Balance of Power o-5 Read online

  “I don’t expect you to say anything critical,” María said. “You work with him. But I wanted you to know what that was about back there because you’ll be working with me, too. I only learned he was here when I learned you would be coming with me. It was a difficult thing to accept, seeing him again.”

  “I understand,” Aideen said. She practically had to shout to be heard over the roar of the rotor.

  María showed her a little half-smile. “Luis tells me you worked to bring in drug dealers in Mexico. That took courage.”

  “To tell you the truth,” Aideen said, “what it took was indignation, not courage.”

  “You are too modest,” María shot back.

  Aideen shook her head. “I’m being truthful. Drugs helped to wreck my neighborhood when I was a kid. Cocaine killed one of my best friends. Heroin took my cousin Sam, who was a brilliant organist at our church. He died in the street. When I got some experience under my belt, I wanted to do more than wring my hands and complain about it.”

  “I felt the same way about crime,” she said. “My father owned a cinema in Madrid. He was killed in a robbery. But both of our desires would have been nothing if they weren’t backed by courage and resolve. And cunning,” she added. “You either have that or you acquire it. But you need it.”

  “I’ll go along with resolve and cunning,” Aideen said, “and one thing more. You have to learn to stifle your gag reflex in order to learn.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You have to close down your emotions,” Aideen explained. “That’s what allowed me to walk the streets undercover — to observe dispassionately and to learn. Otherwise, you’d spend all your time hating. You have to pretend not to care as you talk to hawkers, learn the names of the ‘houses’ they represent. In Mexico City there were the Clouds, who sold marijuana. The Pirates, who sold cocaine. The Angels, who sold crack. The Jaguars, who sold heroin. You have to learn the difference between the users and the junkies.”

  “The junkies are always the loners, no?”

  Aideen nodded.

  “It’s the same everywhere,” María said.

  “And the users always travel in packs. You had to learn to recognize the dealers in case they didn’t open their mouths. You had to know who to follow back to the kingpins. The dealers were the ones with their sleeves rolled up — that was where they carried the money. Their pockets were for guns or knives. But I was always scared in the field, María. I was scared for my life and scared of what I would learn about the underbelly of someone else’s life. If I hadn’t been angry about my old neighborhood, if I weren’t sick for the families of the lost souls I encountered, I could never have gone through with it.”

  María let the smile blossom fully now. It was a rich smile, full of respect and the promise of camaraderie. “Courage without fear is stupidity,” María said. “I still believe that you had it, and I admire you even more. We’re going to make a very good team.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Aideen, “what’s the plan when we reach San Sebastián?” She was anxious to turn the conversation away from herself. Attention had always made her uneasy.

  “The first thing we’ll do is go to the radio station,” María told her.

  “As tourists?” Aideen said, perplexed.

  “No. We have to find out who brought them the tape. Once we do that, we find those people and watch them as tourists. We know that the dead men were planning some kind of conspiracy. The question is whether they died because of infighting or because someone found out about their plan. Someone who hasn’t come forth as yet.”

  “Meaning we don’t know if they’re friend or foe.”

  “Correct,” María said. “Like your government, Spain has many factions, which don’t necessarily share information with other factions.”

  As she was speaking, the pilot turned the stick over to the control pilot and leaned back. He removed his headset.

  “Agent Corneja?” he shouted. “I just got a message from the chief. He said to tell you that Isidro Serrador was killed tonight at the municipal police station in Madrid.”

  “How?”

  “He was shot to death when he tried to take a gun from an army officer.”

  “An army officer?” María said. “This case doesn’t fall under military jurisdiction.”

  “1 know,” he replied. “The chief is looking into who it was and what he was doing there.”

  María thanked him and he turned back to the controls. She looked at Aideen.

  “Something is very wrong here,” María said gravely. “I have a feeling that what happened to poor Martha was just the first shot of what is going to be a very long and very deadly enfilade.”

