"They've been tried," Adolfo said. "They
don't work."
"Our Lord never raised a sword nor took a
life."
Adolfo lay a hand on his brother's shoulder.
"My brother," he said as he looked
into Norberto's tearglossed eyes, "if you can
arrange for His help, then I will not take another
life. I swear."
Norberto looked as if he wanted to say
something but stopped. Adolfo patted his cheek and
smiled. Turning, he opened the door and stepped out.
He stopped and lowered his head.
Adolfo believed in a just God. He did not
believe in a God who punished those who sought
freedom. He couldn't let his brother's beliefs
affect him. But this
was
Norberto, a good man who had worried about him
man and boy and cared for him and loved him whatever he
did. He couldn't leave him in pain.
Adolfo looked back. He smiled at his brother
and touched his soft cheek. "Don't pray for me,
Norberto. Pray for our country. If Spain is
damned, my salvation will be unhappy-and
undeserved."
He drew on the cigarette and hurried down the
steps leaving a trail of smoke and his weeping
brother behind him.
ATX-UL1024 EIGHT
ATX-UL0 Monday, 4:22 p.m. Washington,
D.c.
Paul Hood took his daily late-afternoon look
at the list of names on his computer monitor. Just a
few minutes before he had put his thumb on
the five-byseven-inch scanner beside the computer. The
laser unit had identified his fingerprint and had
asked for his personal access code. One point
seven seconds later it brought up the closed file
of HUMINT personnel reporting to Op-Center from
the field. Hood used the keyboard to enter his
wife's maiden name, Kent. That opened the file and the
names appeared on the screen.
There were nine "human intelligence" agents in all.
Each of these men and women was a national on
OpCenter's payroll. Beside the names were their
present whereabouts and assignments; a summary of their
last report, which had been prepared by Bob Herbert
(the full report was on file); and the location of the
nearest safe house or exit route. If any of the
operatives were ever found out, Op-Center would look
for them at those places and make every effort
to extricate them. To date, none of the agents had
ever been compromised.
Three of the operatives were based in North
Korea.
114 OP-CENTER
Their mission was an ongoing follow-up to the Striker
team's destruction of the secret missile site in
the Diamond Mountains. The agents"
job was to make sure that the missile launchers
weren't rebuilt. Even though a traitorous South
Korean officer had masterminded the construction of the
base originally, no one put it past the
opportunistic North Koreans to take
advantage of the equipment that had been left behind
by attempting to build a new missile installation.
Two Op-Center agents were located in the Bekaa
Valley in Lebanon and two others were working in
Damascus, Syria. Both teams were based in
terrorist hideouts and were reporting on the
political fallout due to Op-Center's
activities there. The fact that OpCenter
operatives had helped to avert a war between Syria
and Turkey was not being looked upon favorably: the
feeling in the Middle East was that nations there took
care of their own problems, even if that solution was
war. Peace brought by outside forces, particularly
by the United States, was looked upon as illicit and
dishonorable.
The last two agents were in Cuba, keeping an eye
on developing political situations in that nation.
The reports were that the aging Castro's hold was
beginning to fray. Whatever the dictator's
drawbacks-and they were considerable-his iron
heel had ironically kept the entire Caribbean more
or less stabilized. Whatever tyrant came
to power in Haiti, Grenada, Antigua, or on
any of the other islands still needed the approval of
Castro to run arms or drugs or even maintain a
sizeable military force. They knew that the Cuban
leader would have rivals assassinated before he let
BALANCE OF POWER 115
them become too powerful. The concensus was that as soon
as Castro was gone, chaos and not democracy would come
to the island and to the region. The United States had
a contingency plan. Operation Keel, to fill and
control that power vacuum using the military and
economic incentives. Op-Center's agents were
key parts of the EWAP network-early warning and
preparedness-which was designed to pave the way for the
plan.
Nine lives.
Hood thought. And for each of those lives there were maybe
two, three, or four dependents. That was not a
responsibility to be taken lightly. He
examined the afternoon reports and saw that the situations were
relatively stable and unchanged. He closed the
file.
These foreign operatives counted on their
files and their communications with Op-Center to be
absolutely secure. They contacted Op-Center
by calling a telephone number at an office in
Washington, an office that rented space
to executives. The number was registered to Caryn
Nadler International Travel Consultants. The
operatives spoke in their native languages,
though each word they used was assigned a different
meaning in English. " 'Can I book a flight
to Dallas?"'" in Arabic could mean "The
Syrian President is gravely ill" in
English. Though the translation files were all
dedicated, seven people other than Paul Hood had
access to them ... and also to the identities of the
operatives. Bob Herbert and Mike Rodgers were
two of them and Darrell McCaskey was the third.
