workers?" Aideen asked.
Maria nodded once. "Do me a favor?" she said.
"Call Luis. Autodial star-seven. Ask him
to locate General Rafael Amadori. Tell
him why."
"No encryption?"
Maria shook her head. "If Amadori
is listening somehow and comes after us, so much the better.
It'll save us the trouble of finding him."
Aideen punched in the code. Luis's cellular
beeped and he answered at once. Aideen passed
along Maria's request and told him about
Adolfo. Luis promised to get right on it and
call them back. Aideen folded away the phone.
"Who is Amadori?" she asked.
"A scholar," she said. "He's a military
general too, but I don't know much about his career.
I only know him as a published author of
articles about historic Spain."
"Obviously, they alarm you."
"Very much so," Maria said. She lit a cigarette.
"What do you know about our national folk hero El
Cid?"
210 OP-CENTER
"Only that he beat back the invading Moors and
helped unify Spain around 1100. And there was a
movie about him with Charlton Heston."
"There was also an epic poem and a play written
by Comeille," Maria said. "I staged it once at
my theater. Anyway," she went on, "you are partly
right about El Cid. He was a knight-Rodrigo
Diaz of Vivar. From around 1065 to his
death in 1099 he helped the Christian king,
Sancho II, and then his successor, Alfonso
VI, regain the kingdom of Castile from the
Moors. The Moors called him
el cid-
'the lord." his
"Honored by his enemies," Aideen said.
"Impressive."
"Actually," Maria said, "they feared him, which was his
intention. When the Moorish stronghold of Valencia
surrendered. El Cid violated the peace terms
by slaughtering hundreds of people and burning the leader
alive. He was not the pure knight that legend has
made him-he would do anything to anybody to protect
his homeland. It's also a myth that he fought to unify
Spain. He fought for Castile. As long as the other
kingdoms remained at peace with Alfonso, as long
as they paid him tribute, neither Alfonso nor El
Cid cared what happened to them.
"General Amadori is an authority on El
Cid," Maria continued. "But I've always
detected in his writings the desire to be something more."
"You mean, to be El Cid," Aideen said.
Maria shook her head. "El Cid was a
glorified soldier of fortune. There is
something more to General Amadori than waging war. If
you read his essays in the political journals
you'll find that he is a leading
BALANCE OF POWER 211
proponent of what he calls "benevolent
militarism." his
"Sounds like a fancy name for a police state,"
Aideen said.
"It is," Maria agreed. She took a long
drag on her cigarette then nicked it out the window.
" 'But he has given the models of Nazi
Germany and Stalinist Russia a new-old twist:
militarism without conquest. He believes that if a
nation is strong, there is no need to conquer other
nations. Those nations will come to him to trade, to seek
protection, to be aligned with greatness. His power
base will grow by accretion, not war."
"So General Amadori doesn't want to be like
Hitler," Aideen said. "He wants to be like King
Alfonso."
"Exactly," Maria replied. "What we may be
seeing is the start of an effort to make Amadori the
absolute leader of Castile and to make Castile
the military hub of a new Spain. A hub which will
dictate to the other regions. And
Amadori has chosen this time-was
"Because he can move troops and influence events
while appearing to stop a counterrevolution," Aideen
said.
Maria nodded.
Aideen looked out at the brightening sky. Her eyes
lowered and her gaze ranged across the beautiful fishing
village. It seemed so peaceful, so desirable,
yet it had been corrupted. Here, in less than a
day, over a dozen people had already died or been
brutally injured. She wondered if there had ever been
a time, since people first descended from trees and began
despoiling Eden, if manifest destiny had ever come
cheaply.
"The price in blood will be very high before
212 OP-CENTER
Amadori can realize his dream," Maria said, as
though reading Aideen's mind. "I am Andalusian.
My people and others will fight-not to keep Spain unified
but to keep Castile from becoming the heart and soul of a
new Spain. It's a rivalry which dates back
to the time of El Cid. And unless we find a way
to stop men like Amadori, it will continue long after
we're gone."
No,
Aideen decided. There had never been a time when people
graciously accomodated other people and other ways.
We were still too close to the trees for that. And among
us, there were too many bull-apes who were unhappy with the
size and makeup of the tribe.
But then she thought about Father Alcazar. There was a man
still trying to do God's work while in the grip of his own
suffering. There
were
good people among the territorial carnivores. If
only they had the power.