  FIFTEEN

  Tuesday, 2:55 A.M. San Sebastián, Spain

  The familia is an institution that dates back to the late nineteenth century. It is part of the same Mediterranean culture that gave rise to crime families in Sicily, Turkey, and Greece. The variation created by the Spanish was that a member’s loyalty was to a legitimate employer, usually the owner of a plant or labor group like bricklayers or icemen. To keep the employer’s hands unsullied, a cadre of employees was selected and trained to perform or protect the owner against acts of violence or sabotage and to execute the same against rivals. The targets were almost always business sites; attacks against home and members of one’s personal family were considered uncivilized. Occasionally, familia members engaged in smuggling or extortion, though that was rare.

  In return for their services, familia members were occasionally rewarded with extra wages. Perhaps a college education for their children. Usually, however, their loyalty earned them only the thanks of their employer and guaranteed lifetime employment.

  Juan Martinez considered the attack against the yacht to be uncivilized. Certainly the scope of it was unparalleled — so many familia members killed at once. Juan had never shied from violence during his years of service to Señor Ramirez. The violence committed against the boating concern, especially in the early years, was usually directed at ships or machines or buildings. Once or twice a worker was attacked, but never the owners or senior management. What had been done tonight demanded a response in kind. Juan, a street kid from Manresa who had worked for Señor Ramirez for twelve years, was eager to deliver it. But first he needed a target. The radio station was a good place to start looking for one.

  Juan and three coworkers drove out to the small broadcast facility. It was located on a nine-hundred-foot-high hilltop, one of three hills located just north of La Concha Bay in San Sebastián. A narrow paved road led halfway to the summit. Near the top, an enclave of expensive, gated homes had been built overlooking the bay.

  How many heads of familias live here? Juan wondered, sitting in the passenger’s side of the car. He was carrying a backpack, which he’d packed at the factory. He had never been up this way before and the view of the coastline, spectacular and serene, made him uncomfortable. He was a man who enjoyed work and activity. He felt as out of place here as he would have in the moonlit gardens that were visible just past the gates.

  A narrower dirt road, typically traveled by motorbikes and hikers, led the rest of the way. The view of the bay was blocked by a turn in the hill; the grasses were not clipped and lush but scrublike and sparse. This was Juan’s kind of place again. He looked up the road toward the low-lying cinderblock building at the end. It was surrounded by a chain-link fence just over eight feet high, with barbed wire strung thickly across the top.

  Radio Nacional de Público was a small, 10 kw station that reached as far south as Pamplona and as far north as Bordeaux, France. The RNP typically broadcast music, news, and local weather during the day and matters of interest to the Basque population in the evening. The owners were avowed antiseparatist Basques who had endured gun attacks and a fire-bombing. That was why the building was made of cinderblock and was set well back from the fortified fence. The broadcast antenna stood in the center of the roof. It was a tall, skele
tal spire made of red and white girders. It stood approximately one hundred fifty feet tall and was topped by a winking red light.

  The familia driver, Martín, had cut the headlights as the car approached. He pulled over three hundred yards from the gate and parked beside the domed crest of the hill. The four men got out. Juan pulled a bicycle from the trunk, slung a backpack on his shoulder, and sprinkled water from a bottle on his face. The water trickled like sweat along his cheeks and down his throat. Then he walked boldly toward the gate. The other three men fixed silencers to their pistols and followed one hundred feet behind him. Juan huffed and walked loudly, partly to cover the footsteps of the others, and partly to make sure he was heard.

  As Juan had expected, there were guards inside the perimeter. They were three men with guns, not professional security people. They had undoubtedly been brought here to keep an eye on the station in the aftermath of the broadcast. Juan and the others had decided ahead of time that if there were people patrolling the grounds, they would have to be taken out quietly and simultaneously.

  Juan forced himself to relax. He couldn’t afford to let the men see him shiver. This was his operation and he didn’t want the other members of the familia to think he was nervous.

