FOURTEEN

   WHEN you enter Madrid from the east, on the highway from Zaragoza and Torrejon de Ardoz, you watch the clean, rocky countryside with its occasional flocks of sheep give way first to blank-faced factories lining the roadway, and then to block upon block of dreary, high-rise apartments that make the heart sink. The air, especially in the hot summer and fall, turns gray-brown and choking; the noise of honking horns and backfiring motor scooters becomes nearly unbearable; and the traffic snarls reach extremities worthy of Rome or Paris. By the time you reach a downtown parking garage, the only thing that keeps you from turning around and driving right back out is the thought of going through all that traffic again.

And then you walk out onto the Paseo del Prado.

It is one of the world’s great avenues. Grand proportions, long rows of green trees, cool, bubbling fountains, and elegant, restful sidewalk cafes create a refuge of quiet and repose in the midst of the mind-jarring hubbub. As soon as Gideon saw it, his jaw muscles, which had knotted during the hot hour-and-a-half drive, relaxed.

He stopped at the first outdoor cafe they came to. "I have to have something cold right now, right here," he said to John.

"I’m for that," John said. "Anything to put off the Prado." They sat at a table in the shade of a tree and signaled for two beers. John leaned the back of his chair against the wide tree trunk.

"It’s beautiful here," Gideon said. "God, it’s great to be out."

"Come on, Doc, you make Torrejon sound like Devil’s Island."

"It is, when you only have five days in Spain and you spend three of them on an air base that looks, feels, and sounds like it’s in the middle of Oklahoma. And smells like it, too."

"You ever been to Oklahoma?"

"No."

"That’s what I thought."

They were both depressed, disappointed with three days of effort that had produced nothing. The old leads had evaporated, and there were no new ones. Following John’s suggestion, they had taken adjacent rooms in the BOQ, and John had remained inside, on his side of the thin wall, whenever Gideon had gone out, but no one had ever come. At other times, Gideon stayed in John’s room while John checked with Security on all the ID cards and temporary passes that had been issued during the previous two months; the only USOC’r that had been there before Gideon was a "local" business management instructor, an American woman who lived and taught in Spain. She had left several weeks ago at the end of the summer session.

The only exciting moment had come when Gideon, lurking on John’s side of the wall, had heard an intruder in his own room. Ignoring John’s instructions, he had dashed through the connecting bathroom and burst wildly in upon an elderly Spanish maid who had screamed and hit him with a pillow.

Eric Bozzini had come late Monday morning and had left at four in the afternoon. John had found out the time of his arrival, and Gideon met him with the rented car for the mile-and-a-half drive to the Officer’s Club for lunch. He also drove him back at the end of the day and spent several tedious hours with him in between. Eric was garrulous and good-humored, seemingly not in the least anxious to shake him off. When Gideon wasn’t with him, John shadowed him from a distance. The net result was a certainty that Eric had conducted nothing but Logistics business at Torrejon. What he might have done had they not been there, they had no way of knowing, but Gideon was more convinced than ever that Eric was not the mysterious USOC’r of the Russian messages.

American NATO bases are among the least exotic, most humdrum places in the world. After two days at Torrejon, Gideon, growing restive, had begun to wonder if he’d deluded himself into expecting a nonexistent adventure. Why was he so sure the things that had happened to him were not simply coincidences? Coincidences did happen, after all, and were they not, by definition, unlikely sets of causally unrelated events? With NSD cutting its ties to him, what made him think he’d still be of interest to the Russians, if indeed he ever had been? How did he know they hadn’t already gotten whatever it was they were after at Torrejon? After all he’d been through, he still didn’t know who or what he was looking for. Nor was he very clear on his wheres or whens. That left whys and hows; not so hot there either.

On Tuesday night, at their regular after-class meeting in John’s room, John had told him that he had been ordered back to Heidelberg and had to fly out of Torrejon late the following afternoon.

With less difficulty than he had anticipated, Gideon had convinced him that they should give up the hunt and go see something of Madrid on John’s final day. John had grumbled a bit about it being unsafe for Gideon off the base, but hadn’t taken long to agree to a trip to the Prado; he was as frustrated and bored as Gideon.

Now that they were finally out, the beer, the food, and the Paseo were all beginning to raise their spirits. With a try at jauntiness, John banged his empty glass on the table. "I’m still not ready for all those paintings. How about some more shrimp? And let’s split another bottle of beer."

Both men relaxed with their refreshed beers and let their eyes rove about the scene around them. Gideon looked with pleasure at the eighteenth-century colonnade of the Prado and at the long rows of narrow windows. Three weeks in Europe had hardly diminished his I-can’t-believe-I’m-really-here-seeing-all-these-wonderful-places attitude. John, however, was looking from face to face of diners and passersby with more than casual interest.

