| |
The hospital was an authentic marvel of modern architecture. The well-defined spaces and its minimalism provided a sense of protective freedom, which was amplified by the white color that dominated everything. Chacon reminded of a summer that he had spent in Mykonos rather than a clinic.
On the contrary of the public hospitals, here you did not see sick people in the corridors nor smelled to disinfectant and decomposition, but perfectly hidden air fresheners were in charge to sprinkle a fresh pine fragrance that hid all those disagreeable effluvia, proper to the sanatoriums.
Hermenegildo was watching a small flat-screen television attached to the wall when Chacón arrived.
—Paco hell of a fright! —he shouted animatedly. Have you seen what the news’ programs say?
—No, I've been quite busy.
—Those idiots are scandalized— though his face was ashen gray, his eyes sparkled with enthusiasm—. As if it caught them by surprise!
Chacon said nothing and just nodded. Seeing his partner in that room —no matter how modernist and expensive it was— had touched something deep in his soul. He thought it could be camaraderie, but he conceded to himself that it was only a sign of the fear he felt that his time would come too. Chacón was a street man, an action man, and when the time came to abandon that to be lying in a hospital watching soap operas, he swore to himself to blow the top of his brains with his revolver.
—But we knew it, right? We knew it!
He was euphoric but noticing that Chacón was not following him with the same effusiveness, he turned off the TV with the remote control and stood up.
—What's up dude?
—Herme, I’ve just arrived from the meeting...
—I knew it! —he shouted angrily—. I should not have let you go alone!
He gave a small jump and sat on the edge of the bed.
—What's wrong, have you been treated badly? —he asked in disgust—. If so, those bastards...
—I have the list— he cut short—. But they want the collection before the end of the week.
—Good— he nodded satisfied—. This is how it was agreed, everything goes exactly as we had planned.
—Not all.
He lowered his head, feeling ashamed.
—Anabel is dead, Mauro too and I don’t have the memory stick.
His friend remained silent for so long that Chacon thought something had happened again. There was a grave look on his face, lost in the mists of a person immersed in deep thoughts in an intense form.
—That doesn’t change anything— he conceded cheerfully—. Everything is under way and you cannot stop.
—I know— he prepared to release the bomb—. I also found the album.
—The one from the Fortuny?
—Yes— that was hard for him—. But they also snatched it from me.
Hermenegildo turned around and began to remove his pajamas with the anagram of the hospital.
—What are you doing?
—I'm out of here— he pulled his clothes out of a closet and began to dress up—. It was only angina pectoris, I feel much better. Besides, right at this moment I need more than ever to be in the front line of battle.
Chacon felt something close to pride for his friend.
—Come on, we must find that album and the pencils— said Hermenegildo, slapping Chacón's shoulder—. This goes on, with or without the album.
****
Tony Fumo woke up when the cell phone in his back pocket began tickling his ass. At first, he did not know where he was, but as his eyes adjusted to the brightness of the sunlight coming through the window, he became aware of what had happened. He tried to move, but he was tied hand and foot to a chair. It was incredible to him that some rookies had left him out of combat, a chair! No one —except in the movies— left someone tied to a chair. To a stove, a radiator or even a handrail maybe, but a chair! They had not even registered him, because although they had taken the Iphone, he still had the other cell phone.
He rose to his feet, furious, and moved as straight as the awkward position allowed him to the staircase that led up to the second floor. Once there he planted himself firmly, and with a powerful hip turn he hit the chair against the plaster balustrade. On the fourth attempt a shower of splinters flew through the room and Fumo was freed from his binding. His face was burning, and he did not know if it was for the bruises or for the shame. The cell phone rang again, and Fumo took it reluctantly.
—Pronto, questo che accade? —when he was obfuscated he could not help speaking in Italian—. What happens?
He listened in silence for almost a minute, his face congested with shock and rage, and responded by biting his lip.
—I don’t have it yet. Call back in twelve hours.
He hung up and left the cabin with a blind rage that invaded up to the last cell of his being. Nobody hit Tony Fumo, and less in the face.
