Midnight In Madrid

Then with a leg, before she could say anything, he pushed the door shut and they stood eye to eye.

“Hello again,” he said. No smile. No emotion.

“Come on in, LaDuca! Have a drink with us!” boomed McKinnon, finally standing. “And relax, would you? It’s about time you formally met Peter Chang. Peter’s come all the way from Peking. I know you’ve seen him before, and I think you’re going to like working with him. Know what? My guess is that you already do!”

Peter Chang smiled very slightly. Then it was gone again.

Up close, he had movie star good looks. An Asian Adonis in a fine suit with a classic Western tie and a light blue shirt. His eyes were dark and sharp, his stature strong but nimble. His hair was perfect. Werewolf of London, she found herself thinking.

Peter gave his head a slight nod. He checked her pistol for ammunition and safety catch, and, with a little showboating Jackie Chan-style move, flipped it around in his hand so that the barrel was pointing away from her.

“Nice piece,” he said. “New acquisition? You didn’t have it last night.”

“If I had,” she said, “I might have used it.”

“That would not have been good,” he said. “If you had tried, one of us wouldn’t be here right now.”

Then he returned the weapon to her, still loaded.

“My apologies if I scared you last night,” he said.

His English was impeccable, just like his marksmanship had been. He could have worked on Saville Row as a tailor or at Claridge’s as a hotel manager.

Her nerves settled slightly. She took back her Browning, then took McKinnon up on his invitation and sat down. It was, after all, her room, even if the taxpayers were footing the bill.

“So, LaDuca,” said McKinnon, as Alex found a place in a comfortable chair. “How are you enjoying your visit to Spain…so far?”

“I’ve been here in Spain before,” she said. “More than once. There was a tax case back in 2004. The FBI sent me because they needed someone who spoke Spanish and French.”

“So you know your way around?” he asked.

“As I said, business a few times. And that’s aside from the trip I made when I was a college student.”

Chang sat quietly, his eyes set upon her like a pair of compass needles pointing north.

“Yeah, I guess those were the days,” McKinnon said. “College years. I remember them myself.”

“Prewar Berlin and the rest, huh?” she said. “Marlene Dietrich in the clubs, right?”

“Ouch! That was nasty.”

“So is finding you here. The lobby wouldn’t work for you to wait?”

Chang followed the repartee back and forth.

“No, it wouldn’t,” McKinnon said. “Not with Peter at my side, not with the security cameras all over the bloody place, and not with a couple of Madrid cops-who weren’t Madrid cops-shot dead last night. What a bloody mess. And anyway, what’s the point of our agency having master keys to every hotel in Madrid if we don’t use them from time to time?”

“I have no idea,” she said.

“Oh, I’m sure you do,” he said. “And by the way, your file did say you were here on the 2004 tax case and that you did visit Malaga with a boyfriend named Damien in 1997. Damien later went into the military, did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t. I haven’t seen him for more than a decade. So why don’t you tell me something else I don’t know, like what you’re doing here and what’s going on, at least from your jaded end of things. Who were the people in the cop uniforms and who jabbed a needle into my partner last night?”

“Bullfight fans. Tourists. The opposition. Liberal Democrats. How should I know? That’s partly what we’re gathered here so happily to discover.”

There was also some bottled water on the coffee table in front of her. She made sure the cap was still factory-sealed, then opened it and poured some into a glass.

“Can I interest you in a whiskey?” he asked. “It’s already on your room-service bill, so I might as well offer you a drink.”

“Maybe later,” she said. “Maybe I’ll need a drink after I hear what you have to say.”

McKinnon laughed. “Spain is a funny place,” he mused. “The present is all caught up with the past, and the past is something most people don’t want to talk about. Yet it keeps repeating itself, doesn’t it? When I was a young case officer in Madrid back in the 1980s, Reagan visited. Are you old enough to remember him?”

She was, of course. “No, Mark,” she said, “but I studied him in history class. Same as Washington, Lincoln, and Elvis Presley.”

But McKinnon was on verbal cruise control. All accelerator and no brakes.

“Reagan visited,” he continued, “and after a bourbon or two, got away from his script. The president made an uncalled for remark about how it was too bad that the Americans who fought in the International Brigades had fought for the ‘wrong side.’ They fought against Franco, in other words, instead of being on the side of Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, and the long and wonderful tradition of fascism and anti-Semitism in this hot, unwashed country. Well, you can imagine how that went over. The Spanish Left organized a ceremony of desagravio. Do you know what that is, LaDuca?”

“It means ‘atonement’ in English,” she said. “Except I also know from my time here before that there’s a strange Spanish ceremony called a desagravio that can be made on behalf of someone else who may not feel apologetic at all.”

“Exactly,” McKinnon said, punctuating the air with a finger. “You got it. In this case, the unrepentant one was President Reagan. The so-called atonement ceremony took place in the Plaza Colon. You know, that square where they got a statue of Columbus?”

“Hence the name of the square,” she said. But if McKinnon got the dig, he wasn’t letting it show.

“Remember, this was 1986,” he said. “There were still a number of broken-down old brigadistas alive, people who had fought against Franco in the 1930s. I was sent to keep an eye on the event. The Plaza Colon was hung with the old flag of the Spanish Republicans, a genuinely ugly, meaningless old rag with vertical purple, white, and red stripes. It looked like a cheap beach towel from a gas station giveaway. Anyway, the old anthem was played, one of those surprisingly bouncy ‘workers’ paradise jingles’ from the early days of Bolshevism, before the whole cause of Communism was thoroughly discredited. The main speaker was a man named Enrique Lister. Fifty years earlier as a young Communist, Lister had been one of the more effective self-taught generals of the Republican Army that fought against Franco. If I remember correctly, and there’s a chance I don’t because my brain has begun its voyage into the sunset, the ceremony took place in an auditorium under the plaza. I was in this highly uncomfortable seat, admiring the beauty of all the Spanish wives. Anyway, it wasn’t an important event, really. Nothing happened except a bunch of decrepit old lefties blew off some steam about Reagan and America. But I had a real sense of history, you know what I mean? A feeling that I was watching a final curtain call from a long-passed age. And yet, know what? All those old polarized elements from Spanish society? There’re still around today.”

“Quite correct. I’ve seen a bit of that recently,” Alex said, thinking of Colonel Pendraza.

McKinnon poured himself another whiskey. “You’ll see a lot more before you’re safely out of here,” he said. “Count on that!”

The bottle was down about four fingers. Chang didn’t have a glass going. McKinnon sipped some water also. Alex was about to interrupt, but McKinnon appeared as if he were about to add something. She rarely interrupted men when they were drinking because they frequently said too much, later to their displeasure.

“I had the same feeling around the same era here in Spain when I attended a lecture at a Catholic school by a man named Serrano Suner,” McKinnon continued. “Ever heard of Suner?”

Alex shook her head. “No,” she said. “Don’t know the name.”

“That’s because you’re too young. What are you now, Alex? Mid thirties?”

“Same as last time you saw me which was two months ago,” she said. “Plus you know I’m twenty-nine if you just read my c.v.”

“Peter?” he asked, looking to the other guest, almost surprising him. “Suner? Name set off any alarms for you?”

For the first time, Chang spoke. “Suner was Franco’s brother-in-law, wasn’t he?” Chang answered.