Balance of Power

FOUR

Aideen was still sitting in the leather couch when Comisario Diego Fernandez arrived. He was a man of medium height and build. He was clean-shaven with a ruddy complexion and carefully trimmed goatee. His black hair was longish but neat and he peered out carefully from behind gold-rimmed spectacles. He wore black leather gloves, black suede shoes, and a black trenchcoat. Beneath the open coat was a dark gray business suit.

An aide shut the door behind him. When it had clicked shut, the inspector bowed politely to Aideen.

“Our deepest sympathy and apologies for your loss,” he said. His voice was deep, the English accent thick. “If there’s anything I or my department can do to help you, please ask.”

“Thank you, Inspector,” Aideen said.

“Be assured that the resources of the entire Madrid metropolitan police department as well as other government offices will be applied to finding whoever was responsible for this atrocious act.”

Aideen looked up at the police inspector. He couldn’t be talking to her. The police department couldn’t be looking for the killer of someone she knew. The TV announcements and newspaper headlines wouldn’t be about a person she had been dressing with in a hotel room just an hour before. Though she had lived through the killing and seen Martha’s body on the street, the experience didn’t seem real. Aideen was so accustomed to changing things — rewinding a tape to see something she’d missed or erasing computer data she didn’t need — that the irreversibility of this seemed impossible.

But in her brain Aideen knew that it had happened. And that it was irreversible. After being brought here, she’d called the hotel and briefed Darrell McCaskey. McCaskey had said he would inform Op-Center. He’d seemed surprisingly unshocked — or maybe Darrell was always that collected. Aideen didn’t know him well enough to say. Then she’d sat here trying to tell herself that the shooting was a random act of terrorism and not a hit. After all, it wasn’t the same as in Tijuana two years earlier when her friend Odin Gutierrez Rico had literally been blasted to death by four gunmen with assault rifles. Rico was the director of criminal trials in Baja California. He was a public figure who had regularly received death threats and had continued to defy the nation’s drug traffickers. His death was a tragic loss but not a surprise. It was a very public statement that the prosecution of drug dealers would not be tolerated by the underworld.

Martha was here with a cover story known only to a handful of government officials. She had come to Madrid to help Deputy Serrador work out a plan to keep his own people, the Basques, from joining with the equally nationalistic Catalonians in an effort to break away from Spain. The Basque uprisings in the 1980s had been sporadic enough to fail but violent enough to be remembered. Martha and Serrador both believed that an organized revolt by two of the nation’s five major ethnic groups — especially if those groups were well armed and better prepared than in the 1980s — would not only be enormously destructive but would have a good chance of succeeding.

If this were an assassination, if Martha had been the target, it meant that there was a leak in the system somewhere. And if there were a leak then the peace process was in serious danger. It was a cruel irony that only a short time before, Martha had been insisting that nothing must be allowed to interfere with the talks.

You know what’s at stake….

Then, of course, Martha had been worried about Aideen’s overreaction in the street.

If only that had been our worst roadblock, Aideen thought. We sweat the details and end up missing the big picture—

“Senorita?” the inspector said.

Aideen blinked. “Yes?”

“Are you all right?”

Aideen had been looking past Comisario Fernandez, at the dark windows. But she focused on the inspector now. He was still standing a few feet away, smiling down at her.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said. “I’m very sorry, Inspector. I was thinking about my friend.”

“I understand,” the inspector replied quietly. “If it would not be too much for you, might I ask you a few questions?”

“Of course,” she replied. She’d been slumping forward but now she sat up in the chair. “First, Inspector, would you mind telling me if the surveillance cameras told you anything?”

“Unfortunately, they did not,” the inspector said. “The gunman was standing just out of range.”

“He knew what that range was?”

“Apparently, he did,” the inspector admitted. “Unfortunately, it will take us a while to find out everyone who had access to that information — and to interrogate them all.”

“I understand,” Aideen said.

The inspector drew a small, yellow notebook from his coat pocket. The smile faded as he studied some notes and slipped a pen from the spiral binder. When he was finished reading he looked at Aideen.

“Did you and your companion come to Madrid for pleasure?” the inspector asked.

“Yes. Yes, we did.”

“You informed the guard at the gate that you came to the Congreso de los Diputados for a personal tour.”

“That’s right.”

“This tour was arranged by whom?”

“I don’t know,” said Aideen.

“Oh?”

“My companion set it up through a friend back in the States,” Aideen informed him.

