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 plan to keep his own people, the Basques, from joining with the equally nationalistic Catalonians in an effort to break away from Spain. The Basque uprisings in the 1980's had been sporadic enough to fail but violent enough to be remembered. Martha and Serrador both believed that an organized revolt by two of the nation's five major ethnic groups-- especially if those groups were well armed and better prepared than in the 1980's-would not only be enormously destructive but would have a good chance of succeeding.

If this were an assassination, if Martha had been the target, it meant that there was a leak in the system somewhere. And if there were a leak then the peace process was in serious danger. It was a cruel irony that only a short time before, Martha had been insisting that nothing must be allowed to interfere with the talks.

You know what's at stake…

Then, of course, Martha had been worried about Aideen's overreaction in the street.

If only that had been our worst roadblock, Aideen thought. We sweat the details and end up missing the big picture-

"Seńorita?" the inspector said.

Aideen blinked. "Yes?"

"Are you all right?"

Aideen had been looking past Comisario Fernandez, at the dark windows. But she focused on the inspector now. He was still standing a few feet away, smiling down at her.

"Yes, I'm fine," she said. "I'm very sorry, Inspector. I was thinking about my friend."

"I understand," the inspector replied quietly. "If it would not be too much for you, might I ask you a few questions?"

"Of course," she replied. She'd been slumping forward but now she sat up in the chair. "First, Inspector, would you mind telling me if the surveillance cameras told you anything?"

"Unfortunately, they did not," the inspector said. "The gunman was standing just out of range."