Blood Pact (McGarvey) (36 page)

A few civilians were watching from across the street. A second uniformed police officer came over.

“Let me see your identification,” the first cop said. He was a nervous, skinny kid who looked like he was still in his teens.

Dr. Vergilio dug out her driver’s license from her backpack, and María handed the cop her passport. She still had the pistol in her shoulder bag, but leaving the Archives she hadn’t wanted to go anywhere unarmed.

The second, much older cop came over. “What is going on here?”

The young cop handed over the IDs.

“I’m Dr. Vergilio, I live here.”

“Yes, I know,” the older cop said. He looked at María’s passport, then compared the photo with María’s face. “Ms. Delgado, what are you doing here?”

“Dr. Vergilio is the curator of the Archivo General de Indias. I’m here searching the records with her gracious help.”

“
Sí,
but what are you doing here?”

“Someone phoned and said there were police at my building,” Dr.Vergilio said. “I have valuable books and maps in my apartment.”

“I came as a friend,” María said.

“Wait here,” the older cop said. He went through the gate to the open door into the manager’s apartment.

A moment later an older man, in civilian clothes, who was tall, very dark, and suave looking, came out, took the driver’s license and passport, and came back to Dr. Vergilio and María, and handed them back their papers.

“I am Policía Nacional Detective Lieutenant Zubaro. I’m sorry to say, Doctor Vergilio, that something dreadful has happened here. Do you have personal knowledge of Mrs. Vallalpandro?”

“Yes, she is the building manager.”

“We know that. But are you aware of any family, or perhaps friends—men friends?”

“Lady friends here in the neighborhood, but I believe that she was childless and her husband passed away years ago.”

“No nephews, nieces?”

“Not that that I am aware of,” Dr. Vergilio said. “What has happened here?”

“The poor woman was murdered sometime this morning.”

“My God.”

María stiffened. Vergilio was not a very convincing actress, and the detective’s eyes narrowed a little.

“In fact I was just about to telephone your office,” he said. “There didn’t seem to be a robbery in Mrs. Vallalpandro’s apartment, nor in any of the others. We looked at yours, naturally, because yours was the only place that contained anything of real value.”

“Was anything missing?”

“Frankly, we cannot tell. It is why I was about to telephone to ask you to take a look.”

“I have a lot of historical documents.”

“Would any of them be worth stealing?” the cop asked. “By that I mean to ask, is there anything in your apartment that, say, an antiquities thief might be interested in?”

“Probably.”

“Then my question is: Why aren’t these items kept at the Archives?”

“I often work at night,” Vergilio said. “It is more comfortable to do so in my own home.”

The cop stepped aside. “Leave your scooter here, and I will walk with you.”

María walked with them through the gate back to Vergilio’s apartment, half expecting the detective to stop her. But he said nothing until they got inside.

“We touched nothing,” he said.

“I appreciate that,” Vergilio told him, obviously distracted.

María hung just behind the cop, as the doctor went immediately into the second bedroom where she opened several of the map drawers and examined the contents of each.

“Is there anything missing?” the lieutenant asked.

“Not yet,” Vergilio said. She turned and brushed past them and walked back out to the dining room, where she looked at several files in thick accordion folders.

For several long moments she stood almost as if in a trance, before she went to her bedroom, where she idly flipped through several other files, and a couple of rare books. When she was done she turned to the cop.

“Nothing has been disturbed,” she said.

“And nothing is missing?”

“No. I doubt that he was here.”

María winced inwardly, careful to keep her expression neutral, but she stood just to the left of the detective, and she could see that he had reacted to the mistake.

“He?” the cop asked. “Do you know who may have killed your building manager, and left no mark of searching for something here?”

Dr. Vergilio shook her head. “I don’t understand what you mean. I have no enemies. I’m just a simple archaeologist.”

“Famous in certain circles lately.”

“What does that have to do with someone coming here to commit murder?”

The detective shrugged. “There is a row of keys in Mrs. Vallalpandro’s apartment. For the apartments. The only key missing was for yours. So whoever killed the poor woman was here. Something here was his motive for the crime. And you said ‘he’ as if you knew someone who might do this thing, and why.”