Hood trusted them completely. But what about the other
four people, two of them in Herbert's office, one in
116 OP-CEWTER
McCaskey's group, and one on Rodgers's
team? All of them had passed standard background
checks, but were those checks thorough enough? were the
codes themselves sufficiently secure in the event that
foreign surveillance picked them up?
Unfortunately, one never knew the answer
to that until someone disappeared or a mission was
sabotaged or a team was ambushed.
There was peril in espionage and intelligence work.
That was a given. For the operatives, the danger was also
part of the excitement. Despite what had happened
to Martha in Spain, Op-Center was doing everything it
could to minimize the risks. At the moment, the shooting
of Martha Mackall was being investigated by Darrell
McCaskey, Aideen Marley, and Interpol in
Spain. Mike R
odgers and Bob Herbert were
studying intelligence reports here and Ron
Plummer was talking to foreign diplomats in
Washington and abroad. Carol Lanning was conferring
with State Department contacts. Whether it was
NASA, the Pentagon, or OpCenter, the
cleanups were always so damn thorough.
In retrospect, why didn 'I the preparations ever
seem as careful?
Hood asked himself.
Because it
was
retrospect, dammit.
They had the luxury of hindsight to see what they
did wrong.
What had they done wrong here? Op-Center
had had no choice about sending Martha. After Av
Lincoln had suggested her name and Serrador had
approved her, she had to go. As for Aideen working as
her assistant instead of Darrell-it made complete
sense. Aideen spoke the language, which Darrell
did not. Serrador had risen from a working-class
family and so had Aideen-Hood thought that might
help them.
BALANCE OF POWER 117
And even if Darrell had been there with them, that
probably wouldn't have helped Martha. Not if she was
the target.
Still, Hood was ashamed that the system had failed on
his watch. Ashamed and also angry.
He was angry at so much right now he couldn't focus
on any one thing for long. He was angry at the
cavalier way in which a life had been ended. Hood
abhorred murder for any reason. When he had first
come to Op-Center, he'd read a closed CIA
file about a small assassination squad created
during the Kennedy administration. Over a dozen
foreign generals and diplomats were executed from
1961 to 1963. The justification for the existence of
such a team was politically valid. Hood
supposed. However, he had trouble accepting
it morally-even if lives were saved in the long run.
But that was the tragedy about Martha's death. It
wasn't as if a despot had been removed
to improve the life of others, or a terrorist had
been taken out to prevent a bombing or shooting.
Someone had gunned down Martha to make a point.
A
point.
He was angry at the Spanish government. They had
asked for help with satellite surveillance,
to watch terrorist activities, and they'd gotten
it. But when it came to giving help they were less than
forthcoming. If they had any information about the shooting
they weren't sharing it. What little information Op-Center
possessed had come from Darrell McCaskey, who
had gotten it from his sources at Interpol. No one
had claimed responsibility for the killing.
Herbert's surveys of the airwaves and fax
transmissions to govern
118 OP-CENTER
ment and police offices had confirmed that. The
getaway car had not been found either by ground or
helicopter surveillance, and the National
Reconnaissance Office at the Pentagon had
been unable to spot it by satellite. The
Spanish police were searching for a
cortacarro,
the Spanish equivalent of a chop shop. But if the
car had been driven to one, no one expected to find
the vehicle before it was dismantled. The bullets were
undergoing chemical tests to see if their point of
origin could be determined. By the time they were traced, and
assuming whoever bought them could be identified, the
trail would be cold. Finally, McCaskey
reported that the mail carrier who had died had no
criminal background. He appeared to be an
unfortunate bystander.
Hood was also angry at himself. He should have had enough
foresight instead of hindsight not to have let Martha and
Aideen undertake what amounted to an undercover operation
without a shadow or two, someone to watch their backs.
Perhaps the gunman couldn't have been stopped but maybe
he could have been captured. Just because the job was
clean-an office meeting instead of open
surveillance or espionage-he'd let them go in
alone. He hadn't anticipated trouble. No one
had. The congressional security office had a
solid reputation and there was no reason to doubt their
efficiency.
Martha had paid for his carelessness.
