Midnight In Madrid

the Roman Catholic Church. Spain under the government of socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero had become one of the most socially progressive countries in Europe. Today, the political right pulled one way in Spanish society and the left pulled in another. And then the Islamic population pulled in its own way.

The latter was a relatively new factor: More than five centuries earlier King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had expelled Muslims unwilling to convert to Christianity. Now, as part of the worldwide migration of people from third world to first world countries, Spain was subject to an inflow of illegal immigrants not unlike that affecting the United States.

When she reached ankle-deep water, she stepped between some children at play. She smiled to them and to the bronzed, bikini-clad au pair girls who attended them. Alex was starting to feel good about life again. On paper, she was still an employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, on loan to the US Department of Treasury. She was still on the payroll even as she walked on the beach.

Her employers back in the United States, both the FBI and Treasury, had been generous about a few weeks of paid leave. Even the bureaucrats who oversaw her assignments agreed that she could use the R-and-R, first from a personal tragedy in February and then from nearly being gunned down in the Paris Metro in May. Before that, there had been the attack on the US president in Kiev, during which Alex had personally had a hand in protecting the president. The system, all agreed, owed her.

She kept telling herself that had been the past, her professional triumph in Kiev, linked to a personal catastrophe. It had been what God intended, she told herself. She could do nothing about the past but could do much about her own future. Yet as a little bit of a spiritual nod to the past and the future, she wore around her neck a delicate gold chain that supported a stone pendant, slightly smaller than an American quarter.

The pendant was of stone and had praying hands carved into it. Months earlier, she had bought it from a girl in the remote mountain village of Barranco Lajoya in Venezuela to replace a small gold cross she had lost in Kiev. In Paris, the stone had shattered, but she took the pieces to a jeweler in Montparnasse and had the pieces reset with a gold-plated steel edge around it to secure it together. So there it still hung. As a piece of beach jewelry, it nicely set off her tan and her swimsuit. Worn on a dressy occasion with a suit, it was equally handsome.

She walked toward her towel. She felt good. But when she reached her towel, her cell phone was ringing. It served her right for buying a phone chip that was good in Spain. She reached for the phone. From habit, she answered in the language of the country she was in. “Diga.”

There was a moment’s pause as her voice bounced off satellites. Then the response returned in English.

“Alex, I don’t know where you are,” said Mike Gamburian back in Washington, “but I have a pretty good hunch where you’ll be in three days.”

“Seriously, Mike,” she said. “Nice to hear from you, but don’t try to read my mind. There’s this cruise ship that’s sailing out of Barcelona for Fiji and the South Seas. They need multilingual hostesses who can cheat at blackjack and speak Russian. I’ve been hired and I’m going.”

There was a pause. “Are you serious?” he asked.

“No, I’m not,” she said. “But serves you right for calling me when I’m at a European beach and hardly wearing any clothes.”

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

She pictured him in his office at the United States Department of Treasury, leaning back in his leather chair, 15^th Street outside his window. Then she remembered that this was Labor Day back in America.

“Shouldn’t you be in your backyard grilling botulism burgers for your family right now?” she asked.

“Should be, yes. But I’m not.”

She crouched down for a moment and grabbed her towel and sunglasses. In one motion, she put the glasses on and worked the towel across her hair and shoulders. She was happy to see her newly acquired iPod, loaded with English, French, and Spanish pop and rock, and a library of jazz and classical, lay just where she had stashed it, plus the novel she was reading.

“Then you didn’t call to ask me how my tan was progressing. What’s going on?”

“What’s your agenda for the rest of the week?” Gamburian asked.

“Are we talking on a secure line?” she asked.

“My end is fine. How about yours?”

“It’s good, also,” she said. “Or at least I think it is. Probably no fewer than a dozen different agencies listening, how’s that?”

“Situation normal,” he said.

A beat and then she added, “Well, I had it in mind to fly to London for two or three days to see some old friends and maybe see some theater. Then I figured I’d be back in Washington next week and pick up again at Treasury the Monday following and start in with whatever dull honest work you have for me. Then, if our previous arrangement holds, which it never seems to, I leave for Venezuela in a few weeks.”

“How would you feel about going to Madrid, instead of London,” he asked, “and staying in Europe for a little longer before coming back to Washington?”

“Why? What’s in Madrid?”

“Great food, great wine, handsome macho Spanish men, the king of Spain, and bull fights. Plus relentless heat and pounding humidity that will make you cry. How does that sound?”

“It stinks, Mike. No way!”

“Good. Glad you’re pumped. Can you be there in three days?”

Her hair was almost dry. She shook it out and liked the feeling. She pulled a thin voile cover-up around her upper body and remained standing. “And why do you want me in Madrid, Mike? I don’t suppose there’s a good reason.”

“The Museo Arqueologico Nacional,” he said, massacring all three words. “Ever been there?”

“Never.”

“Here’s your chance. Uncle Sam promised help with a missing item. Apparently the museum was burglarized a couple of weeks ago. There was a pieta taken.”

“A what? Am I hearing you right?”

“A pieta,” he said again.

“Like the huge one in Rome that weighs ten tons? The Michelangelo? Mary crying over the body of a slain Christ? What did they do, Mike, back a truck up to the place overnight and no one noticed? Great security.”

Gamburian laughed.

“You have the reference right, Alex, but not much else. This one has a bit of a history to it. It’s much older than the Michelangelo work and much smaller. A miniature. It’s a carving in pink granite on a wooden base. Maybe six inches tall and eight inches wide.”

“Art theft isn’t my field,” she said.

“But you learn quickly,” he answered.

“I’ve heard that before and been sorry,” she said. “What are you telling me? You want me to help the Spaniards with a two-bit burglary?”

“This feels like more than ‘two-bit,’ Alex,” Gamburian said. “That’s why we want to assign you to it.”

“Give it to me straight, Mike,” she said. “There are hundreds of major art thefts every week all over the world. What’s different about this one.”

“The uniqueness of the piece,” he said. “And we’ve been picking up some rumors and theories about some small terror cells in Spain that are intent on big things. Art theft often finances major crime. So we’re on guard.”

“Got it,” she said.

“You worked with a man named Mark McKinnon earlier this year, right? He’s one of the top ‘Agency’ guys in Europe.”

“I know him,” she said without enthusiasm.

“He’s on top of this, or at least says he is,” Gamburian said. “He’s going to be in touch with you in Madrid. Once again, you’re the perfect person on the spot.”

“Your flattery is going to get me killed some day.”

“Better you than me.”