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"Does NATO have any jurisdiction here?" Hood asked.

"No," Rodgers replied. "They're not a domestic police force. I checked with General Roche, Commander-in-Chief of Allied Forces in Central Europe. He's pretty conservative. Doesn't want to plant a toe outside the charter."

"With Basques being attacked, the French Basques might not let it remain a domestic matter for long," Plummer said.

"That's true," said Rodgers. "But NATO still won't want to break their primary mandate, which is to resolve disputes between member nations peaceably."

"I know William Roche," Herbert said, "and I don't blame him. NATO still has egg on its face from the Serbian-Bosnian conflict in ninety-four. The Serbs violated designated safe havens all over the place despite the threat of limited NATO air strikes. If you don't intend to go in with everything you've got, stay on the sidelines."

"Anyway," Rodgers said, "there's a larger issue. If Portugal or France or any local government puts troops on alert it might help to precipitate a crisis."

"The Spanish are kinda ornery that way," Herbert said. "Groups of 'em will get together and start something because they're insulted that someone would think they'd start something."

"Are we talking about lynch mobs?" Hood asked.

"They might look for Portuguese or French nationals to beat up on," Herbert said. "Then, of course, those governments will have to respond."

Hood shook his head.

"Welcome to the world of precipitating crises," Herbert said. " 'From my kinfolk firing on Fort Sumter to blowing up the battleship Maine, from shooting Archduke Ferdinand to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Give people a spark and you usually end up with a fire."

"That's the old way," Hood said tensely. "Our job is to figure out how to manage these things, to defuse crises." That came out sounding harsher than Hood had intended and he took a long, slow breath. He had to be careful not to let frustration with his personal crisis seep into his professional crisis. "Anyway," he said, "this brings us to the matter of Darrell and Aideen. Darrell has recommended sending Aideen to San Sebastián with an Interpol agent. I've okayed this. They're going to go undercover to try and find out how the tape from the yacht was made, by whom, and why."

"Who's the Interpol agent?" Herbert asked.

"María Corneja," Hood told him.

"Ouch," Herbert said. "That's got to sting a bit."

Hood thought back to his own brush with his former lover. "They'll have very minimal contact. Darrell will be able to handle it."

"I meant it's gonna sting her," Herbert said. "She may handle it like the Castilians are handling the Catalonians."

It was a joke but a nervous one. María had been infatuated with McCaskey. Their romance, two years before, had caused almost as much conversation as Op-Center's first crisis, finding and defusing a terrorist bomb onboard the space shuttle Atlantis.

"I'm not worried about it," Hood said. "I am worried about giving Aideen an exit strategy in case something goes wrong. They're flying up to San Sebastián tonight. Darrell says that Interpol is worried about the same thing that's been hounding police all over Spain: ethnic loyalties within the organization."

"Meaning that Aideen and María are on their own," Rodgers said.

"Pretty much," Hood agreed.

"Then I think we need Striker over there," Rodgers continued. "I can set them down at the NATO airfield outside Zaragoza. That'll put them about one hundred miles south of San Sebastián. Colonel August knows that region well."

"Get them going," Hood said. "Ron, you'll have to take this to the CIOC. Get Lowell to work with you on it."

Plummer nodded. Martha Mackall had always handled the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee pretty much on her own. But Op-Center's attorney Lowell Coffey knew his way around the group and would give Plummer an assist as needed.

"Is there anything else?" Hood asked.

The men shook their heads. Hood thanked them and they agreed to meet again at six-thirty, just before