"Looking for anyone in particular?" Gideon asked.

"No," John replied, his eyes continuing to move. "Cop’s habit, I guess. Just seeing if there’s anyone watching us, or anybody else who looks like a cop or an agent. Anybody who doesn’t quite belong."

"I understand how you’d spot a cop—he’d have his back to a tree or a wall, the way you do—but how do you tell agents?"

"You learn. It’s part of the job."

"Are you finding anything?"

"Probably not," John said, smiling as he peeled a shrimp with his fingers. "There are a few people who don’t look Spanish. I was just wondering if one of them could be a Russian. The blond guy leaning against the fountain—the one studying the guidebook so hard."

Gideon sipped his beer and looked at the tall young man over the rim of his glass for a few moments. "Nope," he said.

"Nope, what?"

"Nope, he’s not a Russian."

"If you mean he’s reading a German guidebook, I can see that, too, but that doesn’t prove anything."

"Of course not; I was looking at him from an anthropometric perspective."

"Oh boy," John said.

"Oh boy, what?"

"Oh boy, I’m about to get bullshitted."

"How can you say that?" said Gideon, keeping his face straight only with an effort. "I was just going to point out that he’s a classic model of Nordic subrace characteristics: extremely dolicocephalic—cranial index of no more than seventy-five; leptorrhine nasal index. Why, look at the compressed alae and malars. Just look at those gonial angles!"

"See? I can always tell when it’s coming. So, if he’s not Russian, what is he?"

"Swedish, or maybe from the Norwegian uplands, or even northern Germany or England. But definitely not Russian."

"What would he look like if he was Russian?"

"If he were Russian, he might be one of several anthropomorphic types, or a composite. First, he—"

"I’m already sorry I asked," muttered John.

"—could be an East Baltic brachycephal, or he might be a Dinaric acrocephalic brachycephal, or an Armenoid—" Gideon couldn’t help bursting into laughter at John’s disgusted expression. "You’re not doubting me, are you?"

"Doc, I never know whether you’re kidding when you do that. Jesus Christ, acrybrachyphallic…"

Gideon finished his beer and wiped his lips with the cloth napkin; he was feeling much better. "Anyway," he said, "I’d still bet that guy’s a Scandinavian."

"But—"

"What’s the difference, anyway? You don’t have to be a Russian to be a Russian spy. And he could come from Scandinavian parents but be a Russian himself. No way to tell that from cranial conformation. But how can you be thinking about spies on a day like this in a place like this?" "That isn’t the point. You just finished telling me—"

"In any event, it’s moot." Gideon gestured with his head, and they both watched the tall young man walking away from them toward El Retiro Park, his head still buried in the guidebook.

John sighed in mock exasperation. "You know, you’re the only guy in the whole world I never win any arguments with."

"That’s because I am a Ph.D. and therefore know all kinds of smart stuff."

John nodded soberly and sighed again, like a man resigned to his fate. "I think I’m ready for the Prado now."

   JOHN was a good sport about it, but it was obvious that the endless galleries severely tested his endurance. He expressed considerably more appreciation for several of the women visitors than for any of the works of art, and was always a few steps ahead of Gideon, pulling him on to the next painting, the next room. Gideon quickly gave up on John’s art education and concentrated on enjoying the paintings himself.

After three hours in the museum, he had had enough. Promising the long-suffering John no more than a ten-minute detour, he led them back to the Velazquez rooms for one more look at Las Meninas. At the entrance to the Great Rotunda, Gideon stopped.

"Now there you are," he said, pointing at a hulking man with shaggy, dark hair who stood in front of a portrait of Philip IV mounted uneasily upon a horse. "That is an absolutely classic Armenoid composite. Acrocephalic, mesorrhine, cephalic index of at least eighty-five, everted lower lip—"

"Are you saying he’s Russian?"

"Maybe. More like Balkan—Rumanian, Yugoslavian, Bulgarian…."

John looked keenly at the man, watching him move slowly to a second portrait of the ungainly Philip and bend close to examine the ornate frame.

"Don’t get excited, John. What would an agent be doing here?"

"It’s not that. I just think you’re wrong. I say he’s English."

"English! That guy doesn’t have an English gene in his entire body. He’s pure Balkan."

"A famous professor once told me there’s no pure anything."

"So much for famous professors," Gideon said.

"How much do you want to bet?"

A disapproving guard approached with outstretched palms and frowning brow. "Senores…por favor…" They apologized and moved out of the entrance way.

"I’ll bet you dinner at the Zum Ritter when we get back to Heidelberg," Gideon said in a whisper.

"You’re on," John said. "I say he’s English; you say he’s Rumanian or something. What if he’s neither, or both?"

