A few minutes later they were traveling silently through the streets of Madrid in the rain. Sitting on the back seat of the black Packard, Alicia looked up at the profiles of domes and statues along the cornices of Gran Vía. Angel-driven chariots and stone sentinels kept watch from above. It looked to her as if the lead-gray skies had disgorged a snaking reef of colossal, somber buildings, all piled up against each other: petrified creatures that had swallowed entire cities. At her feet, the canopies of grand theaters and the fronts of cafés and fancy shops gleamed beneath the rain. Closer to the ground, people were just tiny sketches with vapor coming out of their mouths, walking past under a swarm of umbrellas. On days such as this, Alicia thought, one began to agree with good old Maura and believe that the dark shadows of the Hispania stretched right across the country, from one end to the other, without letting in a single chink of light.

3

“Tell me about this new operative you’re proposing. Gris, did you say?”

“Alicia Gris.”

“Alicia? A woman?”

“Is that a problem?”

“I don’t know. I’ve heard about her more than once, but always as Gris. I’d no idea she was a woman. Some may question the choice.”

“Your superiors?”

“Our superiors, Leandro. We can’t allow another mistake like the Lomana one. They’re getting nervous in El Pardo.”

“With all due respect, the only mistake was that they didn’t explain clearly from the start why they needed someone from my unit. Had I known what it was about, I would have chosen another candidate. That was not a task for Ricardo Lomana.”

“I don’t set the rules, nor do I control the information. It all comes from above.”

“I realize that.”

“Tell me about Gris.”

“Señorita Gris is twenty-nine and has been working for me for twelve years. She’s a war orphan. She lost her parents when she was eight. She was brought up in the Patronato Ribas, a Barcelona orphanage, until she was thrown out when she was fifteen for disciplinary reasons. For a couple of years she took to living on the streets, working for a black marketeer and second-rate criminal called Baltasar Ruano, who ran a gang of teenage thieves, until the Civil Guard got their hands on him and he was executed, like so many others, in Campo de la Bota.”

“I hear that she’s—”

“That’s not a problem. She can manage on her own, and I can assure you she knows how to defend herself. It’s a wound she sustained in the war, during the Barcelona bombings. It’s never been an obstacle when it comes to performing her duty. Alicia Gris is the best agent I’ve recruited in my twenty years of service.”

“Then why hasn’t she turned up when she was expected?”

“I understand your frustration and apologize once again. Alicia can be somewhat unruly at times, but so are almost all exceptional agents in this line of work. A month ago we had a routine disagreement about a case she was working on. I suspended her temporarily without pay. Not to turn up at her appointment today is her way of saying she’s still annoyed with me.”