shadows.
Fisher wandered for a few minutes, enjoying the quiet, then made his way toward what he hoped was the Plaza Mayor. It wasn’t hard; all the roads and alleys and paths seemed to converge on the town’s center. The bullring was up, Fisher saw: a six-foot-tall bloodred-and-yellow-striped fence enclosing a dirt clearing about 120 feet across. Surrounding the ring, like bleachers, were three-story galleried houses fronted by dark green railings. The sun reflected off the taupe-colored dirt, causing Fisher to squint. He caught a whiff of manure on the breeze.
A hand-painted sign on a nearby fence post announced that the bullfight would take place the next morning. With luck, he’d be gone by then. Not only did he have no love for the sport, but he needed to get on with the business of paying Charles “Chucky Zee” Zahm a visit and finding out precisely what he and his Little Red Robbers had been doing for Yannick Ernsdorff.
Fisher returned to his car and meandered through town to the southwestern outskirts and followed the signs for Castillo de Chinchon until he pulled onto the tree lined dirt road that led him to a small gravel parking lot. As castles went, Chinchon’s was probably underwhelming for the unseasoned traveler; Fisher had seen enough of these to know that was more the rule than the exception. Built on a square and anchored on each corner by a turret barely taller than the crumbling stone walls, the
There were only two cars in the lot and both looked local.
Fisher parked, got out, and walked across the bridge through the portcullis, pausing to grab a brochure from the wall-mounted box. Once inside he walked across the courtyard to the northern wall and followed the steps up the battlement. He was alone; if the two cars in the lot belonged to attendants, they were probably on siesta somewhere.
He pulled his binoculars from his rucksack and panned down the green fields between the castle and the town, picking out landmarks until he found what he was looking for. Karlheinz van der Putten’s home, a two-story red-roofed villa surrounded by a low outer wall built under the shadows of mature olive trees, sat by itself on a dead-end road. Judging by the built-in swimming pool, lined with blue and white arabesque tiles, and the travertine flagstone deck, van der Putten had done well since going into business for himself. A balcony fronted by hand- chiseled cedar rails overlooked the pool deck; spanning the balcony’s width were sliding-glass doors through which Fisher could see a master suite. A matching set of sliding doors on the ground floor led to what looked like a living room, a breakfast nook, and a kitchen.
Fisher scanned the patio until he saw a lone man sprawled on a chaise lounge beneath a potted lemon tree. The angle made positive identification difficult, but the face seemed to match that of van der Putten. Fisher smiled. It seemed the man had spent a good portion of his profits on groceries. Van der Putten was pushing the scales at nearly three hundred pounds. His height, five feet six, combined with his choice of swimwear, a pair of red Speedo trunks, did nothing for him. The image of a sausage ringed by a too-tight rubber band came to mind. Still, Fisher could tell there was a layer of muscle beneath the layer of fat. He’d take care not to underestimate the portly mercenary’s experience and familiarity with violence — in fact, the story behind his nickname, Spock, told Fisher that van der Putten was not only familiar with violence but that he enjoyed it.
A woman appeared on the patio, carrying a pair of margarita glasses. She gave one to van der Putten, then lay down on the neighboring lounge. She had long brown hair, was supermodel thin, and was taller than van der Putten by a good four inches. She wore owl sunglasses that dominated her gaunt face, giving her a distinctly alien appearance. Only extraterrestrial origins or an abiding attraction to money could explain her choice of companion, Fisher decided.
Fisher kept scanning, studying the other homes on van der Putten’s road, looking for likely infiltration and exfiltration routes, and good cover, until finally lowering his binoculars. As he did so he caught a flash of reflected sunlight to his left. Instinctively he knew it hadn’t come from a windshield or window or mirror but rather a lens of some kind — spotting scope, binoculars, or camera. Fisher leaned forward, pulled the brim of his cap lower over his eyes, and rested his arms on the stone, casually looking around as tourists tend to do. He stopped the rotation of his head just short of the flash’s origin and used his peripheral vision to watch for it. A few moments later it came again. Fisher raised his binoculars and pointed them skyward, ostensibly watching the hawk riding the thermals above the castle but flicking his eyes left. A few hundred yards to the north and west, a cluster of villas sat atop a lesser hill. Parked at the head of an east-facing empty cul-de-sac was a gray compact car. Two men stood outside it. Both were armed with either cameras or binoculars. Above Fisher, the hawk cooperated and banked west. He followed it, one eye fixed on the two men until they came into complete focus. Neither looked familiar; both were well tanned, with black hair. Locals, he guessed. One of them was pointing a camera at van der Putten’s home; the other, a pair of binoculars at Fisher himself.
Fisher took his binoculars off the hawk and lowered them, resuming his touristlike scan of the lush fields beneath the
This could not be a coincidence.
He briefly considered bluffing it out as a tourist, but if they were curious enough to drive up here, they would also be thorough enough to memorize his face and record the make and model of his car. He didn’t have time to get away, not in the car, at least.
He waited until the gray compact disappeared behind a line of scrub pines, then pulled out his Canon, zoomed in on van der Putten’s, and took five sets of bursts, then put the camera and binoculars away and returned to the courtyard. He followed the brochure’s map to the eastern wall, then down a set of steps the led beneath the wall, into a short tunnel, then outside through an arch built into the sloped foundation. He turned left, jogged to the base of the southwest turret, and peeked around the corner. He saw no one. He pulled back and waited.
A few minutes later he heard the crunch of tires on gravel, then the soft squeal of brakes. Two car doors opened, then shut, and then he heard feet scuffing over dirt. In his mind’s eye he imagined the two men walking to his rental car and taking down the particulars before heading for the portcullis bridge. The footsteps went quiet as they crossed onto stone. Fisher peeked around the corner and saw the tops of two heads moving toward the portcullis. He heard the soft bang of the brochure box’s lid falling shut, then counted to ten, stepped out, and walked quickly but quietly west along the wall. He was under the bridge and at the southeast turret seventy seconds later. He didn’t pause, didn’t look back, but kept going until he reached the copse of cypress bordering the entrance road. Once in the deep shade, he laid himself flat, scooped the loam into a berm before him, and went still.
His visitors took their time, spending almost thirty minutes in the castle before emerging from the portcullis and crossing back over to the parking lot. A minute passed without the sound of car doors. Two minutes. A door opened and closed, followed by a second. An engine revved up, and moments later the car was moving down the entrance road above Fisher’s hiding spot. He gave them five minutes, then retraced his steps to the castle, back through the courtyard, and across the bridge to the lot.
His car looked undisturbed, but he knew better than to take that on faith. He found the GPS transmitter — a DIY affair consisting of a prepaid cell phone, a plastic project box, and glued-on neodymium magnets — attached to a bracket on the engine’s firewall.
He lay in the cool shade beneath the car for a few minutes, thinking. He’d found himself in a wheels-within- wheels situation. Were these men watching him or van der Putten? If the former, were they watching him
