第 38 页

But she had closed the door.

A few minutes later he telephoned her from his room. “How would you like to spend tomorrow with me in Segovia? It's a fascinating old city just a few hours outside of Madrid.”

“It sounds wonderful. Thanks for a lovely evening,” Tracy. said. “Good night, Jeff.”

She lay awake a long time, her mind filled with thoughts she had no right to be thinking. It had been so long since she had been emotionally involved with a man. Charles had hurt her badly, and she had no wish to be hurt again. Jeff Stevens was an amusing companion, but she knew she must never allow him to become any more than that. It would be easy to fall in love with him. And foolish.

Ruinous.

Fun.

Tracy had difficulty falling asleep.

The trip to Segovia was perfect. Jeff had rented a small car, and they drove out of the city into the beautiful wine country of Spain. An unmarked Seat trailed behind them during the entire day, but it was not an ordinary car.

The Seat is the only automobile manufactured in Spain, and it is the official car of the Spanish police. The regular model has only 100 horsepower, but the ones sold to the Policнa Nacional and the Guardia Civil are souped up to 150 horsepower, so there was no danger that Tracy Whitney and Jeff Stevens would elude Daniel Cooper and the two detectives.

Tracy and Jeff arrived at Segovia in time for lunch and dined at a charming restaurant in the main square under the shadow of the two-thousand-year-old aqueduct built by the Romans. After lunch they wandered around the medieval city and visited the old Cathedral of Santa Maria and the Renaissance town hall, and then drove up to the Alcбzar, the old Roman fortress perched on a rocky spur high over the city. The view was breathtaking.

“I'll bet if we stayed here long enough, we'd see Don Quixote and Sancho Panza riding along the plains below,” Jeff said.

She studied him. “You enjoy tilting at windmills, don't you?”

“Depends on the shape of the windmill,” he said softly. He moved closer to her.

Tracy stepped away from the edge of the cliff. “Tell me more about Segovia.”

And the spell was broken.

Jeff was an enthusiastic guide, knowledgeable about history, archaeology, and architecture, and Tracy had to keep reminding herself that he was also a con artist. It was the most pleasant day Tracy could remember.

One of the Spanish detectives, Josй Pereira, grumbled to Cooper, “The only thing they're stealing is our time. They're just two people in love, can't you see that? Are you sure she's planning something?”

“I'm sure,” Cooper snarled. He was puzzled by his own reactions. All he wanted was to catch Tracy Whitney, to punish her, as she deserved. She was just another criminal, an assignment. Yet, every time Tracy's companion took her arm, Cooper found himself stung with fury.

When Tracy and Jeff arrived back in Madrid, Jeff said, “If you're not too exhausted, I know a special place for dinner.”

“Lovely.” Tracy did not want the day to end. I'll give myself this day, this one day to be like other women.

Madrileсos dine late, and few restaurants open for dinner before 9:00 P.M. Jeff made a reservation for 10:00 at the Zalacaнn, an elegant restaurant where the food was superb and perfectly served. Tracy ordered no dessert, but the captain brought a delicate flaky pastry that was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted. She sat back in her chair, sated and happy.

“It was a wonderful dinner. Thank you.”

“I'm glad you enjoyed it. This is the place to bnng people if you want to impress them.”

She studied him. “Are you trying to impress me, Jeff?”

He grinned. “You bet I am. Wait until you see what's next.”

What was next was an unprepossessing bodega, a smoky cafй filled with leather jacketed Spanish workmen drinking at the bar and at the dozen tables in the room. At one end was a tablado, a slightly elevated platform, where two men strummed guitars. Tracy and Jeff were seated at a small table near the platform.

“Do you know anything about flamenco?” Jeff asked. He had to raise his voice over the noise level in the bar.

“Only that it's a Spanish dance.”

“Gypsy, originally. You can go to fancy nightclubs in Madrid and see imitations of flamenco, but tonight you'll see the real thing.”

Tracy smiled at the enthusiasm in Jeff's voice.

“You're going to see a classic cuadro flamenco. That's a group of singers, dancers, and guitarists. First they perform together, then each one takes his turn.”

Watching Tracy and Jeff from a table in the corner near the kitchen, Daniel Cooper wondered what they were discussing intently.

“The dance is very subtle, because everything has to work together — movements, music, costumes, the building of the rhythm….”

“How do you know so much about it?” Tracy asked.

