Force of Fire (The Kane Legacy) (13 page)

Mark grabbed him by the
shoulders, forcing him to stand. Then he twisted the man’s arms into a holding
position behind his back.

'You and I are going to have a
little talk,' Mark said, ushering the Spaniard into the bushes behind the
shuttered refreshment stand. He would speak to him all right, in the tongue of
all nations.

'Tell me who you work for,'
Mark demanded, wringing his attacker’s arms higher still and pressing him up
against the small wood building.

'No
entiendo
,'
the man answered with a grimace, as Mark yanked harder on one twisted arm and
threw his weight into the thin man’s back.

'Maybe you’ll understand this,'
Mark said, securing the man’s captured arms with his left hand and bringing his
steely right-hand fingers to the Spaniard’s jugular.

'Now,' Mark said, leaning in so
his mouth was just above the man’s right ear. 'Do you talk or do I relieve you
of that responsibility permanently?'

Slowly, deliberately Mark
tightened the pressure of his fingers against the man’s windpipe until he was
gasping for air.

'Como?'
Mark asked,
slackening his grip. 'I didn’t hear you?'

The Spaniard wheezed and turned
his head sideways. 'No English, no English!' he declared in a panic-stricken
voice.

'Fine,' Mark said, hoisting him
by the collar and hurling him sideways into the brush. 'Go spend some time at
Berlitz.'

Mark sat on a cushioned bench
in the small domed annex of the Prado Museum. He’d ducked in here to ensure the
man in the park had been working alone. So far, he thought, still breathing
heavily, he hadn’t been tailed.

Mark leaned forward, propping
his elbows on his knees. The mural before him was larger than a movie screen.
Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, his 1937 rendering of the atrocities of
war.
Mark remembered those all too well.

He studied the fragmented
bodies, wretched heads dislodged from grisly torsos, the ghastly flight of a
horse dying in fear. A single mutilated bull. Mark felt a burning in his
throat, as he saw an American airliner taking a seven hundred and fifty
mile-per- hour dive into the earth.

Their
tightly knit Northern Virginia community had rallied around him. Helped a young
man with promise and athletic prowess get into West Point. He’d specialized in
military intelligence just like his Dad. His mother had been a tall brunette
with a warming smile and intelligent eyes.
Someone who always
had the time to listen.
They’d taken Susan along, his baby sister’s
first time seeing Europe. She’d been only fifteen.

There’d been suspicions of a
bombing, some type of plastic explosive slipped surreptitiously on board. Talk
of drug traffickers and foreign insurgents. But no proof had ever materialized.
He’d started working on something just before he left the DEA. He’d gotten a
lead on an IRA faction with strong sympathizers in Spain. With the DEA funding
his excursion to London, he knew he’d meet with success. At his insistence,
British Intelligence was on the verge of reopening the case. It was all
starting to come together when the DOS came knocking at his door.

Mark had heard of the Defense
Operations Service, though there was much talk in the intelligence community
that it didn’t really exist. Everyone had heard of the CIA, but the DOS was a
mere wisp of speculation. Mark realized now that very idea testified to the
success of the organization.

Even once you were on the
inside, it was difficult to get too much information. Everything was
compartmentalized on a 'need to know' basis. Still, historical rumors
circulated. Truman, a military man himself, did not have complete confidence in
the founding of the CIA, the premise that international intelligence – and
therefore security – would be left entirely at the mercy of civilians.
So, he’d developed a special project. Directed the four- star chiefs from each
branch of the service to initiate his program. Call from the ranks the best of
the best
.

It had been organized under the
expansive wing of the Defense Department and was eventually reassigned as a
secretive
subagency
of the Pentagon’s Defense
Intelligence Agency after a massive DOD restructuring in the early 1960's. To
this day,
the Service was headed by a two star general,
always an MI man, up until this year when, for the first time, a female
Commander occupied the slot
.