But if they did,
Aideen asked herself,
wouldn 'I they wield it like all the rest?
She didn't know-and after being awake for nearly
twenty-four hours this wasn't the best time to ponder
the question. However, as she sat there squinting out at the
blue-gold sky, thinking about what Maria had just
said, she was reminded of another question.
Think about it,
Martha had said to her when they were still back in the
U.s.
Think about how you handle someone's agenda.
Just the way Rodgers had said, Aideen thought:
with a better agenda.
The trick now was to come up with one.
MIWTEE-LIKE caret
Monday, 9:21 p.m. Washington, D.c.
Intellectually, Paul Hood knew that the
United Nations was a good idea. But emotionally, he
did not have much respect for the institution. It had
proven itself ineffective in war and largely
ineffective in peace. It was a forum for posturing, for
making accusations, and for getting a nation's views into the
press with the best possible spin.
But he had a great deal of admiration for the coolheaded
new Secretary-General, Massimo Marcello
Manni of Italy. A former NATO officer,
senator in the Italian parliament, and
ambassador to Russia, Manni had worked
mightily the previous year to keep Italy from
tumbling into the kind of civil war for which Spain
seemed headed.
At Manni's request, a teleconference had
> been arranged for 11:00 p.m. by National
Security head Steve Burkow.
Secretary-General Manni had been talking to the
intelligence and security chiefs of all the
Security Council nations to discuss the
deteriorating situation in Spain.
Burkow, Carol Lanning at the State Department,
and new Central Intelligence Director
Marius Fox-the cousin of Senator Barbara
Fox-would be in on the call.
214 OP-CENTER
Shortly before Burkow's office called at
8:50, Hood had already informed Bob Herbert and
Ron Plummer that he wanted Darrell to remain in
Madrid and Aideen to stay in the field.
"If Spain is coming apart," Hood told his team,
"then HUMINT is more important than ever."
Hood asked Herbert to make sure that Stephen
Viens remained in contact with his loyal colleagues
at the Pentagon-based National Reconnaissance
Office. Viens was a longtime friend of Op-Center's
Matt Stoll and had always been a steadfast ally
during all previous surveillance efforts. Though
Viens had been temporarily relieved of his
NRO duties because of an ongoing Senate
investigation into funding abuses, Hood had
quietly given him an office at Op-Center.
Unlike most people in Washington, Hood believed in
repaying devotion. The NRO had begun conducting
satellite reconnaissance of military movements
in Spain some forty minutes before. Hood
wanted that photographic surveillance to become
part of Herbert's database. He also wanted
copies of the pictures sent to McCaskey in
Spain, via the U.s. Embassy in Madrid,
and to the Striker team, which was airborne. At other
intelligence organizations in Washington, department
heads tended to covet information to give their groups an
edge. But Hood believed in sharing information among his
people. To him and to the unique personnel working with him, the
job was not about personal glory. It was about
protecting Americans and national interests.
In addition to satellite reconnaissance,
Op-Center drew on international news reports
for information.
BALANCE OF POWER 215
Raw TV footage was especially valuable. It
was plucked from satellite feeds before it could be edited
for broadcast. The uncut footage was then
analyzed by Herbert's team and also by Laurie
Rhodes in the OpCenter photographic
archives. Often, camouflaged weapons bunkers were
constructed well prior to military actions. While
these facilities might not always be visible from
space, they often showed up in slightly altered
topography, which could be seen in comparative
studies from the ground.
Hood took a short dinner break in the commissary,
where he read the Sunday comics someone had left lying
around. He hadn't looked at them in a while and he
was amazed at how little they'd changed from when he was a
kid.
Peanuts
and
B.c.
were still there, along with
Tarzan
and
Terry and the Pirates
and
The Wizard of Id.
It was comforting, just then, to visit with old friends.
After dinner. Hood had a short briefing from Mike
Rodgers in the general's office. Rodgers told
him that Striker would reach Madrid shortly after
11:30 a.m., Spanish time. Options for Striker
activities would be presented to Hood as soon as
they were available.
After the briefing. Hood checked in with the night
crew. While the day team continued to monitor the
Spanish situation. Curt Hardaway,
X. Gen. Bill Abram, and the rest of the
"P.m.squad," as they called themselves, were
overseeing the routine domestic and international
activities of Op-Center. Lieutenant
General Abram, who was Mike Rodgers's
counterpart, was especially busy with the Regional
Op-Center. The mobile facility had been
returned from
216 OP-CENTER
its Middle East shakedown and was undergoing repair
work and fine tuning. Everything was under control. Hood
returned to his office to try to rest.