“I used to know a flamenco dancer.”

Naturally, Tracy thought.

The lights in the bodega dimmed, and the small stage was lit by spotlights. Then the magic began. It started slowly. A group of performers casually ascended to the platform. The women wore colorful skirts and blouses, and high combs with flowers banked on their beautiful Andalusian coiffures. The male dancers were dressed in the traditional tight trousers and vests and wore gleaming cordovan-leather half boots. The guitarists strummed a wistful melody, while one of the seated women sang in Spanish.

Yo querнa dejar

A mi amante,

Pero antes de que pudiera,

Hacerlo ella me abandonу

Y destrozу mi corazуn.

“Do you understand what she's saying?” Tracy whispered.

“Yes. 'I wanted to leave my lover, but before I could, he left me and he broke my heart.' ”

A dancer moved to the center of the stage. She started with a simple zapateado, a beginning stamping step, gradually pushed faster and faster by the pulsating guitars. The rhythm grew, and the dancing became a form of sensual violence, variations on steps that had been born in gypsy caves a hundred years earlier. As the music mounted in intensity and excitement, moving through the classic figures of the dance, from alegrнa to fandanguillo to zambra to seguiriya, and as the frantic pace increased, there were shouts of encouragement from the performers at the side of the stage.

Cries of “Olй tu madre,” and “Olй tus santos,” and “Ands, anda,” the traditional jaleos and piropos, or shouts of encouragement, goaded the dancers on to wilder, more frantic rhythms.

When the music and dancing ended abruptly, a silence roared through the bar, and then there was a loud burst of applause.

“She's marvelous!” Tracy exclaimed.

“Wait,” Jeff told her.

A second woman stepped to the center of the stage. She had a dark, classical Castilian beauty and seemed deeply aloof, completely unaware of the audience. The guitars began to play a bolero, plaintive and low key, an Oriental-sounding canto. A male dancer joined her, and the castanets began to click in a steady, driving beat.

The seated performers joined in with the jaleo, and the handclaps that accompany the flamenco dance, and the rhythmic beat of the palms enhanced the music and dancing, lifting it, building it, until the room began to rock with the echo of the zapateado, the hypnotic beat of the half toe, the heel, and the full sole clacking out an endless variation of tone and rhythmic sensations.

Their bodies moved apart and came together in a growing frenzy of desire, until they were making mad, violent, animal love without ever touching, moving to a wild, passionate climax that had the audience screaming. As the lights blacked out and came on again, the crowd roared, and Tracy found herself screaming with the others. To her embarrassment, she was sexually aroused. She was afraid to meet Jeff's eyes. The air between them vibrated with tension. Tracy looked down at the table, at his strong, tanned hands, and she could feel them caressing her body, slowly, swiftly, urgently, and she quickly put her hands in her lap to hide their trembling.

They said very little during the ride back to the hotel. At the door to Tracy's room, she turned and said, “It's been —”

Jeff's lips were on hers, and her arms went around him, and she held him tightly to her.

“Tracy-?”

The word on her lips was yes, and it took the last ounce of her willpower to say, “It's been a long day, Jeff. I'm a sleepy lady.”

“Oh.”

“I think I'll just stay in my room tomorrow and rest.”

His voice was level when he answered. “Good idea. I'll probably do the same.”

Neither of them believed the other.

Chapter 29

At 10:40 the following morning Tracy was standing in the long line at the entrance to the Prado Museum. As the doors opened, a uniformed guard operated a turnstile that admitted one visitor at a time.

Tracy purchased a ticket and moved with the crowd going into the large rotunda. Daniel Cooper and Detective Pereira stayed well behind her, and Cooper began to feel a growing excitement. He was certain that Tracy Whitney was not there as a visitor. Whatever her plan was, it was beginning.

Tracy moved from room to room, walking slowly through the salons filled with Rubens paintings and Titians, Tintorettos, Bosches, and paintings by Domenikos Theotokopoulos, who became famous as El Greco. The Goyas were exhibited in a special gallery below, on the ground floor.

Tracy noted that a uniformed guard was stationed at the entrance to each room, and at his elbow was a red alarm button. She knew that the moment the alarm sounded, all entrances and exits to the museum would be sealed off, and there would be no chance of escape.

