“Did you doubt it?”

“I had my moments of weakness. It’s age. One starts feeling uneasy, seeing the sharks circling. They call it composure.”

“I was going to send you a postcard.”

“Where from?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“I have a feeling this liner isn’t off to the Costa Brava.”

Alicia shook her head. “No. It’s going a bit further.”

“That’s what I thought. Seems like a very long ship to me. May I ask you a question?”

“So long as it has nothing to do with the journey’s end . . .”

“Is the Sempere family safe? Daniel, Bea, the granddad, Julián?”

“It is now.”

“And to what hell did you have to descend to make sure innocent people are able to live in peace, or at least in placid ignorance?”

“To none that wasn’t already on my path, Fermín.”

“Those cigarettes smell good. They look expensive. Of course. You’ve always had a taste for fine, beautiful things. My tastes lie more on the ordinary side, and I like to watch my pennies.”

“Would you like one?”

“Why not? In the absence of Sugus, one must find a way to feed the monkey. The fact is, I haven’t smoked a cigarette since the war, when they were made out of butts and peed-on grass. I’m sure the product has improved.”

Alicia lit a cigarette and handed it to Fermín. He admired the lipstick mark on the filter before taking a drag.

“Are you going to tell me what really happened?”

“Do you really want to know, Fermín?”

“I have a condition that prompts me to want to know the truth at all times. You can’t imagine the amount of distress this ailment brings to those of us who could otherwise live so content in a state of blissful ignorance.”

“It’s a very long story, and I have a boat to catch.”

“You must have a bit of time left to enlighten a poor ignorant fool before weighing anchor.”

“Are you sure you want me to tell you?”

“I’m like that.”

For almost an hour, Alicia told him everything she could remember, from her days in the orphanage and on the streets to when she began to work at the orders of Leandro Montalvo. She told him about her years under Leandro, about how she’d ended up believing she’d lost her soul along the way, never suspecting it was hidden inside her, and about her refusal to continue working for him. “Valls’s case was supposed to be my passport to freedom, my last assignment.”

“But there never is such a thing, is there?”

“No, of course not. You’re only free up to the point where you ignore the truth.”

Alicia told him about the meeting at the Gran Hotel Palace with Gil de Partera, and the assignment she and Captain Vargas, her imposed work partner, had been given: to help uncover the pieces of an investigation that was going nowhere.