****
It had been five hours since he woke up in the cabin. He was sitting behind the wheel of a Volkswagen Sirocco —one of those cars for youngsters that he detested so much for their lack of elegance— and that was the first car that had stopped to pick him up, but he could not waste any more time. The owner —a teenager with a branded shirt— "rested" in the trunk now, with a broken neck and a grimace of idiocy drawn forever on his face.
He had been sitting there for fifteen minutes trying to calm down, not making childhood mistakes due to anxiety, so he was still waiting for an answer. It arrived five minutes later, when a message on his Blackberry told him he was in the right place.
Tony was a professional and keeping track of his goals was as simple as preparing a good pasta dish; it was easy, but you had to know how to do it. Fumo had several programs that allowed to connect to a few servers and find out where credit cards and other identifiers had been used for the last time, but for that he must have the numbers of these documents, something he had forgotten to write down. He scolded himself for it, but he did not get nervous. He decided to keep track of the Mercedes. He provided his GPS tracking number, license plate and password to the tracking system of his phone and obtained an address. It seemed incredible to him that some guys who had not even realized that the car had a fleet tracking device built into the dashboard —like those used by rental companies— would have left him out of the game. He looked once more at the rearview mirror, and a new wave of rage rose to the root of his hair. That guy had spoiled a perfect face like his, chiseled and modeled with creams and good nutrition, and Tony was willing to do the same with his. What he was not sure was what he was going to do with the girl. He had noticed when they were in the kitchen that she wanted him —things that Tony did not miss— and he also wanted to possess her. He understood what he had done, because a woman when she is afraid does irrational things and, for that reason, if she decided to put herself on his side, he might forgive her. It was even possible that they both tortured this big man together and then made love wildly while the guy's body was still hot. He suffered a violent erection and decided to go to work before losing more time.
He parked the Sirocco by the curb and waited by the dumpy building until the phone rang.
****
As Proxy was typing like a madman on the laptop, a list of numbers ran through the screen at full speed. Everyone except the boy held their breath product of stress. At that very moment, Proxy gave a triumphant cry.
—That's it! —he turned the screen so that the others could see it—. The account is of a Swiss bank that was intervened in 1965. Shortly after, it reformed its statutes and became one of the benchmarks of Swiss banking.
—Can you see how much money it has? —Juandi's eyes sparkled.
—Piece of cake— Proxy was enjoying his minute of glory. The code was in another of the pen drives— he typed and left the screen again in front of the others—. There it is.
The three pounced on the screen and read the number aloud.
—Fuck, twenty million! —the giant exclaimed.
—And the other accounts? —Jonás asked.
Proxy watched him for a long time, not understanding what he meant.
—What other accounts? this is the only account here.
—That cannot be— Jonás had gone livid—. The pen drives are full of numbers, and it is not possible that all this mess is for that single account.
—Jonás, that's twenty million! —his friend exclaimed—. For that money many people would be kill.
—You don’t understand— Jonás began to walk around the room more and more nervous—. My grandfather ruined his life because of this; that Billy the kid has killed many people, including my father and that Argentine intelligence woman for that memory stick. They burned the printing press, they tried to assassinate me and you, besides...
—Well, it's very clear— Proxy continued—. All international accounts need a SWIFT or IBAN code for national accounts. In all these pen drives, only one account appears with the abbreviation ABN of a Swiss bank and the respective 8 numbers of the SWIFT. In addition, the other series of numbers are separated by periods, delimiting their extension every three or four figures. It is clear, they are not bank accounts.
Jonás stumbled and needed to sit on one of the sofas. Raquel and Juandi came to his aid. A bloodstain the size of a five-cent coin appeared in the bottom of his shirt.
—For God’s sake Jonás, you must calm down! —Raquel demanded, taking his temperature with her hand—. You are burning!
—Raquel, I tell you that it isn’t possible...
—Em... sorry, but I think there's something else here.
—What do you mean? —Jonás was interested, he had got back to his feet.
