Balance Of Power (1998) Read online

  "I'm not exactly new at it," Aideen replied defensively.

  "No, but you're new on the European stage and to my way of doing things," Martha replied. "You like frontal assaults, which is probably why General Rodgers hired you away from Ambassador Carnegie. Our Deputy Director believes in attacking problems head on. But I warned you about that when you came to work for me. I told you to turn down the heat. What worked in Mexico is not necessarily going to work here. I told you when you accepted the position that if you work for me you have to do things my way. And I prefer end runs. Skirt the main force. Finesse the enemy rather than launch an assault. Especially when the stakes are as high as they are here."

  "I understand," Aideen said. "Like I said, I may be new at this type of situation. But I'm not green. When I know the rules I can play by them."

  Martha relaxed slightly. "Okay. I'll buy that." She watched as Aideen tossed the tattered towelette into a trash can. "Are you okay? Do you want to find a restroom?"

  "Do I need one?"

  Martha sniffed the air. "I don't think so." She scowled. "You know, I still can't believe you did what you did."

  "I know you can't and I'm truly sorry," Aideen said. "What else can I possibly say?"

  "Nothing," Martha said. She shook her head slowly. "Not a thing. I've seen street fighters in my day, but I have to admit I've never seen that."

  Martha was still shaking her head as they turned toward the imposing Palacio de las Cortes, where they were scheduled to meet very unofficially and very quietly with Deputy Serrador. According to what the veteran politician had told Ambassador Barry Neville in a very secret meeting, tension was escalating between the impoverished Andalusians in the south and the rich and influential Castilians of northern and central Spain. The government wanted help gathering intelligence. They needed to know from which direction the tension was coming--and whether it also involved the Catalonians, Galicians, Basques, and other ethnic groups. Serrador's fear was that a concerted effort by one faction against another could rend the loosely woven quilt of Spain. Sixty years before, a civil war, which pitted the aristocracy, the military, and the Roman Catholic Church against insurgent Communists and other anarchic forces, had nearly destroyed Spain. A modern war would draw in ethnic sympathizers from France, Morocco, Andorra, Portugal, and other nearby nations. It would destabilize the southern flank of NATO and the results would be catastrophic--particularly as NATO sought to expand its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.

  Ambassador Neville had taken the problem back to the State Department. Secretary of State Av Lincoln decided that the State Department couldn't afford to become involved at this early stage. If the matter exploded and they were shown to have had a hand in it, it would be difficult for the United States to help negotiate a peace. Lincoln asked Op-Center to make the initial contact and ascertain what, if anything, the United States could do to defuse the potential crisis.

  Martha zipped her blue windbreaker against the sudden chill of night. "I can't stress this enough," she said. "Madrid is not the underbelly of Mexico City. The briefings at Op-Center didn't cover this because we didn't have time. But as different as the various peoples of Spain are, they all believe in one thing: honor. Yes, there are aberrations. There are bad seeds in any society. And yes, the standards aren't consistent and they definitely aren't always humanistic. There may be one kind of honor among politicians and another kind among killers. But they always play by the rules of the profession."

  "So those three little pigs who insisted that they show us around when we left the hotel," Aideen said sharply, "the one who put his hand on my butt and kept it there. They were acting according to some kind of honorable sexual harassers' code?"

  "No," Martha said. "They were acting according to a street extortionists' code."

  Aideen's eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?"

  "Those men wouldn't have hurt us," Martha said. "That would have been against the rules. And the rules are that they follow women, pester them, and keep at it until they get a payoff to leave them alone. I was about to give them one when you acted."

  "You were?"

  Martha nodded. "That's how it's done here. As for the police you would have gone to, many of them collect kickbacks from the street extortionists to look the other way. Get it through your head. Playing the game, however corrupt it seems, is still diplomacy."

  "But what if you hadn't known about their 'profession,' their code? I didn't." Aideen lowered her voice. "I was worried about having our backpacks stolen and our covers blown."

