Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

The soft winter breeze that enters through the open windows of the bar on the Rambla del Raval carries a characteristic Barcelona port odor with it, a mix of the smell of overflowing sewers, rotten fish and urine. No one in the bar or its surroundings seems aware of the odor. Pavel has finished his second glass of whiskey on the rocks.

“I'm a locksmith,” he says, looking at the bartender and pointing at his empty glass again. “Bocanegra only uses me to open doors. Or to get into places he can't get into. What makes you think he'd explain his plans to me?”

Leon stares at him for a long moment. His expression no longer reminds one of passengers put out by inconvenient flight delays.

“Maybe Bocanegra is very happy with his new little friend the antiques dealer,” he says. “But that's not the way things work. You can't just put a new fish into the tank without the other fish getting nervous. Without making waves. This city is my fish tank. It belongs to me and the people I represent,” he adds, and although he doesn't move or turn toward the exit or make any motion that suggests he is about to leave, something in his tone and his general attitude seems to indicate that somehow he's no longer in the bar with Pavel. “And we're going to have to explain that to him. With your help, of course.”

Pavel drinks his third whiskey in one gulp and tries to imagine the implications of Leon showing up in his favorite bar of the Rambla del Raval. The implications of the fact that he knows where to find him and that he also knows about things like the paintings. Particularly the implications having to do with his own personal safety. As for Leon, he's no longer in the bar.

The landscape at dusk is truly Parisian. A landscape of palaces and eighteenth-century mansions in a popular middle-class Jewish neighborhood in the city center. Barely a mile north of the river. The landscape is Parisian in the way that certain overflow channels of clogged sewers are. Certain dogs that do their business in the middle of the sidewalk. Certain women that shout from the door of a café. The sun is just setting over the rooftops that look like forests of eighteenth-century chimneys. Iris Gonzalvo shivers inside her Adeline André red leather coat and takes a drag on her British cigarette while looking through the forged-iron fence of Mr. Travers's palace. On the other side of the fence, a dog is doing his business in the middle of the sidewalk. With his gaze lost on the horizon. The dog is tied with a leash to the hand of a woman with two other leashed dogs who is having a shouting match with someone in front of a café door. Iris Gonzalvo doesn't like to hear shouting in French. It makes her think of Eric Yanel. She takes a drag on her cigarette and releases a thick white cloud where the steam from her breath mixes with the smoke from her cigarette. Through the cloud she can see the horribly French face of the guard at the door. Becoming more and more defined as the smoke dissipates.

“This is your pass.” The guard with the horrible French face hands a magnetic card to Iris Gonzalvo through the window of the guard box. His horribly French face consists basically of a nose shaped like a pepper jammed into a pale sponge riddled with pockmarks. “But he'll have to wait here.” He makes a signal with his head in Aníbal Manta's direction, who is waiting with his enormous arms crossed over his chest about six feet behind Iris. “Those are the rules. You have to show the pass to anyone who asks to see it.”

Iris takes her pass and sticks it in her purse. Then she looks toward where the guard in the box is pointing. The guard box is at the entrance to the courtyard of Mr. Travers's Parisian palace, at the end of a porticoed entrance for cars separated from the street by a forged-iron railing. The palace's main entrance is at the other end of the courtyard, past an ornamental fountain. And beyond some arches under which someone is polishing the bodywork of a Rolls-Royce. A second guard is signaling to Iris Gonzalvo with his hand from the staircase of the main entrance. Although he is too far away for her to see him clearly, Iris has the impression that the second guard carries a submachine gun.

Iris looks at Aníbal Manta, whose face is covered in sweat in spite of the fact that he is only wearing a trench coat over his suit. The fact that Aníbal Manta sweats so much in weather situations that are not extreme could be due to his enormous body mass. Manta looks back at her with a grim expression. With a grim expression on his sweaty red face.

“He says you're going to have to wait here,” she tells him, and takes a pensive drag on her cigarette from behind her dark glasses. On the other side of the fence, the woman with three dogs is still shouting with someone invisible at the door to the café. One of her dogs has started to bark furiously at another dog that is passing by. The sound of the barks is added to the other shouts, barks and car horns of that Parisian winter evening. “Call Barcelona on the satellite line. Tell them that I want Mr. Giraut ready by the phone. He might have to authorize bank movements and that kind of thing.”

The second guard escorts Iris Gonzalvo through the main entrance to the palace's hallway. Her purse and red Adeline André coat are passed through one of those metal detectors with a conveyor belt like they have in airports. Then a woman with the same security company uniform runs a portable metal detector over the twists and turns of her body and pats down the parts where there could be something hidden. During this process, Iris is vaguely aware that her image is visible from different angles on the different monitors in the bank of monitors that one of the guards is watching attentively.

“Miss DeMink, I presume,” says a voice behind Iris Gonzalvo as she is putting her coat back on and gathering her personal effects that have come out on the other side of the metal detector.

Iris Gonzalvo turns. There are two men standing by a spiral staircase. She isn't sure how long they've been there. They could have just arrived or they could have been there the whole time. The spiral staircase is marble and has a giant balustrade and is covered with a dark red carpet. Iris has no idea which of the two men spoke to her. They are both simply there. Looking at her. The strangest thing, however, is not the fact that they're just standing there doing nothing at the foot of the staircase, nor that perhaps they've been there the whole time watching her. The strangest thing about the two men is that, in spite of not being identical, they give off the exact same feeling. They are both blond and suffer varying degrees of alopecia. They both have freckles on their faces, one more than the other. Neither of them wears glasses. They both could be any age between thirty-five and forty-five. They both look like that guy in C.S.I. That redheaded guy that solves all the cases. It's not that they look so much like him. They just give you the same feeling.

“Mr. Travers?” she says. Looking at each of them alternately.

The two blond, freckled, balding men smile at the same time. Something in their simultaneous smiles tells Iris that they are used to giving people the same puzzling effect. Almost as if their silent and vaguely theatrical appearance at the foot of the marble staircase had been meticulously staged to that effect. As if it were some sort of theater trick they were used to doing.

“We are Mr. Fleck and Mr. Downey,” says one of them, without specifying which of the two is speaking. Somehow, it seems to Iris Gonzalvo that the fact that the two men aren't related makes the situation even stranger. “You can say that we're Mr. Travers's legs. Our boss has problems traveling. So we travel for him. Although tonight our job is to make you as comfortable as possible.”