“None,” McCaskey said.
“Very good,” Hood said. “Darrell, I’m going to have Bob and his team look over any new intelligence that’s come in. If there’s anything useful, they’ll get it over to you.”
“I’m also going to make a few calls over here,” McCaskey said. “There are some people at Interpol who might be able to help us.”
“Excellent,” Hood said. “Anyone else?”
“Mr. Hood,” Carol Lanning said, “this is not my area of expertise but I do have a question.”
“Go ahead,” Hood said. “And please — it’s Paul.”
She nodded and cleared her throat. “Might I ask if you’re looking to gather intelligence to turn over to the Spanish authorities or—” She hesitated.
“Or what?”
“Or are you looking for revenge?”
Hood thought for a moment. “Frankly, Ms. Lanning, I want both.”
“Good,” she said. Rising, she smoothed her skirt and squared her shoulders. “I hoped I wasn’t the only one.”
SEVEN
No one had survived the explosion of the Ramirez yacht.
Adolfo hadn’t expected anyone to be left alive. The blast had flipped the ship onto its side before anyone could get out. The men who weren’t killed in the explosion itself were drowned when the yacht capsized. Only the pilot of the runabout had escaped. Adolfo knew about the man. He was Juan Martinez, a leader of the Ramirez
The fisherman and two other late-night trawlers had waited at the scene to provide police with eyewitness accounts of the explosion. When two young officers with the harbor patrol boarded Adolfo’s boat, he acted as though he were very upset by the evening’s events. The officers told Adolfo to calm down, which he did— but only slightly. He informed them that he had been looking toward the harbor when the ship exploded. Adolfo said that all he saw was the dying fireball and then the wreckage showering down, the shards sizzling and steaming as they hit the water. He said that he had sailed for it immediately. One of the investigators wrote rapidly, taking notes, while the other asked questions. They both seemed excited to have something so dramatic occur in their harbor.
The police officers took Adolfo’s name, address, and telephone number and allowed him to leave. By that time Adolfo had pretended to calm enough to wish them well on the investigation. Then he went to the wheelhouse of his fishing boat and throttled up. The engine chugged deeply as Adolfo turned the old vessel toward the harbor.
As Adolfo sailed the choppy waters, he plucked one of the handrolled cigarettes from his pants pocket. He lit it and drew deeply, feeling a greater sense of satisfaction than he had ever known. This was not his first mission for the cause. In the past year he had prepared a letter bomb for a newspaper and had rigged a TV reporter’s car to explode when the gas cap was removed. Both of those had been successful. But this was his most important job and it had gone perfectly. Even better, he’d pulled it off alone. The General had asked Adolfo to do it by himself for two reasons. First, if Adolfo had been caught the cause would only have lost one soldier in the region. Second, if Adolfo had failed then the General would know who to blame. That was important. With so many important tasks ahead there was no room for incompetency.
Adolfo guided the boat swiftly toward shore, his right hand on the wheel and his left hand holding the well- worn string of the old bell that hung outside the wheelhouse. He’d fished these waters since he was a small boy working on his father’s vessel. The low, foggy sound of that bell was one of the two things that brought those days back to him vividly. The other was the smell of the harbor whenever he drew near. The ocean smell intensified the closer Adolfo came to shore. That had always seemed odd to him until he mentioned it to his brother. Norberto explained that the things that cause the smells — the salt, the dead fish, the rotting seaweed — always wash toward the land. That was why beaches smelled more like the sea than the sea did.
“Father Norberto,” Adolfo sighed. “So learned yet so misguided.” His older brother was a Jesuit priest who had never wanted to be anything else. After his ordination seven years ago he was given the local parish, St. Ignatius, as his ministry. Norberto knew a lot about many things. The members of his parish lovingly called him “the Scholar.” He could tell them why the ocean smelled or why the sun turned orange when it set or why you could see clouds even though they were made of drops of water. What Norberto didn’t know much about was politics. He had once joined a protest march against the Spanish government, which was accused of financing death squads that killed hundreds of people in the middle 1980s. But that wasn’t so much a political crusade as a humanistic one. He also didn’t know about church politics. Norberto hated being away from his parish. Two or three times a year Father General Gonzalez — the most powerful Jesuit prelate in Spain — held audiences or hosted dinners for church dignitaries in Madrid. Norberto did not go to these functions unless commanded, which he seldom was. Norberto’s disinterest in his own advancement allowed the power and funding in this province to go to Father Iglesias in nearby Bilbao.
Adolfo was the expert in politics, something Norberto didn’t admit. The brothers rarely argued about anything; they had looked out for one another since they were boys. But politics was the one area where they disagreed passionately. Norberto believed in a unified nation. He had once said bitterly, “It is bad enough that Christendom is divided.” He wished for what he called “God’s Spaniards” to live in harmony.
Unlike Norberto, Adolfo did not believe in either God or Spaniards. If there were a God, he reasoned, the world would be doing better. There wouldn’t be conflict or need. As for that creature called a “Spaniard,” Spain had always been a fragile tapestry of different cultures. That was true before the birth of Christ, when the Basques, Iberians, Celts, Carthaginians, and others were first united under the rule of Rome. It was true in 1469, when Aragon and Castile were joined in an uneasy alliance by the marriage of Ferdinand II to Isabella I. It was true in 1939, when Francisco Franco became El Caudillo, leader of the nation, after the devastating Civil War. It was true today.
It was also true that within this confederacy the Castilians had always been victimized. They were the largest group and so they were feared. They were always the first to be sent into battle or exploited by the wealthy. The irony was that if there were a “real” Spaniard, the Castilian was it. His nature was industrious and fun-loving. His life was filled with the honest sweat of hard work and passion. His heart was filled with music, love, and laughter. And his home, the land of El Cid, was one of vast plains dotted with windmills and castles beneath an endless blue sky.
Adolfo savored the pride of his heritage and the blow he’d struck for both of those tonight. But as he entered the harbor, he turned his attention to the boats moored there. The harbor was located behind the enormous nineteenth-century Ayuntamiento, the town hall. Adolfo was glad it was night. He hated coming back when it was light and all the gift shops and restaurants were visible. Catalonian money was responsible for transforming San Sebastian from a fishing village to a tourist spot.
Adolfo maneuvered carefully and skillfully around the numerous pleasure boats moored there. The fishermen usually kept their vessels out of the way, near the wharf. It made unloading the fish easier. But the pleasure boats dropped anchor wherever their owners chose. The crews then rowed to shore on dinghies. For Adolfo the pleasure boats were a daily reminder that the needs of working men did not matter to the rich. The requirements of the fishermen didn’t matter to the powerful and wealthy Catalonians, or to the tourism they encouraged to benefit their hotels and restaurants and airlines.
When Adolfo reached the wharf he tied his boat in the same spot as always. Then, slinging his canvas grip over his shoulder, he made his way through the groups of tourists and locals who had gathered when they heard the explosion. A few people near the wharf, who had watched him come in from the bay, asked what had
