In his first speech to the Spanish parliament in February 1974, Carrero Blanco’s successor promised many reforms including the right to form political associations. Though he was denounced by hardliners within the regime, the transition had begun, and it never ceased to gnaw at Pendraza that Blanco’s murder rewarded the purposes of those who had killed him.

But the incident hadn’t ended there either. One of the ETA members who had assassinated Carrero Blanco, a man known only by his nom de guerre, Argala, was himself assassinated by a car bomb in the south of France five years later. The killers this time were a Spanish far-right group organized from inside the navy, assisted by neo-fascists from France and Italy.

Argala, was the only one who could identify the mysterious man who handed to ETA Carrero Blanco’s schedule and itinerary. According to a former member of the Spanish army who participated in the bombing against Argala, the explosives that killed Argala came from an American military base, either stolen or “donated to a good cause.”

This morning, Pendraza had been sleeping soundly with his wife of twenty-six years beside him when his phone had rung to report the shootings on the Calla de la Bolsa. Ripped from a peaceful sleep only half an hour earlier, he now stared forward. Pendraza had had more than enough of the scenes that lay before him. He wondered again where it would all end. Why couldn’t Spain remain the sweet isolated place he had known as a young man? At age fifty-seven, he felt as if he were a hundred.

Behind him, on the other side of the police lines, a crowd gathered. Police had strung crime-scene tape everywhere. Technicians doing their jobs. A couple of ambulances were present to take away the dead, and there were more police cars than Pendraza cared to count, not even including the unmarked ones.

Pendraza’s brown eyes slid uneasily over the death scene. He felt his blood pressure rising.

These days in Spain, he raged to himself, he heard and read a lot of foolish things. A lot of revisions of history. But more than ever, Pendraza felt that the late, great Caudillo, General Franco, had saved this great country, and for that matter la civilización español, from the unwashed Bolshevik hordes. Spain would have turned into Poland or Cuba if the reds and the pinkos had had their way. And today it was no different.

He looked at what had happened on the street, then turned in anger, and went back to his car. Now he was officially involved in this. So officially or unofficially, whoever had been a part of this was going to pay. That was a promise he made to himself, and to the spirit of Franco.

MADRID, SEPTEMBER 10, MORNING

At a few minutes before 11:00 a.m., Alex stood in the front lobby of the Ritz. She positioned herself near the large front entrance but stood back from it. She could see vehicles in the arrival area without being seen from the street.

She had been up for three hours already after a nearly sleepless night. She had located Rizzo in a Madrid hospital and had been burning out the secure phone channels to Washington. Now she stood patiently waiting for a ride, as promised on one of those calls.

She did not know how hot a target she might still be. She edged toward the door, giving the doormen a polite nod every time they looked her way. On her left knee, a few inches below the hem of a stylish blue skirt, she wore a fresh bandage from where she had hit the sidewalk the night before. Beneath a blouse and suit jacket, there was a similar bandage on her elbow.

She stepped to the doorway and looked at the city of Madrid beyond the old hotel. Past the stand of chestnut trees that insulated the hotel from the street, traffic churned around the plaza in the middle of the Paseo del Prado, with its fountain featuring Neptune on a chariot pulled by mythological sea beasts. Normal for a weekday morning.

At one point during the Civil War, the front lines had been only a few dozen streets to the west, on the street of Paseo del Pintor Rosales, which overlooked the park called the Casa del Campo. Republican defenders had ridden into action on streetcars that ran up the boulevard known as the Gran Vía. The hotel itself had at one point closed its doors to guests and become a hospital.

A black unmarked Mercedes eased to a stop in front of the Ritz. It was one of those special-orders favored by police and antiterror officials around the world. Within its gleaming steel chassis, it had the most bomb and bullet-resistant armor plating that the trolls of Stuttgart could weld. The tinted windows had the world’s best bulletproof glass, and the occupants could roll through traffic on the most shred-proof tires known to humanity.

A driver stepped out, a hulking armed police officer in a suit. He had a shaved head and a cadaverous face. He stood about six-feet-five and looked as if he broke people in half for breakfast. He came around and opened a rear door. As he opened it, a black Cadillac Esplanade pulled to an abrupt halt behind the black Mercedes.

Friends? Enemies? They could have been either. But from Alex’s phone calls this same morning, she knew exactly who was arriving.

The Mercedes carried the VIP. The second vehicle was the bodyguards’ car. It was filled with four more officers from the National Police. Three were armed with automatic pistols beneath their summer-weight jackets, and one sat with an Uzi across his lap.

The two in the front surveyed their commander’s car. The two in the back watched the front portico of the Ritz. Alex left the lobby of the Ritz and moved quickly toward the Benz. The first bodyguard spotted her immediately and walked to her.

“Alejandra?” he asked in Spanish.

“Soy yo,” she said. It’s me.

“I’m Miguel. Come with me,” he said.

Miguel stood close to her in a protective pose, his body acting as a shield, almost pressed against her, his arm around her shoulders but not touching. Miguel was so close that, from brushing against him, she knew he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

He guided her to the car door. The normally attentive Ritz doormen knew enough to stay away. Alex slid into the backseat. The driver closed the door, moved quickly around to the driver’s side, and jumped in.

In the backseat of the vehicle sat a very unhappy Colonel Carlos Pendraza of the Spanish Policia Nacional. Pendraza nodded to her. They spoke in Spanish.

“Buenos dias,” he said.

“Buenos dias,” Alex answered.

“My sincere apologies for the events of last night,” Colonel Pendraza said.

“Apologies are unnecessary,” she said. “Last night wasn’t your fault, I assume.”

“Of course not!” he said angrily. “And I’ve spent more than an hour on the phone to Washington,” he said. “I assume you have too.”

“I’ve been asked to definitely stay with this investigation,” Alex said. “I spoke to my superior at the Treasury Department. Originally, I was asked to come here as an observer in the theft of The Pietà of Malta. Now my bosses have asked me to take more of an investigatory role. With the permission of the host government,” she said.

“You have our permission, of course,” he said. “And you’ll have any measures of support that you need from the government of Spain. Aside from that, please try not to get killed in our country.”

“I’ll try not to,” she said.

“I’ve tried for thirty years myself,” he said. “I’ve been successful. So far.”

The Mercedes moved quickly out into the morning traffic on the plaza, joining the rumble of cars and trucks and the whine of motor scooters already on the plaza. The sun broke above the neighboring rooftops and blasted the streets.

Madrid in September. Already the day promised to be a scorcher. Colonel Pendraza allowed a moment to pass. Then he switched into fluent English.