—I had overlooked why no more SWIFT codes appeared, but I've checked...
—To the point, nerd— cut Juandi.
—These transfers were made in 1974— he explained‼6; at that time Switzerland had become the main financial reference...
—And there goes on the dude with the explanations— Juandi replied impatiently.
—Seriously Raquel, I thought you had a better taste— the young man replied—. The fact is that these accounts are Raiffeisen, that is, the cooperative type— he paused to make sure they followed him until then—. What I mean is that these types of accounts are for partners, and have up to a limit of 300 nominative with the same SWIFT code
—And that means?
Proxy turned to them after typing a series of numbers and uncovered the screen.
—I mean, that with this code there are fifty different accounts— he swallowed—. All of them with the same amount of twenty million.
****
As they tried to assimilate what Proxy had told them, Jonah began to feel his vision blur. Cottony clouds jumped from one place to another when he stared anywhere, and on more than one occasion he found himself about to vomit. He looked in his backpack for the plastic box where he had stored Mr. Harrison's cocktail of pills and touched the rough surface of a leather plate with his hand. Suddenly he remembered the album —which he had not had time to inspect —and for which Chacon had been so interested. He did not understand the importance of an album of photographs in a matter like that, in which there were about a hundred million hidden in accounts abroad, neither that Otto had left it to his son with the pen drive. He pulled it out and opened it randomly in the middle of the living room table. At first, he could not focus well on those images in sepia, but something caught his attention at first sight. This was not an ordinary album —like many others he had seen— but it was more like a kind of scrapbook. The pages were made of cardboard and contained slots so that the corners of the photographs were introduced as a fastening. Jonás observed that under each portrait someone had written in a tight letter a comment as an explanation. Next to each image they had written down a numerical series that Jonás could not understand. Juandi snatched the album and watched it carefully
—What are these numbers? —he asked.
Proxy left his place in front of the computer and approached, trying to see something over Juandi's shoulder.
—I suppose that some sort of classification for the photographs— Raquel said —. It is usually done when they are going to be included in a publication...
—Nothing of that— cut Proxy, that returned to its place in front of the computer and asked to Juandi to approach the album to him—. For a while I was... let's say, working for a dealer, and I'm familiar with some types of cataloging ...
—What are you talking about? —Juandi said, not understanding where the young man was going.
—What I mean is that these are not numbers to classify photographs, but cataloging records of an art collection, and judging by the amount there is, of a very important one.
—I do not understand anything.
—Can you see? —he showed on the computer—. At first, I thought there were more hidden accounts, as they appeared to me an endless list of numbers that had no SWIFT code or any sense, but that sounded to me in some way —he typed and left in view a long row of numbers separated by dashes—. In the first place the number according to object is written down, 700 for the tables, 300 for ceramics, as if it was a classification code for a library.
He pointed to what he was explaining on the screen.
—Then the year when the work its finished and its file number and cataloging.
—But this does not make sense— Jonás was very pale—. Why would those guys want an art collection?
—Holy Mother, you are not the smartest of the class eh! —the young man scoffed, but before Juandi's menacing look he turned his eyes to the screen—. I don’t know the others, but here is a series that is very well known, I know because I looked for it many times for my boss, and that is the one of the Fortuny Album.
—The Fortuny album?
—That’s right. It is an album of drawings of the missing Bosch i Catarineu’s collection.
Proxy quickly typed again, and on the screen appeared the image of an old album. Next to it was one of the drawings.
—An anonymous returned 24 of the drawings, but the other 105 of the collection are still missing. At this time, that album is valued at more than 25 million, but surely an auction would increase its price.
Jonás went to the screen and observed the beautiful drawing of the sheet while Rachel continued to watch the photograph of the album, in which a pretty lady smiled at the camera without paying attention to the image of the computer. Instinctively he removed the protective plastic and released the snapshot from one of its corners. Encased behind it was a beautiful drawing of a half-naked woman, which was exactly, the same that Proxy had on the computer screen.