Balance of Power

moment, she withdrew her hand. Then she sat back on her heels and stared down at the motionless figure. Sounds became louder as her ears cleared. The world seemed to return to normal motion.

Fifteen minutes ago Aideen was silently cursing this woman. Martha had been caught up in something that had seemed so important — so very damned important. Moments always seemed important until tragedy put them in perspective. Or maybe they were important because inevitably there would be no more. Not that it mattered now. Whether Martha had been right or wrong, good or bad, a visionary or a control freak, she was dead. Her moments were over.

The courtyard gate flew open and men ran from behind it. They gathered around Aideen, who was staring vacantly at Martha. The young woman touched Martha’s thick, black hair.

“I’m sorry,” Aideen said. She exhaled tremulously and shut her eyes. “I’m so very, very sorry.”

The woman’s limbs felt heavy and she was sick that the reflexes that had been so quick with those street kids had failed her completely here. Intellectually, Aideen knew that she wasn’t to blame. During her week-long orientation when she first joined Op-Center, staff psychologist Liz Gordon had warned Aideen and two other new employees that if and when it happened, unexpectedly facing a weapon for the first time could be devastating. A gun or a knife pulled in familiar surroundings destroys the delusion that we’re invincible doing what we do routinely every day — in this case, walking down a city street. Liz had told the small group that in the instant of shock, a person’s body temperature, blood pressure, and muscle tone all crash and it takes a moment for the survival instinct to kick in. Attackers count on that instant of paralysis, Liz had said.

But understanding what had happened didn’t help. Not at all. It didn’t lessen the ache and the guilt that Aideen felt. If she’d moved an instant sooner or been a little more heads-up — by just a heartbeat, that’s all it would have taken — Martha might have survived.

How do you live with that guilt? Aideen asked herself as tears began to form.

She didn’t know. She’d never been able to deal with coming up short. She couldn’t handle it when she found her widower father crying at the kitchen table after losing his job in the Boston shoe factory where he’d worked since he was a boy. For days thereafter she tried to get him to talk, but he turned to scotch instead. She went off to college not long afterward, feeling as though she’d failed him. She couldn’t handle the sense of failure when her college sweetheart, her greatest love, smiled warmly at an old girlfriend in their senior year. He left Aideen a week later and she joined the army after graduation. She hadn’t even attended the graduation ceremony; it would have killed her to see him.

Now she’d failed Martha. Her shoulders heaved out the tears and the tears became sobs.

A young, mustachioed sergeant of the palace security guard raised her gently by the shoulders. He helped her stand.

“Are you all right?” he asked in English.

She nodded and tried to stop crying. “I think I’m okay.”

“Do you want a doctor?”

She shook her head.

“Are you sure, senorita?”

Aideen took a long, deep breath. This was not the time and place to lose it. She would have to talk to Op- Center’s FBI liaison, Darrell McCaskey. He had remained at the hotel to await a visit from a colleague with Interpol. And she still wanted to see Deputy Serrador. If this shooting had been designed to prevent the meeting, she’d be damned if she was going to let that happen.

“I’ll be fine,” Aideen said. “Do you — do you have the person who did this? Do you have any idea who it was?”

“No, senorita,” he replied. “We’ll have to take a look and see what the surveillance cameras may have recorded. In the meantime, are you well enough to talk to us about this?”

“Yes, of course,” she said uncertainly. There was still the mission, the reason she’d come. She didn’t know how much she should tell the police about that. “But—por favor?”

“Si?”

“We were to be met by someone inside. I would still like to see him as soon as possible.”

“I will make the necessary inquiries—”

“I also need to contact someone at the Princesa Plaza,” Aideen said.

“I will see to those things,” he said. “But Comisario Fernandez will be arriving presently. He is the one who will be conducting the investigation. The longer we wait, the more difficult the pursuit.”

“Of course,” she said. “I understand. I’ll talk to him and meet with our guide after. Is there a telephone I can use?”

“I will arrange for the telephone,” the sergeant said. “Then I will personally go and see who was to meet you.”

Aideen thanked him and rose under her own power. She faltered. The sergeant grabbed one of her arms.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to see the doctor first?” the man asked. “There is one in residence.”

“Gracias, no,” she said with a grateful smile. She wasn’t going to let the attacker claim a second victim. She was going to get through this, even if it were one second at a time.

The sergeant smiled back warmly and walked with her slowly toward the open gate.

As Aideen was being led away the palace doctor rushed by. A few moments later she heard an ambulance. The young woman half turned as the ambulance stopped right where the getaway car had been. As the medical technicians hurriedly unloaded a gurney, Aideen saw the doctor rise from beside Martha’s body. He’d only been there a moment. He said something to a guard then ran over to the mailman. He began opening the buttons of the man’s uniform then yelled for the paramedics to come over. As he did, the guard lay his jacket over Martha’s head.

Aideen looked ahead. That was it, then. It took just a few seconds, and everything Martha Mackall had known, planned, felt, and hoped was gone. Nothing would ever bring that back.

The young woman continued to hold back tears as she was led into a small office along the palace’s ornate main corridor. The room was wood-paneled and comfortable and she lowered herself into a leather couch beside the door. She felt achy where her knees and elbows had hit the pavement and she was still in an acute state of disbelief. But a countershock reflex was going to work, replenishing the physical resources that had shut down in the attack. And she knew that Darrell and General Rodgers and Director Paul Hood and the rest of the Op-Center team were behind her. She might be by herself at the moment, but she was not alone.

“You may use that telephone,” the sergeant said, pointing to an antique rotary phone on a glass end table. “Dial zero for an outside line.”

“Thank you.”

“I will have a guard posted at the door so you will be safe and undisturbed. Then I will go and see about your guide.”

Aideen thanked him again. He left and shut the door behind him. The room was quiet save for the hissing of a radiator in the back and the muted sounds of traffic. Of life going on.

Taking another deep breath, Aideen removed a hotel notepad from her backpack and looked down at the telephone number printed on the bottom. She found it impossible to believe that Martha was dead. She could still feel her annoyance, see her eyes, smell her perfume. She could still hear Martha saying, You know what’s at stake here.

Aideen swallowed hard and entered the number. She asked to be connected with Darrell McCaskey’s room. She slipped a simple scrambler over the mouthpiece, one that would send an ultrasonic screech over the line, deafening any taps. A filter on McCaskey’s end would eliminate the sound from his line.

Aideen did know what was at stake here. The fate of Spain, of Europe, and possibly the world. And whatever it took, she did not intend to come up short again.

TWO

Monday, 12:12 P.M. Washington, D.C.