He shut off the light, threw off his shoes, and lay
back on his couch. As he stared at the dark ceiling
his mind went to Sharon and the kids. He glanced at his
luminous watch-the one Sharon had bought him for their first
anniversary. They would be coming into Bradley
International soon. He played with the notion of
borrowing an army chopper and flying up to Old
Saybrook. He'd buzz his in-laws and use a
megaphone to beg his wife to come home. He would be
dismissed for all that but what the hell. It would give
him plenty of time to stay home with the family.
Of course Hood had no intention of doing that. He
was romantic enough to want to play the
modern-day knight, but he wasn't reckless enough.
And why bother going up to Old Saybrook if he
couldn't promise to slow down? He
liked
his work. And shorter hours were something the job just wouldn't
permit. Part of him felt that Sharon was being
vindictive because she'd had to cut way back on her
career activities in order to raise the kids. But
even if he'd wanted to stop working and raise a
family-which he didn't- they couldn't have lived on
Sharon's salary. That was a fact.
He shut his eyes and dropped his arm across them.
But facts don't always matter in situations like this,
do they?
Hood's mind was too busy to allow him to sleep.
He alternated between feeling angry, guilty, and
utterly disgusted. He decided to give up trying
to rest.
BALANCE OF POWER 217
He made himself a pot of coffee, poured it black
into his memorial washington senators baseball
mug, and went back to his desk. He spent some
time with the computer files of Manni's Italian
secessionist movement. He was curious to see what,
if any, intelligence work had been done
to stopgap the collapse of Italy.
There was nothing on file. It was a nearly
six-yearlong process, which began in 1993 as an
offshoot of voter unhappiness over increasing
political corruption scandals. Smaller
communities claimed that they weren't being
adequately represented and so members of
parliament were elected from individual districts rather
than through proportional representation as before. That
caused a fragmentation of power among the major
parties which allowed smaller groups to flourish.
Neo-Fascists came to power in 1994, business
interests of the Forza Italia party wrested power from
them a year later, and then the fall of Yugoslavia
caused unrest all along the Istrian Peninsula
in the north-unrest that the Rome-based Forza
Italia was ill equipped to handle. For help the
premier turned to parties that had a power base there.
But those groups were interested in building their own
strength and fanned the rebelliousness. Violence and
secessionist talk flourished in Trieste and moved
west to Venice and slingshot south as far as Livorno
and Florence.
The Milan-bom Manni was recalled from Moscow
to try to negotiate a fix to the
deteriorating situation. His solution was to draft a
pact that made northern Italy a largely
autonomous political and economic region,
with a congressional government in Milan to replace the
bloc in the parliament in Rome. Both groups
218 OP-CENTER
worked independently with the elected premier. While the
Italians above the Northern Apennines paid
taxes to their own capital, they used the same
currency as the south; the two regions remained
militarily intact;
and the nation was still referred to as Italy.
No military action was taken by Rome and no
foreign intelligence services were involved to any
great extent. The Italian Entente, as it was
called, provided no model for the situation in
Spain. And they lacked the one thing that had made
Manni's efforts workable:
he was only dealing with two factions, north and south.
The Spanish conflict involved at least a half
dozen ethnic groups who had rarely if ever been
comfortable together.
The call came through ten minutes late. Hood
called Rodgers in to listen on the speakerphone. As
Rodgers arrived and took a seat,
Manni was explaining in English that the reason he was
late was because Portugal had just asked the United
Nations for help.
" "There has been violence along the border between
Salamanca and Zamora," Manni said.
Hood glanced at the map on his computer.
Salamanca was located just below Zamora in
central and northwestern Spain. Together, the
regions shared about two hundred miles of border
with Portugal.
"The unrest began about three hours ago when
antiCastilians held a candlelight rally at the
Postigo de la Traicion-the Traitor's
Gate. That's the spot by the city wall where the
Castilian king Sancho II was assassinated in
1072. When police attempted to break up the
rally, stones and bottles were thrown and the police
fired several shots into the air. Someone in the crowd
BALANCE OF POWER 219
fired back and an officer was wounded. The police
are mostly Castilian and they immediately turned on the
Clancy, Tom - Ballance of Power Page 21
