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Clancy, Tom - Ballance of Power

Page 5

by Balance of Power [lit]


  "What of the driver in Madrid?" asked another of the

  men. "Is he leaving Spain as well?"

  "No," said Ramirez. "The driver works for

  Deputy Serrador. He wants very much to rise so

  he will be silent. And the car used by the killers has

  already been left at a garage for dismantling."

  Ramirez drew contentedly on his cigar. "Trust

  me, my dear Miguel. Everything has been thought out

  very carefully. This action will not be traced to us."

  "I trust you," sniffed the man. "But I'm still not

  certain we can trust Serrador. He is a

  Basque."

  "The killer is also a Basque and he did as he

  was

  BALANCE OF POWER 39

  instructed," said Ramirez. "Deputy Serrador

  will also do as he was told, Carlos. He is

  ambitious."

  "Then he is an ambitious Basque. But he is

  still a Basque."

  Ramirez smiled again. "Deputy Serrador

  does not wish to be a spokesman for the fishermen,

  shepherds, and miners forever. He wants to lead them."

  "He can lead them over the Pyrenees into France,"

  said Carlos. "I won't miss any of

  them."

  "I wouldn't either," said Ramirez, "but then who, would

  fish, herd, and mine? The bank managers and

  accountants who work for you, Carlos? The reporters

  who work for Rodrigo's newspapers or

  Alfonso's television stations? The pilots who

  work for Miguel's airline?"

  The other men smiled, shrugged, or nodded. Carlos

  flushed and acceded with a gracious nod of his head.

  "That's enough about our curious bedfellow," said

  Ramirez. "The important thing is that

  America's emissary has been slain. The

  United States will have no idea who did it or

  why, but they will be extremely wary about becoming

  involved in local politics. Deputy

  Serrador will caution them further when he meets with the

  rest of the contingent later this evening. He'll assure

  them that the police are doing everything they can

  to apprehend the killer, but that the prevention of further

  incidents cannot be guaranteed. Not in such troubled

  times."

  Carlos nodded. He turned to Miguel. "And how

  is your part going?"

  "Very well," said the portly, silver-haired

  airline executive. "The discount air

  fares from the United

  40 OP-CEMTER

  States to Portugal, Italy, France, and

  Greece have proven extremely popular.

  Travel to Madrid and Barcelona is down

  eleven and eight percent respectively from the

  levels of last year. Hotels, restaurants, and

  car services are feeling the loss. The ripple

  effect has hurt many local businesses."

  "And revenues will fall even further," Ramirez

  said, " 'when the American public is told that the

  slain woman was a tourist and that this was a random

  shooting."

  Ramirez drew on his cigar and smiled. He was

  particularly proud of that part of the plan. The United

  States government could never expose the identity of the

  dead woman. She had come from an intelligence and

  crisis management center, not from the State

  Department. Nor could the United States reveal the

  fact that she had gone to Madrid to meet with a powerful

  deputy who feared a new civil war. If

  Europe ever learned that an American

  representative of this type had been scheduled

  to meet with Serrador, America would be suspected

  of trying to position the players to its own

  advantage. Which was exactly why Serrador had

  asked for her. With one shooting, Ramirez and his

  group had managed to gain control of both the White

  House and Spanish tourism.

  "As for the next step," Ramirez said, "how is that

  coming, Carlos?"

  The black-haired young banker leaned forward. He

  placed his cigar in the ashtray and folded his hands on

  the table. "As you know, the lower and middle classes have

  been hurt very seriously by the recent employment

  cutbacks. In the past six months, Ban

  BALANCE OF POWER 41

  quero Cedro has restricted loans so that our

  partners in this operation"-he indicated the other men at

  the table-"as well as other businesspeople, have been

  forced to raise consumer prices nearly seven

  percent. At the same time they've cut back

  production so that there has been an eight-percent

  drop in trade of Spanish goods throughout Europe.

  The workers have been hit hard although, thus far, we

  haven't curtailed their credit. We've been

  extraordinarily generous, in fact. We've been

  extending credit to repay old debts. Of course,

  only some of that money goes to relieve debt. People

  make new purchases, assuming that credit

  will be available to them again. As a result, interest

  on loans has compounded to levels eighteen percent

  higher than they were at this time last year."

  Ramirez smiled. "In conjunction with a fall in

  tourism, the financial blow will be severe when that

  credit is not made available."

  "It will be extremely severe," said Carlos. "The

  people will be so deeply in debt they will agree to anything

  to be out of it."

  "But the blow is one you're certain you can control,"

  said Alfonso.

  "Absolutely," Carlos replied. "Thanks

  to cash reserves and credit with the World Bank and other

  institutions, the money supply at my bank and at

  most others will remain sound. The economy will be

  relatively unaffected at the top." He

  grinned. "It's like the plague of blood which befell

  Egypt in the Old Testament. It did not affect

  those who had been forewarned and had filled their jugs and

  cisterns with fresh water."