“Would you be able to provide me with the name of this friend?” the inspector asked.

“I’m afraid not,” Aideen replied. “I don’t know who it was. My coming on this trip was rather last-minute.”

“Possibly it was a coworker who arranged it,” he suggested. “Or else a neighbor? A local politician?”

“I don’t know,” Aideen insisted. “I’m sorry, Inspector, but it wasn’t something I thought I’d need to know.”

The inspector stared at her for a long moment. Then he lowered his eyes slowly and wrote her answers in his notebook.

Aideen didn’t think that he believed her; that was what she got from the disapproving turn of his mouth and the stern knot of flesh between his eyebrows. And she hated stonewalling the investigation. But until she heard otherwise from Darrell McCaskey or Deputy Serrador, she had no choice but to continue to play this by the cover story.

Comisario Fernandez turned slowly and thoughtfully to a fresh page of the notebook. “Did you see the man who attacked you?”

“I didn’t see his face,” she said. “He fired a flash picture just before he reached for his weapon.”

“Did you smell any cologne? Aftershave?”

“No.”

“Did you notice the camera? The make?”

“No,” she said. “I wasn’t close enough — and then there was the flash. I only saw his clothes.”

“Aha,” he said. He stepped forward eagerly. “Can you tell me what they looked like?”

Aideen took a long breath. She shut her eyes. “He was wearing a tight denim jacket and a baseball cap. A dark blue or black cap, worn with the brim in front. He had on loose khaki trousers and black shoes. I want to say that he was a young man, though I can’t be entirely certain.”

“What gave you that impression?”

Aideen opened her eyes. “There was something about the way he stood,” she replied. “His feet planted wide, his shoulders squared, his head held erect. Very strong, very poised.”

“You’ve seen this look before?” the inspector asked.

“Yes,” Aideen replied. The killer had reminded her of a Striker, though of course she couldn’t say that. “Where I went to college there was ROTC,” she lied. “Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. The killer had the bearing of a soldier. Or at least someone who was skilled in handling firearms.”

The inspector made an entry in his notebook. “Did the gunman say anything to you?”

“No.”

“Did he shout anything — a slogan or a threat?”

“No.”

“Did you notice the kind of weapon he used?”

“I’m sorry, I did not. It was a handgun of some kind.”

“A revolver?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she lied. It was an automatic. But she didn’t want the inspector to know that she knew enough to tell the difference.

“Did he pause between shots?”

“I believe so.”

“Was it loud?”

“Not very,” Aideen said. “It was surprisingly quiet.” The gun had been silenced but she didn’t want to let him know that she knew that.

“It was probably silenced,” the inspector said. “Did you see the getaway car?”

“Yes,” Aideen said. “It was a black sedan. I don’t know what kind.”

“Was it clean or dirty?”

“Average.”

“Where did it come from?” the inspector asked.

“I believe it was waiting for the killer down the street,” Aideen said.

“About how far?”

“Maybe twenty or thirty yards,” Aideen said. “It seemed to creep up along the curb a few seconds before the man opened fire.”

“Did any of the shots come from the car?”

“I don’t think so,” she replied. “The only flashes I saw came from the one gun.”

“You were behind the other victim, the postman, for part of the attack. You were very conscientiously attending to his wound. You might have missed a second gunman.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I was only behind him at the very end. Tell me — how is the gentleman? Will he recover?”

“Sadly, señorita, he has died.”

Aideen glanced down. “I’m sorry.”

“You did everything you could to help him,” the inspector said. “There is nothing you should regret.”

“Nothing,” she muttered, “except moving in that direction. Did he have a family?”

“Sí,” said the inspector. “Señor Suarez supported a wife, a baby son, and a mother.”

Aideen felt her temples grow tight as fresh tears formed behind her eyes. Not only had she failed to do anything to help Martha, but her instincts to draw the gunman’s fire had cost an innocent man his life. In retrospect, she should have jumped toward Martha. Maybe she could have put her body between the gunman and Martha or tried to pull the wounded woman behind the goddamn sentry booth. She should have done anything but what she’d done.

“Would you like a glass of water?” the inspector asked.

“Thank you, no. I’m all right.”

The inspector nodded. He paced for a moment, staring at the floor, before looking back at Aideen. “Señorita, ” he said, “do you believe that you and your companion were the gunman’s targets?”

“I believe we were,” she replied. She had expected the question and now she wanted to be very careful about how she answered it.

