Teresa Solana returned to Barcelona that same evening, just in time for the Sant Jordi celebrations on the Saturday. That meant we had to arrange to see her at the beginning of the following week to tell her about our foray into the world of alternative therapies, and this time we couldn’t make an excuse to avoid seeing her in our office. As our main problem was the smashed fake doors, Borja spoke to a carpenter who was prepared to measure up and install two new mahogany doors in the record time of three days. We’d agreed to meet the carpenter at eleven and, when I got to the office at a quarter to, Borja was already there.
“You’re looking very smart,” I said, surprised to see him in a new jacket and tie.
“I’ve arranged to see Mariona. We’re going for lunch at the Via Veneto.”
“Give her my best regards. And my thanks!”
“I’ve already done that a thousand times… By the way, what were you thinking of doing today?”
“Well, I thought I’d go home and spend the afternoon in bed reading a novel,” I replied with a smile, anticipating my pleasant afternoon at leisure.
“I told you not to bother coming in today!” he said, clicking his tongue. “I can deal with the carpenter by myself.”
“You know, it’s a nice day. I took my time walking here. Besides, it will soon be summer and I need to lose some weight or Montse will keep grumbling,” I replied, stroking my paunch.
The bell rang.
“He’s here already!” said Borja, walking towards the door.
However, the man who’d rung the bell didn’t look very much like a carpenter. He was wearing a dark suit, an elegant tie and a light-coloured shirt. I’d say he was in his early forties.
“Mr Borja Masdéu?” he asked in very correct Catalan, though with what sounded like an American accent.
“Yes, I am he,” answered my brother, unable to hide his surprise.
“I need to discuss an urgent matter with you. Can I come in?” And he strode inside and closed the door behind him, not waiting for Borja’s say-so.
“Hey…” said Borja. “Where do you think you are going?”
The stranger didn’t reply. He gave me the once-over and stared at Borja questioningly. Curiously, the spectacle of the smashed fake doors didn’t seem to worry him.
“And who might he be?” he asked, pointing his chin in my direction.
“This is my partner, Mr Martínez,” replied Borja. “And you are?…”
“A friend of Brian’s. Can we talk in front of him?” he asked, referring to me.
“That’s not an issue, my partner is about to leave, aren’t you, Eduard?”
“Not likely! I don’t intend leaving you all alone with this fellow!” And addressing the stranger, I added, “I know all about this. My partner wants to protect me, but I don’t intend on leaving. And watch it, I have a friend in this pocket!”
The man who had introduced himself as Brian’s friend looked at me and smiled.
“A friend?” he said, raising his eyebrows.
“A friend that shoots bullets,” I added, sticking my hand in a trouser pocket to make the threat seem more palpable.
“I understand. Very well then, why don’t you invite me to take a seat?” he said, swaggering his way to the sofa. It was obvious he wasn’t impressed by my threat.
Borja and I exchanged worried glances and sat down as well.
“It wasn’t easy to track you down, Mr Masdéu, as the individual in whom Brian confided,” the fellow kicked off, sprawling back on the settee as if he were in his own front room. “He told us it was a neighbour on the staircase, but never said which.”
“Oh, really?” commented Borja, deadpan.
“Mr Masdéu, let’s not play any more games. I’ve come to get what Brian gave you. It’s time to give it back to us.”
“Give it back to you? To who?” asked Borja, looking put out.
“To Brian’s friends,” he answered dryly.
“You mean the CIA?”
“So you know…” the stranger tried to conceal an almost imperceptible note of surprise that was translated in a very slight raising of his eyebrows. “Well, I hope you’ve not done anything foolish, Mr Masdéu, because that object is highly valuable. Now give me the keyring and I won’t bother you any more.”
“But I’ve already given it back!” protested Borja, nonplussed.
“Given it back? Given it back to whom? And when and where?”
All of a sudden the man’s face transformed into an unpleasant and threatening snarl.
“To a young woman by the name of Emily. She rang me on Tuesday afternoon and we arranged to see her the day after to hand over the packet. She said she worked for the Agency,” explained Borja.
“What did this woman look like?” he asked.
“English, redhead, freckled, thin… Young – twenty-seven or -eight. Not what you would call pretty,” said Borja.
“A redhead with freckles? Are you sure she wasn’t wearing a wig?”
“No. I think it was her own hair, because her eyebrows and lids were the same colour. And I can tell you the freckles were natural. To be candid, she didn’t seem like a spy the way she dressed and talked. But, of course, I supposed it was a disguise to put people off her scent.”
The man sighed.
“She’s not one of ours,” he said finally. “She must be working for another agency. I don’t understand. How could she know you had the keyring?”
“Well, you know, she never exactly used the word ‘keyring’,” said Borja, smiling nervously. “I told you she rang me and said I had something that… Shit!” Borja suddenly exclaimed, turning to me.
It took me a few seconds to grasp what had just occurred to my brother.
“So we’ve made a fucking mess of it yet again!” I muttered.
“It looks that way,” said Borja despondently.
“What do you mean?” asked the stranger, getting more and more agitated. “What are you two talking about?”
“We gave her the wrong thing… So that was why she mentioned a Charlie and not Brian.”
“Charlie? The wrong thing? Would you like to explain yourselves?” the fellow asked, about to hit the roof.
“It’s a long story,” said Borja, looking at his watch. “And we are expecting a visitor…”
“Well, they can wait. Tell me your story. Now,” he rapped imperiously. “Or your partner’s friend and mine will get to know each other,” he said, putting his hand in his pocket.