  "An arrest would have blown our covers a whole lot faster," Martha said. She took Aideen by the arm and pulled her aside. They stood next to a building, away from pedestrian traffic. "The truth is, eventually someone would have told us how to get rid of them. People always do. That's how the game is played, and I believe in obeying the rules of whatever game or whatever country I'm in. When I started out in diplomacy in the early 1970s on the seventh floor of the State Department, I was excited as hell. I was on the seventh floor, where all the real, heavy-duty work is done. But then I found out why I was there. Not because I was so damn talented, though I hoped I was. I was there to deal with the apartheid leaders in South Africa. I was State's 'in-your-face' figure. I was a wagging finger that said, 'If you want to deal with the U.S., you'll have to deal with blacks as equals.' " Martha scowled. "Do you know what that was like?"

  Aideen made a face. She could just imagine.

  "It's not like having your fanny patted, I can tell you that," Martha said. "But I did what I was supposed to do because I learned one thing very early. If you infract the rules or bend them to suit your temperament, even a little, it becomes a habit. When it becomes a habit you get sloppy. And a sloppy diplomat is no use to the country--or to me."

  Aideen was suddenly disgusted with herself. The thirty-four-year-old foreign service officer would be the first to admit that she wasn't the diplomat her forty-nine-year-old superior was. Few people were. Martha Mackall not only knew her way around European and Asian political circles--partly the result of summers and vacations she'd spent touring the world with her father, popular 1960s soul singer and Civil Rights activist Mack Mackall. She was also a summa cum laude MIT financial wizard who was tight with the world's top bankers and well connected on Capitol Hill. Martha was feared but she was respected. And Aideen had to admit that in this case she was also right.

  Martha looked at her watch. "Come on," she said. "We're due at the palace in less than five minutes."

  Aideen nodded and walked alongside her boss. The younger woman was no longer angry. She was disgusted with herself and brooded, as she usually did when she screwed up. She hadn't been able to screw up much during her four years in army intelligence at Fort Meade. That was paint-by-numbers courier work, moving cash and top secret information to operatives domestically and abroad. Toward the end of her tenure there she interpreted ELINT--electronic intelligence--and passed it on to the Pentagon. Since the satellites and computers did all the heavy lifting there, she took special classes on elite tactics and stakeout techniques--just to get experience in those areas. Aideen didn't have a chance to mess things up either when she left the military and became a junior political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico. Most of the time she was using ELINT to help keep track of drug dealers in the Mexican military, though occasionally she was permitted to go out in the field and use some of the undercover skills she'd acquired. One of the most valuable aspects of the three years Aideen had spent in Mexico was learning the ploy that had proved so effective this afternoon--as well as offensive to Martha and the busload of commuters. After she and her friend Ana Rivera of the Mexican attorney general's office were cornered by a pair of drug cartel muscle-men one night, Aideen discovered that the best way to fight off an attacker wasn't by carrying a whistle or knife or by trying to kick them in the groin or scratch out their eyes. It was by keeping moist towelettes in your handbag. That's what Ana used to clean her hands and arms after tossing aroun
d some mierda de perro.

  Dog droppings. Ana had casually scooped them off the street and flung them at the toughs who were following them. Then she'd rubbed some on her arms to make sure no one grabbed them. Ana said there wasn't an attacker she'd ever encountered who stuck around after that. Certainly the three "street extortionists" in Madrid had not.

  Martha and Aideen walked in silence toward the towering white columns of the Palacio de las Cortes. Built in 1842, the palace was the seat of the Congreso de los Diputados; along with the Senado, the Senate, it comprised the two houses of the Spanish parliament. Though the sun had set, spotlights illuminated two larger-than-life bronze lions. Each lion rested a paw atop a cannonball. The statues had been cast using guns taken from the enemies of Spain. They flanked the stone steps that led to a high metal door, a door used only for ceremonies. To the left of the main entrance was a very tall iron fence, which was spiked along the top. Beside the fence gate stood a small guardhouse with bulletproof windows. This was where the deputies entered the halls of parliament.

  Neither woman spoke as they walked past the imposing granite facade of the palace. Though Aideen had only worked at Op-Center a short while, she knew that in spirit her boss was already at the meeting. Martha was quietly reviewing things she'd want to say to Serrador. Aideen's own role was to draw on her experience with Mexican insurrectionists and her knowledge of the Spanish language to make sure nothing was misstated or misinterpreted.

