“You’re going to bury us all, Chief,” Thompson said, holding out his hand to Barnes and then to Staughton. Chain of command trumped good manners. “How was the flight?”

“It’s taken us longer from the airport here than from London to Schiphol.”

“It’s the time of day.”

“Let’s get to business,” Barnes ordered abruptly. “I want to get home in time for dinner.”

“Over here.” Thompson motioned to go inside the station.

“What have you found so far?” Barnes wanted to know.

Staughton was known to speak little, so his silence wasn’t a surprise. He was assimilating everything he heard and saw in order to process it later. He was good at this, in summarizing the parts, always trying to restrain the director’s impulsiveness.

The station wasn’t closed. Only parts were cordoned off by police tape, so civilians were constantly moving about.

“They didn’t close the station?” Barnes inquired.

“They didn’t consider it necessary. The bathroom is in a corner away from the center of the station, so they decided to close access to that area and not affect normal functions,” Thompson explained. “The trains weren’t even late.”

“Efficiency.”

“Our man was named Solomon Keys,” Thompson began. “Born in 1920.”

“Solomon Keys?” Barnes marveled. “He’s a legend at the agency. I remember seeing him once or twice. He was part of the establishment since the beginning. He came from OSS, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Affirmative,” Thompson continued, checking a note he had written in a small notebook with a hard black cover. “Member of the OSS from 1943 until the end of the war, recruited by the agency when it was founded.”

“One of the founders,” Barnes remembered, speaking more to himself than the others, remembering his own career up to now, to director of the CIA, here at Amsterdam Centraal. A lot of sweat and blood spilled, life in danger many times, and the loss. The loss of everything, family, women, normal life… The company demands exclusive commitment. It was what he was in the habit of thinking on lonely nights to justify what he had lost. The truth was he wouldn’t know how to live any other way. When a man had a level of information as elevated as Geoffrey Barnes, with the power and responsibilities inherent in the position, he no longer had a life of his own. It’s a cross to bear. His cross, the cross everyone carries each in his own way, some heavier than others. No one had any notion of what it was like to be a Geoffrey Barnes, what it was to have his work, what it was to know what he knows. No wife, dedicated as she might be, would have the temperament to wait endless nights, trying not to think about whether she would see her husband alive again. It was hard to work for the agency, but just as hard being the wife of an agency employee. As Jerome Staughton could attest, with his two failed marriages, thirty crappy years. You had to be a son of a bitch, as mean as a cobra, a bastard until the day you said “enough.”

“Right,” Thompson noted. “He studied law at Yale at the same time he turned into a valuable resource for the CIA. He left the service in ’ninety-two and traveled around the world. Ah, and do you want to know something interesting?”

“That’s what we’re here for. For tragic events I could have stayed home.”

“He was a member of Skull and Bones. Initiated the same year as Bush the father.”

“What an SOB.”

“Who?” Thompson asked curiously.

“Neither. It’s just an expression,” Staughton explained, always prepared to save Barnes from his own mouth. “If I say you’re an SOB, I’m not insulting you really. Understand? It’s just an expression.”

“Okay.”

“A member of Skull and Bones,” Barnes repeated thoughtfully.

“What is Skull and Bones?” Staughton asked. “Some club? A fraternity?”

“What do you mean, what is Skull and Bones?” Barnes was scandalized by such ignorance.

“I wasn’t hired for my knowledge of culture,” Staughton replied by way of excusing himself.

“Skull and Bones is a secret society. Or better, the secret society of our country,” Thompson explained.

“Like P2?”

“No, not at all,” Barnes answered. “No. P2 is different.” He reflected for a few moments. “If we ranked every secret society, P2 would command them all, including Skull and Bones.”

“But, according to Thompson, Skull and Bones has influential members. I heard talk of a president,” Staughton argued, truly curious.

“Yes. In truth there are two. Bush the son has been a member since ’sixty-eight,” Thompson added.

“Let me see if I can make myself understood.” Barnes stopped to moderate the question.

The allusion to P2, the Italian Masonic lodge whose complete name was Propaganda Due, had to do with a case that occurred a year earlier that brought together these three men in a massive investigation that ended in nothing, according to Barnes. Propaganda Due was one of the most cited special collaborators with the agency, and the millions in funds they had received from Langley for more than thirty years gave their leaders a privileged relationship, often confusing as to which one was in charge of the other. The power of this lodge was enormous, greater than some presidents, prime ministers. In reality P2 had enough power to install governments or bring them down when they didn’t serve their interests. They disposed of lives as it served them, including popes, as John Paul I would testify, if he were still with us. Skull and Bones was a minor league club, a game for rich students, compared with P2, even though it consisted of influential members always under the control of those who really gave the orders. And those people didn’t appear on television reports.

“But the chief said P2 commands almost all the rest,” Staughton interrupted. “The ‘almost’ is missing.”

Barnes looked down on the two men from his imposing height. They resumed walking to the place where the crime was committed eighteen hours ago. Dutch police tape set off the area, including the door to the bathroom. A uniformed officer was on guard at the door to ensure that only those authorized entered.

“All right, you fools, who orders everything and everyone?”

“Who?” Thompson asked, unable to answer.

“Opus Dei,” the chief concluded.

He showed his FBI badge to the guard and entered the crime scene, leaving his subordinates with their mouths open looking at each other.

“Opus Dei?” they both said at once.

They finally joined Barnes moments later, not knowing if what he had said was true or not. It was time to set aside the general subject of power and concentrate on finding the assassin or assassins of Solomon Keys.

“Here we are,” said Barnes, looking at the ample space. Urinals to the right, stalls with doors to the left. A passage separated them. The yellowish tiles couldn’t hide the passage of time. Once they were pure white, an indisputable choice for bathrooms, a symbol of health and luxury at the same time. They found the objects of their investigation in the fourth and fifth stalls. Blood spread from the walls to the floor, more in the fourth than the fifth. The door of the fifth had three bullet holes that formed an irregular triangle. A bloodstain lay over the wall that supported the water tank. A few tiles were broken on the left side of the same wall.

“This is where they killed our man,” Thompson informed them.

They all stared in silence, looking for clues. The smallest detail spoke to them, intent on answering their questions. Who? Why?

“What a shitty way to die,” Barnes vented his feelings.

“Yeah, it is. And, according to the Dutch report, with his pants around his ankles. Literally,” Thompson added.

“You can’t even shit in peace,” Barnes said, closely examining the place.

“Here in the other stall was an English couple. Like our man, they were waiting for the train to Hoek van Holland.”