Clancy, Tom - Ballance of Power
Page 19
"Now, Barcelona's about two hundred miles from
San Sebastian," Herbert said, "and it's an
urban center as opposed to a resort. I'm not
worried that the rioting is going to spread there quickly."
He hunched forward and folded his hands. "But I am
worried, Paul, that when martial law is declared
it's going to have a very, very strong impact on the
collective Spanish conscience."
188 OP-CENTER
"How so?" Hood asked.
"One word," Herbert replied. "Franco. There
are strong and bitter memories of his militant,
fascist Falange party. The first time government
sponsored militancy surfaces in nearly a
quarter of a century, you can bet there's going to be very
fierce resistance."
"The irony," said Plummer, "is that the Germans
helped Franco win the Spanish Civil War.
Having Germans as a flashpoint here is going
to make the resentment even tougher to put down."
"What does this have to do with our people?" Hood asked.
"Are you saying they should lay low until we see
what happens?"'"
Herbert shook his head. "I'm saying that you should get
them out, recall Striker, and urge the President
to evacuate all nonessential American
personnel. Those who stay in Spain should button
up tight."
Hood regarded him for a long moment. Herbert was not
a man prone to overreaction. "How bad do you think
it's going to get?" Hood asked.
"Bad," Herbert said. "Some major political
fault lines have been activated here. I think we
may be looking at the next Soviet
Union or Yugoslavia."
Hood looked at Plummer. "Ron?"
Plummer folded the fax and creased it sharply with his
fingertips. "I'm afraid I'm with Bob on this
one, Paul," he said. "The nation of Spain is
probably going to come apart."
SEVE-MTEEI caret like
Tuesday, 3:27 a.m. San Sebastian,
Spain
Adolfo Alcazar was exhausted when he got
into bed.
He slept on a small, flat mattress in a
corner of the one-room apartment. The sagging mattress
rested on a metal frame not far from the stove; still
lit and glowing dimly, the stove provided the only
light in the small room. The old frame was rusted
from the sea breeze that blew through the window.
He smiled. The mattress was the same one he'd
bounced on when he was a boy. It occurred to him now
as he lay down, naked, how pure an act that had
been-to bounce on the bed. It was an activity that
didn't give a damn about what went before or what
was coming next. It was a complete, self-contained
expression of freedom and joy.
He remembered having to stop when he grew
a little and made more noise. The people who lived
downstairs complained. It had been a harsh thing for a child
to learn, that he wasn't free. And that was only the
first lesson in his lack of liberty. Until he
met the General his life had been a series of
surrenders and retreats that made others happy or
rich. As he lay
backslash Will,
OP-CENTER
down in bed, in the bed that used to
make him feel so free, Adolfo felt a taste
of what it was like to be free again. Free of government
regulations that told him what he could fish and fishing
magnates who told him when and where he could fish so
as not to interfere with them and recreational boats clogging
his harbor because the boating industry had more influence in
Madrid than small fishermen had. With the help of the
General he would be free to make a living in a nation
that once again belonged to the people. To
his
people. The General didn't care if you were Castilian
like Adolfo or Catalonian or Basque or
Galician or whatever. If you wanted to be free
from Madrid, if you wanted self-rule for your people,
you followed him. If you wanted to maintain
the status quo or profit from the sweat of others, you
were removed.
Lying on his back, staring into the darkness, Adolfo
finally shut his eyes. He had done well today. The
General would be pleased.
The door flew inward with a crack, startling him.
Four men rushed toward him before he was fully
awake. As one man shut the door the others pulled
him facedown on the floor. His arms were stretched out
from his sides and his palms were pressed down on the
floor. They pinned him in that position with their knees
and with their hands.
"Are you Adolfo Alcazar?" one of them demanded.
Adolfo said nothing. He was looking toward the
left, toward the stove. He felt the middle finger
of his right hand pulled back slowly until it broke
with a single, flashing snap.
BALANCE OF POWER 191
"Yes!"
he shrieked. Then he moaned. "You killed many men
today," one of them said. Adolfo's head was cloudy with
thought but clear with pain. Before he could clear his mind his
right index finger was pulled back and broken. He
screamed as the pain raced up to his elbow and back
again. He felt something-one of his
socks-stuffed roughly between his teeth.
