Balance of Power

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 government 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 Ann Farris walked in. Hood looked up. She was dressed in an oyster-colored pantsuit, her brown hair bobbed chin-length. Her eyes were soft and her expression was compassionate. Hood glanced back at the computer monitor just to look away.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” Ann 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,” Ann 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,” Ann 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, Ann? Remember reason and talk and negotiation?”

“I remember them,” Ann 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 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, Ann. I congratulate you for talking to Mr. George.”

Ann 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,” Ann 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.”

Ann 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,” Ann said. “And Martha would still be dead.”

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, press-wise?” 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,” Ann 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 e-mailing the translation over as well.”

Hood acknowledged as he closed the Serrador file and brought up Herbert’s e-mail. Then he hit the Vee-Bee 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 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 foreground sounds and play them separately.

Ann came around the desk and leaned over Hood’s shoulder. Her warmth, her closeness were comforting. He concentrated on reading the translation as the message played.

“Ladies and gentlemen, good evening,” said the announcer. “We interrupt the supper club troubador to report about further developments in the explosion of the yacht tonight in La Concha Bay. A few minutes ago, a tape recording was delivered to our studio. It was brought by a man who represented himself as a member of the First People of Spain. This recording is reportedly of a conversation which took place onboard the yacht, identified as the Veridico, moments before it blew up. With the delivery of this tape, the FPS claims responsibility for the attack. They also declare Spain as the province of Spaniards, not of the elite of Catalonia. We will play the recording in its entirety.”

A parenthetical comment from Herbert read: The FPS is a group of Castilian pure-bloods. They’ve been publishing broadsides and recruiting members for two years. They’ve also claimed responsibility for two acts of terrorism against Catalonian and Andalusian targets. Their size and the identity of their leader(s) is unknown.