  42 OP-CENTER

  Ramirez sat back. He drew long and

  contentedly on his cigar. "This is excellent,

  gentlemen. And once everything is in place, our

  task is simply to maintain the pressure

  until the middle and lower classes buckle.

  Until the Basques and the Castilians, the

  Andalusians and the Galicians acknowledge that

  Spain belongs to the people of Catalonia. And when they

  do, when the prime minister is forced to call for new

  elections, we will be ready." His small, dark

  eyes moved from face to face before settling on the

  leather binder before him. "Ready with our new

  constitution-ready for a new Spain."

  The other men nodded their approval. Miguel and

  Rodrigo applauded lightly. Ramirez felt

  the weight of history past and history yet to come on

  his shoulders, and it felt good.

  He was unaware of a disheveled man who sat an

  eighth of a mile away with a different sense of

  history on his shoulders-and a much different weapon at

  his disposal.

  ATX-UL1024 FOUR

  ATX-UL0 Monday, 7:15 p.m. Madrid,

  Spain

  Aideen was still sitting in the leather couch when
Comisario

  Diego Femandez arrived. He was a man of

  medium height and build. He was clean-shaven with a

  ruddy complexion and carefully trimmed goatee.

  His black hair was longish but neat and he

  peered out carefully from behind gold-rimmed

  spectacles. He wore black leather gloves,

  black suede shoes, and a black trenchcoat. Beneath

  the open coat was a dark gray business suit.

  An aide shut the door behind him. When it had

  clicked shut, the inspector bowed politely

  to Aideen.

  "Our deepest sympathy and apologies for your

  loss," he said. His voice was deep, the English

  accent thick. "If there's anything I or my

  department can do to help you, please ask."

  " "Thank you. Inspector,"" Aideen said.

  "Be assured that the resources of the entire

  Madrid metropolitan police department as

  well as other government offices will be applied

  to finding whoever was responsible for this atrocious

  act."

  Aideen looked up at the police inspector.

  He couldn't be talking to her. The police department

  44 OP-CENTER

  couldn't be looking for the killer of someone she knew.

  The TV announcements and newspaper headlines

  wouldn't be about a person she had been dressing with in

  a hotel room just an hour before. Though she had

  lived through the killing and seen Martha's body

  on the street, the experience didn't seem real.

  Aideen was so accustomed to changing things-rewinding a

  tape to see something she'd missed or erasing computer

  data she didn't need-that the irreversibility of this

  seemed impossible.

  But in her brain Aideen knew that it

  had

  happened. And that it was irreversible. After being brought

  here, she'd called the hotel and briefed Darrell

  McCaskey. McCaskey had said he would inform

  Op-Center. He'd seemed surprisingly

  unshocked-or maybe Darrell was always that

  collected. Aideen didn't know him well enough

  to say. Then she'd sat here trying to tell herself that the

  shooting was a random act of terrorism and not a hit.

  After all, it wasn't the same as in Tijuana

  two years earlier when her friend Odin Gutierrez

  Rico had literally been blasted to death by four

  gunmen with assault rifles. Rico was the

  director of criminal trials in Baja

  California. He was a public figure who had

  regularly received death threats and had continued to defy

  the nation's drug traffickers. His death was a

  tragic loss but not a surprise. It was a very

  public statement that the prosecution of drug

  dealers would not be tolerated by the underworld.

  Martha was here with a cover story known only to a handful

  of government officials. She had come to Madrid

  to help Deputy Serrador work out a plan to keep

  his own people, the Basques, from joining with

  BALANCE OF POWER 45

  the equally nationalistic Catalonians in an effort

  to break away from Spain. The Basque uprisings in

  the 1980's had been sporadic enough to fail but

  violent enough to be remembered. Martha and Serrador

  both believed that an organized revolt by two of the

  nation's five major ethnic groups-especially if

  those groups were well armed and better prepared than in

  the 1980's-would not only be enormously

  destructive but would have a good chance of succeeding.

  If this were an assassination, if Martha had been the

  target, it meant that there was a leak in the system

  somewhere. And if there were a leak then the peace process

  was in serious danger. It was a cruel irony that

  only a short time before, Martha had been insisting that

  nothing must be allowed to interfere with the talks.

  You know what's at stake. . . .

  Then, of course, Martha had been worried about

  Aideen's overreaction in the street.

  If only that had been our worst

  roadblock,

  Aideen thought.

  We sweat the details and end up missing the big

  picture-

  "Senorita?"

  the inspector said.

  Aideen blinked. "Yes?"

  "Are you all right?"

