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"But the blow is one you're certain you can control," said Alfonso.

"Absolutely," Carlos replied. "Thanks to cash reserves and credit with the World Bank and other institutions, the money supply at my bank and at most others will remain sound. The economy will be relatively unaffected at the top." He grinned. "It's like the plague of blood which befell Egypt in the Old Testament. It did not affect those who had been forewarned and had filled their jugs and cisterns with fresh water."

Ramirez sat back. He drew long and contentedly on his cigar. "This is excellent, gentlemen. And once everything is in place, our task is simply to maintain the pressure until the middle and lower classes buckle. Until the Basques and the Castilians, the Andalusians and the Galicians acknowledge that Spain belongs to the people of Catalonia. And when they do, when the prime minister is forced to call for new elections, we will be ready." His small, dark eyes moved from face to face before settling on the leather binder before him. "Ready with our new constitution-ready for a new Spain."

The other men nodded their approval. Miguel and Rodrigo applauded lightly. Ramirez felt the weight of history past and history yet to come on his shoulders, and it felt good.

He was unaware of a disheveled man who sat an eighth of a mile away with a different sense of history on his shoulders-and a much different weapon at his disposal.

* * *

FOUR

Monday, 7:15 p.m.

Madrid, Spain

Aideen was still sitting in the leather couch when Comisario Diego Fernandez arrived. He was a man of medium height and build. He was clean-shaven with a ruddy complexion and carefully trimmed goatee. His black hair was longish but neat and he peered out carefully from behind gold-rimmed spectacles. He wore black leather gloves, black suede shoes, and a black trenchcoat. Beneath the open coat was a dark gray business suit.

An aide shut the door behind him. When it had clicked shut, the inspector bowed politely to Aideen.

"Our deepest sympathy and apologies for your loss," he said. His voice was deep, the English accent thick. "If there's anything I or my department can do to help you, please ask."

"Thank you. Inspector," Aideen said.

"Be assured that the resources of the entire Madrid metropolitan police department as well as other government offices will be applied to finding whoever was responsible for this atrocious act."

Aideen looked up at the police inspector. He couldn't be talking to her. The police department couldn't be looking for the killer of someone she knew. The TV announcements and newspaper headlines wouldn't be about a person she had been dressing with in a hotel room just an hour before. Though she had lived through the killing and seen Martha's body on the street, the experience didn't seem real. Aideen was so accustomed to changing things-rewinding a tape to see something she'd missed or erasing computer data she didn't need-that the irreversibility of this seemed impossible.

But in her brain Aideen knew that it had happened. And that it was irreversible. After being brought here, she'd called the hotel and briefed Darrell McCaskey. McCaskey had said he would inform Op-Center. He'd seemed surprisingly unshocked-or maybe Darrell was always that collected. Aideen didn't know him well enough to say. Then she'd sat here trying to tell herself that the shooting was a random act of terrorism and not a hit. After all, it wasn't the same as in Tijuana two years earlier when her friend Odin Gutierrez Rico had literally been blasted to death by four gunmen with assault rifles. Rico was the director of criminal trials in Baja California. He was a public figure who had regularly received death threats and had continued to defy the nation's drug traffickers. His death was a tragic loss but not a surprise. It was a very public statement that the prosecution of drug dealers would not be tolerated by the underworld.

Martha was here with a cover story known only to a handful of government officials. She had come to Madrid to help Deputy Serrador work out a