“Do you know why?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“Have you any suspicions? Are you involved in any kind of political activity? Do you belong to any groups?”

She shook her head.

There was a knock on the door. The inspector ignored it. He regarded Aideen harshly and in silence.

“Señorita Temblón,” he said, “Forgive me for pressing you at this time, but a killer is free in the streets of my city. I want him. Can you think of no reason that someone would want to attack you or your friend?”

“Comisario,” she replied, “I have never been to Spain nor do I know anyone here. My companion was here years ago but she has — she had—no friends or enemies that I know of.”

There was a second knock. The inspector went to the door and opened it. Aideen couldn’t see who was standing outside.

“Sí?” the inspector asked.

“Comisario, said a man, ”Deputy Serrador wishes for the woman to be brought to his office at once.“

“Does he?” the inspector asked. He turned and looked at Aideen. His eyes narrowed slightly. “Perhaps, señorita, the deputy wishes to apologize in person for this terrible tragedy.”

Aideen said nothing.

“Or perhaps there is some other reason for the audience?” the inspector suggested.

Aideen rose. “If there is, Comisario Fernandez, I won’t know that until I see him.”

The inspector folded away his notebook and bowed courteously. If he were annoyed with her he didn’t show it. He thanked Aideen for her assistance, apologized again for what had happened, then extended an arm toward the open door. Aideen left the room. The sergeant who had brought her inside was waiting. He greeted her with a bow and they walked down the corridor together.

Aideen felt bad for the inspector. He had an investigation to oversee and she hadn’t given him anything to go on. But as Martha had pointed out, there were rules for every society and for every stratum of that society. And whatever the country, despite the constitutions and the checks and balances, the rules were always different for government. Phrases like “need-to-know” and “state secrets” effectively shut out otherwise legal inquiries. Unfortunately, in many instances — this one among them — the obstructions were necessary and legitimate.

Deputy Serrador’s office was located a short walk down the corridor. The office was the same size and had largely the same decor as the room Aideen had just left, though there were a number of personal touches. On three walls were framed posters of the bullring of Madrid, the Plaza de las Ventas. On the fourth wall, behind the desk, were framed newspaper front pages describing Basque activities during the 1980s. Family photographs were displayed on shelves around the room.

Deputy Serrador was seated behind the desk when Aideen entered. Darrell McCaskey was sitting on the sofa. Both men rose when she entered. Serrador walked grandly from behind the desk, his arms outstretched and a look of deep sympathy on his face. His brown eyes were pained under his gray eyebrows. His high, dark forehead was creased beneath his slicked-back white hair and his wide mouth was downturned. His soft, large hands closed gently around Aideen’s.

“Ms. Marley, I am so, so sorry,” he said. “Yet in my grief I am also relieved that you are unharmed.”

“Thank you, Mr. Deputy,” Aideen said. She looked at McCaskey. The short, wiry, prematurely gray Deputy Assistant Director was standing stiffly, his hands folded in front of his groin. He was not wearing the kind of diplomatic sympathy that was all over Serrador: his expression was grave and tight. “Darrell,” she said. “How are you?”

“I’ve been better, Aideen. You all right?”

“Not really,” she said. “I blew it, Darrell.”

“What do you mean?”

“I should have reacted… differently,” Aideen said. Emotion caused her to choke. “I saw what was happening and I blew it, Darrell. I just blew it.”

“That’s insane,” McCaskey said. “You’re lucky you were able to get out of the way at all.”

“At the expense of another man’s life—”

“That was unavoidable,” McCaskey said.

“Mr. McCaskey is correct,” Serrador said. He was still holding her hands within his. “You mustn’t do this to yourself. These things are always much clearer in — what do you call it? Hindsight.”

“That’s what we call it,” McCaskey said with barely concealed irritation. “Everything is always much clearer after the fact.”

Aideen gave McCaskey a questioning look. “Darrell, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Nothing except that Deputy Serrador is disinclined to hold any discussions at the moment.”

“What?” Aideen said.

“It would be most inappropriate,” Serrador stated.

“We don’t agree,” McCaskey replied. He looked at Aideen. “Deputy Serrador says that the arrangement was made with Martha. That it was her experience and her ethnic background that enabled him to convince the Basques and Catalonians to consider possible U.S. mediation.”

Aideen regarded Serrador. “Martha was a respected and highly skilled diplomat—”

“A remarkable woman,” Serrador said with a flourish.

