Noel Hynd - Midnight in Madrid

Mahoud’s body jumped at first like a great fish on a line, then went slack and buckled. He felt himself drop hard to the sidewalk. Distantly, as he lay in agony dying, he listened to the quiet footsteps of the two men walking away. And he wondered for a final time why the big explosion had never happened.

Several minutes later, Peter Chang moved quickly to a fourth location, accompanied by Wong and Ming. With little effort to conceal their faces, they arrived at the building where Jean-Claude lived in a rambling, cluttered four-room apartment.

Chang and Wong took the front stairs and Ming went to the rear where, at a synchronized moment, he hoisted himself up to a second floor window via a gutter pipe from the roof.

Here was the moment Peter had been waiting for. He wanted to savor it. Jean-Claude had been the instigator of the events that had left Yuan dead, and Chang had special plans for Jean-Claude.

They would ambush Jean-Claude in his home. But killing him swiftly would be too good. They would tie him and sit him down. Chang would show him a picture of Lee Yuan, who had died in a cold, smoky mountain castle in Switzerland.

In Peter’s mind, Jean-Claude would shake his head and deny knowledge of any man named Yuan.

Chang, as it played out in his mind, would become animated.

“This man’s name was Hun Sung Yuan. We knew him as Lee Yuan,” he would explain evenly. “Hun Sung Yuan was my friend. He was my mentor. He trained me when I entered the service of my government.”

Jean-Claude would listen in terror.

“Yuan was a boy during the Great Leap Forward,” Peter would explain. “He was five years old, and his family was sent to camps in the countryside for reeducation. Yuan’s parents were practicing Christians during the Cultural Revolution. Practicing religion was considered social turmoil. So they were held in a Beijing detention center for nearly a year as the Red Guard considered what charges to bring. Then Yuan’s parents were sent to a camp in the freezing northeast of China for reeducation instead. Yuan was sent to an orphanage. As an adult, he didn’t practice religion, but he had an interest in it. Christian items that may have been touched by a saint. Yuan was a fine man, but he had his superstitions. Which was his right.”

Jean-Claude would continue to stare. Maybe he would kick. Maybe he would protest. But he would be gagged with duct tape, so his protests would find no ears.

“As years went by,” Chang would explain, “Mr. Yuan became prosperous. And he wished to possess certain items. One was The Pieta of Malta. Mr. Yuan felt that he purchased the item very fairly. But through you and your people, it was not delivered to him. Instead, when he came to retrieve it, your associates murdered him. Do you think that was a wise thing to do?”

Jean-Claude, rethinking his position on recent events, would shake his head.

“You’re right,” Chang said. “It was not a wise thing to do.”

And then Chang would take out a long knife from under his suit jacket, a very sharp one normally used for trimming meat. He would let Jean-Claude stare at it with wide eyes while Ming and Wong approvingly watched their new master.

Then Chang would reach slowly-because he wished to draw it out-to Jean-Claude’s left ear. And with a quick powerful slashing motion he would thrust the knife into his victim’s neck and slash hard from left to right, cutting the man’s throat.

Then he would step back quickly and watch Jean-Claude begin to die in agony, even though no one had been gracious enough to be with Yuan in his final minutes. And then Peter would wash the knife off and take it with him. It would take a man about fifteen minutes to bleed to death after such an incident. And Peter needed to wrap things up and get out of the country quickly.

So there was no time to waste.

Except, this was only how Peter had planned it from the start.

In the final execution, it didn’t go that way.

When Peter, Ming, and Wong broke into Jean-Claude’s home, their victim wasn’t there.

That changed everything.

J ean-Claude was elsewhere, putting the final touches on the charge of explosives.

Working alone in the narrow, cramped chamber under the American Embassy, he braced his flashlight between an old brick and a stone. Working with the low beam from the flashlight, he spread before him the ten different detonators from the pack he had purchased.

He was taking no chances. He would use all of them. He only needed one to trigger the ten kilos of explosives he had spread in separate packets around the chamber. If just one ignited, chances are much of the block would implode.

On the first Number Ten Delay switch, Jean-Claude used a pair of pliers to crush the end of a thin copper tube containing acid. There was no need to crush the end of the tube completely flat. All he needed to do was crush it sufficiently to break the glass vial, thereby releasing the liquid within. Then he removed and discarded the safety pin holding back the striker. Finally, he inserted the other end of the pencil detonator into a brick of explosives. His charges were good for twenty-four hours, meaning they would blow the next night around midnight, give or take.

He repeated the procedure four more times. He then drew back and fought for his breath. The air was disappearing in this cramped hole. And he was sweating profusely. It occurred to him that if there were some sort of freak accident with the acid leaking too quickly into the explosives, he would be blown into oblivion. So, twenty-four-hour timer or not, it was wise to move as quickly as possible.

There! Everything was set!

Then something clattered in the small adjoining chamber. Jean-Claude froze.

“What the-?”

It wasn’t that unusual for rocks or pieces of concrete to crumble and fall, or for a rat to disturb something. But this sounded different. It sounded like a tool, a flashlight or something, dropping.

His eyes went to the portal that led to the next chamber. He saw a flicker of a light waving. Good God, he was not alone!

What the-!

Then he heard something human. A cough! The cough of a woman!

He left the detonators where they were, set to blast away within twenty-four hours. Angrily, suspiciously, he drew his gun from his belt.

Whoever was in the next chamber sounded as if she was getting to her feet after somehow burrowing in.

Well, he’d killed that busybody woman who had worked for the Metro, and he would kill again.

Jean-Claude checked his pistol and readied it for a quick discharge. It was completely loaded. Whoever was there, he would cut them in half, no questions asked.

He held his pistol aloft and went to the passageway where he could ambush his intruder.

S omewhere in the back of her mind, Peter’s words floated like a ghost.

A philosopher with a gun…

Well, at least I’m a philosopher…

On her feet in these strange chambers under the embassy, she thought her heart was going to burst from her chest. She drew her own weapon.

…if you could have murdered Hitler and Stalin and avoided World War II, would that have-?

The shadows shifted in the portal to the adjoining chamber, and she pointed her weapon in that direction. Out of instinct, she identified herself. “Hello? Hello? Police?!” she said.

But the frame of a man quickly bolted into view in the doorway. The gunman gave her less than a second. She could see arms and legs and a head, a trim body and a half-crouch. One of the arms was extended and swung a gun in her direction, and everything she had ever learned at the target ranges in California and Washington kicked sharply into gear, and it was surely a beneficent God that had trained her to be such a good shot.