"You killed the head
of our familia,"
the man said. His ring finger was drawn back until it
popped. They released it and the three broken fingers
sat side by side, bloated but numb. His hand was
trembling as they twisted back the pinky finger. It
flopped down, shattered like the others. Then he felt
something hard and cold on his thumb. His head was forced
around and he saw a crowbar, held vertically. The
curved end was resting on top of his thumb. It was
raised straight up and brought down hard. The thumb
burned as the skin ripped and bone cracked. The
crowbar went up again and then came down, this time on the
wrist joint. It came down once in the center,
once on the left, and once on the right. Each blow
sent a swift, hot wave of pain up his arm to his
shoulder and along his neck. When it passed there was
only a deep throbbing weight on his forearm, like an
anvil was sitting on it.
"Your hand will never again be raised against us," the man
said.
With that, they released Adolfo and turned him over.
He tried to control his right arm but it flopped as though
it were asleep. He caught a glimpse of
blood as it trickled down his forearm. He didn't
feel it until it reached his elbow.
192 OP-CENTER
Struggling weakly, Adolfo was dragged several
feet and then they pinned him again, on his back. The
sock was still jammed in his mouth. It was dark and tears
of pain filled Adolfo's eyes. He could not see
the faces of his captors. He fought to get free
again but his efforts were like the wriggling of a fish in one of
his nets.
anywhere-except to hell if you don't tell us what
we wish to know. Do you understand?"
Adolfo looked up at the dark face. He tried
to spit out the sock, not to respond but in defiance.
The man grabbed a fi/l of hair and pulled
Adolfo's head toward him. "Do you understand?"
Adolfo didn't answer. A moment later the man
nodded to someone kneeling on Adolfo's knee. A
moment after that he felt his right leg being lifted. Every
part of him screamed as his bare foot was placed into the
open grate of the oven, above the dying fire. He
came violently alive and screamed into the sock and
tried to withdraw. But the men held him there.
"Do you understand?" the man above him repeated
calmly.
Adolfo nodded vigorously as he kicked and
rocked and tried to get away. The man turned
toward the others. They withdrew his foot and set it
back down. The flesh screamed and he was viciously
awake. But the pain focused his mind. He was
panting through the sock and squirming under their grip.
He looked up wide-eyed at the one dark face.
The man removed the sock and held it over
Adolfo's mouth. "Who do you work with?" he asked.
BALANCE OF POWER 193
Adolfo was panting heavily. His foot felt
icy-hot, like ocean spray on a bad sunburn.
He felt them lift up the other leg.
"Who do you work with?"
"A general," Adolfo gasped. "An Air
Force general named Pintos. Roberto Pintos."
" "Where is he stationed?"'"
Adolfo didn't answer. It was time to wait a little
before lying again. The one time Adolfo had met
General Amadori-the real general, not this imaginary
General Pintos-was at a meeting of
nonmilitary aides in an airplane hangar in
Burgos. There, the General had warned everyone that this
day might come. That they might be found out and
interrogated. He said that once the war had begun, it
wouldn't matter what they said. But he cautioned them
to hold out as long as possible for their own sense of
honor.
Most men can be broken,
he had said.
The trick is not to be broken without confusing the
enemy. If you are captured, there is nothing you can do
to prevent being tortured. What you must do is talk.
Tell the enemy lies. Keep on lying as long as
you can. Lie until the enemy cannot tell the true from
the false, the good information from the bad.
"Where is General Pintos stationed?" the torturer
continued.
Adolfo shook his head. The sock was crushed back
into his mouth and he felt himself jerked forward on the
left and his foot placed into the ferocious heat. His
struggles were as frantic as before. But while the pain
was awful and it drew sweat from every inch of him, there was
one thing comforting. The pain in his right
194 OP-CENTER
foot was not so blinding anymore. He held on to that
thought until the pain in his left foot tore it from his
mind and sent sheets of anguish up and down his
entire body. Except for his right hand.
He felt nothing there. Nothing at all, not even
pain-and that scared him. It made him feel a little
dead.
They pulled his foot from the fire and dropped it
back down. They pinned him again. The dark face
came close to him again. The tears in Adolfo's
eyes smeared the black shape.
"Where is Pintos stationed?"
The sheets of pain had become a constant burning, but
it was less intense. Adolfo knew that he could
hold out until the next round-whatever the next round
was. He was proud of himself. In a strange way
he felt free. Free to suffer, free to resist.
But it was his choice.
"Ba-Barcelona," Adolfo moaned.
"You're lying," the torturer replied.
"n-no!"
"How old is he?"
"Ffifty-two."
"What color is his hair?"
"Brown."
The torturer smacked Adolfo. "You're lying!"
Adolfo looked up at the face and shook his head
once. "No. I speak .. . the truth."
