Clancy, Tom - Ballance of Power

by Balance of Power [lit]

  passionate than a convert.

  Lanning regarded Hood. "The more I think about what

  Mr. Herbert just said, the more troubled I am by all of

  this. We've had situations before where we've been set

  up by foreign interests. Let's assume for the moment

  that that's what happened. That Martha was lured to Spain

  to be assassinated, for whatever reason. The only

  way we'll ever find that out is if we have access

  to all aspects of the investigation. Do we have that,

  Mr. McCaskey?"

  "I wouldn't count on it," McCaskey replied.

  "Serrador said he's going to look into it, but

  Aideen and I were both shuttled off to our hotel

  rooms and we haven't heard anything since."

  "Yeah, the Spanish government isn't always very

  forthcoming about their private activities," Herbert

  said. "During World War II, this supposedly

  neutral nation rode shotgun on trainand

  truckloads of Nazi booty sent from

  Switzerland to Portugal. They did it in

  exchange for future favors, which, luckily, they

  never got to collect on."

  "That was Francisco Franco," Ron Plummer

  said. "Professional courtesy,

  dictator-to-dictator. It doesn't mean that

  Spanish people are that way."

  92 OP-CENTER

  "True," Herbert said, "but the Spanish leaders

  are still at it. In the 1980's the defense minister

  hired drug smugglers as mercenaries to kill

  Basque separatists. The government purchased

  guns for the team in South Africa. They let them

  keep the weapons afterward, too. No," he said, "I

  wouldn't count on any Spanish government to help the

  United States with anything."

  Hood held up both hands. "We're getting off

  the subject here. Darrell, for the moment I'm not

  concerned about Serrador, his motives, or his

  intelligence needs. I want to find out who killed

  Martha and why. Mike," Hood looked at

  Rodgers-"you recruited Aideen. What's she

  made of?"

  Rodgers was still standing behind Carol Lanning. He

  unfolded his arms and shifted his weight.

  "She stood up to some pretty tough dealers in the

  drug trade in Mexico City. She's got

  iron in her back."

  "I see where you're going, Paul," Liz said, "and

  I want to caution you. Aideen's under a lot of

  emotional stress. Throw her into a covert police

  action right now and the pressure could break her."

  "It could also be just what she needs," Herbert said.

  "You're absolutely right," Liz replied.

  "Everyone is different. Only the question isn't just

  what Aideen needs. If she goes undercover and

  cracks, she could be the nail that cost the horse that

  cost the kingdom."

  "Besides," Herbert said to Hood, "if we send

  someone else over to follow the muddy footprints,

  we lose time."

  "Darrell," Hood asked, "did you hear that?"

  "I heard."

  BALANCE OF POWER 93

  "What do you think?"

  "I think a couple of things," McCaskey said.

  "Mike's right. The lady's got backbone

  to spare. She wasn't afraid to get right in

  Serrador's face. And my gut tells me the

  same thing as Bob's: I'm inclined to let

  her loose on the Spaniards. But Liz has also

  got a solid point. So if it's okay with you,

  let me talk to Aideen first. I'll know pretty

  quick whether she's up to it."

  Hood's eyes shifted to the staff psychologist.

  "Liz, if we decide to go ahead with something and

  Aideen's involved, what should Darrell look for?

  Any physical signs?"

  "Extreme restlessness," Liz replied. "Rapid

  speech, foot tapping, cracking the knuckles,

  heavy sighing, that sort of thing. She's got to be able

  to focus. If her mind wanders into guilt and loss,

  she's going to drop down a hole and not be able to get

  out."

  "Any questions, Darrell?" Hood asked.

  "None," McCaskey said.

  "Very good," Hood said. "Darrell, I'm going to have

  Bob and his team look over any new intelligence

  that's come in. If there's anything useful, they'll

  get it over to you."

  "I'm also going to make a few calls over here,"

  McCaskey said. "There are some people at Interpol

  who might be able to help us."

  "Excellent," Hood said. "Anyone else?"

  "Mr. Hood," Carol Lanning said, "this

  is not my area of expertise but I do have a-question."

  "Go ahead," Hood said. "And please-it's

  Paul."

  She nodded and cleared her throat. " "Might I

  ask if

  94 OP-CEMTER

  you're looking to gather intelligence to turn over to the

  Spanish authorities or-was She hesitated.

  "Or what?"

  " "Or are you looking for revenge?"'"

  Hood thought for a moment. "Frankly, Ms.

  Lanning, I want both."

  "Good," she said. Rising, she smoothed her skirt

  and squared her shoulders. "I hoped I wasn't the

  only one."

  SEVE-LIKE caret

  Monday, 10:56 p.m. San Sebastian,

  Spain

  No one had survived the explosion of the Ramirez

  yacht.