  Juan stopped when he saw the gate. “Son-of-a-bitch,” he said loudly.

  One of the guards heard him. He walked over urgently while the other two stayed back, covering him.

  “What do you want?” the guard asked. He was a very tall, lanky man with a curly spray of thinning brown hair.

  Juan stood there for a long moment, apparently dumbfounded. “I want to know where the hell I am.”

  “Where the hell do you want to be?” the guard asked.

  “I’m looking for the Iglesias campground.”

  The guard snickered mirthlessly. “I’m afraid you’ve got a bit of a ride ahead of you. Or more accurately, behind you and to the east.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The guard jerked a thumb to the right. “I mean the campground’s on the top of that next hill over there, the one with the—”

  There was a dull series of phup-phup-phups behind Juan as the other familia members fired at the guards. The men dropped silently with red, raw holes in their foreheads.

  As the familia members moved forward, Juan set the bicycle down, pulled off his backpack, and went to work.

  The easiest way to get in was to announce yourself on the intercom and wait for the gate to be buzzed open. But that wasn’t an option nor was it the only way in. Juan removed a cloth from the backpack as well as a crowbar. His undershirt was heavy with sweat and the cool air chilled him as he climbed halfway up the fence to the left of the gate.

  He flung the crowbar over the top while holding the free sleeve of his shirt. The shirt landed on top of the barbed wire. Juan reached his index and middle fingers through the nearest link, grabbed the crowbar, and pulled it back through. Then he removed the iron bar and tied the shirt sleeves together. When he was finished, he took the shirt belonging to Ferdinand, the muscular night watchman. He repeated the procedure so that there were two layers of fabric over the barbs. When he was finished, the men climbed over the safe zone they’d created on top of the fence. They dropped quietly inside the perimeter and then waited a moment to make sure no one had heard them. When they were certain no one had, they walked swiftly toward the metal door in front. They walked carefully, crossing the open area in relative silence.

  The other three men had crowbars as well and Ferdinand had a.38 revolver in his deep-cut right pants pocket. There were extra shells in his left pocket, wrapped in a handkerchief so they wouldn’t jangle. Juan and his people did not want to kill any more people. But after what had been done to Señor Ramirez, they would not hesitate to do anything that was necessary to complete their mission.

  They knew that the door would be locked and had planned accordingly. Juan was the tallest of the men and he placed his crowbar on the top left side of the door, between the door and the jamb. Martin bent low and put his bar on the bottom left side. The other man, Sancho, inserted his crowbar to the left of the knob. Ferdinand pulled the gun from his pocket and stood back, ready to fire in case they were attacked.

  The men wedged the prongs of the crowbars in as far as they would go. If they didn’t get it open on the first try they would push them back in unison and try again. They figured that two strong pulls should do it. Martin had worked in construction and said that even if the door were double-bolted, the jambs wouldn’t be steel reinforced. Grounded metal like that would wreak hell with the radio broadcasts, he said.

  The men pulled hard on Juan’s count of three. The door flew open on the first try, large wood splinters fracturing up and down the jamb. As soon as Ferdinand gave them the all-clear they ran in.

  There were three people inside. One man was inside a soundproof booth and two people, a man and a woman, were seated at a control panel. As planned, Martin sought out the fuse box. He found it quickly and killed the electricity. The station died before the announcer could report what was happening. Under the brilliance of two battery-powered emergency lights mounted on the ceiling, Juan and Sancho ran over to the technicians. They clubbed each one hard across the collarbone. They fell to the ground, the woman moaning and the man shrieking. While Ferdinand covered them, Juan entered the booth. He walked calmly toward the announcer.

  “I want to know who gave you the tape you played earlier,” Juan said.

  The slender young man, bearded and indignant, moved back on the rolling chair.

  “I’ll ask you one more time,” Juan said, raising the crowbar. “Who gave you the tape recording?”