In the early days, the DOS was
said to employ only former operatives who could neatly fold themselves back
into civilian society while covertly remaining on active duty. But after
Vietnam, when enrolment ranks plummeted and so many of those with the training
sought plain-clothed employment, the DOS reluctantly began to take on
civilians.
Civilians who nonetheless needed the appropriate
clearances and covert operations background.
Civilians like Mark Neal
who had done their time in hell and were ready to get out.

But the DOD doesn’t have to let
you out. It was there in the fine print of Mark’s appointment papers. There, in
a little -known section of military proprieties that tells the prospective
officer that he or she is, in fact, signing on for life.

They’d been watching him, they
said.
A real comer.
Someone with the
right background and experience.
And they needed him to report by the
end of the week.

It was a matter of national
security. Surely, a patriot like Mark would want to do his part. If he didn’t,
of course, there were ways of changing his mind. He could come willingly as a
civilian, or be reluctantly recalled to active duty. Of course, the civilian
choice would be less restrictive. Not to mention less messy. Thoughtful man
like Mark wouldn’t want to trouble all those paper-pushers at the Pentagon with
the busy work.

Mark turned his eyes to the
ceiling seeking the reason. Picasso had hit it dead on. Life was a jumble, an
excruciating experience of limb being torn from limb just as surely as death
severs the soul from the body. There was so much there that didn’t make sense.

He’d been with the DEA less
than six years, with the DOS now eight. And still hadn’t been able to make one
goddamned shred of difference.

McFadden was standing in the
hall of Los
Jeronimos
looking disgruntled when Mark
returned, pulling off his sweat-drenched tee. 'Where's Denton?'

'I was hoping you'd tell me.'

'You let him get away?'


'How the hell was I supposed to
know he'd try? Went to take a leak, okay? When I came out he was gone.'

'Fine, fine.
Babysitting's
not my thing either. How long has it
been?'


'Couldn't have been gone more
than ten minutes,' McFadden grated.

'Good. You check with the
concierge to see if he called a cab or left any clues. I'll grab a change of
clothes and meet you in the lobby in five.'

By ten a.m. the Prado was
swarming with tourists. Scott breezed by the Flemish collection and headed for
the West Wing. He moved about inconspicuously taking in the huge tapestry
walls, the El Greco and Velazquez oils. He looked and he listened. Student
painters were everywhere.
Apprentices taking their training
copying the masterworks.

Scott circled the incongruous
rooms until he came upon a likely group. A handful of pony-tailed young men in
their twenties carrying backpacks, the
tell-tale
packs of
Ducados
sticking out of their denim hip
pockets. Though it was a popular cigarette, one group in particular was rumored
to smoke this bitter, unfiltered brand. Scott had smoked it once himself. Not
because he liked it.
But because it paid.

It was a glamorous world he'd
been sucked into, glamorous and filled with unprecedented danger. It was the
one time in his life he’d meant something, had influence. And it had thrilled
him.

He’d actually considered a
career in covert operations and had applied to the CIA.
But
they la
ughed
in his face.
No intelligence
organization in their right mind would hire him with his record. He was a security
risk. He’d established some unsavory patterns over the years. Things have a way
of coming back around.

So he'd taken odd jobs waiting
tables on the Hill while he tried to figure things out. Ana had never
understood his lack of ambition. Never knew about the CIA or the DEA. He had
been that good. But nobody seemed to give a damn whether he'd been good at what
he was in Spain or not. He'd served his purpose. That was all. Here's your last
roll of bills. Thank you very much. If you ever say a word to anyone, we'll
deny ever having known you.

Eventually, he picked up an
internship clerking for a Texas Senator. They could use his Spanish but
couldn't pay him, sorry. So he continued to wait tables at night and had less
and less time for Ana. Ana and her questions, those damn questions that had no
answers. Why couldn't she just leave him alone? Why couldn't she just let him
breathe?

