“A paint store, the kind for artists, might have it. You go in and ask for paint thinners. Get every kind they have. Try that first. If you pass by a dry cleaner, try them too. Say you spilled ink on a couch and you’ll pay for some of the stuff they use for ink stains.”

“I’m getting hungry,” said Ruiz.

“Buy something to eat on the way, then. I can’t go out like this and shop for thinners, and the smells are making me sick, so I couldn’t eat anyway. Just get me something that will take the ink off. We’ve got to fix this now.”

Ruiz picked up his jacket off the chair and went down the hall to the narrow, cagelike elevator. When Russell heard the elevator’s grating slide to the side to admit Ruiz, he rinsed his face again and looked in the mirror. His face felt hot, that if the blue were removed, it would be glowing.

The trap had sprung when he had unlatched the briefcase. One spring mechanism had snapped the briefcase open, and the other had pushed the circular bottom of an ink-filled cylinder upward like a piston. It had been sealed at the top with only a layer of wax paper. Ink had shot out onto his face and chest.

Fiendish. What kind of person thought that way? The trap had required that Fargo figure out in advance that somebody was going to take his briefcase. Russell was sure he hadn’t been spotted. Had Ruiz made some stupid mistake? Or did Fargo always walk around in foreign cities carrying a booby trap?

Russell rubbed some cold cream all over his face and neck, desperate to soothe his burning skin. He dialed his satellite phone.

“Hello,” said Sarah Allersby.

“It’s me,” he said. “We went to San Diego and then followed them to the airport. They flew to Spain. That’s where I’m calling from—Valladolid.”

“What are they doing there?”

“We’ve been watching them for a few days. At first, all they did was go sightseeing in the daytime and out to expensive restaurants every night.”

“By now, they must have hit nearly all of them,” Sarah Allersby said.

“Pretty near. For eight days, they’ve been going to the University of Valladolid every day. They seem to be really interested in all the old buildings in town. But they’ve been doing some sort of research.”

“I’m starting to feel uncomfortable. Reassure me. What are they researching?”

“They go to the History Library and look at old books. Everywhere she goes, she has a big leather purse. After a couple of days, he started carrying a briefcase. They had to leave them with the librarian when they got there and pick them up when they left.”

“What was in the cases?”