I started to sweat. It was clear the nightmare of Brian and his damned keyring wasn’t over yet. We thought we’d said goodbye to one of our problems and it now seemed we’d simply created another. Borja kept his cool and explained all the ins and outs of the statue, the kidnapping by Russian mafia who’d then been defeated in a gun battle with the mossos d’esquadra in the Poblenou film studio, how we’d discovered by chance the memory stick in Brian’s keyring, and the confusion created over the statue and the keyring. The stranger listened without interrupting, and when Borja had finished, he took a notebook from his pocket and asked for the name of the Dutch antiquarian who’d contracted him to bring the statue to Barcelona. Borja tried to resist revealing his name, but in the end he yielded to the aggressive attitude of that fellow who, unlike me, was most definitely carrying a real firearm in his pocket.
“Wait a minute,” I interjected. “You also owe us an explanation. After all, Brian was our neighbour and he almost sent us to our grave. We would be interested to know why.”
The man said nothing for a few seconds and just ruminated.
“Very well,” he said with a sigh. “I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. In any case, if you tell anyone else, I don’t think they will believe you.”
“We don’t intend repeating it to anyone. We just want to know what this is all about,” Borja assured him.
The fellow lolled back on the sofa and loosened his tie.
“You perhaps don’t realize that Barcelona has recently become, let’s say, a point of encounter for employees of the different intelligence agencies,” he began.
“You mean Barcelona is a den of spies,” Borja translated.
The fellow smiled, but didn’t deny that was true.
“There’s a group of agents who belong to different agencies and have become what we might call ‘friends’, and they have decided to save the world from corrupt governments and market speculation.”
“A praiseworthy aim,” I commented.
“Yes, it’s what happens when people are idle,” he continued scornfully, interpreting my remark as sarcastic, which it wasn’t. “People end up making the wrong friends and doing strange things.”
“So what happened?” asked Borja.
“Between them, they managed to collect a lot of confidential information that makes WikiLeaks look like child’s play. If this information became public knowledge, it could undermine a number of governments, including yours, and even the foundations of the capitalist system. They had information that was far too dangerous.”
“And Brian was one of these rebellious agents?”
“No, Brian had infiltrated the group and managed to get hold of the documents they were keeping encrypted on a memory stick.”
“But there must be more than one copy…” interjected Borja.
“For security reasons – that is, so no member of the group might be tempted to sell the information to the highest bidder – there was only one copy in a file locked into a very sophisticated program. It is impossible to copy it if you don’t know the code. Obviously, over time, computer experts and methods can break all manner of codes… But it takes time.”
“And how about the Russians who kidnapped us? What’s their role in all this?” asked Borja.
“The group’s fears weren’t unfounded. One of these dissident agents decided that if, rather than save the world altruistically, he sold on the information, he’d make enough money to outdo the author of Harry Potter. He was negotiating with the Russian mafia, and, somehow or other, they discovered you were the person entrusted with the memory stick.”
“This dissident agent wouldn’t by any chance be a smallish lady with sensual lips?” I asked, remembering the woman who’d accosted Borja in the street and given him that mobile.
“Could be,” the stranger replied in a tone that meant “Yes, it was her”. “Did she get into contact with you?”
“Yes, she did,” confirmed Borja. “She gave me a mobile and asked me to be at the ready, that they’d be in contact with me. I suppose she was referring to the Russians, but, as I knew nothing at that stage about what the keyring contained, I thought she must be referring to my contact in the matter of the statue.”
“Didn’t they ring you?”
“The mobile’s battery went dead, and, as it was such an old model, I couldn’t find a charger that worked…” Borja defended himself. “However, I still don’t understand why Brian gave me the memory stick using the ruse that I was holding on to a spare copy of the keys to his flat. He and I hardly knew each other.”
“That was precisely why. Brian knew they were after him, and, while he awaited instructions, he decided to put the memory stick in a safe place. That’s why he hid it in the keyring and gave it to you. What could be more harmless in a Mediterranean country than asking a neighbour to keep a copy of the key to your door?”
“Well, it almost put paid to us,” I said resentfully.
“I’m very sorry. I’m sure Brian didn’t think you’d be in any danger. Of course, he didn’t think he was up for the chop either…” he added, acknowledging the weakness of his argument.
“So then who did kill Brian? The spy with the sensual lips? The Russians? His dissident colleagues?” I asked.
“Not exactly. In fact, it was a mistake,” he said uneasily.
“A mistake?” I repeated.
“This goddam crisis has affected all of us. Budgets have been slashed all round, and that sometimes means we aren’t as coordinated as we ought to be in my department.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was another group of our agents working on the case that didn’t know Brian was an infiltrator acting as a triple agent. Unfortunately, they decided to neutralize him before he could share the information with them.”
“What a fuck-up!” I shouted.
“Well, Brian was no angel, let’s be clear about that. None of us is.”
“So what are you going to do now?” asked Borja defiantly. “Are you going to take your pistol out and blast us to kingdom come, as they did with Brian?”
The man stared at Borja as if he had a screw loose and sat up.
“Why should I?” he asked after a while. “Where would that get us? Besides, there’s no proof of any of what I’ve been telling you. And who knows, perhaps you will help us identify the English girl to whom you so rashly handed Brian’s keyring?” he said, getting up off the sofa and heading towards the door.
“Don’t count on us,” said Borja. “We have terrible memories.”
“We’ll see about that.”
When he was in the doorway, he turned and said with that perpetual smile of his, “Oh, by the way. I don’t know if this statue you told me about is very valuable, but it is extremely likely that someone, in some corner of the planet, is currently furious with you two guys.”