“I don’t know. It was just a figure of speech. Isn’t it usually men who commit such crimes?”

“That is true,” the detective said. “But then there are exceptions.” He glanced at María, who held his momentary gaze.

“Nothing was disturbed here,” Dr. Vergilio said, digging herself a deeper hole in front of the cop.

“We know he took your key, so the natural assumption is that either he is a very careful professional who doesn’t leave traces of his comings and goings, or you are lying, or both.”

“I am not lying!” Dr. Vergilio shouted. “Nothing was disturbed here. Beyond that I know absolutely nothing, except that after last night’s riot right outside of the Archives and now this horrible crime I am shook up and frightened. You cannot imagine what an inestimable loss it would be for Spain if the Archives were to be seriously damaged.”

“I understand,” the detective said sympathetically. “But you must also understand, Doctor, that I am trying to do my job, which among other aspects is assuring your personal safety. Someone wants something that you have, and I think that you know who it is, and I think that your life may be in danger. Please help me to help you, and Spain’s priceless treasures.”

Dr. Vergilio shook her head. “I need to get back to my office. There may be another riot tonight and I want to prepare my security people and staff.”

The detective stepped aside. “I will provide an escort for you.”

Outside they passed through the iron gate to where the Vespa was parked when María spotted a man in the crowd across the street. She only caught a momentary glimpse before he turned and walked away. But she was almost certain that it was the man whose passport photo McGarvey and Otto had sent her.

“Is it possible for us a get a ride back to the Archives?” she asked the detective. “I don’t think Dr. Vergilio is up for driving her scooter back just now.”

“It’s not necessary,” Vergilio protested, but the detective disagreed.

“I think Ms. Delgado may be right,” he said.

SIXTY-SEVEN

They landed at Gibraltar’s International Airport in late afternoon, and taxied over to a private aviation terminal where they were picked up in a Land Rover by an older man with a badly pockmarked face in the black robes of a priest, who identified himself as Father Aguero.

“It was probably a very good idea that you are entering Spain from here, rather than flying to Madrid first,” the priest said. “Monsignor Franelli thought it would be best.”

“I’m known in Spain,” McGarvey said.

“But not as a representative of His Holiness.”

“Do you know about our mission?”

“No, nor do I wish to know. I’m here simply to get you across the border without being searched, and then take you to your hotel in Seville.”

They drove to the border crossing where they stopped at the back of a line of a half dozen other cars, a couple of them taxis. When it was their turn, a passport control officer in uniform came over. “Father,” he said respectfully. He looked at McGarvey and Otto in the backseat. “May I see your passports?”

They handed them out the open window, and the officer studied both. When he looked up, he nodded. “Do either of you have anything to declare?”

“No,” McGarvey said.

“You’re an American.”

“Cleveland Diocese, actually,” Fr. Aguero said.

“Their business here?”

“They are emissaries from the Pope, but their mission is classified. You understand, señor.”

The officer was getting suspicious, and the priest lowered his voice. “His Holiness will be making a visit to Spain, specifically to Seville in six months. These gentlemen are here to begin making the arrangements.” He shrugged. “In the present climate one cannot be too careful.”

Spain, like many other countries on the Continent, was beginning to have a Muslim problem—not with law-abiding people, but those with ties to Islamic militant groups. Elsewhere there had been threats on the Pope’s life.

“I understand completely,” the officer said. He handed back the passports. “But why didn’t you fly directly to Seville?”

“That’s the other part of the secret mission. His Holiness wants to visit here first and then make a pilgrimage, if you will, by motorcade.” Fr. Aguero shrugged. “Sometimes the will of a Pontiff is not for us to understand.”

The border guard nodded. “Go with God, then,” he said, and stepped aside so that they could pass through.

Once clear of the border crossing and past the rows of condominiums and tourist attractions on both the Mediterranean and the Bahía de Algecira sides of the narrow peninsula at the town of La Linea de la Concepción, they headed north to the N340 at San Rogue and then east until they reached C339, which was a narrow country road with very little traffic.