The office door was open and Arm Fan-is walked
in. Hood looked up. She was dressed in an
oystercolored pantsuit, her brown hair bobbed
chin-length. Her eyes were soft and her expression was
compas-
BALANCE OF POWER 119
sionate. Hood glanced back at the computer
monitor just to look away.
"Hi," he said.
"Hi," Arm replied. "How're you doing?"
"Lousy," Hood said. He opened a file
Herbert had transmitted about Serrador.
"What's doing on your end?"
" "A couple of reporters have connected Martha
with Op-Center," Arm said, "but only Jimmy
George at the
Post
has figured out that she probably wasn't there as a
tourist. He agreed to hold the story for a day or
two in exchange for some exclusives."
"Fine. We'll give him the morgue shots,"
Hood said bitterly. "That'll sell a few
papers."
"He's a good man, Paul," Arm replied.
"He's playing fair."
"I suppose he is," Hood replied. "At
least there was a dialogue between you two. You spoke and
reason prevailed. Remember reason, Arm?
Remember reason and talk and negotiation?"
"I remember them," Arm said. "And the truth is, a
lot of people still practice them."
"Not enough," Hood said. "When I was mayor of
L.a. I had a feud with Governor Essex.
Lord Essex, we called him. He didn't like
what he called my unorthodox way of doing things.
He said he couldn't trust me." Hood shook his
head. "The truth is, I cared about the quality of
life in Los Angeles while he dreamed of being
President. Those two goals didn't mix. So
he stopped talking to me. We had to communicate through
Lieutenant Governor Whiteshire. The joke
is, L.a. didn't get the money it needed and
120 OP-CENTER
Essex didn't get reelected as governor.
Freakin" baby. Politicians don't
communicate, sometimes families don't
communicate, and then we're surprised when things come
apart. I'm sorry, Arm. I congratulate you for
talking to Mr. George."
Arm walked over and leaned across the desk.
She reached out her right hand and touched the back of
Hood's hand with her fingertips. They felt gentle
and very, very feminine. "Paul, I know how you feel."
"I know that," Hood said softly. "If anyone
does, you do."
"But you've got to believe that no one could have
anticipated this," Arm said.
"There you're wrong," Hood replied. He withdrew
his hand from under hers. " 'We screwed up. I
screwed up."
"Nobody screwed up," she said. "This was
unforeseeable."
"No," he replied. "It was just unforeseen. We have
combat simulations, terrorist simulations, and even
assassination simulations. I can push a button on
this computer and it'll show us ten different ways
to capture or kill the warlord-of-the-month. But the
process of anticipating simple security
problems wasn't built into our system and Martha
is dead as a result."
Arm shook her head. "Even if we'd had
security people watching her, Paul, this couldn't have been
prevented. They couldn't have moved in in time. You know
that as well as I do."
"At least they might have gotten the
killer."
"Maybe," Arm said. "And Martha would still be dead."
BALANCE OF POWER 121
Hood wasn't convinced, though he would know more when his
own cleanup analysis was completed. "Is there
anything else we have to take care of, presswise?"
he asked as his phone beeped twice. That meant it
was an internal call. Hood glanced at the caller
code. It was Bob Herbert.
"Not a thing," Arm said. She rolled her lips together
as though she wanted to say more, but she didn't.
So much for communication.
Hood thought cynically as he picked up the phone.
"Yes, Bob?"
"Paul," he said urgently, "we've got
something."
"Go ahead."
"We picked this recording up from a small
commercial radio station in Tolosa. I'm sending it
over on the Vee-Bee. We haven't been able
to verify the authenticity of the tape you're about to hear,
though we'll be able to do that in about an hour. We're
getting sound bites of the speaker from a Spanish
television station here in order to compare the voices.
My gut tells me they're real but
we'll know for sure in an hour or so.
"The first voice you're going to hear is the local
radio announcer introducing the tape," Herbert
went on. "The second voice is from the tape itself.
I'm emailing the translation over as well."
Hood acknowledged as he closed the Serrador
file and brought up Herbert's e-mail. Then he
hit the VeeBee key on the keyboard. The
Vee-Bee, or Voice Box, was the equivalent
of audio e-mail. The sounds were digitally
scanned and cleaned by one of "Miracle" Matt
Stoll's computer programs. The audio delivered
122 OP-CENTER
by the Vee-Bee simulator was as close to real
life as possible. Thanks to the digital encoding,
the listener could even isolate background or
Clancy, Tom - Ballance of Power Page 12