"If he’s not eastern European, or his family isn’t, I’ll buy. But how are we supposed to find out?"

"Let’s go ask him."

Gideon, shy with strangers, quailed slightly. "You can’t just walk up to him and ask him where he’s from."

"Why not? How about if we just say ‘good afternoon’ to him in English and see how he answers? I think that will settle it right there."

As they started forward, Gideon touched John’s arm. "But what the heck makes you so sure he’s an Englishman?"

John smiled broadly and tapped his temple with a forefinger. "Who else would carry a big black umbrella on a day like this?"

   GIDEON saw the craziness in his eyes as soon as the man turned toward them. John didn’t.

"Good afternoon," John said jauntily. "Lovely paintings, aren’t—"

With a cry that was part shriek, part snarl, the man flailed at John with the umbrella. Catching him off balance as he ducked, the blows struck him on the shoulder with surprisingly solid thuds, sending him reeling backwards and finally depositing him on the floor in a sitting position. A quick look at his face told Gideon he was more surprised than hurt. The man lifted the umbrella again.

The room seemed to explode away from the upraised umbrella. People ran for the exits or fell back against the walls. Several women screamed, and some of the men dropped to the floor. Gideon, emerging from the momentary paralysis into which he had been shocked, jumped for the umbrella, concerned almost as much for The Surrender at Breda, which hung inches from the waving metal ferrule, as for John. He managed to get his hand around the shaft and drag it sharply downwards, away from the canvas. The man, twisting as his arm was wrenched, stepped forward just as the umbrella came down, so that the point struck him on his left foot. Gideon heard a distinct, sharp click, and assumed that blow must have cracked a metatarsal.

The effect on the man was extraordinary. With a shuddering gasp, he sprang back a step and clasped the umbrella tightly to his body. His eyes, panicky and crazed an instant before, pierced Gideon with a look so laden with despair that Gideon instinctively stepped forward to help. For a second the big man stood there, his eyes rolling ceilingward, like the nearby St. Sebastian of Zurbaran come suddenly to life, embracing an umbrella instead of a cross in his twentieth-century Passion.

Gideon’s hesitant touch galvanized him, and with a choked cry the man brushed him aside and ran for the exit, scattering the people in his way. John, in the act of rising from the floor, launched himself at the rushing figure but couldn’t reach him, so that he hung outstretched and suspended for a long moment, like a stop-action frame of a diver, before he fell to the floor with a crash.

At the exit, the guard who had earlier asked them to be quiet made a half-hearted attempt to block the doorway, but then dropped back against the wall, ashen-faced, before the charging man’s onslaught. The man disappeared toward the exit at a full run.

As the room’s shocked stillness gave way to a sudden babble, Gideon went to John and helped him up.

"Are you all right?" Gideon asked.

"Except for my pride."

"There wasn’t anything you could do. It happened too fast. I was just standing there with my mouth open through most of it, myself."

"And all I did was keep falling on my face."

"Not always your face," Gideon said. "John, do you have any idea what that was about?"

John shrugged and winced as he rubbed his shoulder. "Damn heavy umbrella. No, I don’t know what it was about. We just picked a crazy Englishman to talk to, I guess."

"I suppose so," Gideon said, smiling. He paused while they looked each other in the eye. "Do you really believe that? That it was just another coincidence?"

"Of course not. What do you make of it?"

They walked from the Great Rotunda under the awestruck scrutiny of the crowd, quiet again as they watched them go. The guard at the door, still pale, hesitantly moved toward them as if he were about to speak, but thought better of it and let them pass unmolested.

"I really don’t know," Gideon said. "It’s one more crazy event that doesn’t seem to connect with anything else, but it must. Whatever it was, something about you scared that guy witless."

"Or something about you."

   BY the time they had turned off he highway at Torrejon, they had exhausted all the theories that were even remotely plausible, and Gideon was musing and abstracted as they walked through the base terminal toward John’s plane. "Did you see what happened when the umbrella punched him on the foot?" he said. "It was as if he was a big inflated doll and the point of the umbrella punctured him and let all the air out. Or that his big toe was his Achilles’ heel"— Gideon grimaced at his metaphor, but John didn’t notice— "and that hitting him there meant his end, and he knew it."

"Doc," John said gravely at the gate to his flight, "you’re trying to make sense of a lot of puzzling things that nobody’s been able to figure out, so I can’t blame you for wanting to fit them together. But you only know a little part of the espionage picture, and I don’t know much more. Don’t lead yourself into thinking that you’re the center of everything that’s going on, or that everyone’s after you, or that you can save the world."

Gideon grinned wryly. "You’ve just given a textbook description of the classic paranoiac psychosis: delusions of persecution, delusions of grandeur, and the construction of an elaborate, internally logical system to account for everything." He paused. "You could be right."