“What might your target be?” he asked. “An individual? Several individuals. A vehicle? Moving or stationery? Large? Small?”

“A building,” said Jean-Claude.

“A building or the people in it?” Farooq asked.

“Both,” Jean-Claude said.

“Very good,” Farooq continued after a moment. “For your purposes then, might I suggest a relatively new item known as a ‘slapper’ detonator? This variety uses thin plates accelerated by an electrically exploded wire or foil to deliver the initial shock…”

“No,” Jean-Claude said. “I consider that type of detonator unreliable. I’m seeking a British item known as a Number Ten Delay switch, which is unavailable in Spain except through merchants such as yourself.”

The Number Ten Delay was a sort of “timing pencil.” It consisted of a brass tube, with a copper section at one end, which contains a glass vial of cupric chloride. A spring-loaded striker was held under tension and kept in place by a thin metal wire. The timer would be primed by crushing the copper section of the tube to break the phial of cupric chloride, which then would slowly eat through the wire holding back the striker. The striker would shoot down the hollow center of the detonator and hit a percussion cap at the other end of the detonator and the combustion would follow. A delay switch ranged from ten minutes to twenty-four hours, accurate within plus or minus three minutes in an hour’s delay and plus or minus an hour in a twelve-hour delay.

Farooq nodded thoughtfully. “I see,” he said. “Then for the first time I understand the high quality of explosives that you have. In what form are the explosives now?”

“Twenty individual bricks,” Jean-Claude said.

“They would be military quality then, I would suspect.”

Jean-Claude said nothing, which was an implied yes.

Farooq thought for a moment then washed his hands at a sink behind his counter. “And you have them in your possession, these explosives?”

“Spare me the stupid inquiries. Would I be here if I didn’t? Again, I know the product that I need. Can you get them for me with no chance that they can ever be traced.”

Farooq was toweling his hands dry by now. “I believe I can,” he said softly.

“Perfect,” Jean-Claude said after a few minutes of examination. “I need two packs with the twelve-hour delay. Can you get them for me?”

“Yes, I can. It will take a few days, but I have my own resources.”

“How much will this cost me?”

The owner wrote an outrageous money figure down on a piece of paper.

“I will also require the entire payment in advance,” Farooq added.

“You’re a robber!” Jean-Claude snapped.

“I am a businessman,” the dealer said. “And, my friend,” the old Arab said. “You are not just buying detonators and the ability to strike at Western infidels. You are also buying my silence and good will. I have been in business for a long time. There must be a reason, and the reason is that my first dissatisfied customer will return and kill me. So I don’t expect you to become one. My price is high, but I deliver with discretion and safety for the buyer. So do we do business or do I ask you to leave?”

Jean-Claude glared at him. Then he nodded, peeled off a wad of money, and paid.

MADRID, SEPTEMBER 8, AFTERNOON AND EVENING

From the National Police Headquarters, Alex walked back to the Ritz, relaxed for an hour, and then fired up her laptop again. She was trying to get an overall feel of art theft, a grip on it and the people who commit it. There was no way to approach a case without having a feel for it.

Hours passed. She had a light dinner delivered to her room. She felt stale, almost unproductive. She had learned a lot this day but wasn’t sure she had made any real progress or yet had an angle on the case. After her dinner, she prowled through more odds and ends about art theft and art thieves.

Item: The original of a Norman Rockwell reproduction titled Russian Schoolroom was found in the collection of the American movie mogul Steven Spielberg in 2007. Spielberg had paid about $200,000 for the 16 x 37 canvas in a legitimate purchase and then had alerted the FBI immediately when he learned of its questionable provenance. Item: Art thieves-as professional criminals-do a simple risk-versus-reward evaluation. They know that even if they receive only a fraction of the work’s market value, the cash gained was at low risk of death or injury. And museums and private collectors are an easy touch. Item: Nor had anyone seen any trace of the biggest art theft in European history. In February of 2008, a gang swiped four paintings worth an estimated $163 million from the E.G. Buehrle Collection in Zurich, Switzerland. They took works by Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh. “These paintings were extremely valuable on the open market, but they never went onto the open market,” said a Swiss detective at the time. “So they’re priceless but they’re also worthless.” Item: Some thieves often try to ransom the art back to the museum or the insurance company. Usually, an insurance company would rather get art back at a fraction of its original price than pay the owner its insured value. Ransoming art to an insurance company through an intermediary adds ten to twenty percent to the market value, which often turns into quite a lot of money. Item: Art thieves rarely face justice. A work of art does not require a title document in order to be transferred from one owner to another, so a stolen object easily enters the legitimate stream of commerce. Even if the original thief can be identified, there is also a statute of limitations on prosecution for theft.

And a final item, having its numbing effect on Alex:

Even if a stolen work is recovered, the original owners may not get it back. Art stolen from a Los Angeles mansion in 2003 and sold in Sweden remained with its Swedish purchasers. Even though the thief was caught, the Swedish government refused to return the paintings, claiming that according to Swedish law, the auction buyers had purchased the paintings in good faith. Laws governing art theft were a maze of contradictions from one country to the next, often offering the trained investigator little more than frustration.

Alex leaned back and took stock. Whoever had pilfered The Pietà of Malta from the museum in Madrid was not to be mistaken for a high-society, tuxedo-wearing, Thomas Crown Affair style thief.

She stared at her computer screen, a picture of confusion and doubt. Maybe it was time to return to America. She could opt out of this Pietà of Malta case very easily.

Maybe she should, she told herself.

She closed out of her laptop, drew a breath, and watched evening settle in across the city.

MADRID, SEPTEMBER 8, EVENING

The Iberia flight from Geneva to Madrid glided into its landing trajectory at 10:15 that evening. In a business-class seat by a window, John Sun gazed out the window and watched the lights of the city stretch out below him. Then the plane descended from its path in the purple sky, and as the 727 banked, the traveler picked up the lead-in lights that beckoned the aircraft into Aeropuerto Barajas, one of Europe’s busiest and most modern facilities.

There was much on his mind. In one capacity or another, he had presided over three deaths in Switzerland. Now he was just as happy to be out of the country. The farther and faster he got away from the place, the better he would feel. The business of death, the back-alley enforcement of his nation’s interests, was never an attractive business. He was experienced in it and efficient at it, but that didn’t mean he was wedded to it or even liked it. In fact, in ways that he couldn’t even explain to himself, it always unsettled him. Then again, the world was a cruel, nasty place, and all other rules of life followed from that one.