was looking for the famous missing Andreason girls, that a woman at CIFAS who had been helping him was murdered, that he was wanted by the police, that he was innocent.
“I believe that I am a good judge of character,” Javier said. “I choose to believe you. How can I help?”
“I need to get to Segovia. They’ll be looking for me at the train stations. All the car rental agencies will have my details by now. Do you have a car?”
“I do. It is hardly ever used. I do not even know why I keep it. The insurance is crazy for a piece of steel that does not move. Once a month I go to the garage and start it, for the battery, you see. I think you are a good man. I hope you find these poor girls. Take the car and may God keep you safe.”
37
Marcus parked Javier’s car in the center of Segovia and visited a few shops until someone was able to tell him the location of the nearest store for hunting supplies.
The San Cristóbal Armory, a short drive away, was a small shop packed with hunting and fishing gear. The proprietor grunted at his customer and kept checking a catalogue resting on a display case. Marcus went for a rack of paper maps and chose one that was detailed enough to show not only the village of Lirio, but the location of Castle Gaytan.
“Can I see those binoculars?” Marcus said in Spanish.
“American?” the shop owner asked.
“I am.”
“Then I speak to you in English, okay?”
“That would be good, thank you.”
“I was in army,” the man said. “We had NATO exercises. I had American friends. I visited my friend in California.”
“California’s great.” He had a look through the German binoculars and said he’d take them. Behind the owner there was a wall-rack of shotguns. “You’ve got a nice selection,” he said.
“Some nicer than others,” the owner said.
“What’s your nicest?”
“This one,” he said, reaching. “The Benelli Super Vinci pump-action. I can take or leave Italians, but I can’t deny they make an excellent shotgun.”
“May I?”
Marcus pumped it and visually inspected the chamber to make sure it was empty, while the proprietor nodded his approval at his safe handling. He felt its balance point and sighted down the long barrel.
“How much?” he asked.
“One thousand six hundred. For a nice American gentleman, one thousand five hundred.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Fantastic. I’ll just need to see your license.”
Marcus said, “That’s going to be a bit of a problem.”
“No license, no sale. This is Spain, not America.”
“There was a fair amount of dust on this gun,” Marcus said. “How long have you had it?”
“I was a younger man.” He patted his big gut. “And thinner.”
“I’ll take it off your hands for three thousand.”
“I don’t want to go to prison,” the man said, moistening his lips with his tongue.
“I don’t want you to go to prison either.”
The prospect of a huge windfall was making the fellow breathe fast. “The no-license price is five thousand. Cash. No records.”
Marcus winked. “With the binoculars?”
“Binoculars, map, shells—sure.”
When Marcus returned from a bank with the cash, there was a closed sign on the door. The owner unlocked it, let him in, and counted the cash.
“Wait here,” the man said, taking the gun with him.
“Where are you going?” Marcus asked.
“Give me five minutes.”
Marcus heard loud grinding from a back room and figured out what was happening.
When the owner returned, he said, “No more serial number and looks like my camera stopped working, the piece of shit. You were never here.”
“You’re right. I was never here.”
“I’m not going to read about you in the papers, am I?”
Marcus said, “Stick to the sports pages and you’ll be good.”
*
He left his car at the trailhead parking lot and from a vantage point on a hiking trail a hundred meters up the Guadarrama Mountains, Marcus focused his new binoculars. From this elevation, the earthen-brown, stone castle looked squat and massive. He could see a long drive from the main road that passed through vineyards and orchards before ending at the castle entrance. There were several vehicles parked in front of the main structure, but he couldn’t see any people. He had a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a large bottle of water, and he kept his hunger and thirst at bay while he maintained his surveillance.
An hour passed by and doubts crept in.
He had no idea the girls were here. He had no idea whether Gaytan was here. He had just dropped five thousand euros, an uncomfortably large chunk of change, on an illegal gun. Did he think he was going to be charging in like Rambo? For the moment, all he could do was keep observing and figure out his next steps. He was a man wanted for murder who couldn’t exactly expect the Spanish police to be sympathetic to a request to raid the home of a prominent doctor.
He put down his water bottle and lifted his binoculars when he thought he saw something moving on the roof. It was a man walking the ramparts. He didn’t appear to have a weapon, but he too had binoculars he was using to scan the grounds. The sun was high in the early-afternoon sky and because his position was due south, he thought his lenses wouldn’t be glinting.
A sentry had to be a sign of something going on inside.
Then he saw something that short-circuited all his carefully considered and rational thought.
Up on the ramparts, a second