  If only we'd had a little more time to prepare, Aideen thought as they walked around snapping pictures, acting like tourists as they slowly made their way to the gate. Op-Center had barely had time to catch its breath from the hostage situation in the Bekaa Valley when this matter had been relayed to them from the U.S. Embassy in Madrid. Relayed so quietly that only Deputy Serrador, Ambassador Neville, President Michael Lawrence and his closest advisors, and the top people at Op-Center knew about it. And they would keep quiet. If Deputy Serrador were correct, tens of thousands of lives were at risk.

  A church bell rang in the distance. To Aideen, it somehow sounded holier in Spain than it did in Washington. She counted out the tolls. It was six o'clock. Martha and Aideen made their way to the guardhouse.

  Nosotros aqui para un viaje todo comprendido, Aideen said through the grate in the glass. "We're here for a tour." Completing the picture of the excited tourist, she added that a mutual friend had arranged for a private tour of the building.

  The young guard, tall and unsmiling, asked for their names.

  Senorita Temblon y Senorita Serafico, Aideen replied, giving him their cover identities. Before leaving Washington Aideen had worked these out with Serrador's office. Everything, from the airplane tickets to the hotel reservations, was in those names.

  The guard turned and checked a list on a clipboard. As he did, Aideen looked around. There was a courtyard behind the fence, the sky a beautiful blue-black above it. At the rear of the courtyard was a small stone building where auxiliary governmental services were located. Behind that was a new glass-covered building, which housed the offices of the deputies. It was an impressive complex that reminded Aideen just how far the Spanish had come since the death in 1975 of El Caudillo, "the leader," Francisco Franco. The nation was now a constitutional monarchy, with a prime minister and a largely titular king. The Palacio de las Cortes itself spoke very eloquently of one of the trying times in Spain's past. There were bullet holes in the ceiling of the Chamber of Sessions, a remnant and graphic reminder of a right-wing coup attempt in 1981. The palace had been the site of other attacks, most notably in 1874 when President Emilio Castelar lost a vote of confidence and soldiers opened fire in the hallways.

  Spain's strife had been mostly internal in this century, and the nation had remained neutral during World War II. As a result, the world had paid relatively little attention to its problems and politics. But when Aideen was studying languages in college her Spanish professor, Senor Armesto, had told her that Spain was a nation on the verge of disaster.

  Where there are three Spaniards there are four opinions, he had said. When world events favor the impatient and disaffected, those opinions will be heard loudly and violently.

  Senor Armesto was correct. Fractionalization was the trend in politics, from the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia to the secessionist movement in Quebec to the rising ethnocentrism in the United States. Spain was hardly immune. If Deputy Serrador's fears were correct--and Op-Center's intelligence had corroborated it--the nation was poised to suffer its worst strife in a thousand years. As Intelligence Chief Bob Herbert had put it before Martha left Washington, "This will make the Spanish Civil War look like a brawl."

  The guard put his list down. "Un momento," he said, and picked up the red telephone on the console in the back of the booth. He punched in a number and cleared his throat.

  As the sentry spoke to a secretary on the other end, Aideen turned. She looked toward the broad avenue, which was packed with traffic--la hora de aplastar, or "crush hour," as they called it here. The bright lights of the slow-moving cars were blinding in the dark twilight. They seemed to pop on and off as pedestrians scurried past. Occasionally, a flashbulb would fire as a tourist stopped to take a picture of the palace.

  Aideen was blinking off the effects of one such flash when a young man who had just taken a picture put his camera in the pocket of his denim jacket. He turned toward the booth. She couldn't see him clearly beneath the brim of his baseball cap, but she felt his eyes on her.

  A street extortionist posing as a tourist? she wondered impertinently as the man ambled toward her. Aideen decided to let Martha handle this one and she started to turn away. As she did, Aideen noticed a car pulling up to the curb behind the man. The black sedan didn't so much arrive as edge forward, as though it had been waiting down the block. Aideen stopped turning. The world around her suddenly seemed to be moving in slow motion. She watched as the young man pulled what looked like a pistol from inside his jacket.

