Clancy, Tom - Ballance of Power

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by Balance of Power [lit]

to look the other way. Get it through your head.

  Playing the game, however corrupt it seems, is

  still diplomacy."

  BALANCE OF POWER 9

  "But what if you hadn't known about their

  "profession," their code? I didn't."

  Aideen lowered her voice. "I was worried about

  having our backpacks stolen and our covers blown."

  "An arrest would have blown our covers a whole lot

  faster," Martha said. She took Aideen by the arm and

  pulled her aside. They stood next to a building,

  away from pedestrian traffic. "The truth is,

  eventually someone would have told us how to get rid of

  them. People always do. That's how the game is played, and

  I believe in obeying the rules of whatever game

  or whatever country I'm in. When I started out in

  diplomacy in the early 1970's on the seventh

  floor of the State Department, I was excited as

  hell. I was on the seventh floor, where all the

  real, heavy-duty work is done. But then I found out

  why

  I was there. Not because I was so damn talented, though

  I hoped I was. I was there to deal with the apartheid

  leaders in South Africa. I was State's

  "in-your-face" figure. I was a wagging finger that

  said, "If you want to deal with the U.s., you'll have

  to deal with blacks as equals." was Martha scowled.

  "Do you know what that was like?"

  Aideen made a face. She could just imagine.

  "It's not like having your fanny

  patted,

  I can tell you that," Martha said. "But I did what

  I was supposed to do because I learned one thing very

  early. If you infract the rules or bend them

  to suit your temperament, even a little, it becomes a

  habit. When it becomes a habit you get

  sloppy.- And a sloppy diplomat is no use

  to the country-or to me."

  10 OP-CENTER

  Aideen was suddenly disgusted with herself. The

  thirty-four-year-old foreign service officer would

  be the first to admit that she wasn't the diplomat her

  forty-nine-year-old superior was. Few people were.

  Martha Mackall not only knew her way around

  European and Asian political circles-partly

  the result of summers and vacations she'd spent

  touring the world with her father, popular 1960's soul

  singer and Civil Rights activist Mack

  Mackall. She was also a summa cum

  laude MIT financial wizard who was tight with the

  world's top bankers and well connected on

  Capitol Hill. Martha was feared but she was

  respected. And Aideen had to admit that in this case

  she was also right.

  Martha looked at her watch. "Come on," she said.

  "We're due at the palace in less than five

  minutes."

  Aideen nodded and walked alongside her boss. The

  younger woman was no longer angry. She was disgusted with

  herself and brooded, as she usually did when she

  screwed up. She hadn't been able to screw up much

  during her four years in army intelligence at Fort

  Meade. That was paint-by-numbers courier work,

  moving cash and top secret information to operatives

  domestically and abroad. Toward the end of her

  tenure there she interpreted ELINT'-ELECTRONIC

  intelligence- and passed it on to the Pentagon.

  Since the satellites and computers did all the

  heavy lifting there, she took special classes

  on elite tactics and stakeout techniques-just

  to get experience in those areas. Aideen didn't have a

  chance to mess things up either when she left the military

  and became a junior political officer at the

  U.s. Embassy in Mexico. Most of the

  time

  BALANCE OF POWER 11

  she was using ELINT to help keep track of drug

  dealers in the Mexican military, though occasionally

  she was permitted to go out in the field and use some of the

  undercover skills she'd acquired. One of the most

  valuable aspects of the three years Aideen had

  spent in Mexico was learning the ploy that had proved

  so effective this afternoon-as well as offensive to Martha

  and the busload of commuters. After she and her friend Ana

  Rivera of the Mexican attorney general's

  office were cornered by a pair of drug cartel

  musclemen one night, Aideen discovered that the best

  way to fight off an attacker wasn't by carrying a

  whistle or knife or by trying to kick them in the

  groin or scratch out their eyes. It was by keeping

  moist towelettes in your handbag. That's what Ana

  used to clean her hands and arms after tossing around some

  mierda de perro.

  Dog droppings. Ana had casually scooped them

  off the street and flung them at the toughs who were

  following them. Then she'd rubbed some on her arms

  to make sure no one grabbed them. Ana said there

  wasn't an attacker she'd ever encountered who stuck

  around after that. Certainly the three "street

  extortionists" in Madrid had not.

  Martha and Aideen walked in silence toward the towering

  white columns of the Palacio de las Cortes.

  Built in 1842, the palace was the seat of the

  Congreso de los Diputados; along with the

  Senado, the Senate, it comprised the two houses

  of the Spanish parliament. Though the sun had set,

  spotlights illuminated two larger-than-life

  bronze lions. Each lion rested a paw atop

  a cannonball. The statues had been cast using

  12 OP-CENTER

  guns taken from the enemies of Spain. They flanked

  the stone steps that led to a high metal door, a

  door used only for ceremonies. To the left of the

  main entrance was a very tall iron fence, which was spiked

  along the top. Beside the fence gate stood a small

  guardhouse with bulletproof windows. This was where the

  deputies entered the halls of parliament.