“Yes, but as gifted a negotiator as Martha was, she was not indispensible,” Aideen went on.

Serrador stepped back. His expression was disapproving. “You disappoint me, señorita.”

“Do I?”

“Your colleague has just been murdered!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Deputy,” Aideen said, “but the issue is not my sense of occasion—”

“That is true,” said Serrador. “The issues are experience and security. And until I’m convinced that we have both, the talks will be postponed. Not canceled, Señor McCaskey, Señorita Marley. Merely delayed.”

“Deputy Serrador,” McCaskey said, “you know as well as I that there may not be time for a delay. Before Ms. Marley arrived I was telling you about her credentials, trying to convince you that the talks can go ahead. Ms. Marley has experience and she isn’t timid, you can see that.”

Serrador looked disapprovingly at the woman.

“We can carry on,” McCaskey said. “As for security, let’s assume for the moment that word of this meeting did get out. That Martha was the target of an assassination. What does that mean? That someone wants to scare away American diplomats. They want to see your nation come apart.”

“Perhaps the goal isn’t even a political one,” Aideen said. “Martha thinks — Martha thought that perhaps someone is hoping to make money on an armed secession.”

Serrador cleared his throat. He looked away at his desk.

“Mr. Deputy, please,” McCaskey said. “Sit down with us. Tell us what you know. We’ll take the information back with us and help you put a plan in place before it’s too late.”

Serrador shook his head slowly. “I have already spoken with my allies in the Congress. They are even more unwilling than I am to involve you now. You must understand, Señor McCaskey. We were talking with the various separatist parties before this — and we will do so again. It was my personal hope that if the United States could be brought into the discussions unofficially, and the leaders of both sides could be persuaded to make concessions, Spain could be saved. Now I’m afraid we’ll have to try and solve the problem internally.”

“And how do you think that will end?” Aideen demanded.

“I don’t know,” Serrador replied. “I only know, regrettably, how your association with this process must end.”

“Yes,” she said. “Thanks to the death of one who was brave enough to lead… and the retreat of one who wasn’t.”

“Aideen!” McCaskey said.

Serrador held up a hand. “It’s all right, Señor McCaskey. Señorita Marley is overwrought. I suggest you take her back to the hotel.”

Aideen glared at the deputy. She wasn’t going to be bullied into silence and she wasn’t going to do an end run. She just wasn’t.

“Fine,” she said. “Play it cautiously, Mr. Deputy. But don’t forget this. When I dealt with revolutionary factions in Mexico the results were always the same. The government inevitably relied on muscle to crush the rebels. But it was never enough to destroy them completely, of course, and the insurrectionists went underground. They didn’t flourish but they didn’t die. Only people who were caught in the crossfire died. And that’s what’s going to happen here, Deputy Serrador. You can’t tamp down centuries of resentment without a very big boot.”

“Ah. You have a crystal ball?”

“No,” she replied sharply. “Just some experience in the psychology of oppression.”

“In Mexico,” Serrador pointed out. “Not in Spain. You’ll find that the people are not just — what do you call them? Haves and have-nots. They are also passionate about their heritage.”

“Aideen,” McCaskey said, his voice stern, edgy. “That’s enough. No one knows what’s going to happen anywhere. That’s what these meetings were supposed to be about. They were supposed to be fact-finding, sharing ideas, a chance to find a peaceful resolution to the tensions.”

“And we may yet have those explorations,” Serrador said, once again the diplomat. “I mean no disrespect to the loss of your colleague but we’ve lost just one opportunity. There will be other ways to avoid spilling blood. Our immediate concern is to find out who was responsible for this crime and how the information got out of my office. Then — we will see.”

“That could take weeks, months,” McCaskey said.

“While haste, Señor McCaskey, may cost us more lives.”

“I’m willing to take that risk,” Aideen muttered. “The cost of retreat and inactivity may be much higher.”

Serrador walked behind the desk. “Prudence is neither of those.” He pressed a button on the telephone. “I sought the help of the distinguished Señorita Mackall. She has been taken from us. I sought and may still seek the help of the United States. Is that still available, Señor McCaskey, should I call on it?”

“You know it is, Mr. Deputy,” McCaskey answered.

Serrador dipped his head. “Gracias.”

“De nada,” McCaskey replied.

The door opened. A young aide in a dark suit took a step into the office. He stood with his arms stiffly at his sides.