  Aideen experienced a moment of paralytic disbelief. It passed quickly as her training took over.

  "Fusilar!" she shouted. "Gunman!"

  Martha turned toward her as the gun jerked with booming cracks and dull flares. Martha was thrown against the booth and then dropped to her side as Aideen jumped in the opposite direction. Her thinking was to draw the man's fire away from Martha. She succeeded. As Aideen dove for the pavement, a startled young mailman who was walking in front of her stopped, stared, and took a bullet in his left thigh. As his leg folded and he pitched forward, a second bullet hit his side. He landed on his back and Aideen dropped flat beside him. She lay as low as she could and as close to him as she could as he writhed in agony. As bright blood pumped from his side, she reached over and pressed her palm to the wound. She hoped that pressure would help stanch the bleeding.

  Aideen lay there, listening. The popping had stopped and she raised her head carefully. As she watched, the car pulled from the curb. When people began to scream in the distance, Aideen rose slowly. She kept up pressure on the man's wound as she got on her knees.

  "Ayuda!" she yelled to a security guard who had run up to the gate at the Congress of Deputies. "Help!"

  The man unlocked the gate and rushed over. Aideen told him to keep pressure on the wound. He did as he was told and Aideen rose. She looked back at the booth. The sentry was crouched there, shouting into the phone for assistance. There were people across the street and in the road. The only ones left in front of the palace were Aideen, the man beside her, the guard--and Martha.

  Aideen looked at her boss in the growing darkness. Passing cars slowed and stopped, their lights illuminating the still, awful scene. Martha was lying on her side, facing the booth. Thick puddles of blood were forming on the pavement beneath and behind her body.

  "Oh, Jesus," Aideen choked.

  The young woman tried to rise but her legs wouldn't support her. She crawled quickly toward the booth and knelt beside Martha. She bent over her and looked down at th
e handsome face. It was utterly still.

  "Martha?" she said softly.

  Martha didn't respond. People began to gather tentatively behind the two women.

  "Martha?" Aideen said more insistently.

  Martha didn't move. Aideen heard the sound of running feet inside the courtyard. Then she heard muted voices shouting for people to clear the area. Aideen's ears were cottony from the shots. Hesitantly, she touched Martha's cheek with the tips of two fingers. Martha did not respond. Slowly, as though she were moving in a dream, Aideen extended her index finger. She held it under Martha's nose, close to her nostrils. There was no breath.

  "God, oh God," Aideen was muttering. She gently touched Martha's eyelid. It didn't react and, after a moment, she withdrew her hand. Then she sat back on her heels and stared down at the motionless figure. Sounds became louder as her ears cleared. The world seemed to return to normal motion.

  Fifteen minutes ago Aideen was silently cursing this woman. Martha had been caught up in something that had seemed so important--so very damned important. Moments always seemed important until tragedy put them in perspective. Or maybe they were important because inevitably there would be no more. Not that it mattered now. Whether Martha had been right or wrong, good or bad, a visionary or a control freak, she was dead. Her moments were over.

  The courtyard gate flew open and men ran from behind it. They gathered around Aideen, who was staring vacantly at Martha. The young woman touched Martha's thick, black hair.

  "I'm sorry," Aideen said. She exhaled tremulously and shut her eyes. "I'm so very, very sorry."

  The woman's limbs felt heavy and she was sick that the reflexes that had been so quick with those street kids had failed her completely here. Intellectually, Aideen knew that she wasn't to blame. During her week-long orientation when she first joined Op-Center, staff psychologist Liz Gordon had warned Aideen and two other new employees that if and when it happened, unexpectedly facing a weapon for the first time could be devastating. A gun or a knife pulled in familiar surroundings destroys the delusion that we're invincible doing what we do routinely every day--in this case, walking down a city street. Liz had told the small group that in the instant of shock, a person's body temperature, blood pressure, and muscle tone all crash and it takes a moment for the survival instinct to kick in. Attackers count on that instant of paralysis, Liz had said.