“Something like that.”

Alicia and Vargas followed Brians down the underground avenue, the lines of columns on either side shielding them from view. The lawyer walked on almost to the end, not showing any interest in the shops bordering the avenue.

“Perhaps he’s allergic to sunlight,” suggested Vargas.

Brians walked straight past the Catalan Railways’ ticket office and continued down the vast gallery. Only then did it become obvious where he was heading.

The Avenida de la Luz Cinema loomed ahead, a somber fantasy marooned in that strange subterranean Barcelona. Its amusement-park lights and old posters for rereleases had been tempting the tunnel creatures—sacked office clerks, truant schoolchildren, and sleazy pimps—to its matinees since shortly after the civil war. Brians walked up to the ticket office and bought a ticket.

“Don’t tell me our lawyer goes to the cinema halfway through the morning,” said Vargas.

At the entrance, the usher opened the door for Brians, and he disappeared under the canopy announcing that week’s program: a double bill with The Third Man and The Stranger. A somewhat evil-looking Orson Welles bearing an enigmatic smile looked down from a poster, framed by flickering lightbulbs.

“At least he has good taste,” Alicia said.

As Vargas and Alicia went through the velvet curtains sealing the entrance, they were hit by an aroma of old cinema and unspeakable sadness. The projector’s beam cut through a thick cloud that seemed to have been trapped for decades over the stalls. There were only three or four people in the entire cinema. Rows of empty seats sloped down to the screen, where a treacherous Harry Lime ran through the phantasmagoria of Vienna’s sewer tunnels, in a series of spectral images that seemed, to Alicia, straight out of Víctor Mataix’s book.

“Where is he?” whispered Vargas in her ear.

She pointed toward the bottom of the stalls. Brians had taken a seat in the fourth row. They moved down the side passage, where a row of seats was backed up against the wall, as on an underground train. Halfway down, Alicia slipped into one of the rows, sitting in the middle.

Vargas sat down beside her. “Have you seen this film?”

Alicia nodded. She’d seen it at least six times and knew the dialogue by heart.

“What’s it about?”

“Penicillin. Keep quiet.”

The wait turned out to be shorter than they thought. The film was still running when Alicia, glancing over her shoulder, saw a figure advancing down the side aisle. She nudged Vargas, who was by now utterly engrossed in the film.

The stranger wore a dark coat and carried a hat in his hand. Alicia clenched her fists. The visitor stopped by the row where the lawyer was sitting, and stood staring calmly at the screen. A moment later he stepped into the row just behind Brians, sitting in a seat diagonally behind the lawyer.

“Knight’s move,” whispered Vargas.

For the next couple of minutes the lawyer showed no sign of having noticed the presence of the stranger, nor did the stranger seem to communicate with him in any way. Vargas looked at Alicia skeptically. Even she began to think that perhaps it was a simple coincidence—two strangers in a cinema with no more connection than a nearsightedness that made them prefer to sit in the front rows. It was only when the sound of gunshots filled the hall, ending the thousand lives of the evil Harry Lime, that the stranger leaned toward the seat in front of him, and Brians turned slightly. The sound track took away his words, and all Alicia was able to establish was that the lawyer had spoken a couple of sentences and given the stranger a piece of paper. Afterward, ignoring one another, they settled back in their seats and continued watching the film.