  Adolfo hadn't expected anyone to be left

  alive. The blast had flipped the ship onto its

  side before anyone could get out. The men who weren't

  killed in the explosion itself were drowned when the yacht

  capsized. Only the pilot of the runabout

  had escaped. Adolfo knew about the man. He was

  Juan Martinez, a leader of the Ramirez

  familia.

  He had a reputation for being resourceful and devoted

  to his boss. But Adolfo wasn't worried about

  Martinez-or any other Ramirez thugs. Very

  soon the

  familia

  would no longer exist as an adversarial force. And with

  their demise other familias would stay out of the

  General's way. It was funny how power didn't

  matter so much when one's survival was threatened.

  The fisherman and two other late-night trawlers

  had waited at the scene to provide police with

  eyewitness accounts of the explosion. When two young

  officers with the harbor patrol boarded Adolfo's

  boat, he acted as though he were very upset by the

  evening's events. The officers told Adolfo

  to calm down, which he did-

  96 OP-CENTER

  but only slightly. He informed them that he had been

  looking toward the harbor when the ship exploded.

  Adolfo said that all he saw was the dying fireball

  and then the wreckage showering down, the shards sizzling

  and steaming as they hit the water. He said that

  he had sailed for it immediately. One of the

  investigators wrote rapidly, taking notes,

  while the other asked questions. They both seemed

  excited to have something so dramatic occur in their

  harbor.

  The police officers took Adolfo's name,

  address, and telephone number and allowed him

  to leave. By that time Adol
fo had pretended to calm enough

  to wish them well on the investigation. Then he went

  to the wheelhouse of his fishing boat and throttled up.

  The engine chugged deeply as Adolfo turned the

  old vessel toward the harbor.

  As Adolfo sailed the choppy waters, he

  plucked one of the handrolled cigarettes from his pants

  pocket. He lit it and drew deeply, feeling a

  greater sense of satisfaction than he had ever known.

  This was not his first mission for the cause. In the past year

  he had prepared a letter bomb for a newspaper and had

  rigged a TV reporter's car to explode when the

  gas cap was removed. Both of those had been

  successful. But this was his most important job and it

  had gone perfectly. Even better, he'd pulled

  it off alone. The General had asked Adolfo to do

  it by himself for two reasons. First, if Adolfo had

  been caught the cause would only have lost

  one soldier in the region. Second, if

  Adolfo had failed then the General would know who

  to blame. That was important. With so many

  important tasks ahead there was no room for

  incompetency.

  BALANCE OF POWER 97

  Adolfo guided the boat swiftly toward shore,

  his right hand on the wheel and his left hand holding the

  well-worn string of the old bell that hung outside

  the wheelhouse. He'd fished these waters since he

  was a small boy working on his father's vessel. The

  low, foggy sound of that bell was one of the two things that

  brought those days back to him vividly. The other was the

  smell of the harbor whenever he drew near. The ocean

  smell intensified the closer Adolfo came

  to shore. That had always seemed odd to him until he

  mentioned it to his brother. Norberto explained that the

  things that cause the smells-the salt, the dead fish,

  the rotting seaweed-always wash toward the land. That was why

  beaches smelled more like the sea than the sea did.

  "Father Norberto," Adolfo sighed. "So learned

  yet so misguided." His older brother was a

  Jesuit priest who had never wanted to be anything

  else. After his ordination seven years ago he was

  given the local parish, St. Ignatius,

  as his ministry. Norberto knew a lot about many

  things. The members of his parish lovingly called him

  "the Scholar." He could tell them why the ocean

  smelled or why the sun turned orange when it set

  or why you could see clouds even though they were made of

  drops of water. What Norberto didn't know much

  about was politics. He had once joined a protest

  march against the Spanish government, which was accused of

  financing death squads that killed hundreds of people in

  the middle 1980's. But that wasn't so much a

  political crusade as a humanistic one. He

  also didn't know about church politics. Norberto

  hated being away from his parish. Two

  98 OP-CENTER

  or three times a year Father General Gonzalez-the

  most powerful Jesuit prelate in Spain-held

  audiences or hosted dinners for church dignitaries

  in Madrid. Norberto did not go to these functions

  unless commanded, which he seldom was. Norberto's

  disinterest in his own advancement allowed the power and

  funding in this province to go to Father Iglesias in

  nearby Bilbao.

  Adolfo was the expert in politics, something

  Norberto didn't admit. The brothers rarely

  argued about anything; they had looked out for one

  another since they were boys. But politics was the one

  area where they disagreed passionately. Norberto

  believed in a unified nation. He had once said

  bitterly, "It is bad enough that Christendom is

  divided." He wished for what he called "God's

  Spaniards" to live in harmony.