  Aideen had been looking past Comisario Femandez,

  at the dark windows. But she focused on the

  inspector now. He was still standing a few feet

  away, smiling down at her.

  "Yes, I'm fine," she said. "I'm very sorry,

  Inspector. I was thinking about my friend."

  "I understand," the inspector replied quietly.

  "If it

  46 OP-CENTER

  would not be too much for you, might I ask you a few

  questions?"

  "Of course," she replied. She'd been slumping

  forward but now she sat up in the chair. "First,

  Inspector, would you mind telling me if the

  surveillance cameras told you anything?"

  "Unfortunately, they did not," the inspector said.

  "The gunman was standing just out of range."

  "He knew what that range was?"

  "Apparently, he did," the inspector admitted.

  "Unfortunately, it will take us a while to find out

  everyone who had access to that information-and to interrogate

  them all."

  "I understand," Aideen said.

  The inspector drew a small, yellow notebook

  from his coat pocket. The smile faded as he

  studied some notes and slipped a pen from the spiral

  binder. When he was finished reading he looked at

  Aideen.

  "Did you and your companion come to Madrid for

  pleasure?"'" the inspector asked.

  "Yes. Yes, we did."

  "You informed the guard at the gate that you came to the

  Congreso de los Diputados for a personal

  tour."

  "That's right."

  "This tour was arranged by whom?"

  "I don't know," said Aideen.

  "Oh?"

  "My companion set it up through a friend back in the

  States," Aideen informed him.

  "Would you be able to provide me with the name of this

  friend?"'" the inspector asked.

  "I'm afraid not," Aideen replied. "I

  don't know

  BALANCE OF POWER 47

  who it was. My coming on this trip was rather

  lastminute."

  "Possibly it was a coworker who arranged it," he

  suggested. "Or else a neighbor? A local

  politician?"

  "I don't know," Aideen insisted. "I'm

  sorry. Inspector, but it wasn't something I thought

  I'd need to know."

  The inspector stared at her for a long moment. Then

  he lowered his eyes slowly and wrote her answers in

  his notebook.

  Aideen didn't think that he believed her; that was

  what she got from the disapproving turn of his mouth and the

  stern knot of flesh between his eyebrows. And she hated

  stonewalling the investigation. But until she heard

  otherwise from Darrell McCaskey or Deputy

  Serrador, she had no choice but to continue to play

  this by the cover story.

  Comisario Femandez turned slowly and th
oughtfully to a

  fresh page of the notebook. "Did you see the man

  who attacked you?"

  "I didn't see his face," she said.

  "He fired a flash picture just before he reached for

  his weapon."

  "Did you smell any cologne? Aftershave?"

  "No."

  "Did you notice the camera? The make?"

  "No," she said. "I wasn't close enough-and then

  there was the flash. I only saw his clothes."

  "Aha," he said. He stepped forward eagerly.

  "Can you tell me what they looked like?"

  Aideen took a long breath. She shut her eyes.

  "He was wearing a tight denim jacket and a

  baseball cap. A dark blue or black cap,

  worn with the brim in front.

  48 OP-CENTER

  He had on loose khaki trousers and black

  shoes. I want to say that he was a young man, though

  I can't be entirely certain."

  "What gave you that impression?"

  Aideen opened her eyes. "There was something about the

  way he stood," she replied. "His feet

  planted wide, his shoulders squared, his head held

  erect. Very strong, very poised."

  "You've seen this look before?" the inspector asked.

  "Yes," Aideen replied. The killer had

  reminded her of a Striker, though of course

  she couldn't say that. "Where I went to college there

  was ROTC," she lied. "Reserve Officers"

  Training Corps. The killer had the bearing of a

  soldier. Or at least someone who was skilled in

  handling firearms."

  The inspector made an entry in his notebook.

  " 'Did the gunman say anything to you?"

  "No."

  "Did he shout anything-a slogan or a threat?"

  "No."

  "Did you notice the kind of weapon he used?"

  "I'm sorry, I did not. It was a handgun of some

  kind."

  "A revolver?"

  "I wouldn't know," she lied. It was an

  automatic. But she didn't want the inspector

  to know that she knew enough to tell the difference.

  "Did he pause between shots?"

  "I believe so."

  "Was it loud?"

  "Not very," Aideen said. "It was surprisingly

  BALANCE OF POWER 49

  quiet." The gun had been silenced but she didn't

  want to let him know that she knew that.

  "It was probably silenced," the inspector

  said. "Did you see the getaway car?"

  "Yes," Aideen said. "It was a black sedan.

  I don't know what kind."

  "Was it clean or dirty?"

  "Average."

  "Where did it come from?" the inspector asked.

  "I believe it was waiting for the killer down the

  street," Aideen said.

  "About how far?"

  "Maybe twenty or thirty yards," Aideen said.

 

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