She sat on the bench in the center of the Muses room, filled with eighteenth-century Flemish masters, and let her gaze wander toward the floor. She could see a round access fixture on each side of the doorway. That would be the infrared beams that were turned on at night. In other museums Tracy had visited, the guards had been sleepy and bored, paying little attention to the stream of chattering tourists, but here the guards were alert. Works of art were being defaced by fanatics in museums around the world, and the Prado was taking no chance that it could happen there.

In a dozen different rooms artists had set up their easels and were assiduously at work copying paintings of the masters. The museum permitted it, but Tracy noticed that the guards kept a close eye even on the copiers.

When Tracy had finished with the rooms on the main floor, she took the stairs to the ground floor, to the Francisco de Goya exhibition.

Detective Pereira said to Cooper, “See, she's not doing anything but looking. She —”

“You're wrong.” Cooper started down the stairs in a run.

It seemed to Tracy that the Goya exhibition was more heavily guarded than the others, and it well deserved to be. Wall after wall was filled with an incredible display of timeless beauty, and Tracy moved from canvas to canvas, caught up in the genius of the man. Goya's Self-Portrait, making him look like a middle-aged Pan… the exquisitely colored portrait of The Family of Charles IV… The Clothed Maja and the famed Nude Maja.

And there, next to The Witches' Sabbath, was the Puerto. Tracy stopped and stared at it, her heart beginning to pound. In the foreground of the painting were a dozen beautifully dressed men and women standing in front of a stone wall, while in the background, seen through a luminous mist, were fishing boats in a harbor and a distant lighthouse. In the lower left-hand corner of the picture was Goya's signature.

This was the target. Half a million dollars.

Tracy glanced around. A guard stood at the entrance. Beyond him, through the long corridor leading to other rooms, Tracy could see more guards. She stood there a long time, studying the Puerto. As she started to move away, a group of tourists was coming down the stairs. In the middle of them was Jeff Stevens. Tracy averted her head and hurried out the side entrance before he could see her.

It's going to be a race, Mr. Stevens, and I'm going to win it.

“She's planning to steal a painting from the Prado.”

Commandant Ramiro looked at Daniel Cooper incredulously. “Cagajуn! No one can steal a painting from the Prado.”

Cooper said stubbornly, “She was there all morning.”

“There has never been a theft at the Prado, and there never will be. And do you know why? Because it is impossible.”

“She's not going to try any of the usual ways. You must have the museum vents protected, in case of a gas attack. If the guards drink coffee on the job, find out where they get it and if it can be drugged. Check the drinking water —”

The limits of Commandant Ramiro's patience were exhausted. It was bad enough that he had had to put up with this rude, unattractive American for the past week, and that he had wasted valuable manpower having Tracy Whitney follow around the clock, when his Policнa Nacional was already working under an austerity budget; but now, confronted by pito, telling him how to run his police department, he could stand no more.

“In my opinion, the lady is in Madrid on a holiday. I calling off the surveillance.”

Cooper was stunned. “No! You can't do that. Tracy Whitney is —”

Commandant Ramiro rose to his full height. “You will kindly refrain from telling me what I can do, seсor. And now, if you have nothing further to say, I am a very busy man.”

Cooper stood there, filled with frustration. “I'd like to continue alone, then.”

The commandant smiled. “To keep the Prado Museum safe from the terrible threat of this woman? Of course, Seсor Cooper. Now I can sleep nights.”

Chapter 30

The chances of success are extremely limited, Gunther Hartog had told Tracy. It will take a great deal of ingenuity.

That is the understatement of the century, Tracy thought.

She was staring out the window of her suite, down at the skylight roof of the Prado, mentally reviewing everything she had learned about the museum. It was open from 10:00 in the morning until 6:00 in the evening, and during that time the alarms were off, but guards were stationed at each entrance and in every room.

Even if one could manage to take a painting off the wall, Tracy thought, there's no way to smuggle it out. All packages had to be checked at the door.

She studied the roof of the Prado and considered a night foray. There were several drawbacks: The first one was the high visibility. Tracy had watched as the spotlights came on at night, flooding the roof, making it visible for miles around. Even if it were possible to get into the building unseen, there were still the infrared beams inside the building and the night watchmen.

The Prado seemed to be impregnable.

What was Jeff planning? Tracy was certain he was going to make a try for the Goya. I'd give anything to know what he has in his crafty little mind. Of one thing Tracy was sure: She was not going to let him get there ahead of her. She had to find a way.