Jean-Claude again smiled tolerantly.

“You’ve made your point and you’ve made it very clearly,” Jean-Claude said. “I think of this as part of the cost of doing business. A tax, so to speak. I don’t wish any aggravation past this evening any more than you do.”

“You will not hear from us,” said the Turk who for the second time attempted to leave. But Jean-Claude held his hand, keeping him at the table.

The Turk’s other hand inched toward his weapon.

“There is no need for a firearm,” Jean-Claude said disdainfully. “But now I just need assurance from you. I need your word to me that this is the only ‘tax’ the people in my organization are going to need to pay to you. I’ve already removed the little ‘bugs’ that you were so conniving as to place in our shipment of merchandise. And I have had the entire shipment searched millimeter by millimeter to make sure there are no other little hidden presents for us. So actually, you would have difficulty locating us after our mission is complete. So let’s just be clear that neither will ever see the other again under any circumstances.”

“You have our word,” said the Turk.

“Then you have ours as well.”

Jean-Claude extended a hand. It was firm, strong, and dry. Their hands clasped.

“Travel wisely with the money,” Jean-Claude said.

The Turk gave a little snort in return.

“I have an accomplice with a rifle in a window across the street,” Lazzari said. “You will give me ten minutes to leave. If you move from this table, you’ll be gunned down like a rabbit. If you reach under your clothing to find a weapon I may have missed, you’ll be gunned down also. If you make any effort to come looking for me or my brother, you will also be killed. Understand?”

“I understand perfectly,” Jean-Claude answered. “I’m in fear of my life here. There is no way I would dare to do anything.”

He sat back down and smiled.

“That’s good. That’s good.” Lazzari said. Yet somehow, Jean-Claude was too calm. He hadn’t sounded convincing to his business associate.

Fretfully, Lazzari turned on his heels. He moved swiftly along the narrow passageway between café tables. He hit the sidewalk, his pace accelerating. Jean-Claude watched him go, doing a slow count of seconds as the Turk disappeared with a bag of money.

MADRID, SEPTEMBER 10, LATE EVENING

They sat at a table that evening, Alex and Peter Chang, at a small restaurant in the Bailén amidst remnants of Moorish Madrid and in the shadow of the grand Basilica de San Francisco. They were in a small room with burnt-ochre walls and oak paneling, a quiet chamber behind a noisy brass tapas bar. They sat in a booth in the back that afforded both of them cover, as well as a view of both the entrance and the exit.

In Spanish, with an affable young waiter, they ordered a dinner of tuna steaks in soy and ginger with a bottle of Rioja. When the waiter departed, Alex switched the conversation back to English.

“You speak Spanish with a very slight accent,” she said, “but your English is perfect. Better than most native speakers, I’d say,” she said. “And what there is of an accent almost sounds British, but with a few American inflections thrown in. How did that happen?”

“I was born in Hong Kong and grew up there,” he said. “I went to British schools on the island and then later in England when I was older. My mother was a teacher, my father owned a shipping company. Only five ships, but papa kept them busy.”

“Only five, huh?” she said. “That’s five more than most people.”

“Then, when I was in my early twenties, I spent a few years in New York.”

“Doing what? Working?”

“Political studies. Columbia University. New York City,” Peter Chang said. “I was a teaching fellow and earned my master’s degree. I lived in New York for five years. I loved the place. Broadway theater. The smut of Times Square. Two ballparks and the dirty pretzels from the vendor who was always outside the School of International Relations on 110^th Street. What a city!”

He finally grinned. There was a chilliness to Peter, she noted. She had to push hard to get past a cautious exterior. She wondered what lurked beneath, passion or poison.

“As you know, Hong Kong was a crown colony of the United Kingdom when I was growing up,” he continued. “My family remained even after the transfer of the island’s sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China in 1997. I went back, horrified that Peking now controlled the island. But it wasn’t as bad as I’d guessed. One thing led to another, and the new government offered me a very comfortable career.”

“Impressive résumé,” she said.

“You flatter me,” he said.

“But hardly as impressive as your abilities with a pistol,” she said. “Or should I say, pair of pistols? Where did you learn those skills?”

“I was taken aside, given special treatment, special training. Same as yourself.”

The waiter arrived with the bottle of Rioja and the conversation jumped back to Spanish. Peter did the tasting, gave his approval, then asked for the wine to be decanted so it could air. The dialogue between Alex and Peter stayed on small matters until the food arrived and, not by surprise, turned out to be spectacular.

Peter lowered his tones and switched back to English when the conversation turned serious again. “Let me bring you up to date on The Pietà of Malta,” he said. “Our own intelligence knew the trail of a transaction involving the bird. Black market sale: $1,250,000 from the sale of a stolen piece of art. The physical transaction of the artwork was made in Switzerland with the money returning to Spain by electronic transfer.”

“So someone paid to have it stolen?”

“Someone paid a lot to have it stolen,” Peter said. “Which brings us to motivations.”

“Arguably it could have been a private collector,” she said. “One of those immensely wealthy people who get their charge merely out of possessing the item. Or it could have been stolen by people who wanted to raise money. But if the money returned to Spain, what was the purpose of it?”

“Here we get into the notion of artwork financing criminal activity or terror activity. And the latter would most likely be aimed at America or Americans,” he said. “Listen, another agent from my agency went to Switzerland to intercept the transaction. The agent carried five checks on the Bank of Hong Kong to complete the transaction.”

“And?”

“He was murdered when he was supposed to retrieve the carving from an old monastery,” he explained. “Then his body was dumped in the mountains. Concurrent with his disappearance, the checks were cashed through an Arab bank in Ri’yad. And as I mentioned, much of the money eventually came back to Spain by electronic transfer. It was laundered first through Zurich, then through a bank in the Cayman Islands.”

Alex picked up on the explanation.

“So whoever was brokering the deal had your agent killed, took his money, then sent the pietà in another direction. Perhaps to the Middle East. Or at least, that’s what we speculate.”

“You could put forth that theory,” Peter said.

“Do you put forth that thesis?” she asked.

“Most of it. Or variations on it. It’s the foundation of what I’m working with.”

“Bad way to do business,” she said, harkening back to those who had brokered the sale of the stolen art.

“Yes. It’s a very shortsighted way to do business,” said Chang with a certain iciness. “Selling the same stolen art work twice. Or at least twice. It leaves everyone unhappy and puts in motion some very unfortunate repercussions.”

“I can imagine,” Alex said.

“It was enough reason for me to fly to Switzerland to arrange for the agent’s body to be sent home to China,” he said. He paused very slightly. “While I was there, I picked up where the other agent left off and embarked myself on the trail of the bird and the transactions involving it. How’s your tuna?”