Two men walked out of Terminal B at Barcelona airport carrying only hand luggage and joined the queue for a taxi. The names in their Italian passports were Verrochio and Perini, and they were almost identical in appearance: tall and well-built, wearing dark suits, sunglasses with impenetrable black lenses shielding their eyes. When they reached the head of the line, they climbed into a black and yellow Mercedes cab and, as the driver pulled away from the rank, Perini gave him an address on the western edge of the city in heavily accented but fluent Spanish.
When they arrived at their destination, Perini leaned forward. “Wait here, please,” he said. “I’ll be about ten minutes, then we need to go into Barcelona itself.”
Verrochio stayed in the car while Perini got out, walked a short distance down the street and entered the foyer of an apartment building. He checked a small piece of paper on which a few numbers were written, then pressed one of the buttons on the intercom. Lights flared on and he stared unblinking into the lens of a camera. A couple of seconds later the electric lock buzzed, and he pushed open the door and walked inside.
Perini took the elevator to the seventh floor, walked down a short corridor and knocked on a door. He heard the sound of movement inside and was aware of an unseen eye assessing him through the security peephole. The door opened and he found himself face-to-face with a swarthy, heavily built man wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
“Tony sent me,” Perini said, in Italian, and the man beckoned him inside, locking the door behind him.
The man led the way into one of the bedrooms and opened a built-in wardrobe. He pulled out two black leather briefcases and placed them both on the bed.
“I can offer you Walthers or Glocks,” he said, snapping open the locks on both cases.
Perini bent down to look at them. In one were two Walther PPK semiautomatic pistols in nine-millimeter, and in the other a pair of Glock 17s in the same caliber. Both cases also contained one spare magazine for each pistol, two boxes of fifty rounds of Parabellum ammunition and a couple of shoulder holsters.
Perini inspected the four pistols carefully, then replaced them in the briefcases.
“I’ll take the Glocks,” he said, finally.
“No problem. You’ll need them for one day, I was told?”
“One day, perhaps two,” Perini agreed.
“Is there sufficient ammunition?”
“More than enough.”
“Good. Call me on this number when you want to return them.” The man handed over a slip of paper.
Perini slipped it into his wallet. Then he snapped the locks shut on the briefcase containing the Glocks, shook the man’s hand and left the apartment.
“Take us to the Plac?a Mossèn Jacint Verdaguer,” he instructed the taxi driver, as he leaned back in his seat.
The driver nodded. In a few minutes the vehicle was heading for the center of the city on the Avinguda Diagonal, the major road that divides Barcelona in two.
On arrival at the plac?a, Perini paid the driver, including a modest tip, and the two men climbed out and stood waiting on the pavement until the taxi vanished into the stream of fast-moving traffic.
Verrochio pulled out a street map of Barcelona.
“We need to get over there,” Verrochio said, pointing. They waited at the pedestrian crossing for the lights to change, then walked across the Diagonal and headed south down the Passeig de Sant Joan, before turning right onto the Carrer de Valencia.
“That’ll do,” Perini said, as they reached the junction with the Carrer de Pau Claris. Near the corner was a street café with chairs and tables outside. They stopped and took seats that offered them a clear view of the entrance of the Museu Egipti on the opposite side of the road.
When the waiter appeared, Verrochio practiced his Catalan by ordering two cafe’s amb llet and a selection of pastries, and settled down for what was probably going to be a long wait.
Once their coffees and food had been served, Perini nodded to his companion. “You go first.”
Verrochio walked through the café to the toilet, carrying the briefcase, and returned in about five minutes. Ten minutes or so later, Perini did exactly the same thing. Anyone looking closely may have noticed that the briefcase appeared to be lighter once Perini sat down again at the table. This was because it was now almost empty, containing only forty-odd rounds of nine-millimeter ammunition. The two Glock pistols and loaded spare magazines were tucked in the shoulder holsters the two men were now wearing under their light jackets.
“This could be a complete waste of time, you know,” Verrochio said, his eyes invisible behind his designer shades. “They might never turn up.”
“On the other hand, they might arrive in the next ten minutes, so look sharp,” Perini replied.
But after an hour, the strain of watching, with nothing to show for it, was beginning to tell on both of them.
“I’ll read for an hour while you watch, then we’ll change over, OK?” Perini said. “And let’s grab another drink next time that waiter comes by.”
“Sounds good to me,” Verrochio replied, and shifted his chair slightly to ensure he had an unobstructed view of the museum entrance.
II
Getting to the museum wasn’t easy. It was the first time Bronson had been to the city, and, once they’d left the main roads, they got lost in the maze of one-way streets.
“This is it,” Angela said finally, looking up from her map to check the street signs as Bronson swung the Nissan around a corner. “This is the Carrer de Valencia.”
“At last,” Bronson muttered. “Now, if we can just find somewhere to park the bloody car . . .”
They found a space in one of the multistory parking garages near the museum and walked across the road toward the small gray-white building. It didn’t look much like a museum to Bronson, who had a mental picture of stone steps and marble columns. Instead, the building was only about the width of a house, and in fact didn’t look unlike a large townhouse. Above the central double doors were three floors of windows, fronted by balconies with metal railings.
“Not very big, is it?” Bronson remarked.
“It’s not meant to be. It’s a small, specialist unit, not a huge place like the Victoria and Albert, or the Imperial War Museum.”
Inside, they paid the six-euro admission charge. Angela walked over to the reception desk and smiled at the middle-aged woman sitting behind it.
“Do you speak English?” she asked.
“Of course,” the receptionist replied. “How can I help you?”
“We’d like to see Professor Puente. My name is Angela Lewis and I’m a former colleague of his. Is he in the building?”
“I think so. Just a moment.” She dialed a number and held a short conversation in high-speed Spanish. “He remembers you,” she said with a smile, as she replaced the receiver. “He’s working upstairs in the Dioses de Egipto room, on the first floor, if you’d like to go straight up.”
“Thanks,” Angela said, and led the way toward the staircase.
Almost as soon as they reached the first floor, a short, dark-haired swarthy man trotted toward them, his arms held wide in a gesture of welcome.
“Angela!” he called, and wrapped himself around her. “You’ve come back to me, my little English flower!”
“Hello, Josep,” Angela said, smiling while disentangling herself from his grasp.
Puente stepped back and held out a hand toward Bronson, his movements quick and bird-like. “Forgive me,” he said, with a barely distinguishable accent, “but I still miss Angela. I’m Josep Puente.”
“Chris Bronson.”
“Ah.” Puente stepped back, his eyes flicking from one to the other. “But I understood that you two were . . .”
“You’re right,” Angela said, sighing and looking at Bronson. “We were married, then we got divorced and I’ve frankly no idea what we are now. But we need your help.”
“And might that be because of what you’re carrying in that black bag, Chris?” Puente asked.