The face hovered a moment longer and then the
sock was shoved back down. Adolfo felt himself
tugged to the side. They grabbed his left arm and held
it and pushed his hand into the opening.
He screamed in his throat as his fingers curled into
BALANCE OF POWER 195
a fist and fought to get out of the heat. And then everything
went dark.
He woke bent over the sink with water rushing down
over the back of his head. He coughed, vomited up
the stew, then was dropped onto his back on the
floor. Every patch of flesh on his feet and left
hand throbbed hotly.
The sock was thrust back in his mouth.
"You're strong," the dark face said to him. "But we
have time and I have experience. The first things men always
give up are lies. We will continue until we have
the truth." He bent closer. "Will you tell us who
you work with?"
Adolfo was trembling. The parts of him that weren't
burned or broken were chilly. It seemed very odd
to feel something so trivial as that. He shook his head
twice.
This time he wasn't moved. The sock was pushed
harder into his mouth and held there. One of the crowbars
was raised over Adolfo's right shoulder and
was swung down hard. The bone broke audibly under
the blow. He cried into the sock. The crowbar was
raised again and struck lower, between the shoulder and elbow.
Another bone broke. He cried again. Each blow
brought a burst of agony and a yelp and then numbness.
Each scream was a rent in his will. The pain was just pain
but every scream was a surrender. And as he surrendered
those pieces of his fighting spirit, he had less to draw
on.
"When you talk, the beating will stop," the voice said.
196 OP-CENTER
Someone started working on his left side and he jumped
and howled with each strike. He felt the wall of
resistance crumble faster now. And then something
surprising happened. He didn't feel like himself
anymore. His body was broken; that wasn't him.
His will was shattered; that wasn't him" He was someone
else. And that someone else wanted to talk.
He said something into the sock. The face came down
and the beating stopped. The sock was removed.
"Am . .. Am ..."
"What?" said the dark face.
"Ama . . . dori."
"Amadori?" the face repeated.
"Am ... a ... do ... ri." Each
syllable rode out on a breath. Adolfo couldn't
help himself. He just wanted the pain to stop."...Gen
... er ... al."
"General Amadori," the face said. "That's who you
work with?"
Adolfo nodded.
"Is there anyone else?"
Adolfo shoo
k his head once. He shut his eyes.
"Do you believe him?" someone asked.
"Look at him," someone replied. "He hasn't
got the wits left to lie."
Adolfo felt himself being released. It felt good just
to lie there on his back. He opened his eyes and stared
up at the dark figures gathered around him.
"What do we do with him?" one man asked.
"He killed Senior Ramirez," said another.
"He dies. Slowly."
That was the final word on the matter-not by concensus but because
the man swung his crowbar down
BALANCE OF POWER 197
on Adolfo's throat. The fisherman's head
jerked up and then fell back as his larynx shattered;
his dead arms didn't move. Then he lay there
tasting blood and wheezing. He was able to draw just enough
breath to remain conscious but not enough to satisfy
his lungs.
The pain settled into a steady roar, which helped
to keep him conscious. He was Adolfo Alcazar
again but the agony in his limbs and in his throat made
it difficult to string thoughts together. He couldn't
decide whether he'd acted courageously by holding
out for as long as he did or cowardly for having
succumbed at all. Flashes of thought said yes
he'd been brave, then no he hadn't. And then it
didn't seem to matter as he shivered and the pain
suddenly attacked him. Sometimes it came in like the
tide, engulfing him. Sometimes it lapped at him like
tiny breakers out at sea. The small swells he
could manage. But the big ones tortured him.
God, how they made him shake all over.
He had no idea how long he lay there and whether his
eyes had been open or closed. But suddenly his
eyes were open and the room was brighter and there was a
figure bending beside him.
It was his brother, Berto.
Norberto was weeping and saying something. He was making
signs over his face. Adolfo tried to raise his
arm but it didn't respond. He tried to speak-
"A... ma... do ... ri."
Did Norberto hear? Did he understand?
"Cfty . ..
chur. .. church."
"Adolfo, lie quietly," Norberto said.
"I've telephoned for a doctor-oh. God."
Norberto continued saying a prayer.
198 OP-CENTER
"Warn. . . Gen.. . er... al... they ...
know.
..." Norberto laid a hand on his brother's
lips to silence them. Adolfo smiled weakly. His
brother's hand was soft and loving. The pain seemed
to subside.
And then his head rolled to the side and his eyes shut
and the pain was gone.