ALICIA AND VARGAS stepped into what felt like the main cabin in a luxury yacht. An aura of grey light hovered in the air. Leaden skies and tears of rain sealed the windows.
The office was oval in shape. A large desk of fine wood stood at its centre. Around it, most of the wall space was lined with spiral-ling bookshelves that seemed to form a bow as they rose towards the glass lantern at the top of the tower. Only one section was clear of books: it resembled a mural but was made up of dozens of small framed photographs packed together on the wall directly across from the desk. Alicia and Vargas walked over to examine it. All the images were of the same face and traced a photographic biography. A pale-faced girl with fair hair grew up before the eyes of the observer, from childhood to adolescence and first youth – the trail of a life in a hundred snapshots.
“It looks like the minister loves someone even more than he loves himself,” said Alicia.
Vargas stayed on another moment or two, gazing at the portrait gallery, while Alicia went over to Valls’s desk. She pulled out the admiral’s chair and sat down on it, then placed her hands on the sheet of leather covering the table and glanced around the room.
“What does the world look from there?” asked Vargas.
“Small.”
Alicia turned on the desk lamp. A warm, powdery light filled the room. She opened the first drawer in the desk and found a carved wooden box.
Vargas walked over and sat on a corner of the table. “If it’s a humidor, I want the first Montecristo,” he said.
Alicia opened the box. The inside was lined with blue velvet and seemed shaped to hold a revolver, but now it was empty. Vargas leaned over and stroked the edge of the box. He smelled his fingers, then nodded.
She pulled open the next drawer. It contained a collection of cases, all neatly lined up as if they were part of an exhibition. “They seem like little coffins,” she said.
“Show me the corpse,” said Vargas.
Alicia opened one of the cases. It contained a black-lacquered fountain pen with a white star on the tip of its cap. She pulled it out and smiled as she felt its weight, then pulled off the cap and slowly twisted one of the ends. A gold and platinum nib that seemed wrought by a cabal of wise men and goldsmiths shone in her hands.
“Is that the magic fountain pen of Fantômas?” asked Vargas.
“Almost. This is the first fountain pen produced by Montblanc. It dates back to 1905. A very expensive piece.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Leandro has one exactly like it.”
“It’s more your sort of thing.”
Alicia put the pen back in the case and closed the drawer. “I know. Leandro promised he’d give it to me the day I retired.”
“And that will be?”
“Soon.”
She tugged at the third and last drawer, but it was locked. She glanced at Vargas.
He shook his head. “If you want the key, go down and ask your friend Doña Mariana.”
“I wouldn’t like to bother her when she’s so busy with ‘Don Mauricio’s affairs’.”
“So?”
“I thought at headquarters you were given courses on breaking and entering.”
Vargas sighed. “Move out of the way.”
The policeman knelt down in front of the set of drawers and pulled out of his jacket an ivory handle, from which he then unfolded a double-edged serrated blade. “Don’t think you’re the only one who knows about collectors’ pieces. Pass me that paper knife.”
Alicia handed it to him, and he began to force the lock with the blade, at the same time using the paper knife to push at the gap between the drawer and the desk.
“Something tells me this isn’t the first time you’ve done this,” Alicia observed.
“Some people go to soccer games, and others force locks. You’ve got to have some hobby.”
The operation took a little over two minutes. With a metallic snap, the lock gave way and the paper knife sank into the drawer. Vargas pulled out the blade. There wasn’t a single scratch or dent on it.
“Tempered steel?” asked Alicia.
Vargas folded the knife neatly by pressing the tip of the blade on the floor, and put it back in the inside pocket of his jacket.
“One day you must let me play with that contraption,” said Alicia.
“If you behave yourself,” said Vargas as he opened the drawer.
They both looked expectantly inside. It was empty.
“Don’t tell me I’ve forced open a minister’s desk for nothing.”
Alicia didn’t reply. She knelt down next to Vargas and felt the inside of the drawer, rapping on the base and sides with her knuckles.
“Solid oak,” said the policeman. “They don’t make furniture like this any more.”
Alicia frowned, puzzled.
Vargas got to his feet. “We’re not going to find anything here. We’d do better going to headquarters to inspect Salgado’s letters.”
Alicia, who was still feeling the inside of the drawer and the base of the one above it, ignored him. There was a space of about three centimetres between the bottom of the second drawer and the end of the side panels of the one below.
“Help me get it out,” she said.
“Not content with breaking the lock, you now want to pull the whole desk to pieces,” Vargas muttered, signalling her to move out of the way and pulling out the drawer. “You see? Nothing.”
Alicia grabbed the drawer and turned it over. Stuck to the back panel of the base with a cross formed of two pieces of insulating tape was what looked like a book. Carefully pulling off the tape, she lifted out the volume.
Vargas felt the adhesive side of the tape. “It’s recent.”
Alicia set the book on the desk, sat down again, and pulled it towards the lamp. Vargas knelt beside her and looked at her with interest.
The volume contained roughly two hundred pages and was bound in black leather. There was no title on the cover or the spine. The only distinctive mark was a golden spiral embossed on the cover, creating a sort of optical illusion: when you held the book, you felt as if you were looking down a spiral staircase descending into the deep.
Alicia opened the book. The first three pages each bore an ink drawing of a chess piece with vaguely human features: a bishop, a pawn, and a queen with black eyes and vertical pupils, like those of a reptile. On the next page was the title of the book:
THE LABYRINTH OF THE SPIRITS VII
Ariadna and the Scarlet Prince
TEXT AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY VÍCTOR MATAIX
Beneath the title, and spilling over the page to its left, was an illustration in black ink, the image of an eerie city with buildings that had faces. Clouds slid through the rooftops like snakes. Bonfires and pyres of smoke rose from the streets, and a large blazing cross presided over the city from a mountaintop. Alicia could make out the landmarks of Barcelona – but it was a different Barcelona, a city that seemed to sketch out a nightmare seen through the eyes of a child. She turned over a few more pages, pausing at an illustration of what was undoubtedly the Temple of the Sagrada Familia. In the drawing the structure seemed to have come to life; the unfinished cathedral crept like a dragon, the four towers of the Nativity door rippling against sulphur-coloured skies, ending in heads that spewed out fire.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” asked Vargas.
Alicia shook her head slowly. For about two minutes she immersed herself in the strange universe projected by those pages. Images of a travelling circus populated by creatures who shunned the light; of an endless cemetery standing with its swarm of mausoleums and souls rising up to heaven, passing through clouds; of a ship stranded on a beach strewn with wreckage and a huge tide of corpses trapped beneath the water’s surface. And ruling over that ghostly Barcelona from the top of the cathedral’s lantern tower, gazing at the streets that swirled below, a silhouette clad in a tunic that fluttered in the wind, an angel’s face with wolfish eyes: the Scarlet Prince.
Alicia closed the book, intoxicated by the strange and perverse power it exuded. Only then did she realize that what she was holding in her hands was only a children’s storybook.