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"I am Juan and this is Ferdinand," said the man who had watched the frisking. "Your full names, please."

"María Corneja and Aideen Sánchez," María said.

Aideen picked up on the "change" in her own nationality. It was an inspired move on María's part. These two might not trust fellow Spaniards right now but they'd trust foreigners even less. Internal warfare was a perfect environment for foreign powers to spread weapons, money-and influence. Roots like that were often difficult to dislodge.

Aideen looked from one to the other of the men. Juan was the older of the two. He looked tired. The skin was deeply wrinkled around his nervous eyes and his slender shoulders were bent. The other man was a colossus whose eyes were deep-set under a heavy brow. His flesh was smooth and tight like the face on a coin and his broad shoulders were straight.

"Why are you here, María Corneja?" Juan asked.

"I want to talk to you about an army General named Rafael Amadori," María said.

Juan looked at her for a moment. "Go ahead."

María pulled the cigarettes from her jacket. She took one and offered the pack around. Juan accepted one.

Now that they were here, it bothered Aideen that they were collaborating with killers. But as Martha had said, different countries had different rules. Aideen could only trust that María knew what she was doing.

María lit Juan's cigarette and then she did her own. The way she lit his smoke-cupping the match under Juan's cigarette, inviting him to take her hands and move them toward the tip-made the action very intimate. Aideen admired how she used that to establish a rapport with the man.

"Seńor Ramirez and the heads of other business groups and familias were slain yesterday by a man working for Amadori," María said. "I believe you've met him. Adolfo Alcazar."

Juan said nothing.

María's voice was softer than Aideen had ever heard it. She was wooing Juan.

"Amadori is a very powerful officer," María continued, "who appears to hold a key place in the food chain of what's been going on. Here's how it looks to me. Ramirez had an American assassinated yesterday. Amadori knew this was going to happen and let it happen. Why? So that he could present an audiotape to the nation implicating Deputy Serrador. Why? So that Serrador and the Basques he represents would be discredited at home and abroad. Then he had Alcazar murder your employer and his coconspirators. Why? To discredit the Catalonians and destroy their powerbase. If Serrador and the business leaders were planning some kind of political maneuver, that's finished now.

"More importantly," María went on, "the presence of a conspiracy weakens the government considerably. They don't know who they can trust or who to turn to for stability. Words won't reassure the people. They're fighting each other from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, from the Bay of Biscay to the Strait of Gibraltar. The government needs someone strong to establish order. I believe that Amadori has orchestrated things to make himself that man."

Juan stared at her through the smoke of his cigarette. "So?" he said. "Order will be restored."

"But maybe not as it was," María said. "I know a little about Amadori-but not enough. He's a Castilian nationalist and, from all I can determine, a megalomaniac. He appears to have used these incidents to put himself in a position to have martial law declared throughout Spain-and then to run that martial law. I'm concerned that he won't step down after that. I need to know if you have or can get any intelligence that will help me stop him."

Juan smirked. "You're suggesting that Interpol and the Ramirez familia work together?"

"I am."

"That's ridiculous," Juan said. "What will stop you from gathering intelligence on us?"

"Nothing," María admitted.

Juan's smirk wavered. "Then you admit you might."

"Yes, I admit that," María said. "But if we don't stop General Amadori, then whatever intelligence I happen to gather on the familia will be useless.