“Hernandez,” said the deputy, “please take our guests out through the private entrance and tell my driver to see that they get safely back to their hotel.” He looked at McCaskey. “That is where you wish to go?”

“For the moment, yes. If possible, I’d like to go wherever the investigation is being handled.”

“I see. You have a background in law enforcement, I recall.”

“That’s right,” said McCaskey. “I spent a lot of time working with Interpol when I was at the FBI.”

Serrador nodded. “I’ll look into it, of course. Is there anything else I can do for either of you?”

McCaskey shook his head. Aideen did not move. She was seething. Again, politics. Not leadership, not vision. Just a cautious “T-step,” as they used to call a little dance move back in Boston. She wished she’d saved some of the mierda de perro for this meeting.

“My automobile is bulletproof and two of the guards will accompany you,” Serrador said. “You will be safe. In the meantime, I will speak with those of my colleagues who were scheduled to participate in today’s meeting. I will contact you in a few days — in Washington, I imagine? — to let you know how and if we wish to proceed.”

“Of course,” McCaskey replied.

“Thank you.” Serrador smiled thinly. “Thank you very much.”

The deputy extended his hand across the large mahogany desk. McCaskey shook it. Serrador swung his hand toward Aideen. She shook it as well, very briefly. There was no warmth in the short look they exchanged.

McCaskey had eased his hand onto Aideen’s back. He half-guided, half-pushed her out the door and they walked the corridor in silence.

When they were inside the deputy’s limousine, McCaskey turned to Aideen. “So.”

“So. Go ahead. Tell me I was out of line.”

“You were.”

“I know,” she replied. “I’m sorry. I’ll take the next plane home.” This was becoming the theme of the day. Or maybe it was something larger, the wrong fit of Aideen Marley and ivory tower diplomacy.

“I don’t want you to do that,” McCaskey said. “You were out of line but I happen to agree with what you were saying. I don’t think our accidental good-cop, bad-cop routine worked, but it’s got potential.”

She looked at him. “You agreed with me?”

“Pretty much. Let’s wait until we can call home and see what the rest of the clan has to say,” McCaskey continued.

Aideen nodded. She knew that that was only part of the reason McCaskey didn’t want to talk. Limousine drivers were never as invisible as passengers presumed: they saw and heard everything. And putting up the partition wouldn’t guarantee privacy. Chances were good that the car was bugged and their conversation was being monitored. They waited until they had returned to McCaskey’s hotel room before continuing. He’d set up a small electromagnetic generator designed by Matt Stoll, Op-Center’s technical wizard. The unit, approximately the size and dimensions of a portable CD player, sent out a pulse that disrupted electronic signals within a ten-foot radius and turned them to “gibberish,” as Stoll described it. Computers, recorders, or other digital devices outside its range would be unaffected.

McCaskey and Aideen sat on the side of the bed with the Egg, as they’d nicknamed it, between them.

“Deputy Serrador thinks that there isn’t much we can do without cooperation on this end,” McCaskey said.

“Does he,” Aideen said bitterly.

“We may be able to surprise him.”

“It might also be necessary to surprise him,” Aideen said.

“That’s true,” McCaskey said. He looked at Aideen. “Anything else before I call the boss?”

Aideen shook her head, though that wasn’t entirely true. There was a great deal she wanted to say. One thing Aideen’s experiences in Mexico had taught her was to recognize when things weren’t right. And something wasn’t right here. The thing that had pushed her buttons back in the deputy’s office wasn’t just the emotional aftermath of Martha’s death. It was Serrador’s rapid retreat from cooperation to what amounted to obstruction. If Martha’s death were an assassination — and her gut told her that it was — was Serrador afraid that they’d target him next? If so, why didn’t he take on extra security? Why were the halls leading to his office so empty? And why did he assume — as clearly he did — that simply by calling off the talks word would get back to whoever did this? How could he be so certain that the information would get leaked?

McCaskey rose and went to the phone, which was outside the pulse-radius. As Aideen listened to the quiet hum of the Egg, she looked through the twelfth-floor window at the streetlights off in the distance. Her spirit was too depleted, her emotions too raw for her to try to explore the matter right now. But she was certain of one thing. Though these might be the rules by which the Spanish leaders operated, they’d crossed the line into three of her own rules. First, you don’t shoot people who are here to help you. Second, if shooting them is designed to help you, then you’re going to run into rule number three: Americans — especially this American — shoot back.