Scott approached what seemed to
be the leader of the group. He was the one the others deferred to, the one who
held the floor without interruptions or guffaws when he talked.

'
Esta
Luis?
' he asked in a knowing tone that meant he expected an answer.

The young man pierced him with
cold, black eyes
. '
Quien
quiere
saber?'

'Un amigo,'
Scott said,
hoping Cromwell was right.

He jerked his head sideways,
the dark brown ponytail flipping over his shoulder.
'
Esta
con Goya.'

Scott bowed his head in
acknowledgment and headed for the small gallery dedicated to Francisco Goya.
One of the master's paintings consumed an entire wall. The Third of May portrayed
the slaughter of Spanish citizens by French soldiers after the fall of Madrid
to Napoleon in 1808.

The painting's central figure
was dressed in white, his arms outstretched in crucifixion. At his sides were
the disbelieving faces of men; at his feet lay the carnage of others; and,
before him, stood the French firing squad, shoulders hunched, rifles trained on
their disbelieving victim
.

It was a fitting
portrait. This was exactly what the LPP hoped to do to the Spanish federalists.
Drag them out into the street for mass murder. Scott knew if this were ever to
come to pass Ana's grandmother, Maria, would be among the first to go. She was
a staunch supporter of the King and had had several family members receive
royal appointments over the years. Thinking of Maria, Scott found himself
wanting to stop it. Of course he wanted
Ana
back
unharmed. This was one gruesome history that didn't merit repetition.

A tour group of Orientals had
been partially obstructing his view with their
minicams
and large-lensed Nikon cameras. It was not until their guide led them into the
next room that Scott saw the old man in the oversized beret seated on a folding
stool in front of the canvas,
sketch pad
in hand.
Scott would buy a crude pencil rendering and a little information. A Ben
Franklin ought to do it.

Mark was tugging on his chinos
when the telephone rang. He’d tried to call Washington before his run but had
been unable to get a line through.

'Hi, chief.
What's the word?' Jarvis said.

Mark nabbed his briefcase off
the nightstand and quickly dropped his scrambler into the hand-held receiver.
'Denton's given us the slip.'

'Are you sure it was
deliberate?'


'No doubt.
But I'm hoping he's working on something.'


'Yeah, it'd really rot for him
to go AWOL on you now.'


'We'll find him. Count on it.
I've got about thirty seconds before his trail goes cold. Got anything
big?'


'Big as they
come.
We got a cable this morning from Northern Spain. El
Dedo
's
renegade runners and the
LPP are claiming responsibility for snatching Ana.'

'What are their demands?'

'You were right on target.
Archivo
azul
,'
Jarvis said, emphasizing the words. 'We get Ana when they get the file. It's
that simple.'


Mark wished. He had pieced it
together during his return flight from Miami. It was the only thing that made
sense. The
archivo
was a cache of top-secret
intelligence maps detailing the hidden underground network of military
installations in Spain. It was from these installations, and with the aid of
Iberian sympathizers, that Ana's father had managed to smuggle arms to the
Allies, despite the efforts of Basque militants to sabotage his operation,
code-named MILO II.

'There’s one more thing, boss.
The LPP wants to specify the courier.'

Mark grabbed his damp t-shirt
off the bed and wiped the new perspiration forming above his ears. 'Let me
guess,' he said, thinking of the man in the park, 'it’s not me.'

'We’re instructed to take no
action until contact is made.' Jarvis kept talking. 'What I don't get, is why
these LPP guys think they have a prayer. It's never been U.S. policy to
negotiate with terrorists.'

He was still learning, Mark
realized. 'Any leaks to the press?'

'No, thank God. Everyone here's
been keeping a lid on it. We haven't even contacted the mother, as you
directed.'

'Good, good.
There’s really nothing she can do but worry. And, if she were to talk –
to anyone, it could mean even bigger trouble. Do me a favor.'

'Name it.'