Spanish capital where she felt as if she had lost five years of her life pinned in a filthy tunnel under the streets- where she might have lost her life completely if Peter and his hit team hadn’t found her.
She shuddered. What kind of bizarre angel had been her guardian this time? If she believed in God at all, in what ways did He work? Would human beings, would
She searched the geometry of events. In Kiev, she had lost a man who loved her, and lost a piece of jewelry. Here she had gained a piece of jewelry and found-
She examined the gold bangle on her wrist.
And then a realization hit her. It more than hit her. It jolted her.
She glanced at her watch. It was past 2:00 p.m. She turned the key in her ignition and jerked the car into reverse. She had to hurry. There was still some wrapping up to do, and she just had time today.
SEVENTY-THREE
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 21, AFTERNOON
She drove faster than she should have getting back into Madrid. The traffic was thick but allowed her to move around quickly. Her first stop was the rental car company. Quickly scanning the car to check for any of her own property, she found the black box in the trunk-the stealth box that would beat bank security-that Peter had mentioned.
She placed it in a black tote bag and took it with her. She dropped off the paperwork and the car keys, without going to the desk. So much the better, she mused. She had never been listed as an insured driver, so just as soon skip the desk. Nothing good could happen there.
She was in the old city. She knew the neighborhood well enough to know that the branch of El Banco de Santander where Peter kept his stash was a pleasant ten-minute walk away. She had on a good pair of walking shoes and a comfortable skirt. She pushed her sunglasses in place and hoofed the few blocks to the bank.
Twenty minutes later, she sat in the small private room that she had visited once in her life. A bank security man wearing white gloves delivered the safety deposit box to her. This was her first trip to the box alone, but obviously Peter, as he had casually said a few days earlier, had returned on the afternoon of the Connelly murder.
He had returned and made some adjustments.
“
“
When the clerk was gone, Alex opened the safety deposit box. Everything was exactly as she had last seen it, with the exception of the cash, which Peter had drawn on. Well, those Madrid evenings, she noted with a wry smile, didn’t come cheap.
She lifted the gift box out, the one with the wrapping paper from the Swiss jeweler, and set it aside. It was slightly heavier, and she could see that Peter had opened it and rewrapped it. Typical male fingers, good at larger, more complicated tasks, not so good with the small stuff.
She smiled to herself at the thought.
She looked at the two stacks of money, the dollars and the euros. About twenty-five thousand dollars in US currency, depending on how much the people in the foreign exchange section upstairs were finagling with the daily rate.
She fingered the money and shook her head. She didn’t need any and didn’t want it. Her employer paid her for an honest day’s work and got it from her. She didn’t need to drink from a pool of poisoned water.
Twenty-five grand. In her grandfather’s day you could have bought a small house for dough like that. In her parents’ day, you could have made the down payment. These days, you were lucky to get lunch.
She pulled the black box, the one with Peter’s gun in it, out of her tote bag. She positioned it into the deposit box. It fit easily with the gift wrapped box gone.
She smiled again and gently slid the gift box into her tote. She completed her business in the bank within a few minutes, politely thanked the guard and was gone.
It was only three o’clock. She was doing fine.
She took lunch at one of the local cafes, relaxed slightly, added a bold glass of chilled Spanish white Rioja to her meal, then a second glass. She felt her nerves finally settle. She was surprised that she felt that way because the meeting at the museum was still in front of her and she was guarded about what direction it would take. She took out her cell phone and made some calls.
She emerged from the cafe less than an hour later and walked directly to the Museo Arqueologico. Rivera, the curator, was there in the lobby to meet her.
“Thank you for phoning ahead,” he said. He spoke English out of courtesy and out of gratitude. “I might have been out. But I cancelled the rest of my afternoon.”
“Thank you,” she said. “It will be worth it.”
They met in a special conference room. Colonel Pendraza of the National Police arrived next and Colonel Sanchez, the real Colonel Sanchez, of the Guardia Civil entered at almost the same time. There were no police there from foreign agencies, though Alex had notified them all. The meeting had been called too quickly for any to attend, and in any event, Alex had notified them by email or phone that the issue of the stolen pieta had been resolved to the likings of two governments. Floyd Connelly, of course, remained booked out of town.
Rivera convened the meeting and turned it over to Alex.
“I suspect several of you have been briefed so far,” Alex said. “To backtrack, we know that a small objet d’art disappeared from this museum several weeks ago. Within the past fortnight some of us in this room came together to see what the implications of the theft were and whether, in the best of all possible worlds, there was any room for recovery of the item.”
The men assembled in the room waited.
“I’m happy to announce that this is one of those rare cases where justice, perhaps in a crude way, has been dealt to those who engineered the theft. They were also on the path of a greater evil, which has quietly been averted. And as an added bonus, The Pieta of Malta is back here for the people of Spain.”
She set the gift wrapped box on the table.
Pendraza looked at the box. “How do we know it’s not going to explode?” Pendraza asked, making a joke of it.
“It hasn’t yet,” she said. She paused. “Don’t worry. It won’t,” she said.
The package sat benignly in front of all of them.
“You’re the curator,” Alex said, turning to Rivera. “You’re used to dealing delicately with fine objects. Please open the package.”
Rivera’s fingers did the walking. In the quiet room, the ribbon came off. The curator smiled and worked with the joy of a little girl opening a present on Christmas morning. Then away came the firm tactile wrapping paper and within was a wooden box. The box was nondescript, unmarked, sturdy but light, the type of thing that might normally house Japanese chocolates.
The curator held the box carefully in his hand, raised his eyes to Alex again. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like the honor, yourself?” he asked her.
“No, thank you,” she said
He opened it and, although he knew what to expect, astonishment crossed his face. He stared at it for several seconds and no one else in the room could see.
From his pocket, he took out a small velvet pad, the type upon which jewelers place diamonds on for inspection. He laid the pad on the table. And then, from the box that Alex had presented, he removed the contents and placed it on the mat to the further astonishment of those gathered.
And there before them was the primitive miniature carving that had served as the inspiration for Michelangelo’s masterpiece. There in the center of the room sat