The day was waning, and Fr. Aguero kept glancing in his rearview mirror, as if he expected to pick up a tail.

“Anyone following us?” McGarvey asked.

Otto was on his computer getting them hotel reservations and arranging for a car in Seville.

“Not so far. Monsignor Franelli suggested I take this route rather than the main highway so that if we were followed from Gibraltar it would become evident almost immediately and we could deal with it.”

“Are you in the Order?”

The priest glanced at McGarvey’s image in the rearview mirror. “No.”

“Just a parish priest?”

“Something like that.”

Otto looked up. “We’re in,” he said. He turned the computer so that McGarvey could see that they had a two-bedroom suite at the Gran Meliá Colón, under the names Joseph Burton and James Schwartz.

“Anything on the police net we need to know about?”

“They’re setting up for another night of riots in the Barrio de Santa Cruz.”

“Lots of places in which to get lost,” McGarvey said, thinking of how he would do it if he were Montessier. The area had been the old Jewish quarter and was a rat warren of narrow, twisting streets and alleys.

The riot would provide a diversion, but if his mission was to get the cipher key from Dr. Vergilio he would need something more than that. Something more compelling, something that would force her to bring the key in exchange for the diary.

They went through several small forests that were broken up by small farm fields, some of wheat and some of grasslands for cattle. But most of the eighty miles or so up to Seville was open land of scrub brush and near deserts, until just south of the city the first olive groves growing up the hillsides started to appear.

Fr. Aguero held his silence. He was on a mission for the Church that he neither liked nor disliked. He was merely following ecclesiastical orders.

Traffic picked up a little after five when they reached the N334 highway outside of El Arahal, which turned into a divided highway about ten miles outside of the city, and Fr. Aguero began to relax a little.

“What hotel do you wish to be taken to?”

McGarvey told him, and twenty minutes later they pulled up in front of the grand hotel, and a bellman opened the doors for them and took their single bags. Otto hung on to his laptop.

“Thank you, Father,” McGarvey said to the priest through the open driver’s side window. “This is important. Lives are at stake.”

“They very often are with the Order.”

McGarvey stepped back and the priest drove off without looking back.

Seville smelled like Spain—olive oil, fish, maybe sardines, wood smoke, in the distance the spice saffron, and just now a hint of burnt gasoline and something else, maybe vinegar, maybe tear gas left over from last night’s riots.

Otto went ahead up the stairs into the central lobby under the stained glass dome, and checked them in while McGarvey picked up a house phone. “Paul Harris, please.”

“One moment, sir,” the operator said. The room number rang several times, before the operator came back. “There is no answer, sir. Would you care to leave a message?”

“Yes, please. Tell him that an old friend is in town, and would like to meet with him for drinks sometime this evening. Here in the hotel.”

“Shall I say a time?”

“Let’s say, eight. Tell him I have the key. He’ll understand.”

“Yes, sir.”

McGarvey hung up and went to the front desk and handed his passport to the clerk, who took an impression, and then handed it back.

They took their bags from the bellman, McGarvey gave him a generous tip, and he and Otto went upstairs. When they were in their suite, McGarvey checked the windows, which looked down on the street, traffic light at this hour. Later tonight things would pick up, especially if a riot materialized down in the barrio near the museum.

Otto had connected to one of his programs back at Langley.

“He’s here,” McGarvey said.

Otto looked up, his eyes round.

“In the hotel. The bastard checked in under the Paul Harris name he gave Dr. Vergilio.”

“Arrogant.”

“Yeah,” McGarvey said. “He thinks that he’s the smartest guy in the room. And probably the toughest, because if anyone catches up with him, he’s sure that he can take them down. He’s evidently never failed before.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Show him the error of his ways.”

SIXTY-EIGHT

Al-Rashid finished an early dinner of filet of sole, with a good potato salad and a half bottle of a local white wine he’d never heard of downstairs at the hotel’s El Burladero bar and restaurant. It was just before six-thirty when he signed for the bill. On the way out he passed a house phone, and for no reason he could think of, picked it up and asked if he’d had any messages.