  Neither woman spoke as they walked past the imposing

  granite facade of the palace. Though Aideen had

  only worked at Op-Center a short while, she

  knew that in spirit her boss was already at the meeting.

  Martha was quietly reviewing things she'd want

  to say to Serrador. Aideen's own role was to draw

  on her experience with Mexican

  insurrectionists and her knowledge of the Spanish language

  to make sure nothing was misstated or

  misinterpreted.

  If only we "d had a little more time to prepare,

  Aideen thought as they walked around snapping

  pictures, acting like tourists as they slowly made

  their way to the gate. Op-Center had barely had time

  to catch its breath from the hostage situation in the

  Bekaa Valley when this matter had been relayed

  to them from the U.s. Embassy in Madrid.

  Relayed so quietly that only Deputy

  Serrador, Ambassador Neville,

  President Michael Lawrence and his closest

  advisors, and the top people at Op-Center knew about

  it. And they would keep quiet. If Deputy

  Serrador were correct, tens of thousands of lives

  were at risk.

 
A church bell rang in the distance. To Aideen, it

  somehow sounded

  holier

  in Spain than it did in Washington. She counted out

  the tolls. It was six o'clock. Martha and Aideen

  made their way to the guardhouse.

  BALANCE OF POWER 13

  Nosotros aqui para un viaje todo

  comprendido,

  Aideen said through the grate in the glass. "We're

  here for a tour." Completing the picture of the excited

  tourist, she added that a mutual friend had arranged for a

  private tour of the building.

  The young guard, tall and unsmiling, asked for their

  names.

  Senorita Temblon y Senorita Serafico,

  Aideen replied, giving him their cover

  identities. Before leaving Washington Aideen had

  worked these out with Serrador's office. Everything, from the

  airplane tickets to the hotel reservations, was in

  those names.

  The guard turned and checked a list on a

  clipboard. As he did, Aideen looked around.

  There was a courtyard behind the fence, the sky a

  beautiful blue-black above it. At the rear of the

  courtyard was a small stone building where auxiliary

  governmental services were located. Behind that was a

  new glass-covered building, which housed the offices

  of the deputies. It was an impressive complex that

  reminded Aideen just how far the Spanish had come

  since the death in 1975 of El Caudillo, "the

  leader," Francisco Franco. The nation was now a

  constitutional monarchy, with a prime minister

  and a largely titular king. The Palacio de las

  Cortes itself spoke very eloquently of one of the

  trying times in Spain's past. There were bullet

  holes in the ceiling of the Chamber of Sessions, a

  remnant and graphic reminder of a right-wing coup

  attempt in 1981. The palace had been the site

  of other attacks, most notably in 1874 when

  President Emilio Castelar lost a vote of

  confidence and soldiers opened fire in the hallways.

  14 OP-CENTER

  Spain's strife had been mostly internal in this

  century, and the nation had remained neutral during

  World War II. As a result, the world had paid

  relatively little attention to its problems and

  politics. But when Aideen was studying languages

  in college her Spanish professor, Senor

  Armesto, had told her that Spain was a nation on the

  verge of disaster.

  Where there are three Spaniards there are four

  opinions,

  he had said.

  When world events favor the impatient and disaffected,

  those opinions will be heard loudly and violently.

  Senor Armesto was correct. Fractionalization was

  the trend in politics, from the breakup of the

  Soviet Union and Yugoslavia to the

  secessionist movement in Quebec to the rising

  ethnocentrism in the United States. Spain was

  hardly immune. If Deputy Serrador's

  fears were correct-and Op-Center's intelligence

  had corroborated it-the nation was poised to suffer its

  worst strife in a thousand years. As Intelligence

  Chief Bob Herbert had put it before Martha left

  Washington, "This will make the Spanish Civil

  War look like a brawl."

  The guard put his list down.

  "Un momenta,"

  he said, and picked up the red telephone on the

  console in the back of the booth. He punched in a

  number and cleared his throat.

  As the sentry spoke to a secretary on the other

  end, Aideen turned. She looked toward the broad

  avenue, which was packed with traffic-

  la hora de aplastar,

  or "crush hour," as they called it here. The bright

  lights of the slow-moving cars were blinding in the dark

  twilight. They seemed to pop on and off as

  BALANCE OF POWER 15

  pedestrians scurried past. Occasionally, a

  flashbulb would fire as a tourist stopped

  to take a picture of the palace.

