Midnight In Madrid

and smooching. Soon they got up and left too, weaving merrily toward the door.

Ali, the heavy man with the moustache who was Samy’s boss, spoke to Samy in Arabic. “I’m going to put the Cerrado sign on the door,” Ali said, indicating he was ready to close. “And I’m turning the window light off. Let’s go home.”

Samy thought that was an excellent idea.

Ali went next door to use the bathroom at the grocery store that was run by his cousin. In the rear of his store, Samy started cleaning the counter behind the pastry display case. The single man who had been reading a newspaper, the lone customer remaining, got up, yawned, stretched, and gave Samy a nod.

“Buenas noches,” Samy called back.

The man nodded in return, then took some steps toward the door.

Samy turned his back and busied himself with neatening up. Then Samy heard the door close and he heard steps. He figured Ali was back and said something to him. But there was no answer. A second later Samy felt something indefinably amiss and knew something was wrong.

He turned abruptly. The single man, the Asian, was standing on the other side of the pastry case, staring at him. Samy froze. He knew this was trouble.

David Wong looked at Samy carefully.

“?Que quiere usted, Senor?” Samy asked. What do you want?

“Do you speak English?” Wong asked in English.

Samy understood but quickly shook his head. The Asian’s eyes were fixed on him like lasers.

Wong reached into a pocket and pulled out a picture of Lee Yuan, his mentor, just as Yuan had been Peter’s mentor and the mentor of his partner Charles Ming.

“Do you know anything about this man?” the Asian asked softly.

Samy shook his head again. He looked to the door, the escape route. The man in front of him had closed it, locked it apparently, and pulled the shade down.

Samy fumbled in English. “I don’t know any Chinaman,” he said.

“Now you do,” Wong answered.

For a moment Samy was paralyzed. Then there was a knocking on the front door. He heard Ali’s voice calling. “Samy? Samy, you in there?”

“Ayudame! Ayudame!” Samy screamed in Spanish. Help me! Help me!

Samy suddenly backpedaled. He tried to edge around the display case to where there was a narrow passage on the far side from where he could sprint to the door.

Wong lowered his left hand, and the picture of Lee Yuan was gone. Then the right hand came up, and it held a small gun, one of those Italian jobs that are just perfect for killing in small areas like stores, washrooms, and public transportation.

Samy yelled in terror when he saw the outline of the weapon. At the front door, Ali knocked sharply now, frantically next, then started to pound at the wooden frame. When all that failed, he hit the door with his shoulder.

Samy scrambled but Wong fired. The first bullet caught the waiter in the shoulder but hurled him sideways against the wall. Then the well-dressed Asian was on him like a big cat. Samy began to sputter and plead, half prayers, half curses, a desperate plea for his life.

Wong wasn’t listening any more than a cat would consider pleas from a mouse.

Wong pounced on his fallen prey, pushed the nose of the pistol to Samy’s head. Samy tried to cover it with his hands, but Wong pushed the gun between the Arab’s frenzied trembling palms and fired point blank.

One shot. Two shots.

The bullets blew out Samy’s eye socket, half of his brain, and the back part of his skull, all of which splattered and coated the floor beneath him.

Wong quickly stuffed his gun back under his suit jacket and went to the door. He threw the door open. Ali now stood in front of him in shock and surprise.

“Buenas noches,” Wong said.

“What’s going on?” Ali asked in Spanish.

Wong smiled. “Nada,” he said.

As Ali spoke to Wong, his gaze traveled past Wong and settled on Samy’s sprawled body on the floor. Wong caught the moment of realization in Ali’s eyes and jumped on it.

Wong brought up a knee that impacted like an express train into Ali’s groin.

When the cafe owner doubled over in absolute agony, Wong uppercut a vicious fist into the man’s face, crushing his nose with a tremendous crunch, splintering it to pieces within its skin. A downward smash of the elbow to the back of Ali’s head, sent him to the floor. There Wong left him, sobbing in a huddled mass at the doorway to his cafe, but in all ways better off than Samy had been for the encounter.

Wong straightened the lapels of his jacket and departed at a normal pace.

SIXTY-FIVE

MADRID, SEPTEMBER 18, EVENING

The local police granted Alex permission and provided keys to the forgotten underground Madrid. The Policia Nacional offered her a backup, but she declined. She went by herself, stubborn and overconfident, bearing her weapon, a hand lantern, and a GPS compass that she had bought for the occasion.

She unlocked a creaking old door that led to an old service passage that was at the far end of the Metro stop at Nunez de Balboa. She prayed she wouldn’t get lost in the subterranean labyrinth.

Carrying a lantern, she found herself wandering long-forgotten underground chambers that were unknown and unimaginable to the people of modern Madrid. Outside light disappeared quickly, and she relied on her lantern. There was movement around that was nonhuman. First she saw one rat, then she saw ten. First she had ample overhead clearance and then, as she neared the newer construction near the embassy, she had little. Then none.

She walked in a crouch. In her free hand, she carried a piece of chalk, marking passages as she went through them. She encountered stray cats, some alive, some dead. She came across a rat writhing in the agony of a poisonous death. Her nostrils were assaulted by the rancid odors of sewer leaks and the ground was wet and uneven under her feet.

It was cold. Then it was hot. Then it was cold again. An hour passed.

Then a second. She continued to prowl through the winding maze of underground tunnels, crawlspaces, and abandoned passageways that led toward the United States Embassy from the Metro stop at Nunez de Balboa. As she moved, she constantly consulted her handheld GPS.

She felt as if she had stepped into a moonscape or a surreal bombed-out world of a future that had endured a nuclear catastrophe or a plague or maybe something even worse. She sidestepped old sewers and crossed dried-out viaducts. She passed mute walls that had once been basements, some of which even bore graffiti or artwork. Damaged structural supports sagged overhead, and water trickled in various filthy urban streams. There were old plaster walls, etched with names that appeared to be those of soldiers because many bore ranks before their names, and some had written prayers also. She wondered how many of the prayers had been answered or whether a single one of the names on the wall still belonged to someone living. She doubted it.

Alex recalled that during the bloody final days of the Civil War, troops massed underground and then came up out of manholes into the streets to kill their enemies or be killed by them. On other walls, legions of live insects fed on smaller insects.

She wandered through derelict bunkers where white plastery stalactites hung like daggers, and she crossed an obsolete rail track where no train had probably passed within the last century. At some points, the passages were peaceful, the way a crypt is peaceful, and at other times there was a stinking fetid squalor beyond