comprehension, and she had to hold her hand to her mouth for fear of getting sick.
Her compass told her, however, that as she worked her way through the underground maze, she was indeed drawing closer to the area under the embassy, which meant that if she could access the area, anyone could.
More graffiti. Then a handful of murals, some of them pornographic, by artists no doubt long dead. Decrepit rungs that led nowhere marched upward on walls that had been truncated by newer construction. It was utterly silent in most places, and yet from time to time a cool wet breeze slapped her in the face, and she felt as if she were a frightened little girl exploring the basement of a haunted house.
Another mural, one of a man in prison. A mess of terra-cotta tiles. A quote from Cervantes in Spanish and a poem about tuberculosis written in black paint on yellow brick. Old shoes and bottles and newspapers emerged in the ray of her flashlight, and then another mural, a breathtaking rip-off of Dali’s
Old steam pipes. Meter after meter of them. Sealed vaults in the walls. Bricked-over exits. A tipped-over rusting gurney. Pools of water, red with rust. Ghostly staircases that led into uneven walls of concrete or granite. Utter blackness, relieved only by her light.
Years ago, she had read T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and now as she prowled under a modern city, she thought of Eliot’s unreal metropolis where dread lurked in the shadows, terrible things emerged by the gleam of light, her shadow near midnight rose to meet her and where she saw fear in a handful of dust.
In another thirty minutes, she found the flashlight most recently discarded by Jean-Claude, outside a low crawlspace that led to a narrow tunnel. According to her GPS, the tunnel would lead the final few meters toward the embassy.
Alex looked at the flashlight. She knelt down and looked into the tunnel. Incredibly, there seemed to be light at the other end of it. The tunnel looked to be secure and wide enough for passage.
She picked up the flashlight. The bulb was dim but she could see.
Decision: go forward or head back? She had always learned to go forward. She decided to do something impetuous and stupid. She took off her jacket and knelt. The tunnel didn’t look too bad. She would crawl in.
Time to get dirty.
She got down on her stomach and leaned in, pushing her own flashlight ahead of her. And she entered the tunnel. A few seconds later, she was on a slow horizontal crawl through a wet partially man-made tunnel under the streets of Madrid. It was no one’s idea of fun.
She crawled her way through the passage for ten feet, then fifteen. Moving slowly. The walls then started to seize up around her.
Uh oh…The flashlight started to flicker. So that’s why it had been abandoned. The tunnel narrowed slightly.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Just so that she understood her options, she tried to move backward. Okay, a few paces. She could go either way.
Bad idea! Bad bad bad idea! Claustrophobia started to settle in.
She started to cough.
The coughing stirred up dust and mortar, her eyes smarted. She coughed more.
She tried to back up.
She couldn’t.
She was stuck.
SIXTY-SIX
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 18, EVENING
No more than three blocks away from Samy’s bistro, through the maze of streets in the Rastro, Basheer sat nervously in the living room of the small house he shared with his wife, Leila. He was watching the late sports on television and was particularly interested in a match of his adopted land Morocco against Cameroon.
Leila came out of the bedroom to see what he was watching. She was wearing only a linen robe that she normally wore around the house. When she saw her husband was viewing sports, she gave up on getting his attention.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said softly. “Then let’s get into bed.”
Basheer grunted his approval. It made sense: first his favorite activity, then his second.
Leila went to the bathroom and started the water for her shower. Playfully, she stood in the doorway and slid out of her robe. Then she tossed her robe into the living room and stood naked before her husband, trying to interest him.
Her husband smiled but didn’t budge from the sports. “Later,” he said.
A minute passed. Maybe two.
Basheer heard a noise in the entrance hallway behind him, but the account of the game he wanted was seconds away. So he didn’t investigate. There were only friends in this building, anyway, so what could go wrong?
A few seconds later, he heard a creak behind him on the old floorboards. The creak finally caused him to turn and glance behind him. He did a double take and jumped from his chair.
A Chinese guy! Stealthy as a giant cat! How the-?
Charles Ming stood with his arm extended, with a gun pointed forward.
Basheer opened his mouth to scream but never had the chance. Charles Ming squeezed the trigger hard three times. Three bullets slammed into Basheer’s chest before he had the chance to duck for cover or even scream. He hit the floor hard and in deep pain. He knew life was ebbing out of him, and all he could think of now was that this must have something to do with the bomb that didn’t go off.
Ming stepped over him and sent another bullet directly through his heart.
Ming looked at the linen robe on the floor. He heard the shower water running and knew how easy the end of this job would be. He stepped over the robe and walked to the bathroom door, which was half open.
He pushed it the rest of the way.
Behind a vinyl see-through shower curtain, he could see the body of a woman. She was young and a little plump, with black hair and very pale skin the color of a fish fillet. He studied her for a moment because he had never before seen a woman undressed without having to pay for it. He reasoned that her skin was pale because it never saw the sunshine. Unlike Western or Chinese women, she never wore a bikini or went to the beach.
But Ming made no special note of her. She was an assignment, same as her husband who was dead on the floor behind him. He gazed at her with curiosity for a few seconds. He wondered how long he could stare before she saw him.
He had his answer a few seconds later. She turned.
Her eyes went as wide as saucers. Then she screamed.
The sound of the scream pulled Ming out of his mini-reverie. He raised the pistol sharply and fired three shots into the woman’s body from a distance of five feet.
Her knees buckled, her body slammed against the back wall of the shower, and her voice went quiet like a television suddenly turned off. She dropped like a sack of potatoes, made a gurgling sound, and was still.
As a courtesy to the people downstairs, Ming stepped forward and turned off the water before he departed.
SIXTY-SEVEN