  Aideen was blinking off the effects of one such flash

  when a young man who had just taken a picture put his

  camera in the pocket of his denim jacket. He

  turned toward the booth. She couldn't see him

  clearly beneath the brim of his baseball cap, but she

  felt his eyes on her.

  A

  street extortionist posing as a tourist?

  she wondered impertinently as the man ambled toward

  her. Aideen decided to let Martha handle this one and

  she started to turn away. As she did, Aideen

  noticed a car pulling up to the curb behind the man.

  The black sedan didn't so much arrive as edge

  forward, as though it had been waiting down the block.

  Aideen stopped turning. The world around her suddenly

  seemed to be moving in slow motion. She watched as the

  young man pulled what looked like a pistol from inside

  his jacket.

  Aideen experienced a moment of paralytic

  disbelief. It passed quickly as her training took

  over.

  "Fusilar!"

  she shouted. "Gunman!"

  Martha turned toward her as the gun jerked with

  booming cracks and dull flares. Martha was thrown

  against the booth and then dropped to her side as Aideen

  jumped in the opposite direction. Her thinking was

  to draw the man's fire away from Martha. She

  succeeded. As Aideen dove for the pavement, a

  startled young mailman who was walking in front of her

  stopped, stared, and took a bullet in his left

  thigh. As his leg folded and he pitched forward, a

  second bullet

  16 OR-CENTER

  hit his side. He landed on his back and Aideen

  dropped flat beside him. She lay as low as she could

  and as close to him as she could as he writhed in

  agony. As bright blood pumped from his side, she

  reached over and pressed her palm to the wound. She

  hoped that pressure would help stanch the bleeding.

  Aideen lay there, listening. The popping had stopped

  and she raised her head carefully. As she watched,

  the car pulled from the curb. When people began to scream in

  the distance, Aideen rose slowly. She kept up

  pressure on the man's wound as she got on her

  knees.

  "Ayuda!"

  she yelled to a security guard who had run up to the

  gate at the Congress of Deputies.

  "Help!"

  The man unlocked the gate and rushed over. Aideen

  told him to keep pressure on the wound. He did

  as he was told and Aideen rose. She looked

  back at the booth. The sentry was crouched there,

  shouting into the phone for assistance. There were people across the

  street and in the road. The only ones left in

  front of the palace were Aideen, the man beside her, the

  guard-and Martha.

  Aideen looked at her boss in the growing darkness.

  Passing cars slowed and stopped, their lights

  illuminating the still, awful scene. Martha was lying on

  her side, facing the booth. Thick puddles of

  blood were forming on the pavement beneath and behind her body.

&
nbsp; "Oh, Jesus," Aideen choked.

  The young woman tried to rise but her legs wouldn't

  support her. She crawled quickly toward the

  BALANCE OF POWER 17

  booth and knelt beside Martha. She bent over her and

  looked down at the handsome face. It was utterly still.

  "Martha?" she said softly.

  Martha didn't respond. People began to gather

  tentatively behind the two women.

  "Martha?"

  Aideen said more insistently.

  Martha didn't move. Aideen heard the sound of

  running feet inside the courtyard. Then she heard

  muted voices shouting for people to clear the area.

  Aideen's ears were cottony from the shots.

  Hesitantly, she touched Martha's cheek with the

  tips of two ringers. Martha did not respond.

  Slowly, as though she were moving in a dream, Aideen

  extended her index finger. She held it under

  Martha's nose, close to her nostrils. There was

  no breath.

  "God, oh God," Aideen was muttering. She

  gently touched Martha's eyelid. It didn't

  react and, after a moment, she withdrew her hand. Then

  she sat back on her heels and stared down at the

  motionless figure. Sounds became louder as her ears

  cleared. The world seemed to return to normal motion.

  Fifteen minutes ago Aideen was silently

  cursing this woman. Martha had been caught up in

  something that had seemed so important-so very damned

  important. Moments always seemed important

  until tragedy put them in perspective. Or

  maybe they

  were

  important because inevitably there would be no more. Not

  that it mattered now. Whether Martha had been

  right or wrong, good or bad, a visionary or a

  control freak, she was dead. Her moments were over.

  The courtyard gate flew open and men ran from behind

  it. They gathered around Aideen, who was star 18

  OP-CENTER

  ing vacantly at Martha. The young woman touched

  Martha's thick, black hair.

  "I'm sorry," Aideen said. She exhaled

  tremulously and shut her eyes. "I'm so very, very

  sorry."

  The woman's limbs felt heavy and she was sick that

  the reflexes that had been so quick with those street kids

  had failed her completely here. Intellectually,

  Aideen knew that she wasn't to blame. During her

  weeklong orientation when she first joined Op-Center,

  staff psychologist Liz Gordon had warned

  Aideen and two other new employees that if and when

  it happened, unexpectedly facing a weapon for the first

  time could be devastating. A gun or a knife

 

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