  Unlike Norberto, Adolfo did not believe in

  either God or Spaniards. If there were a God,

  he reasoned, the world would be doing better. There

  wouldn't be conflict or need. As for that creature

  called a "Spaniard," Spain had always been a

  fragile tapestry of different cultures. That was

  true before the birth of Christ, when the Basques,

  Iberians, Celts, Carthaginians, and others were

  first united under the rule of Rome. It was true in

  1469, when Aragon and Castile were joined in an

  uneasy alliance by the marriage of Ferdinand II

  to Isabella I. It was true in 1939, when

  Francisco Franco became El Caudillo,

  leader of the nation, after the devastating Civil War.

  It was true today.

  It was also true that within this confederacy the Castilians

  had always been victimized. They were the

  BALANCE OF POWER 99

  largest group and so they were feared. They were

  always the first to be sent into battle or exploited by the

  wealthy. The irony was that if there were a "real"

  Spaniard, the Castilian was it. His nature was

  industrious and fun-loving. His life was filled with the

  honest sweat of hard work and passion. His heart was

  filled with music, love, and laughter. And his

  home, the land of El Cid, was one of vast plains

  dotted with windmills and castles beneath an endless

  blue sky.

  Adolfo savored the pride of his heritage and the

  blow he'd struck for both of those tonight. But as he

  entered the harbor, he turned his attention to the boats

  moored there. The harbor was located behind the enormous

  nineteenth-century Ayuntamiento, the town hall.

  Adolfo was glad it was night. He hated coming

  back when it was light and all the gift shops and

  restaurants were visible. Catalonian money was

  responsible for transforming San Sebastian from a

  fishing village to a tourist spot.

  Adolfo maneuvered carefully and skillfully around

  the numerous pleasure boats moored there. The

  fishermen usually kept their vessels out of the way,

  near the wharf. It made unloading the fish easier.

  But the pleasure boats dropped anchor wherever their

  owners chose. The crews then rowed to shore

  on dinghies. For Adolfo the pleasure boats were

  a daily reminder that the needs of working men did not

  matter to the rich. The requirements of the fishermen

  didn't matter to the powerful and wealthy

  Catalonians, or to the tourism they encouraged

  to benefit their-hotels and restaurants and

  airlines.

  When Adolfo reached the wharf he tied his boat in

  100 OP-CENTER

  the same spot as always. Then, slinging his canvas

  grip over his shoulder, he made his way through the

  groups of tourists and locals who had gathered when

  they heard the explosion. A few people near the wharf,

  who had watched him come in from the bay, asked what had

  happened. He just shrugged and shook his head as he

  walked along the gravel path, through a row of gift

  shops and past the new aquarium. It was never a good

  idea to stop and talk to people after completing a job. It

  was only
human to want to lecture or to boast and that

  could be deadly. Loose lips not only sink ships:

  they can undo those who sink them.

  Adolfo continued along the path as it turned

  into Monte Urgull, the local park. Closed

  to automobile traffic, the park was the site of

  ancient bastions and abandoned cannon. It

  was also home to a British cemetery from the duke of

  Wellington's 1812 campaign against the French.

  When he was a boy, Adolfo used to play here-before

  the ruins were promoted from weed-covered wreckage

  to protected historical relics. He used

  to imagine that he was a cavalry soldier. Only

  he was not fighting the imperious French but the His

  "hastardos

  from Madrid," as he knew them. The exporters who

  drove his father to an early grave. They were men who

  bought fish by the ton to ship around the world and who

  encouraged inexperienced fishermen to ply the waters off

  San Sebastian. The exporters didn't want

  to develop a regular team of suppliers. Nor

  did they care whether they destroyed the ecological

  balance of the region. Bribes to officials made

  certain that the government didn't care either. All they

  wanted was to fill a new and unprecedented demand for

  fish as it

  BALANCE OF POWER 101

  replaced beef on tables throughout Europe and

  North America. Five years later, in 1975,

  the exporters began buying fish from Japan and the

  opportunists left. The coastal waters were theirs

  again. But it was too late for his father. The

  elder Alcazar died a year later, having struggled

  long and hard to survive. His mother died just a few

  months after that. Since then, Norberto was the only

  family Adolfo had.

  Except, of course, for the General.

  Adolfo left the park after the Museum of San

  Telmo, a former Dominican monastery. Then he

  walked briskly along dark, quiet Calle

  Okendo. The only sounds were the distant waves and

  muffled voices from television sets coming through open

  windows.

  Adolfo's tiny second-floor apartment was

  located on a small side street two blocks

  to the southeast. He was surprised to find the door

  unlocked. He entered the one-room apartment

  cautiously. Had someone been sent by the General or

  was it the police?

  It was neither. Adolfo relaxed when he saw that it was

  his brother lying on the bed.

  Norberto closed the book he was reading. It was

  The Moral Discourses of Epictetus.

  "Good evening, Dolfo," Norberto said