  “I don’t know who he was,” the man said. His voice was high and squeaky. He cleared his throat. “I don’t know.”

  Juan swung the crowbar against the man’s left tricep. The man grabbed his arm as his mouth dropped open and let out air, like a furnace. Tears formed in his wide eyes.

  “Who gave you the tape?” Juan repeated.

  The man tried to close his mouth. It didn’t seem to want to work. The chair thumped up against the wall and stopped.

  Juan continued toward him. He looked at the fingers of the man’s right hand. They were wrapped around his upper arm. He swung the crowbar again, at the fingers.

  The iron bar smashed the back of his hand, just below the lower knuckles. There was an audible crack, like the snap of dry chicken bones. The hand dropped onto the man’s lap. Blood pooled and caused the skin to bulge at once. This time the victim was able to scream.

  “Adolfo!” he shouted from that wide, open mouth. “Who?” Juan repeated. “Adolfo Alcazar! The fisherman!” The man provided Juan with the address and Juan thanked him. Then he swung the crowbar one more time, just hard enough to break the man’s jaw. Juan looked out at Martin and Sancho, who did likewise. There wasn’t time to check for cellular phones and he didn’t want them calling ahead to warn the fisherman.

  Five minutes later the four familia members were driving back down the road toward San Sebastián.

  SIXTEEN

  Monday, 8:15 P.M. Washington, D.C.

  When Hood called home, neither Sharon nor the kids picked up the phone. The answering machine message came on after four rings; it was Harleigh’s from the day before.

  “Hi. You’ve reached the Hood family. We’re not home right now. But we’re not going to tell you to leave a message because if you don’t know that, we don’t want to talk to you.”

  Hood sighed. He’d asked the kids not to leave smart-ass messages like that. Maybe he should have insisted on it. Sharon had always said he wasn’t strict enough with them.

  “Hey, guys, it’s me,” Hood said. The conviviality in his voice was difficult, forced. “I’m afraid I’m going to be at the office a while longer. I hope you all had a good first day of spring vacation and that you’re out at the movies or the mall or something fun. Sharry, would you please give me a call when you get back? Thanks. Love you all. Bye.” />
  Hood felt a flash of desperation as he hung up. He wanted very badly to talk to Sharon. He hated having this barrier between them and he wanted to make things better. Or at least to make peace until he could sit down, talk to her, and make things better. He tried Sharon’s cellular phone but got kicked into the answering system. He decided not to leave a message.

  Almost the moment he put the phone in the cradle his private line rang. It was Sharon. He smiled and a weight seemed to rise from his chest.

  “Hi there,” he said. This time the conviviality was effortless, genuine. There was noise behind her — loud talking and garbled announcements. “You guys at the mall?”

  “No, Paul,” she said. “We’re at the airport.”

  Hood had been slumped back tiredly in his big leather chair. He sat up. He didn’t say anything for a moment; it was a good habit he’d picked up during his political career.

  “I’ve decided to take the kids to Connecticut,” Sharon continued. “You won’t be seeing them much anyway this week and my folks have been asking us to come up.”

  “Oh,” he said. “How long do you intend to stay?” His voice was calm but his insides weren’t. He was looking at the framed family photograph on his desk. The picture was three years old but the smiles on the four faces suddenly seemed to belong to another lifetime.

  “I honestly don’t know,” she answered.

  Ron Plummer and Bob Herbert arrived then. Hood held up a finger. Herbert saw that he was on his private line. He nodded and the men turned their backs to the doorway. Ann Farris arrived a moment later. She joined the two men waiting in the hall.

  “I guess that depends on—” Sharon said, then stopped.

  “On what?” Hood asked. “On me? On whether I want you here? You know the answer to that.”

  “I know,” Sharon said, “though I don’t know why. You’re never around. We go on vacations and you leave the first day.”

  “That happened once.”