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Clancy, Tom - Ballance of Power

Page 21

by Balance of Power [lit]


  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

 

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